[Emperors of the Fading Suns] [Emperors of the Fading Suns] Projects Discussion

[xarvh]

The addition of training charms is a huge have changer in politics.


@cyl: what charms were you thinking about specifically?

 

[xarvh]

@cyl actually even if it was the case, you could work around it by replacing only half of the personnel at time.

 

[Kacie]

The idea of using dice to confuse your enemy is a nice idea; it was explored in WW II thoroughly, to the point of the Allies setting up departments who's job it was to fool the Germans into thinking the Allies hadn't broken the German code. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon is an excellent fictional account of this.


Dice rolling without thoughtful oversight to see if the dice roll is strategical disaster - you might as well behead yourself and hand your head on a platter to the enemy.


That's without considering the mortals under the command. If repeatedly given bad commands - and random will produce bad commands on average half the time - command structure breaks down as people refuse to follow bad commands. Witness the Vietnam War for America, where lobbing a grenade into the (young fresh-from-college) commander's tent was common, because they gave bad orders (based theory without practical considerations).


In an emergency, order is important. If your people do not know the order of command, there is chaos, and they are easy pickings. The United States has a definite order of who becomes President - it's never been necessary to name Speaker of the House to President, but even if the top 3 people are assassinated, there's a clear succession order all the way down the whole of the Congress.


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More importantly, for Empire building:

There will be very little confusion for the people because they will know the people who can become rulers and officials - they'll be their neighbors, bosses, coworkers, friends, lovers etc etc - and the general rules will be set by the Council anyway.

This does not scale with size.


This works for a small city. It does not work for an Empire; it will not work for the Cross + resettled Mirunda. The people in the two cities do not know each other.


It would not work for a city even as large as Great Forks.


I work at a place with 5000 people. I know maybe 50 of them. If someone wiped out the head of lab and the division managers(~10 people), I would not know who was next in line.


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There's a distinction between "Who can become a Leader" and "Chain of Succession if someone is assassinated". The leader pool can be large, as long as there is time to train successors (overcome institutional lifetime limits). The chain of succession is "Who do we look to in an emergency" - and that needs to be crystal clear. If the pool of leadership is wide enough, including people who are currently house-wives, business owners, farmers, loggers, what-have-you -- that's fine, as long as when the emergency goes down, people know to whom to turn.


Finally - from my workplace experience - people want to know how they can move up the chain to better their position. A clear idea of what they need to achieve promotion is necessary for contentment - and workplace content/happiness is the best guard against sabotage trying to stir up discontent.

 

[cyl]

@xarvh :Bureaucracy - Indolent Official Charm for example.


As for replacing 50% of the personal, I prefer to go all in, and I just loved the idea of chaos being used to promote order.

 

[xarvh]

@cyl: you can use chaos (the mathematical one) to promote robustness, but there is an efficiency price to pay and the results are unpredictable.

 

[xarvh]

But yeah, training charms mean that you don't bother to select the best.

 

[JayTee]

Training charms as a reward. Earn your place among the elite, get specialized training to do your job even better. Or if you retire or change professions, be awesome at that as well.

 

[Kacie]

I just loved the idea of chaos being used to promote order.

Have you ever worked at a place where the employees - highly educated, motivated people - begin to suspect it doesn't matter what they do? That nothing they do matters whether they get promoted?


Do you understand how demoralizing that is?

 

[cyl]

But yeah, training charms mean that you don't bother to select the best.

As well as Bureaucracy charms will be used to stabilize the results and promote efficiency.

Training charms as a reward. Earn your place among the elite, get specialized training to do your job even better. Or if you retire or change professions, be awesome at that as well.

Can be done, but I'd rather not make it about earning a place among the stars.


It's a responsibility and a risk considering the context, a duty for the greater good, a public service.


@Kacie Good points.


About size: it can work locally I think.


We have 15K or something souls under our protection. The mortals will handle the day to day lives and problems and when things go really bad they will turn to the Exalts. The point is to avoid taking care of everything and see things and act globally. But to do that we need to cover our asses locally.


So, say we split the population in half, we got 7.5 in Mirunda and 7.5 in Cross. Logically the average ratio of civil servants (including teachers, cops, doctors etc etc) per 1000 inhabitants in modern states is 90.


Let's be very generous and say that 30 of them are administrative employees and officials.


With one "class" we can train 150 officials, enough to administrate a city of 5000 with a non randomly rotative structure.


A second class and we already have a multitude of possibilities, a third class and good luck destabilizing that city bad guys !

I work at a place with 5000 people. I know maybe 50 of them. If someone wiped out the head of lab and the division managers(~10 people), I would not know who was next in line.

And why is that if you don't mind my asking ?


Is it because


- no one told you ?


- you don't care ? (some people really don't, but I'm not saying that you are one of those )


- this information is unavailable ?


- the people responsible for this hierarchy just went "aw fuck this, let's keep it that way, it's not like there's a zombie nuclear apocalypse coming our way !" (that happens more than one can think)

The chain of succession is "Who do we look to in an emergency" - and that needs to be crystal clear. If the pool of leadership is wide enough, including people who are currently house-wives, business owners, farmers, loggers, what-have-you -- that's fine, as long as when the emergency goes down, people know to whom to turn.

Well there's a simple answer for that. There's an acting "manager", if he goes down, you go to the next scale, and if there are no more scales, you go to the one who was in charge last shift.


While there is an active hierarchy everything runs, and when the hierarchy is under attack, the individuals have experience with executive prerogative and have been trained to adopt protocols (pretty much like the Salt Lines Defenses), so you will always find someone you can count on to fix things or send a report to the Exalts.


People will never go "uh guys, the division managers are all dead... what do we do ? who do we call ?"... because we will have too many people trained, organized and ready to step up when it's their turn to do so.


The more members the government castes will have the easier it will be to handle an "administrative" crisis.


The point is to allow people to manage themselves 98% of the time and limit our intervention to big crises or significant projects that require our attention / participation.

Finally - from my workplace experience - people want to know how they can move up the chain to better their position. A clear idea of what they need to achieve promotion is necessary for contentment - and workplace content/happiness is the best guard against sabotage trying to stir up discontent.

You're absolutely right.
But Creation is not a happy peaceful place where the only thing one has to give a damn about is his own personal contentment.


There are deathlords, deathknights, demons, faes, cannibals, lunars, infernals, behemoths, rogue spirits, crazy Dragon Blooded, wildlife and god knows how many more things out there who are trying to kill his fair share of mortals.


The context is radically different, and more importantly, the people we took under our wings are survivors.


They all come from places that have been destroyed by a dark force, most have seen loved ones die in horrible ways (starvation, disease or the occasional rampaging undead) and we have struggled just to keep them alive.


Without our collective action, they wouldn't be alive today. And they all know it.


Also considering what's going on with the outside world, we can fairly assume that this sort of social and professional discontent will not rise so soon because as long as we haven't destroyed our enemies, their lives are still in danger and they need the Exalts to protect them.

Have you ever worked at a place where the employees - highly educated, motivated people - begin to suspect it doesn't matter what they do? That nothing they do matters whether they get promoted?
Do you understand how demoralizing that is?

Yup, I have, and at the time, I did not get it at all.
I could talk about my personal experiences which made me rather resilient to / detached from that kind of stress, but that would be missing the point.


I learned after a while that people are defined by their experiences, and that the rougher you get it, the more resilient you become if you can overcome the traumas and that inversely the least you experience the ugly side of life, the more fragile it can make you (but not always, some people are just born bamfs).


Those guys in Cross and Mirunda are supposed to have had the roughest life a human being can have.


So even if we were evolving in times of peace and stability and that all was good and proper in Creation, I don't really see them whining about their working conditions before a generation or two.

 

[Kacie]

Something that works for 15k does not necessarily scale up, at all. Furthermore, a random "now you are promoted!" scheme would have to synchronize across the entire area of an Empire.


The reason why I wouldn't know who is in charge is because the Divisions are all equal. If the heads of all the divisions are killed, there's ~50 sections, none of whom have been designated more important than any other section. To avoid this, one has to delineate the chain of succession and make it absolutely clear to all.

Well there's a simple answer for that. There's an acting "manager", if he goes down, you go to the next scale, and if there are no more scales, you go to the one who was in charge last shift.

What if you have multiple scales, and no one knows who should be in charge? If explosions go off all over town, and you just woke up, how do you know who was in charge last shift? How do you know that when your town grows and is more than 15k?


You talk about all the people in the Cross being survivors. That's true now - but won't be true in 20 years. The children won't have been through the same things the parents were.


Bottom line - randomness is terrible in a moment of crisis, and terrible at giving good personal incentive over the long run.

 

[cyl]

Something that works for 15k does not necessarily scale up, at all. Furthermore, a random "now you are promoted!" scheme would have to synchronize across the entire area of an Empire.

It works for the Jury Duty system, so I do not see why it would not work in our case.


Consider it's a local administration, not a global one. Since our cities are hundreds of miles away from each other, they have to stand on their own.


We will not be an Empire until we can colonize the lands and build additional settlements and forts between the cities we control.


All administration will have to be local and Cross Mirunda and Nathir will be city state pretty much like medieval free cities, and in the meantime, we as exalt will have a global view of things and will handle the big decisions for the "Empire".

If the heads of all the divisions are killed, there's ~50 sections, none of whom have been designated more important than any other section.To avoid this, one has to delineate the chain of succession and make it absolutely clear to all.

Exactly, the key element is proper information of the individuals and the community.


I'm not saying we should shuffle the officials every day, but once every 2 weeks and with little irregularities, that will prevent external risks and at the same time allow us to continue our progress.

If explosions go off all over town, and you just woke up, how do you know who was in charge last shift? How do you know that when your town grows and is more than 15k?

The people who were last in charge know and will step in if the active hierarchy is threatened.


Think about it like a back up system.


If current week hierarchy is down, hierarchy -2weeks steps in, if hierarchy -2weeks is also down, hierarchy -4weeks steps in etc etc.


There will always be someone to step in and take charge. And to paralyze the system, an enemy would have to go through all the troubles of killing a lot of people and that wouldn't go unnoticed.

You talk about all the people in the Cross being survivors. That's true now - but won't be true in 20 years. The children won't have been through the same things the parents were.

You don't erase that much misery and suffering within 20 years (unless you are called Rhapsody and you want people to forget).


The pain and the lessons people learned about life will be passed on to their children, and it's our job to make those who forgot remember where they came from that a lot people died to get to where they are.


Commemoration is one way to do it, but school is another.


Anyone can forget about the ones who died in WWII, but no one will as long as they teach about it during history classes.


Plus the context isn't favorable to a 20 years projection.


We've got a lot of enemies, a lot of holes and flaws and a lot to patch up if we want this thing to hold.

Bottom line - randomness is terrible in a moment of crisis, and terrible at giving good personal incentive over the long run.

I'm more concerned about short term security issues rather than long term happiness of the public servants.


Besides increasing detection measures to become aware of unidentified foreign essence users strolling in our midst, there is very little we can do to protect a social group and the individuals composing it from getting mind raped or physically attacked unless we put a powerful delegate in charge or have an exalt act as a guardian for the social group.


Since we're trying to untie our hands from micro managing the dominion, it is the only way I can think of right now to protect an organization without compromising its work and structure.


We can't make officials and rulers anonymous, so I think one way of reaching safety and continuity is to make the social group unpredictable and shifting, even mercurial, in order to confuse potential predators.


It's very much like the defensive techniques used by some schools of fishes or other preys working in groups to distract, maze and tire a predator.


We can't make really make the organization or the individuals anonymous to protect them, but we can confuse a predator with a multitude of targets and an constant renewal of the workforce.


Also, even if we were enslaving people, we would have waysto make them happy about it through the use of social charms, but we only have a few options at our disposal to make an organization enduring enough to withstand the assaults of an essence user.


And it's not totally random, it's a chaotic way of determining who will be in charge for a fixed period of time.


Say we take the dice game to help us organize this thing. We create a list of all the people able fit and trained for duty and at the end of each shift then we just need to:


- roll the dice to determine the period of time of the next shift (day / week / month / season)


- roll the dice once per each office to determine who will work to the City hall this shift


We won't have to fear incompetence because all will be properly trained, each time the hierarchy in place is under attack, the previous hierarchies can step in without delay (the individuals will know what to do because they'll have been trained and will remember what they did and when).


And finally people will never get bored because they will always be doing something new which is also important if you're concerned about their mental well being.


Ultimately we could even think about spreading the knowledge and open several activities to people considering their training... but here it could become very very messy without computerization.

 

[Kacie]

Cyl, swapping people in a bureaucracy every 2 weeks is a ridiculous idea.

 

[cyl]

IRL yes, obviously.


In the exalted universe, considering city state management and our powers, not so much.


Keep in mind that we can make them individually the best of the best. They will all know what to do, and how to do it optimally without any form of supervision and will respect our guidelines and meet their deadlines. If they don't we have charms for that too


The only difference is instead of putting someone in an office for a long period of time, either through merit or election, we change the rules about who does what and when and we handle administration with a caste or corps of numerous and seriously badass bureaucrats.


I can understand that it feels wrong, but think of it as just switching parts of a clockwork regularly.


They won't act like "people", they will act more like interchangeable administrative "drones".


Now if you reject the idea, which is understandable, then how do you think we should proceed to keep the mortals and the organization safe vs essence using saboteurs ?

 

[CrazyIvan]

I can understand that it feels wrong, but think of it as just switching parts of a clockwork regularly.


They won't act like "people", they will act more like interchangeable administrative "drones".

Stuff like this is why I've always asserted that Solars make the best villains in the Exalted setting. It's almost impossible to use their high Essence charms and not be a monster.

 

[Arynne]

You don't erase that much misery and suffering within 20 years (unless you are called Rhapsody and you want people to forget).


The pain and the lessons people learned about life will be passed on to their children, and it's our job to make those who forgot remember where they came from that a lot people died to get to where they are.


Commemoration is one way to do it, but school is another.

Test of Survival at age 18?

 

[CrazyIvan]

It's what modern China does as well.
The problem is, who decides who passed the test and who does not?


Who updates the tests as things change?


Who ensures that the skills required to pass the (uncheatable) test are the same required to run the city?

I will note that this was what Fangs was trying to do with her civil service project before she skipped town, and she was one of these people back in the day.

 

[CrazyIvan]

@cyl: you can use chaos (the mathematical one) to promote robustness, but there is an efficiency price to pay and the results are unpredictable.

*Network dynamics postdoc hat*


There's also a fair amount of evidence that purely dynamic networks are less resilient to certain types of problems than ones with a number of fixed linkages, in addition to efficiency penalty.


There's a reason you don't see many things in nature running off a purely Monte Carlo governmental approach and being multicellular.

 

[CrazyIvan]

Anyone can forget about the ones who died in WWII, but no one will as long as they teach about it during history classes.

But, while we understand WWII academically, we don't have the visceral experience. The PTSD. The self-medication via rampant alcoholism.


I can tell you that the U.S. suffered a little under 3,000 casualties when we landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944.


I cannot tell you what it was like to watch Eddy from Toledo try to keep his insides from falling out, and been unable to help him because I was pinned down behind a wrecked landing craft.


That's the point. In 20 years, the people of the Cross will be the children of survivors. In 40 more, they will be the children of the children of survivors. Mirunda won't be a vivid memory. It will be something grandpa doesn't like to talk about.

 

[Kacie]

I've already proposed above how to handle setting up a government bureaucracy that doesn't need hands-on Exalted running it all the time.


Protecting from essence users is hard to do. Best bet is to summon more demons and have them guard immaterial where people work, and to train people to do jobs, and to have a clean chain of command so that if someone(s) are killed, the people know who steps up to take their place.


Convoluted chain of command and switching people rapidly leads to a hugely ineffective government, and while charms can help, I believe the whole point was to not have the government bureaucracy dependent on Exalted.

 

[JayTee]

Elementals, not demons, please.


Or I can build some automatons once I get the factory cathedral up and running.

 

[CrazyIvan]

Protecting from essence users is hard to do. Best bet is to summon more demons and have them guard immaterial where people work, and to train people to do jobs, and to have a clean chain of command so that if someone(s) are killed, the people know who steps up to take their place.

I'd suggest that any large-scale organization of mortals that can't be snapped in half by a moderate Essence exalt just hadn't been hit hard enough by one yet. Keep in mind that this is the setting the Guild is currently operating in - most Solars are still low Essence fledglings.

Convoluted chain of command and switching people rapidly leads to a hugely ineffective government, and while charms can help, I believe the whole point was to not have the government bureaucracy dependent on Exalted.

And having a complex, random chain of command, while protection from murder, isn't protection from society-level rewrites. Hell, one could cause merry havoc by creating a society-wide taboo against random numbers.

 

[CrazyIvan]

Elementals, not demons, please.

Elementals have problems being long term labor, what with them actually having jobs in Creation, and draw more attention than demons.

 

[CrazyIvan]

...I now really, really want Fangs to instill a society-wide taboo against random numbers somewhere.

 

[xarvh]

Also, guys, it is not necessary for you to define in such detail your form of government.


And whatever you choose, it does not have to be definitive. You can improve it or just scrap it and try something else.

 

[cyl]

Also, guys, it is not necessary for you to define in such detail your form of government.
And whatever you choose, it does not have to be definitive. You can improve it or just scrap it and try something else.

But, while we understand WWII academically, we don't have the visceral experience. The PTSD. The self-medication via rampant alcoholism.


I can tell you that the U.S. suffered a little under 3,000 casualties when we landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944.


I cannot tell you what it was like to watch Eddy from Toledo try to keep his insides from falling out, and been unable to help him because I was pinned down behind a wrecked landing craft.


That's the point. In 20 years, the people of the Cross will be the children of survivors. In 40 more, they will be the children of the children of survivors. Mirunda won't be a vivid memory. It will be something grandpa doesn't like to talk about.

Depends on the elders and their involvment I'd say.


I'm the only male member of my family on my father's side who hasn't had to fight in a war ever since the 19th century.


My grandpa and my dad were pretty clear about what war can be and do to one's body and mind (both got shot and almost died), and they painted a pretty vivid picture in my head of their experiences, something that I will transmit to my kids if I have any one day to prepare them if they have the bad luck to be involved in a war, just to prepare them, even if I have not experienced this myself.


Also, what happened in Thorns and Mirunda and to Kalak's people wasn't exactly war.


It was more like a genocide, followed by an exile and a period of great suffering, and I think a large majority of the survivors were civilians.


And that changes a lot of things regarding social memory.


Plus we've got exalts around, some of them who were directly involved in these "conflicts", and most of us who saw many of the people from Thorns and Mirunda die around them, unable to save all of them.


I don't think those exalts will ever forget what it was like and they will likely help the naive and forgetful remember and will bring them back down to earth.

Protecting from essence users is hard to do. Best bet is to summon more demons and have them guard immaterial where people work, and to train people to do jobs, and to have a clean chain of command so that if someone(s) are killed, the people know who steps up to take their place.

The problem with a clean chain of command is it's pretty much like dressing a list of targets to be influenced / hurt.


If people know who's in charge and the individuals are known, then the enemy can know where to hit, hence my proposition to make that list regularly shifting.


If increased protection is the solution our team wants to consider, it's fine, but we'll have to put one spiritual guardian to follow each person taking on a major office every single minute of his life.


The saboteur's influence may come from any place, at work, in a tavern, during the way home, or even at home.

Elementals have problems being long term labor, what with them actually having jobs in Creation, and draw more attention than demons.

Not all of them have jobs in Creation, some are free to roam without creating an imbalance like water children IIRC.


But demons are more specialized anyway and can serve longer.

I'd suggest that any large-scale organization of mortals that can't be snapped in half by a moderate Essence exalt just hadn't been hit hard enough by one yet. Keep in mind that this is the setting the Guild is currently operating in - most Solars are still low Essence fledglings.

The Guild doesn't stand alone, it has spiritual and even exalted back up IIRC. A lot of people make a buck so they aren't going to let if fall apart.
Besides the Empire it's the second most powerful organization in the world.


A celestial could tear it apart, but the parties interested will notice whatever changes the solar make and will most likely restore order.


For example, I am pretty sure that as soon as the slave trade stops, you'll have people investigating and assassins sent to take care of things.

And having a complex, random chain of command, while protection from murder, isn't protection from society-level rewrites. Hell, one could cause merry havoc by creating a society-wide taboo against random numbers.

It does present the advantage of dampening organization wide rewrites, but it doesn't protect a whole society.


This is why I suggest that the first priority should be increasing essence detecting measures.


You have to detect an incoming threat, and then organize your groups and individuals to prepare for the ones you security net failed to catch.

...I now really, really want Fangs to instill a society-wide taboo against random numbers somewhere.

That would be an awesome battlefield for Fangs & Malek.


- what did you to do "my" government ?


- who ? me ? I simply improved it