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Houses Minor Organisation

RollPlay®: Far Verona
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#1

There has been some discussion about how to organise the houses minor and I think it would be worth having a dedicated thread for that purpose. @equusmule has suggested that each of the minor houses should control its own assets and fac creds (They can of course give fac creds to one another.) and then the houses should vote on which action to take that turn. I think the specifics of how the voting should work will require more discussion, but to get us started I decided to take a look at the first part of the suggestion, having houses control their own assets and fac creds.

The first question is whether we are likely to have enough assets to make this work.

prioritize the faction’s attributes, deciding the order in which they focus on Force, Cunning, and Wealth. Minor factions should have a 4 in their most important attribute, established planetary governments should have a 6, and regional hegemons should have an 8.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the houses minor have more power than a single planetary government between them.

give regional hegemons four assets in their primary [attribute] and four in others.

This works out to one asset per house, with one left over. So far so good.

The next question then is how we should assign attributes so that each faction can end up with an asset that is thematically appropriate.

House Aquila: Force
House Eridanus: Wealth
House Lyra: Cunning
House Pyxis: Cunning

  • E.g. Covert Shipping/Transit

House Triangulum: Wealth

  • E.g. Laboratory, Researchers, R&D Department

House Serpens: Force

  • Psychic Assassins (how could they not have the assassins who killed the emperor?)

House Reticulum could go either Wealth, for those who make, or Force for those who wield.

If we split Reticulum, Wealth and Force are tied for highest. This works out well enough, with the eighth asset bringing the highest up to the required four. I think the fact that Serpens is also responsible for running all of the big hospitals should tip the balance in favor of wealth. (Medical centers are a Wealth asset.)

That leaves us with an attribute ordering (highest to lowest) of Wealth, Force, Cunning.

If we take a look at the Wealth assets, Bank, Local investments, Laboratory, Pretech Researchers, and R&D Departments are all passive upgrades. (The Bank probably makes the most sense fictionally.) If we take one of these for the eighth, we can maintain the individually controlled assets structure.

What about fac creds?

It turns out that Wealth being the highest attribute is a good idea for multiple reasons. With a Wealth of 8, the houses minor will receive seven faction credits per turn, or one per house. ( 8/2 + (7+5)/4 = 7 )
This keeps everything nice and simple. We don’t have to keep track of fractions of credits. Each house gets one per turn.

TLDR: I think this is a great solution, assuming the faction is set up to accommodate it.

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#2

I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I don’t think the minor houses fit the attributes that well.

If we take Serpens as an example; the assets that fit with them most are:
Book of Secrets - Cunning Asset,
Psychic Assassins - Force asset,
Medical Centre - Wealth Asset.

Those three assets epitomise House Serpens but they each come from a different attribute.

#3

It’s not about each house fitting neatly into any one attribute. It’s a question of which attribute their one starting asset should come from. This matters because we need to have four come from the same attribute for the faction to be valid based on the rules in the book.

Personally I can’t imagine House Serpens not having the Psychic Assassins, seeing as they’re so important to the history of the sector.

Edit: Although five of the seven do fit fairly neatly, as far as I can tell.

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#4

He’s just stating what should be the main attributes upon starting, I believe. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong @viratus

It’s also plausible to level the rest up and buy the thematic assets if need be. Of course it’s not like upon creation of the Houses Minor faction that they’d get assets that are thematic to all 7 of the houses. Of course there has to be to be compromise.

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#5

Fair enough. Although for me I would suggest Book of Secrets fits better with Serpens if I had to choose one. We know that they assassinated the Emperor but we don’t know what happened to the assassins. But we do know that they have a psychic council that can see the future.

#6

The way I see it, Serpens is already getting the effects of the council for free when Adam drops things in chat for them.
But you are right, we don’t know what happened to the assassins after they were successful.

#7

Even if every minor house gets their own assets and somehow their own F/C/W-rating, there is still the tag of the factions, what makes them special.

Some examples for other factions:
House Vagrant tag would be “Pirates”.
The Deathless tag would be “Mercenary Group”
The High Imperial Church of Messiah-As-Emperor “Theocratic”

But the minor Houses are so different, just as an example:
House Aquila “Warlike”
House Eridanus “Exchange Consulate”
House Lyra “Machiavellian”
House Phyxis “Secretive”
House Reticulum – no clue what would fit best? “Technical Expertise”
House Serpens “Psychic Academy”
House Triangulum “Technical Expertise”

I think it will be very difficult to have all minor houses to have only one tag. The problem I see here is, if Adam takes everything away from the minor houses what makes them special, there would be no need to split them up in seven factions in the first place. Because they would be everything and nothing at the same time, with nothing special about the all in one faction.

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#8

I guess I wasn’t very clear in my first post, but what I was trying to do was figure out which F/C/W rating would work best for the faction as a whole. It’s just a way of organising ourselves. None of it requires special rules in the faction turn itself.

I agree that choosing tags for the Houses Minor is a bit odd. It would be OP to just give them tags relevant to every house. However, there are a few general ones that work for all of the houses I think, like Deep Rooted or maybe Machiavellian.

Edit: I think having the specific tags as an incentive for individual houses to try to become factions in their own right is not necessarily a bad thing.

2 Likes
#9

I had another input.
Will Adam consider the population of each faction for their F/C/W-rating? Or will he do what he thinks is best for the setting?
Because at this moment in the poll, the minor houses have 37.27% and House Fornax in 2nd position with 12.73%.
Will the minor houses as one faction become the power they deserve, with triple the population? Or will the minor houses be just a minority, like their name says?

#10

I hope that at some point at least one of the Minor Houses becomes large enough that they decide to split off into their own faction entirely. That’ll be fun.

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#11

Here’s what Adam said on Discord in terms of in-universe faction strength:

I figure it’s like:
TIER ONE - Houses Minor, ACRE
TIER TWO - Crux, Vela, Fornax, the High Church
TIER THREE - Everyone Else
GOD TIER - THE GUILD

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#13

Was this on the Mathsquad discord or somewhere else?

#14

I believe it was posted on JP’s discord last night

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#15

Here’s what I’d think in terms of actually deciding the Faction turn:

Minor Council (7 members, 7 votes)

  • 1 - 2 weeks before Faction turn, the 7 Members each have the option to propose a specific Faction turn to the specifications that Adam wants.
  • Some time before the turn, a meeting of the Minor Council is held, and they select (by single-transferrable-vote?) 1 of the 7 Faction turns proposed. The winner is reported.
  • The Minor Council has a Speaker which rotates through the Houses on a monthly basis. The last month’s Speaker confirms House attendees. The current Speaker chairs the Council’s meetings and reports the final results to Adam.
  • The Houses to determine who attends internally each month.

Everything is publicly recorded for Council meetings/votes. We’re not going to be a sneaky Faction. This system is about as simple as possible while practical.

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#16

I made note of it in the discord, but I propose a measure for a vote-of-no-confidence should the need arise; a house would propose it and it would be resolved by a simple majority vote.

2 Likes
#17

So how did you guys end up deciding on operations? Is that ironed out yet?

#18

How do you mean? I don’t believe we’ve officially agreed on any method of operation for the minor council meetings if that’s what you’re asking, but I had no objections to Twilight Spark’s proposed method

#19

Yeah, was just wondering how things were going in your faction. Seems the most politically intriguing at the moment. Is it chaos right now, or are you guys all united?

#20

The Houses Minor havent done much in the way of organising inter-house relations. Some have started but in terms of the faction turn dilemma, everyone is kinda waiting to see the playing field.

#21

Pyxis has done wonderfully coordinating themselves but yeah, we haven’t sorted out the minor houses as a whole yet. I think everyone is still pretty wary of the other minor houses at the moment.