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

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

Like Justin, I think the entire thing is devolving into a merit badge culture. A few notes:
1.) I think royalty want to 'make their mark' on the kingdom. Passing laws is no good, a future monarch can 'un-pass' them. (AEthelmearc once had a pair who wanted to pass nearly 30 of them in one reign) But, once an award is given, it's permanent. And rather than deal with classes of activity as mentioned above, the royalty will reward specifics in their field of interest. I believe both East and AEthelmearc have awards for table settings.
2.) I have seen lists of 'triple-peers' with bonus cookies if they have a royal peerage as well. I saw a face-book discussion of who would be the first 'quad-peer' within a week of the creation of The Order of Defense.
3.) Like Justin, I'm a data junkie. I made a list of ALL the peers of AEthelmearc along with the dates of their first AoA level award, first GoA level award and first PoA level award. It now takes longer to get a Grant of Arms in AEthelmearc then it did to get a Patent of Arms in our part of the East before AEthelmearc was created. And the length of time increases the longer time passes. Grant awards add another 'step on the ladder' but that makes it a longer ladder, not one with steps closer together.
-- Dagonell

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

BTW, Has anyone run this past the Society level heralds? Has anyone told them it's a done deal? Has anyone ever heard a Society level herald scream bloody murder? :)

[jducoeur]

Yeah, just so. People say, "Oh, the new award won't promote a step-ladder!", but that's naive -- the step-ladder effect is insidious, and very hard to avoid. Despite how hard I pound into peoples' heads that you don't have to have a Manche before you get a Laurel, I still hear people say it from time to time.

Worse, the people writing recommendations usually assume the step-ladder -- that you have to recommend for the lowest award this person doesn't yet have. And why not? It's hard to know which "level" is appropriate for somebody, if you aren't in the Order yourself. Hell, *I* don't know what the appropriate distinctions are between the new ranks.

The new awards *will* worsen the step-ladder, and they *will* make it harder for people to get Peerages, guaranteed -- decades of experience shows that more levels slows people down. This is *not* a way to help the Kingdom.

(Yes, I'm angry about the whole thing. I'm proud of my Kingdom, and it annoys me when it does something this stupid just because *other* Kingdoms happen to be stupid in the same way.)

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

AEthelmearc went Kingdom in 97. Discount the first three years while they gave out the long-overdue Peerages. Start with 1/1/2000. Number of peerages since 1/1/2000? 81. Number of those who DIDN'T have the grant award first? 7. That's 8%. The last one was in 2011 and most of them were before 2003.