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MOD UPDATE: BANANA SPLIT
Some of you might have noticed a debate ongoing on the correspondence comm. We wanted to clear a few things up in advance of letting people actually vote. And sorry for not doing this sooner—we thought it would be cool and more organic for it to come up IC first, but it seems like we’ve confused and alarmed some people! Lesson learned.
The big question is whether the Gallows outpost should split from the Inquisition or not. Doing so could take several forms, spanning from burning down a Chantry while chanting “Fuck the Divine” on one end to coming to an amicable agreement with Skyhold and with the new Divine about how to cooperate on the other. Remaining with the Inquisition and continuing in approximately the same capacity as before is also a viable option, obviously!
The reason this is an issue now is because the Divine will, per the writ on which it was founded, have authority over the Inquisition. Whether she will successfully exercise that authority is up for IC debate, but since we’re currently in charge of the NPCs at Skyhold, we can pretty confidently say that the leadership there—and the thousands of devout Andrastian soldiers who make up the Inquisition’s main forces outside of our little bubble—will do their best to unify with the Chantry and take advantage of the Divine’s unambiguous authority to deal with the war head on, rather than defy the Divine and potentially fracture Thedas further. So our PCs get to decide whether they’re also going to fall in line.
In addition to leaving this up to a vote, we're currently trying to leave the details of what a split would look like open-ended IC so people can make proposals about how to potentially go about it, if it is in fact gone about. If our characters do vote to split off into a separate entity, the two main options we're aware of as of now are:
1. Declaring independence and severing ties with the Inquisition and Chantry, more or less completely, to pursue a separate agenda without their assistance or encumbrance.
2. Becoming an independent ally (similar to how the Rebel Mages, the Templar Order, the Chargers, etc., can ally with the Inquisition while preserving themselves as separate groups with their own leaders and hierarchy) and continuing to coordinate with the Inquisition, but with less direct Inquisition oversight of and accountability for the Gallows' day to day operations and decisions.
But there could potentially be other options, too, if characters propose other plans IC in the next couple of days so they can be incorporated into the vote.
WHAT WON’T CHANGE
The IC politics are obviously complex, and the potential repercussions of either choice are too variable for us to lay out in advance. But we can promise that our goal is to make sure people have fun—including fun grappling with ethical dilemmas and arguing about questions that have no correct answer, and there isn't a right or a wrong outcome here. Some things will go wrong regardless of which you choose, because things going wrong is fun; some things will also go right regardless of which you choose, because things going right is fun, too. We’re just here to facilitate everyone telling stories together, and this decision is about some details in how we’re going to tell the story going forward, rather than anything to do with winning or losing the game/war/etc.
IC, it’s perfectly fine and reasonable for your characters to be concerned about this meaning Game Over. We don’t mean to smother that debate at all. But for the sake of making sure no one is concerned OOC that worst case scenarios will make the game unplayable or that responding a certain way could make their characters appear at fault for advocating something that will then get everyone murdered, here are some things we can confirm in advance that deciding to split will not do:
And here are things deciding to stay will not do:
Again, it isn’t unreasonable for characters to be alarmed about those possibilities and to argue about them IC. Please continue to do that! But OOC, we want you all to know that it’s going to be fine.
* Making sure your character is motivated to stick around and thus be playable remains your job, at the end of the day, so you’ll have to work with us. There might not be anything we can do if your stance is “my character hates the Chantry so much there is literally nothing that could convince him to stay if it means working for them" or "my character hates this idea so much there is literally nothing that could convince him not to leave immediately if we split." But if you’re willing and able to work with us, we’re confident we can make either option playable for any character.
WHAT MIGHT CHANGE
As for what would change, it will mostly be a matter of details, atmosphere, and theme. We can tell a story about a group of oddballs and their reluctant babysitters having to maneuver within an organization that doesn’t align with all of their values or approve of all of their work, facing the need to set aside their personal beliefs in order to stop a larger threat, because that’s the only way to save the world. Or we can tell a story about a group of oddballs and their reluctant babysitters stepping outside of that organization to form something new with its own principles, that does the weird and dirty work the Chantry would be too afraid to sully itself doing, because that’s the only way to save the world.
Other than those big narrative differences, here are some non-exhaustive examples of how the choice could likely affect day to day RP on an ongoing basis:
RECEPTION: Being part of the Inquisition might open some doors that would otherwise have to have their locks picked or their guards bribed. So it won’t affect whether or not you can do a plot that involves getting through that door, but it may affect how you go about opening it.
FUNDING: The Inquisition isn’t overflowing with spare coin, but it is well-funded enough that no one runs out of ink. Or wine. Staying with the Inquisition would maintain that atmosphere of relative comfort, at least for now. Depending on IC arrangements for funding, splitting off might potentially mean being much stingier on daily comforts and conveniences, and efforts to secure funding or find treasure and so on would have extra importance.
ADVOCACY: Staying with the Inquisition will mean that using time, resources, etc. to push for goals that don’t align with the Chantry’s interests will become significantly more difficult. Not impossible! We’ll continue to pretend it’s normal and fine for people to take a week off with five friends for a “vacation” and not be suspected of causing whatever damage occurred at their destination, within reason. But things may be more complex to pull off and require a greater degree of subtlety than in the past in order to avoid negative consequences.
On the other hand, splitting with the Chantry won’t be a Start Riots Free card; it will mean the buck stops with characters themselves, and they’ll have to weigh on their own whether taking a stand on something is worth the repercussions it might have for their littler group’s reputation and ability to function, etc.
SENDING CRYSTALS: Splitting will mean the Gallows having a closed crystal network rather than having discussions overheard by the Inquisition or Chantry. Staying will mean not that, unless your character sends specific Gallows-only messages—so not a huge deal, but one that might affect the general atmosphere of openness or secrecy on that comm.
BACKLASH: There may be some backlash for splitting off, either from the Inquisition/Chantry or from Thedas, with the degree of hostility depending on how publicly loud people are about splitting and how the decision is approached and presented. The potential benefits to both organizations for being able to disclaim responsibility for our characters while continuing to let them work unencumbered are significant enough that we were originally going to have Skyhold and the Divine just ask the group to be independent, please, like a mother bird shoving a really ugly baby with a glowing wing out of the nest, so it’s possible they won’t even be mad. But, again, that depends on the details, which we are currently leaving to you all to figure out.
BRANDING: New name? New uniforms? Exciting, but also a confusing hassle. Let’s call it a conpro.
And other things, of course. This isn't exhaustive, and characters don't have any way of knowing IC that changes might not be more extreme than this, so it's fine for them to be concerned about it either way. But for your OOC consideration, when you start thinking about how you want to vote, these examples are about the scope and scale of the changes that will directly impact your RP on a daily basis.
OUR PREFERENCE
Splitting was originally our idea for reducing some of the ways that RP conflicts with “reality”—the amount of nonsense people get away with despite technically reporting to Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine, and Cullen; the alarming public conversations that frequently occur with no repercussions; the absence in IC debates of the voices of the thousands of conservative soldiers who make up the Inquisition's actual majority; the appointment of concerning people to leadership roles, etc. The fact that the game population is very weird and liberal, while the Inquisition as a whole is in fact conservative, can lead to some cognitive dissonance and miscommunication when people try to debate or discuss what the Inquisition is or does or believes. The current hierarchy also means a lot of decisions that might be fun for PCs to make themselves are being made by (or have to be approved/vetoed by) inaccessible NPCs. So on that hand, we think splitting off could make a lot of things easier.
On the other hand, if we do split, we have to rewrite a whole bunch of info pages, and that is the worst and will probably take us 12 years, so we’ll be happy no matter which one the game picks.
HOW TO VOTE
We aren’t putting up the poll quite yet, to let the discussion progress a little further first, but when we do vote, it will be done in two parts.
The first part will be your vote for which outcome you prefer, OOC, as a player. The second part will be your characters’ votes for the outcomes they would prefer. We’ll use Part 1 to decide which outcome we ultimately go with, as a game, and Part 2 to decide how it comes about.
So, for example, if a majority of characters want to split from the Inquisition, but a majority of players want to stay with the Inquisition, then IC we can have the group vote to leave but then be convinced not to somehow, to make sure we get the preferred OOC result. Conversely, if a majority of characters want to stay but a majority of players want to split, then IC they can vote to stay and then get forced to split anyway by external factors.
And if majorities of players and characters both agree on one outcome, then hurrah, that’s easy—they can vote to leave and leave, or vote to stay and stay.
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