[Chaos]

Hello, this is your local deadbeat GM here, with a big announcement to make.

As most of you may know, I've been in charge of the game's law enforcement group, aka the 'Guards', since the dawn of time. I have overseen and messed with this group and how they function for years, for better or worse. Over the past several months, however, I've undertaken a massive amount of brainstorming and drafting (with great contributions from the Guard players) to make the biggest change to the Guards yet.... or more appropriately, a big overhaul to the Guards as a whole. Today, I've come to present the fruits of our labor to the public.

This overhaul is meant to take the SL2 Guards and turn them into the SL2 Military, opening up the system and its roles like never before.

There's a big abbreviated document about this, but for those who don't want to dig through all that black and white, here's a basic rundown of what the overhaul entails:

-The 'Guards' are now considered 'Military', expanding their potential duties.
-Each kingdom/empire/etc. will have their own military branch, including special branches like Church Knights.
-These militaries will be player-run, using ranks to determine how much authority each character has, with GMs observing to ensure fair play.
-Players can apply to any branch at any time.
-Standard procedures, as well as how charges/sentences work, are detailed and made public.

The 'Military Document', in its white-and-black notepad glory, can be found here for further reading.

I encourage everyone to peruse this document (or just the thread) and provide their thoughts on this overhaul, as well as any feedback or suggestions they may have regarding it. If all goes well within 1-2 weeks time, the Military Overhaul will then be implemented!




In the meantime, allow me to provide a quick Q&A on several potential questions:

Q: This sounds cool, but how are we going to apply to these military branches?
A: Once the overhaul is implemented, a 'Role' subforum will be created in the Applications forum. You will be able to apply for a military role there, and once approved, you will be placed into the SL2 Military Discord and sorted into the proper roles/channels. All approvals will be done by GMs to start off... and yes, this will include opinions from the leader(s) of whatever branch you apply for.

Q: Do I have to apply for just the lowest rank to start, or can I shoot higher when applying?
A: You can try to start off at a higher rank, and it's possible to be accepted as such. However, your application will go under additional scrutiny/standards based on how high you're aiming to start.

Q: Okay, players are running the show, that's nice. But what about if they become inactive?
A: Higher-ranked characters are expected to be around at least every so often; if such a character becomes inactive, their role may be changed out with a more active character. Keep in mind that we are not expecting everyone to be around on the daily, but we are trying to prevent hang-ups due to someone being absent for a long time.

That being said, this standard is not held to lower ranks, particularly the lowest rank. They are not expected to do anything like mandatory patrols, though we do encourage them to show up at least every now and then.

Q: What measures do you have to prevent potential corruption within branches, i.e. Someone firing a character because they don't like their player?
A: All administrative actions within a branch, including promotions, demotions and terminations, will go through GM approval before they ever see the light of day. This should cut down any improper use of authority. (If this turns out to be wrong, we can implement further measures as necessary)

Q: Are all branches going to use the ranks shown in the Document?
A: While each branch (sans special cases like Church Knights) will usually follow the same 'categories', they will have different names for their ranks. These ranks will be shown once the overhaul is implemented.

Q: Are there any mechanical benefits to the characters taking part in the military?
A: At this moment, there are no mechanical benefits to being a military character. Payment was considered, but due to the drastically more open nature of the proposed military branches, we will be holding off consideration for payment systems until the overhaul is implemented and some time has passed. Same goes for any other potential mechanical benefits.

Q: What about the militias?
A: Militias have been considered, but they will be addressed post-overhaul. Rest assured, however, that we are not going to force any of the Militias to retire or anything like that. Ideally, we'll find a way to provide some level of integration between Military and Militias, but that's a topic for later.

Q: This 'document' burns my eyes. Aren't you going to do something a little less notepad-y?
A: I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but later on, this whole thing will go into a google doc, where people don't have to squint to read everything. For now, I deeply apologize for the mess.

[Turadis]

This is the cool stuff. As resident palaboo, I find myself really enthusiastic to know more about the Church Knight side of the equation.

-Church Knights have the following capabilities:
   --Slightly higher combat capability than high-level PCs.

It is established making use of any of these capabilities would require GM approval before acting. But what exactly would this particular capability look like? Would the Church Knight player get a little GM applied buff at the beginning of mechanical combat? Would they get to cheese being on a slightly higher level during RP combat with GM overview? It seems as if this may be controversial depending on how it manifested.

---Character cannot use skills/spells that either contradict an honorable/chivalrous image or otherwise clash with Mercalan values (I.e. Huggessoan spells, The Void, and anything that shrugs at the natural order).

There exist a number of classes and powersets that obviously fall under this rule. (Hexer, Void Assassin, Dark Authority Aquamancer.) But there also exist a number of classes/powersets that seem to exist on the fringes of Mercalan or Chivalric values. For instance, Black Knight ( Safeish Void Magic ), Ghost ( Blood Magic. ) or Shapeshifter ( Yo that's nastay. ) Some classes ( Namely Spellthief ) Are also frequently roleplayed as being dramatically different from their base lore, where said base lore would typically exist in contrast of chivalric values and/or the law. For these cases, can/should it be established what may or may not be on the table?

[Kameron8]

--How this conflict plays out (I.e. PvP) should be agreed upon by both sides.
--If the military side wins the Conflict, the other side cannot resist any attempted arrests.
---This also applies to Conflicts that do not result from 'Military Encounters'. (I.e. Bandits try to ambush a patrol on the main road)

-If an arrest is successful, then the Military Encounter has ended, and the following steps occur:
--One or more military characters escort the arrested party to the nearest jail or prison. (I.e. Fort Arjav)
--The military character(s) states the charges against the arrested party, and explains the sentence they will face.
--The arrested party is then processed; they are divested of their belongings and given standard prisoner wear, and any measures against certain racial parts (or for beings like Liches and Dullahans) are taken.
--Finally, the arrested party is placed into their cell (or in the jail/prison proper); at this point, their sentence begins.

I feel like there should be some additional follow-up information for what happens if an arrest is unsuccessful, and the military side is defeated.  Does the character get to flee unharassed?  Does every other player or military member who has since arrived on the scene get to interfere after the non-military side's victory?  Does it depend on the area/patrol level?  Is the right to capturing the other character mutual (I assume not)?  

There are vaguely related rules to reference to try and make this less ambiguous, such as the fleeing rules, but I think it would be a worthwhile addition to the notepad document if a few bullet points could be made for this matter.  I've played a Guard character for long enough to know that eventually a disagreement will spawn from this information not being explicit.

[Druby]

I'd like to bring up a few issues I've seen, some extremely small, and others as things I just don't see as working out quite as intended. As a preface, I do very much like the change and I'm a big supporter of it, but since things are still in the works I figured I'd throw my thoughts in while it's possible that things can be modified and flexed around before things are all finalized for the overhaul and as a sort of aside, I have served time in the military and so a lot of this probably bothers me just a bit more than your average person in the same way someone might see something they know well being simplified, and none of this should really be taken as critical issues that demand complete change.

First of all, the rank structure is extremely abridged. I can understand why, after all things aren't going to be a real military, we're just RPing and all, however in terms of "enlisted" rank structure, you basically just have "soldier" and that's it, nothing else. I'd recommend throwing in at least like a Sergeant rank above just Soldier (and possibly renaming Soldier to something like Private but that's just me being nitpicky to be honest). As a much more minor aside, Major is below Colonel in real life ranks, but seems to be above in the list. I suppose it's really not that big a deal, since they're really just names, but it does bother me ever so slightly.

Secondly, and a slightly bigger issue in my opinion, is the idea that each "Officer" is going to be assigned their own "Corps". Terminology aside, I'm not sure how exactly that'd work out, since I highly doubt we'll have enough people of the Soldier/Lieutenant rank to make that feasible, and I imagine there'll be quite a lot of officers going around with empty Corps. IRL, military units larger than a platoon have more than a single officer in charge of them, and larger units consist of smaller ones in a sense, so it's not like each officer leads a bunch of enlisted personnel in a vacuum. It'd probably be easier just to assign people to someone a rank above them (skipping ranks if necessary) to help keep things filled out, rather than having everyone basically command NPCs all the time.

[Lolzytripd]

I don't think the sl2 militaries should exist as "punishment force to gank and hunt down evil/morally grey characters"

they should exist as faction pvp, perhaps in some kind of island capture mode where the various nations compete over archipelagos to get our feet wet in more player driven factional control.

This will devolve into interpol the way its described, people will have alts/friends in each military faction and use their network to track down people icly when they are just trying to establish themselves as a villian.

[Sarah54321]

I don't think that's the point of the military. There's a reason there's different ranks of being able to interrupt. Not to mention, I'm not sure people will be forming gank squads to do this. In fact, I feel like this might just make it a little easier to handle things like evil or bad guy characters with the new system of 'can guards appear in this case' or not.

That, and the new rules with scene locking kind of make it harder to do that. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

There was talk about making the names more fantasy-like, which is what many of the current roster of guard players wanted, myself included. I personally think swapping the real life ranks for more in-universe, or fantasy-like titles would be cooler, and probably make it less jarring for those who served.

I'm a little disappointed the whole idea is being presented as a pastepin, but I'm just glad it was finally brought into public properly.

[Lolzytripd]

thinking more on this I have another fundemental issue with this, Police and military are seperate entities, and have historically been kept seperate, they are seperate duties with a huge difference in scope, the only thing they have in common is the potential for violence

Soldiers use deadly force when confronting the enemy. Police officers, by contrast, are required to try to accomplish their missions with appropriate force, they are trained to exercise deadly force only as a last resort. The military uses violence as a means to an end, while a police officer draws and shoots only to protect himself/herself or others from violence.
.
In wartime, our soldiers operate in an extremely chaotic and confused environment -- every civilian is a potential enemy, every window a possible sniper's nest. The police confront a more comprehensible and structured situation -- no more than a few suspects, bystanders who are generally assumed to be friendly or neutral. At war, chaos and lack of structure make it even more difficult for our soldiers to be effective policemen.

The military should not be used against the land they swear to protect, only in rebellion or revolution it would make sense. I'm not against militaries, I'm against militaries policing civilians in their own country.

[Druby]

For a fantasy setting, I don't think merging militaries with police is too far fetched. After all, leaders really didn't exactly care for civil rights for a long period up until around the renaissance historically. It's really more of a matter of what kind of fantasy setting you want to have, and while I agree with what you've said, this is a fictional setting, and if the setting has the military acting as a rough police force, then by all means. Besides, considering how NPCs occasionally speak of how the Empire deals with criminals, I don't see it being too far off the mark at least there. What matters is that people follow the laws, not that they're necessarily treated with respect, especially when there's no democratic Bill of Rights, or a Magna Carta, or any other sort of document guaranteeing a citizen's rights in the setting.

[Lolzytripd]

theres a difference between a Vampire detective and a singapore-esque tolerance to crime and using the hammer you throw at opposing countries at your civilian populace.

Its okay to have police -within- the military, especially when military service is mandatory in times of war, its different however when every member of the military is also a member of the police. This has been true forever, long before we started righting down rights in reality. A military needs thousands of men to ward off their enemies, they don't need nearly as many people for the role of keeping the peace in their own lands. The kind of people that military service attracts is also very different from the kind of people that take up the call to enforce law and order. You historically have the nobility seeking to increase their position in the world joining the officer corps, cavalry, knight hood, etc. while the poor and disenfranchised with not much more to do joining the infantry and serving in hope that their loyalty will bring a change in fortune to their life. Both groups to some degree desire going to war, seeking fame and/or fortune through combat. These armies, legions, hordes, warbands historically loot and plunder cities they capture on their crusades, when in rome, sack, loot and burn it down. Some of these people could be the kind of people that could be guards, but most aren't.