Clans... Love them or hate them?!

[Revanael]

I know one which isn't too existent at the moment...

[SekoETC]

Know one person who loves her clan very much. OOC thinking may be a bit different but IC...

[AoM]

I am superstitious about TBR. I had one character who joined it, then it fell apart (the Mason incident) and so he slinked off to forget about the clan completely and have a nice life in Kwor. 10 years later, TBR arrives near his doorstep and convinces him to join. Not even a year later, that character is dead. I'm not saying it was the clan's fault, I'm just saying that everytime I've joined that clan, bad things have happened.

Besides. Clans are chaotic, unpredictable and scary things. I prefer my characters to be with the governments, fight on the the side of order and all that.

~AoM

[The Industriallist]

The only difference between clans and governments is clans don't need to pretend to care about anyone outside. A few governments actually govern. Most of them slap down some rules and then go about their own business.

Businesses differ from either only in that they often don't try to control outsiders at all.

[The Sociologist]

The only difference between clans and governments is clans don't need to pretend to care about anyone outside. A few governments actually govern. Most of them slap down some rules and then go about their own business.

Businesses differ from either only in that they often don't try to control outsiders at all.

Yes... There is no countryside in Cantr, well not such as can be used meaningfully--only towns. Towns can contain buildings, and these can be locked and then defended with iron and steel weapons. So such form the bases of power. These sources tend to be in the hands of older characters who form oligarchies.

Now, here is my question. Let us say a very young "woman in her twenties", indeed a recent newspawn, stands for one of those "Councils" that sometimes appear and, through sheer force of personality, somehow wins. Would she be given copies of the keys to the town's real stores? I mean the stores where the steel reserves and weapons are kept, not the town hall with its bit o' charity rice.

You see, if there are such cases, then you would have a genuinely interesting and rather modern form of "government".

However, the only variations I've seen so far are caused by differences in the number of older characters in a place. The fewer there are, the more concentrated the power is, and the more there are, then naturally the more distributed it is. So, you get a range from dictatorship to forms of civic "incorporation", much like medieval towns.

All my bets so far are on oligarchy. This is why distinctions between private and civic property are rather vague. When the newspawn peasants work "for the town" they are really working for the oligarchs who control the town, and who don't particularly need to make such distinctions.

So far, I have been unable to discover any difference between clans and governments in those cases where the clans operate from a town base just like any other oligarchy. In all cases I've observed so far, such distinctions seem to be external RL ideologies imported for roleplay fun and games.

What would interest me is clans operating completely without towns as bases; also extended families with representatives in many towns they don't themselves control, and attempts to set up wide-ranging "secret societies", religious orders, and the like.

The Rangers also interest me. To what degree have members of the design and programming departments had a hand in this? Even though they may claim to be acting IC, it seems a little to good to be true in some areas. What I suspect at the moment is that the same handful of players who have oligarch characters also operate ranger characters.
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[The Industriallist]

I don't think that the rangers are an OOC creation. Really. That would just defeat the entire concept of the game, and they wouldn't do that.
Also, most places don't have equivalents. The Rangers are completely unique, so far as I can tell. But they aren't totally without bases...they can use Krif, Drojf, and Seatown Forest as sources of equipment and manufacturing (at least to some degree).

I haven't seen a single town without at least some of the oligarcical tendencies you mention, but at least one town actually isn't ruled by them. The two new councillors of Drojf were elected in their mid to late twenties (over a respected ranger about his late thirties), and neither brought any significant resources with them. And they aren't marginallized in the government, either.

But I don't see anything uninteresting about less 'modern' governments. The depressing part is how so many of them are really exactly the same...especially the 'companies' that are essentially purely materiallistic dictatorships.

[Oasis]

Okay, something freaky just happened. My post ended up on the bottom of Sociologists post. And most of his post seems to have disappeared.

[The Industriallist]

Did someone hit the "edit" button instead of the 'quote' button? Because right now it looks as if the Sociologist replied internally to his own post...

Moderator misclicks

[Oasis]

edit:
I'm so sorry, Sociologist. I hit my back button, to try to retrieve your post, and all that was there was the one I put. You wouldn't happen to have it in notepad, would you? *hopeful look*

[The Sociologist]

:oops:

edit:
I'm so sorry, Sociologist. I hit my back button, to try to retrieve your post, and all that was there was the one I put. You wouldn't happen to have it in notepad, would you? *hopeful look*

Yeah, I thought for I moment there I'd gone schizo or something. Talking to myself, heheh. Tell you what, I'll try going back to being me and you stick to being you. Deal?

[Oasis]

Deal! *shakes*

[cantrpotatoe]

well I dont know what you all are talking about , but I love clams. they taste so good with a smooth cheese sauce...

[Revanael]

ClaNs, not ClaMs, potato!

*thinks about putting a clan in a cheese sauce*

[cantrpotatoe]

its best with cheddar... and spelled with an M .. claMs ..see M

[The Industriallist]

*Hits cantrpotatoe with a billy club*
There was a good discussion here. Go interfere with something else.