Limitation of Coordinator Territory Claims

Pursuant to Administrative Bylaw 3A, I, Jason Hubbard, voting CM for Quoth the Raven in Baltimore, hereby propose the following modification to Coordinator Bylaw 3Ciii5:

5. Passing new Coordinator Territory before council is considered something that affects multiple chronicles. All Coordinator Territory must be designated either "Approval" Territory or "Notify" Territory in the Proposal. After passing Coordinator Territory of any kind that territory should be added to the Territory List which shall be posted to the OWBN website.

To read:

5. Passing new Coordinator Territory before council is considered something that affects multiple chronicles. All Coordinator Territory must be designated either "Approval" Territory or "Notify" Territory in the Proposal. After passing Coordinator Territory of any kind that territory should be added to the Territory List which shall be posted to the OWBN website. Coordinator Territory must be limited to the claim of single cities and their surrounding environs; it is not permissible for Coordinators to claim entire countries, States, or provinces as their territory. It is permissible to claim several adjacent counties, or the local equivalent. Previous Coordinator territory claims exceeding this limitation are hereby rescinded.

Further, pursuant to maintaining continuity in One World by Night, I propose a one time Coordinator territory conversion period. During this period, Coordinators having had territory claim over an area exceeding the scope of the revised bylaw will have three months to prop claims for individual cities and/or counties within their prior claimed territory. For this period, such claims will be considered to auto-pass, barring timely objection by voting One World by Night Council Members; timely objection is considered to be one week following notification to the Council list of the Coordinator Territory claim. After such period, Coordinators losing territory through this claim are directed to run such plots as necessary to maintain OWbN continuity concerning this loss of territory.

Discussion:

I am making this prop largely because I feel that the scope of Coordinator Territory needs to be limited. There is only one cannon example of any Supernatural creature maintaining control of a territory as large as a Country/Province in modern times, and that is Baba Yaga, who did not maintain absolute control and was eventually deposed. There is no reason a genre Coordinator needs to control a territory so large.

So far as I know, we have not yet allowed a Coordinator to claim an entire State in the US; this is an attempt to bring the spirit of that policy to the rest of the world. The world is a large place, and control of entire nations, states, or provinces is not necessary to the establishment of the World of Darkness setting in One World by Night. It creates unnecessary paperwork for member chronicles wishing to create NPCs or PC's with background dealing with such out-sized territory claims, makes it difficult to run plot with international involvement, and in general is unduly cumbersome.

This obviously has something to do with France, and in general Europe and international games. Further, it presents an unreasonable barrier to entry for games within such claimed territories. New games should be expected to adapt to OWbN continuity, but this should not mean that they should have to give up claim to Chronicle Sovereignty to a Coord. A new game seeking entrance into OWbN should not have to negotiate away Chronicle Sovereignty with a Genre Coord simply to gain admittance into the org.

The offices of the Coordinators exist to improve the roleplay experience of our organization; they should not be an obstacle to expanding our membership to games which very well may improve that roleplay experience. OWbN is founded on the principle that expanding our network of games and players improves the roleplay experience for all of our members, creating a more robust setting and new opportunities for shared plot and roleplay. Coords becoming an obstacle to this expansion through territory claims go against the the very spirit of OWbN. New membership should outweigh Coordinator claims to territory; in negotiating the acceptance of new games, Coordinator Territory in general should not be of equal weight to territory claimed by an OWbN Chronicle.

The issue of continuity is however important, and I feel that by limiting the scope of territory claims we can balance this issue.

I recognize that this presents the possibility of more work for the Coordinator team; this is why I've specified the conversion period for three months, to give genre coords and their teams plenty of time to work out what claims need to be made, and to propose them to Council. As worded, the auto-pass would only apply to territories within previously granted territories outside the scope of the proposed modified bylaw. I feel that this is more than enough time to get such work done.

~Jason Hubbard
CM Quoth the Raven
seconded by Estevam, Nova Helveciabridge mediaNike Air Max 270