Game Rule Proposals

Mobius

Mobius

Squire
Chicago Staff
Marshal
¿What is the specific reason for opacity regarding the movement of Proposals through the Owner's circle? That is, ¿why is their no public insight into:
  • ¿What Proposals have been submitted?
  • ¿Which Proposals are under review?
  • ¿When these Proposals were/will-be discussed (at which levels of the Owners' Committee and Sub-Committees)? Ie. a Timeline of a Proposal's life-cycle.
  • ¿Why was the Proposal rejected?
  • ¿Where should Proposals be submitted? How should they be formatted?

I'm looking for insight into JUST the Game Rules Proposal process, not changes to the Franchise rules or other "business" related issues. Specifically, I'd like to know these answers so that if a Proposal is defeated, it can be retooled, resubmitted, and hopefully, passed.

On the one hand: I've heard many excellent people saying they made excellent Proposals to the Ownership, but having no clue how (or even if) they were received or why they were rejected - this leads me to believe the Ownership doesn't care or want Player Proposals.

On the other: I've heard Owners and National People saying over and over, "We Want your Proposals! Write them up and Submit them!" - this leads me to believe the Ownership very much cares and wants Player Proposals.

¿Which is it? If the Alliance is meant to be designed from the Players up, that's excellent; please say so. If the Alliance is meant to be designed from the Owners down, that's excellent; please say so. Either way, ¿can we get some guidance, please?
 
Here is what I've been told to do for rules proposals:

The Pitch - one or two sentences describing what your proposal is about.

The Problem - the current rules/wording (including quotes and references to the book and/or official addendum, as well as any specific examples where the current rule affected gameplay) and why they are confusing/need improvement.

The Solution - your proposed rules/wording changes (i.e. Replace "x" from page 123 with "y").

The Consequences - take time to consider all possible consequences of the change, both good and bad.

The Wrap-up - restate your pitch in a concise manner that summarizes the other points you made


Send all of that to your Head of Rules and/or Owner and if it is deemed worthy of an Owner's Vote, it will get tabled. If not, your HoR and/or Owner should be able to work with you to make the proposal worthy of Owner discussion or at least explain to you why they will not push it up.

Having a good relationship with your HoR and/or Owner beforehand (this usually involves being an active participant in the betterment of your local chapter through volunteering in some way) greatly increases your chances of getting a positive and constructive response from them.

As for the rest of the tracking proposals through the Owner channels, I have no idea how that is done or if it is permissible to make that more transparent.

-Luke
 
Cpt.MarcusNelson said:
This is completely off topic but I have to ask.

Mobius, why do you preface every question with an upside down question mark?
Click to expand...
It's a stylistic hold-over from when I studied Spanish. The initial punctuation prompts and prepares the reader for the question; plus, I sometimes find it easier to mark only a certain portion of a sentence as interrogative, ¿ya know? With alt-codes, ¡anything is possible!
 
I'm sure part of the reason for the lack of transparency is, well, look at the boards. Many people have ideas about how they think the game should be; if everything that did or did not make it to vote -- and the things that didn't pass -- were public knowledge it is very likely the owners would be bombarded with "But whyyyy?" emails, text messages, phone calls, facespace whatevers, and even actual nagging during events.

They are, after all, only about a half step up from volunteers.
 
I can say with certainty that this game is built from the players up. High Magic was written and submitted by a player. That proposal resulted in one of the most significant changes for our game in recent memory.

With that said, the reason that there is no published list of pending proposals is mainly for PR reasons. At our core we are a game design company and despite our unique relationship with our players we need to behave in a similar fashion.

Let me illustrate it this way through a timeline of sorts:

1. Willy McPhee write a proposal for a skill that lets Artisans convert production into raw elemental damage packets.

2. The submission is made public through "the list" and the owners/ARC begin deliberating.

3. During this deliberation several players begin feverishly debating the proposal. Several for and others against.

4. Ultimately the owners vote the proposal down.

5. The boards blow up AGAIN with people on both sides of the issues arguing over the proposal and its validity.

This would happen with EVERY proposal, because there will always be players who are impacted by potential changes (and there are people who are just plain irrate townspeople). As a result, while we ask for proposals to be sent in, but we cannot publish them to the entire game.

With that said, if you were to write a proposal and submit it to your owner for review I would follow up with your owner to verify the status.


Stephen
National PR
 
There really isn't a specific formalized process in place for dealing with player proposals. I think there's no doubt that everyone would be more satisfied with a standardized process of something like:

- Players can send proposals to X email address, and should expect a response (at "got it" or "you should edit this and resubmit") within 48 hours. The contact people for this address are responsible for keeping a list of current outstanding proposals updated on the forums here.
- A committee (consisting of probably several reps from the owners, at least one ARC member, and at least one ALC member) reviews the proposal and decides whether to forward it to a specific committee for consideration (rituals, rules, logistics, publicity, or direct to the owners).
- The target committee comments/debates over the proposal and eventually it can get sent to the owners for approval; the player who initially submitted it is kept updated of its progress regularly. Owners vote it up or down.

That would be great! Problem is, nobody has the time.

I'm the current chairman of the ARC. In the last 9 months I've probably gotten 50+ proposals sent directly to me because people don't know where else to send them to. Some of these are as simple as a PM saying "hey, we should do this". Some of them are 5-page documents. Some are people talking to me in person and asking why we do something or why we don't do something. Others are things that owners forward on to me to review. In general, I try to at least answer the question - even if it takes me a month to get around to it - or reply with my thoughts on the proposal and a recommendation to forward it up to their chapter owner.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time or energy to devote to really giving each proposal the consideration it deserves, especially not in a timely manner. I just don't. We're all volunteers here, and the process that I described above would take a fair bit more time and energy from a lot of people who already are stretching themselves to give what they can to helping out the Alliance. I know I'm not the only one; I'm aware of plenty of other proposals that get sent in to different owners, other committee members, etc. but these people simply don't have the time to devote to everything they're given.

It's absolutely great that we have a committed playerbase! I think that's a wonderful thing. The downside to that is that there really is a deluge of comments, questions, and proposals coming in from that committed playerbase all the time, and we don't have the process or staff to deal with these. Some of the questions that come up on the ARC board take a lot of time and energy and debate for us to answer, and those are a far cry from a 5+ page detailed proposal.

So I guess my answer is that there's not currently an official method that I know of other than "submit a proposal to your chapter owner", but I don't believe that *they* have a particular process for dealing with them either. The real answer? Get more people to volunteer at a national level so we can have the time and energy to accept more proposals and deal with them better :)

-Bryan
 
Guys,

If you have ideas on how to improve the logistics component of the game, please feel free to contact me, and I can help your proposal get into shape and to the right people.

Rob Sachs
Alliance Logistics Committee
 
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