Polites wrote:A lot of Cultural Protocols (some of them actually introduced by myself as a player, but that should not be relevant to this discussion) we believe are overly detailed, making them hard to understand at a glance and thus making the nations in question less accessible to players that do not care much for world-building.
Agreed, although I point out that the current rules do give Moderation authority to insist on simpler Cultural Protocol bills, and that as a result of this, the problem is not as big as it was a few years ago. To quote from the
Game Rules:
16.3.1 The Cultural Protocol bill should be presented in such a way that a new player could glance at it and very quickly be able to identify the key demographic data. Cultural Protocol bills should be short and simple. They should not include an excessive amount of text and extraneous information.
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Polites wrote: 2) As you may have noted, the very detailed Cultural Protocols (and as a matter of fact most Cultural Protocols) are the work of a small but dedicated minority of players. Most players are here for the political simulation, not the world-building. Under the proposed reform we believe that those players that do not care about world-building can have a greater voice in determining the cultural makeup of their nations.
On the removed thread, you made the point (which I fully concur with) that some players struggle with the technical requirements regarding submitting Cultural Protocol updates. (The requirements are objectively hardly difficult/unreasonable, actually, but all the same, a lot take the process casually, make mistakes and understandably become frustrated with the ensuing delays).
However, I felt you did not adequately explain why the system being proposed would necessarily make the process smoother and simpler for players. At the end of the day, even with the new system, you will still have players lobbying Moderation to authorise changes to the cultural backgrounds of their nations, and you will still have Moderators who want to be helpful, but will not always be able to give every player everything they want all of the time. What I am saying is, even under the new system, there will still be a
process of some kind. What I think we need to know is: how exactly will that work? What will be the considerations by which Moderation/RP Team/whatever determines whether a player's petition regarding a nation's culture is accepted? And how confident are you that less experienced players and players who are less involved with "world-building" will fare better under this new regime?
Polites wrote: 3) Cobura actually is a good example of the problems that arise from the current system. As it stands, it is a mix of Ethiopian, Byzantine, Egyptian, and Serbian cultures, until recently with relatively equal weight for each of them. It is a fascinating nation (which I helped develop myself), but the problem is, that ethnic mix is not something most people could easily wrap their head around, and Cobura's player number throughout its history reflects that. And as it turns out, the current makeup of Cobura is the result of Cultural Protocols rules which allow minute changes and only after considerable RP, which means that difficult cultures can only be modified after a (very) long period of time and in practice only by the small minority of players that care about such things. The current makeup I think owes more to the fact that Coburan RP has been boxed in a particular combination stemming from the very first Cultural Protocol (that included Slovak, Celtic, Spanish, African, Arabic, Russian, and German cultures), gradually modified over the years, than from the desire of Coburan players to establish an Ethiopian-Byzantine-Egyptian-Serbian mix.
There are provisions in the current rules for dealing with inaccessible cultures:
(a) Moderation can reject such Cultural Protocols, or amend them if they have been accepted and it has turned out they were not sufficiently accessible:
16.7 Moderation will not accept Cultural Protocol updates which introduce, on a significant scale, cultures which are likely to be insufficiently accessible to players. In particular, for all significant cultures in Particracy, it should be easy for players to access and use online resources to assist with language translation and the generation of character names. Moderation reserves the right to amend Cultural Protocols which are deemed to have introduced significant cultures that are not sufficiently accessible and which are not being actively role-played with.
(b) Moderation can permit players to make larger-than-usual changes in order to make the culture more accessible:
16.5.1 Whilst significant changes should always be justified by role-play, where certain factors are present, Moderation reserves the discretion to adopt a more restrictive or a more relaxed approach to proposed changes. These factors include:
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to protect or promote cultures regarded as under-represented in the game world.
- Where it is deemed to be desirable to limit or reduce cultures regarded as over-represented in the game world.
- Where there are issues involved with a culture not being sufficiently accessible to players.
- Where players not present in the nation but with a strong connection to it are deemed to have presented a strong case. In particular, the nation's recent players, as well as players in the surrounding nations, may be deemed to have a legitimate interest.
But even putting aside these special allowances, the conventional terms for changing cultures in nations are actually not
that rigid. You have to move at a modest pace, but its hardly a snail's pace, and you can make changes over time. To quote the rules:
16.5 As a general convention, players should be able to provide good reasons if they want to significantly change Cultural Protocols which are less than 30 in-game years old. Where the Cultural Protocols are more than 30 in-game years old, then a change to any of the categories by 5% or less will generally be accepted without question. If the changes proposed are between 5 and 10%, then players should be prepared for the possibility of having the changes queried. If the changes proposed are over 10%, then players should always expect to need to provide strong role-play justification for the changes. Changes of over 15% will never be accepted unless the grounds for justification are exceptional.
In practice, Moderators are quite liberal with these guidelines. From my observation, it is very, very rare for changes under 10% to be rejected, and even changes between 10% and 15% are approved a lot of the time, even when not that much RP has been involved to justify it.
(c) If players find a Cultural Protocol too inaccessible, they can petition to remove it:
15. Requests for Culturally Open Status
15.1 In order to become a Culturally Open country, a bill requesting such a change must first be passed. It has to be supported by a 2/3rds majority of all players with seats (not just those with seats who vote) and over 50% of the seats in the legislature. Also, at least two of the players sponsoring the bill must have been currently continuously active in the nation (ie. no inactivations) for at least 2 months.
15.2 A request for approval of the bill should then be posted on the Requests for Culturally Open Status thread. In order to become official, the request must then be approved by Moderation. Moderation reserves the right to reject such a request where such a request is motivated by malicious intent or the targeted culture is deemed to be under-represented in the game.
15.2.1 Moderation will not approve of such a request within the first 96 hours of it being requested. This is in order to give other players a chance to query the proposed changes, if they wish to do so.
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Polites wrote: 4) If you check the Base Culture Documents you will see that we are in fact trying to maintain RP continuity in most if not all nations.
This is not true; significant changes have been proposed. Going by the current edition of the document, here are some examples:
- Baltusia, which has largely been RPed so far as English, becomes Hispanic.
- Beluzia, which has also largely been RPed so far as English, becomes more than half Dutch/Frisian.
- Davostan, another usually-English currently Open nation, becomes Finnish and Welsh, which it has never been before.
- Dranland/Dankuk is turned into a majority Korean country, eliminating the traditional balance between Koreans, Spanish and Welsh.
- Hawu Mumenhes has been significantly changed in a way the main long-term player there has already strongly objected to.
- Keymon's Greek/Roman theme is completely removed so it can become Corsican and Sardinian, which it has never been before.
- Kirlawa's historical English population is suddenly reduced from 30% to 5% without explanation (somewhat buggering things up in terms of my New Englia backstory...).
- Mordusia, which has always been English, become Filipino.
- Solentia, which has always been mainly English and sometimes English-with-Arab, suddenly becomes Italian and Greek.
- Vorona, another nation which has spent most of its time as English, suddenly becomes Igbo.
So the reality is, there
are drastic changes being proposed here, and if this new scheme is introduced, you can probably bet there will be further similar such drastic changes imposed in the future. It will all be in the hands of whoever is in Moderation/RP Team at the time.