Under Debate: Oaths Tokens

[JeVondair]

Name: Oath Token

Summary:
So I had an idea a while back, years ago when some of us tried to make the Order of Aristocrats happen. Seniority was based upon how many personal oathes of feality your character held from other characters. Fastforward to last night while I was watching John Wick 2 for the upteenth time and I had an idea. Oath Tokens.

Details:
To take an estate in any region, a knight must send an oath token to the regional lord. I imagine this happening the same way we send item/trade requests. until a lord accepts the oath, your character will be unable to take an estate there. New characters automatically have their oaths offered/accepted upon character creation. but after that you're on your own! Once your Oath token is accepted, the option to take estates in other regions/realms will be greyed out as honor demands that you must first be released/absolved of your oath token. Unless a lord is incapacitated or killed, your character is bound to theirs.


Benefits:
The goal and benefit here is to improve the SMA across the game. Players will have to seriously consider and account for who they give their loyalty to. I feel that aspect is sorely lacking in game and this will do a substantial amount to bolster the BM experience.

Downsides:
I toyed with the idea of giving each character THREE oath tokens to account for lords, dukes, rulers respectively, but I felt that added unnecessary complication. This idea would be more functional if it were purely between the Lord/Knight relationship. This way, lords and dukes can still rebel or secede without being impacted at all. And since, whenever these occur, the lord/duke in question takes all of their knights with them anyway, it all falls together.


A possible abuse could be that in the event of a secession where knights are forced to leave a realm against their will. I believe this was specifically addressed in a different thread and it was concluded that a safeguard should be implemented giving impacted knights a certain grace period to return to their realm of choice. 

[Blint]

Another downside to consider would be, what if a knight is in a realm that they find toxic and/or unfun to play for reason XYZ, and they want to leave and find a new realm and estate. What if the lord either does not relinquish them because they're a jerk, or because they don't play actively, perhaps they just quick play, follow movement orders and ignore other messages. We would need a way to combat this, perhaps something along the lines of the Knight can request the oath token be returned and/or the oath be relinquished, and if no response is given after X number of days, the token is auto returned to the knight.

We would also need to consider what happens if the Lordship changes - say due to elections. Does the knight owe their oath to the previous lord? Or is the oath ultimately to the region? Do they need to re-offer their token to the new lord? What if the new lord says no, should knights be punished because the previous lord lost an election?

[JeVondair]

That sounds even more SMA to me than what I wrote!

[Vita`]

But we must remember that this is a game meant to be enjoyed, not a medieval simulation; that SMA serves us, we don't serve SMA.

[Stabbity]

Instead of greying out the option to take an estate elsewhere, let the knight give out another oath token, but at the cost of honor.

[JeVondair]

That's a better idea 

[Blint]

Instead of greying out the option to take an estate elsewhere, let the knight give out another oath token, but at the cost of honor.

I still bring back up my notion of what if the lord won't "release" the knight for whatever reason - malicious or otherwise.. It doesn't seem fair to me to punish a player for the actions of another player..

[Stabbity]

I still bring back up my notion of what if the lord won't "release" the knight for whatever reason - malicious or otherwise.. It doesn't seem fair to me to punish a player for the actions of another player..

A few points of honor isn't particularly a big deal, not like it'll happen very often.

[Zatirri]

A potential fix for this, would be that if your lord will not release you, the duke can go over his head to do it.
If the duke wont do it, the King/ruler can.

Also, it shouldn't prevent you turning to a new realm, only changing within yours.
Turn coats happened, they could take a hit to their honour, but if they're willing to turn their back on a realm then the oath means very little.

[JeVondair]

I personally feel that if a lord won't release you, too bad, you gave your word of honor, a pact was made. They SHOULDNT be easy to get out of without betraying your oath to King and Country as well to find a home in a different country. More likely is that a lord may become inactive or somehow miss the release request. I do like the idea of being able to go above their heads in the chain of command to get a duke or ruler to intercede, but that sounds like it would be very difficult to code. A potential compromise is giving oath tokens a counter the same way duel requests have.


For Example...


Let's say on the POLITICS tab we add an OATH OF FEALTY link. this is the "Token" Clicking the link leads to a new page that tells you who currently holds your oath, and who is above them in the aristocracy (Duke, King). This is where we could have the "REQUEST RELEASE" button. Opening it reveals a dropdown menu of the three people who could release you (Lord, Duke, King). You select whom you want to receive the request. If you select Lord, that lord will receive a notification much like the duel request where if it goes unanswered for a certain period, then the knight is automatically released. If you select Duke or King, they CAN release you, in which case a notification saying as much would be sent to the lord. However, the Duke/King will not have a counter/timer like the Lord does. if they ignore you, well tough luck, roleplay your way out and/or find a better realm for your character/playstyle.

To be honest, so long as we're brainstorming, i'd also like this Oath of Fealty page to hold a log of all the people you've owed fealty to in the past, and/OR all the knights who owe(d) you their fealty. I like the idea of players having this information system-logged to refer back to for RP purposes.