..Interesting ambition. And, hey, everyone has to have a goal to shoot for, but that doesn't solve the base problem of how everyone playing along is still, in the guild, subservient to the guild founder. The guild, therefore, exists to serve the aims of the guild founder, who *can't* be kicked out or removed from his position, ever. He remains at the top, watching over everything. Again, it seems like you're trying to play realm politics, without the dedicated realm infrastructure and mechanics. How are you going to keep it dynamic enough to prevent it from getting stale, or preventing people from just leaving or losing interest?
Not unlike a King-Duke combo? Not unlike a realm in general? The Aristocracy is another layer, a new arena/playing field. It will offer everyone exactly what they want to take from it - not unlike Battlemaster in general.
The maintenance o guilds is also a PITA, and expecting people to form subsidiary guilds, and maintain them as well... I just don't see this ever gaining much traction as anything other than a big messaging system. Not to mention that having more than handful of nobles as full members will require a LOT of guildhouses for a rather significant expenditure in infrastructure, and a continual drain on guild funds due to regional taxes and maintenance fees. Your first few levels of guildhouses add quite a few members, but that quickly levels off. A guild that could hold half the nobles on Dwilight would be ... prohibitively expensive. (Proably requiring well over 1,000 gold a month in maintenance fees, not counting taxes.) The largest guild ever in BattleMaster, the Darkan Mercenary Company, peaked at 104 members (not all full members), and we always had problems shuffling people in and out of full membership due to membership constraints.
I guess we will find out? I've never managed a monolith guild before, plus the second tier of guilds that will have to come with it.
Fun fun fun til her daddy takes the t-bird away!
The concept has some merit, especially if it encourages roleplaying relationships between families by marriages of NPC or and/or PC characters. Though it might very well happen that the actual master guild is not required in the long run. Regardless, I hope it will work out. It might if care is taken as to not let it turn into an empire for one man.
Then it's up to the aristocrats in the Great House to see to it that they are not taken advantage of, unless they choose to be in that circumstance (which we've seen in several cases in Battlemaster). Really, the aristocracy is only as effective or as dangerous as it is allowed to be.
The one thing it isn't designed to do, however, is cause every realm to form their own indigenous Great House to protect their own borders (like what used to happen with religions). That defeats the purpose of interconnecting the individual noble to a wider web of nobility.
I'm surprised this idea hasn't hatched somewhere on Battlemaster already? Or maybe it did but in a different guise?
