And *poof*, a whole new pile of stupid awards appears

[jducoeur]

*Sigh*. I suppose I knew that the East would eventually follow so many other Kingdoms in adding Yet Another Freaking Layer of Awards. But man, I so don't approve -- with every passing year, the award system becomes simply an enormous list of merit badges. Their Majesties are good people, and well-intentioned, but IMO this is a significant mistake, that will do more harm than good.

OTOH, I suppose it's self-correcting: we're pretty much getting to the point where nobody has any ideas what the awards mean any more, so they're becoming irrelevant. (I mean, *I* can't remember a lot of them any more, and I'm a court junkie.) More and more people, far as I can tell, are coming to regard the award system as Just Plain Stupid, which does leave room to convince them to ignore the whole idiotic morass and concentrate on the game instead.

(Yes, I know -- I've lost this particular battle, and I have better things to do than beat the dead horse. But I'm going to allow myself one good grouse first...)

Comments

[laurion]

Yep. And again the question arises of why awards are going to specific activities, instead of classes of activity. It means even more in the future.

(Equestrians and thrown weapons and siege weapons and unarmed combat left out again, while arts and sciences gets lumped into one.)

Heaven forfend we discuss patterns and models and instead continue to create more special procedures for the ever infinite edge cases.

[laurion]

Has anyone mentioned that having more awards devalues all awards? And that it just introduces another rung on the checklist ladder for some people? Will those who rise through the whim ranks before getting the OHMs consider themselves to have 'earned it' more?

[serakit.livejournal.com]

I saw somebody on the Facebook group ask if he was going to get the Whim one if he already had the relevant OHM. So clearly people *are* viewing it as a ladder.

I look at this and go "this is not doing *anything* for my already-existing pathological fear of Court."