[Discuss] Buy Claim

[Timothy Collett]

I have an idea/proposal for replacing the Buy Title feature...though  
it depends on some assumptions about the new personal claim system  
that I cannot yet be sure are true.

Assumption 1: The personal claims have degrees, so that you can have  
anything from a weak/minor claim to a strong claim to a region
Assumption 2: You can have multiple people with claims on a region
Assumption 3: If you have a claim on a region with no current Lord,  
there will be a mechanism for asserting that claim to become its Lord  
(with a way for someone with a stronger claim to contest it,  
preventing you from gaining the title)
Assumption 4: People with claims will have some way of more or less  
abdicating, eliminating their claim

Now, for my proposal:
Do away with the Buy Title feature, as it exists.  Replace it with a  
Buy Claim feature with a nearly identical RP description (you forge  
documents stating you are a close blood relative of a previous holder  
of the title). This will get you, depending on the success of the  
forgery, anywhere from a moderately weak to a strong claim.  It could  
even be possible to buy a claim to a region with a lord (though it  
would probably end up being weaker than if you bought it when there  
was no lord).

Also make weak claims show up more or less randomly (much as I  
suggested earlier, with such claims' appearance and strength  
depending on factors like location of family home, amount of time the  
character spends in or near the region, etc).  Given the nature of  
such claims, I don't think it unreasonable that it should be  
discovered, in the normal course of events, that 4 or 5 different  
people have a claim of greater or lesser strength to the lordship of  
a single region.

Furthermore, the new lordship referendums in republics and  
democracies should not grant automatic lordship, but give a strong  
claim (or perhaps multiple claims whose strengths depend on how many  
votes the candidates got!).

Now, the hard part:
Remove appointment by the ruler or Duke as an option in cases where  
there is *any* claimant within the realm, no matter how weak.

Now, if you have a region with no lord, whose only claimants are the  
Duke of the capital and a border Baron who perversely likes his front- 
line position, you have to convince both of them to abdicate their  
claims before you can appoint anyone.

Appointment would thus disappear entirely in republics and  
democracies, to be replaced by popular election of people who could  
then assert a claim--though it might not be a bad idea to allow the  
Ruler or Duke to *call* for an election for a particular region, even  
if it does have a claimant.  Keeps the politics interesting.

This would make "buying the title" to a region almost totally  
unassailable, because claims would appear silently all the time, with  
only the claimant being informed, and the only way to become Lord  
would be to claim your title, so once you'd bought the claim, you'd  
be acting just like any other claimant.

Timothy Collett
Anaris Family

--

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
--Admiral Count Aral Vorkosigan


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