[Suggestion] SWN Factions Structure

[Vanquol]

With so many people getting excited for [To-Be-Named-Something-Other-Than-Swan-Song] I thought I’d suggest how an idea for organizing a faction to try and facilitate, an enjoyable experience where everyone gets to contribute to decisions. All of this is my opinion and is in no way official, what actually gets decided is up to Adam, JP, and the various people who make up the factions again just to reiterate this is a suggestion. If any faction chooses to adopt these ideas I’d suggest not getting into Politics until after a day or so of the Discord being created so everyone has a chance to join in and participate.

1. First off Let’s talk about Leadership, I do believe each faction should have a Leader, Representative, Administrator someone who’s responsibility it is to facilitate decisions (See Number 2), communicate with Adam on what the faction is doing, and discuss with other Faction heads Politics, such as deals, stratagems, and assurances.
   1. A. The aforementioned position of leadership should be filled by an election where each candidate puts their name forward discusses their goals, aims and such for the faction, this should take a rough days time so those in different time zones don’t miss out. Then the people of that faction vote, and after a 24 Hour or so time period to give people in different time zones the chance to vote the person with the Majority takes the position. Baring a majority a runoff Election is established Where the Top 10 Candidates have another vote, and the person with the most votes takes the Leadership. (I’d recommend to just half the candidates until a majority is established but that would increase the required time but doing that at worst would add another 2 days to the process). I recommend a time where this election takes place again like after every faction turn (Which I believe Adam said there will be a Faction turn once every month), or after every 3rd Faction turn.
   1. B. For factions that want more than one leader or for the Houses Minor I suggest you do a Council instead where you have a set number of seats and those with the top votes fill those. So if you have a Council of 7, it is filled by the people with the top 7 votes. In the Houses of Minor special case they do in-house elections for a Leader, who either sits at a Council for the Minor Houses or chooses a Representative for the Council.
   2. When it comes to decisions, It won’t be too enjoyable if only one person makes the decision for the entire Faction elected or not, so instead I propose whoever or whatever group is at the head of the faction sees what the faction as a whole would like to do and takes the options solidifies what they would mean and presents them to the Faction as a whole and then like choosing the leader the Faction takes a day to vote on it then the Head(s) of the faction proceed to communicate the Factions plan to Adam so he knows what they’re doing for the Faction turn.
   2. A. Spies, I know people intend to spy for other factions and people might be worried about it but it’ll create a fun and interesting environment. For example knowing that the Faction you plan to betray might have a chance to see it about to happen. However it also lets other Factions who might wish to attack those your betraying thus helping you.
   2. B. Now instead if you have a Council you could designate a time and have the faction debate various actions then have the Council vote on it so that you facilitate decision making a lot faster but since after Each Faction turn you’ll have a month to talk and decide things that might not be necessary.
   3. When it comes to the in-universe the elections and voting don’t have to represent actual voting someone loosing an election could represent them falling out of favor in the faction, or a decision they simply were strong armed by the others in the faction. Most of this Suggestion is done so that everyone feels like the contribute and has fun with it.

If you read all this Thank You, for taking my suggestion serious. Can’t wait for the Show it’ll be amazing as will nerding out with this awesome community in Discord.

[VyRe40]

This is largely how I figured faction organization should go, though I personally wouldn’t do term limits cause the “month” of game time in SWN could be one week in real life with the pacing of shows (Faction Turns occur once per month in-game), and that can make things a bit wonky. Instead, I’d recommend that whenever there’s a significant call for new leadership, the people of the faction just hold a special election.

[Vanquol]

I may be wrong but I think Adam said he’d do a Faction turn once Per Actual Realtime Month though If it is ingame month that yeah I wouldn’t do terms quite that way.

[Mrcowabungaa]

Can it even work to do them every real-time month? Because in terms of gameplay time a realtime month could span anything between a couple days, if the crew is stuck on some planet or whatever for a few sessions, or like two or three months. So you either get oddly little faction-action, or oddly much. The whole thing, judging from the book, seems to be made to give the characters an even flow of things happening in the greater universe. Otherwise things are going to be oddly erratic.

Considering that, say, a fleet can only move so many hexes per faction turn it’d be real weird if the faction turn would have a very variable ingame time frame. Their in-world speed would variate very oddly, and that could possibly also screw with the modicum of balance that the faction turn has as compared to the actual game’s players.

I can imagine it feels kind of eh if the players want to interact with their faction in a certain way only to discover that behind their backs the factions did all sorts of stuff they couldn’t interact with simply because they were on a certain planet for a few days that just happened to take a few sessions, and that happened to be a real-life month. Am I making any sense? I have no idea if I am.

[AdamKoebel]

The faction turn is happening once every in-real-life month.

[notNOTjack]

You are definitely making sense but because we are having audience interaction and that means you gotta have some consistency and to try and retain engagement Adam decided to have the irl monthly faction turn despite the possible issue you mention. It’s going to be a balancing act but I’m sure Adam will manage and introduce the in-universe events caused by the faction turns as thoughtfully as possible to avoid any conflicting timing or whatnot.

[Mrcowabungaa]

Aight, I understand @notNOTjack’s explanation makes sense anyway. Curious to see how that’s going to work out in terms of balance then. I’m so pumped to see this show hit the road, it’s unreal.