Synod
The Synod is the body of state responsible for religious matters. Its membership is every player character with a congregation.
The structure of the Synod is covered on the public wiki. This page focuses on the work and processes followed by the Synod department of the Civil Service team.
In-character, the Synod team is the Tribune of the Synod.
Pre-event work
Before each event, we produce the following documents:
- The Assembly Lists, which show all Members of the Synod pre-booked for that event, split out by Assembly
- The Mandate List, which shows all available mandates available that event
- The Synod Titles List, which shows all titles appointed through the Synod & their occupants, and also lists all titles up for appointment
These documents are produced via Google Docs and then converted to PDF for printing in Preston prior to the event starting.
Producing the lists
The most complicated is the Assembly Lists. This first requires accessing the "Voting Rights - Synod" from the "Data" tab of the PD database (if you don't have access, you can ask Jonathan to get this sorted for you). There's a Google Sheet that does most of the heavy lifting for us (which at some point could be improved even further with macros). You can use the previous event's Google Docs as a template for this event, just make sure you update everything.
- Paste the data from the database into the Google Sheet
- Do a quick sense-check - is there anything out of place?
- very high or very low vote strengths
- members of Plot crew with votes unless specifically warned ahead of time
- Using the pivot tables, sort each Virtue Assembly:
- By Nation in Ascending order
- By Name in Ascending order
- Copy and paste each Assembly list into a Google Doc and format it
- Split over 2 pages as necessary
- At the top of each Assembly list, in bold and larger letters, put the name of the Assembly
- At the bottom-right of each page, put the name of the Assembly and, if more than one page, the page number in brackets
- Where you have to go over 2 pages, keep each nation onto one page
- Do the same for National Assemblies
- Also export the total voting strength, greater majority threshold and number of priests for each Assembly into two tables, one for Virtue and one for National (with General as the "total" line for each
The Mandate List requires going through every single Wind of Fortune and finding any mandates presented. We group them by Wind of Fortune they appear in. We don't capture the effects of the mandates, just:
- The text (which includes the cost) - this is critical to get exactly right
- Who submitted the wording, if it was done by a player
- What Assembly/Assemblies the mandate is for
- Whether it competes with any other mandate
For the Synod Titles List, take the one from the previous event. Update it with all changes to incumbents, and add/remove titles from the list as needed. Then using the database, identify all titles up for election and list them along with how they're elected.
Pre-event printing
This is normally handled by Jonathan, but anyone could do it. All the below printing should be onto vellum as it's for IC use.
- Assembly Lists - 6 copies for each Virtue Assembly (2 for each Cardinal, 2 for the voting books, 1 for the primacy book, 1 for the wall), 1 copy of each National Assembly (for the primacy book) and 2 copies for the National Assemblies with dedicated tiles (currently Highguard, League and Wintermark)
- Synod Titles Lists - 2 copies, one duplex (for the book) and one simplex (for the wall)
- Mandate List - 3 copies, 1 for the main desk and 2 for the citizen's writing desk
- Judgement Sheets - print more as needed to top up supplies. General Assembly goes through the most, followed by some of the National Assemblies
- Voting Sheets - we should have about 500 for each event (c. 250 judgements with 2 sheets each), so generally print 500 unless we have a notable leftover from previous events
- Other notices - these currently include:
- Lectures and Assembly Change posters - confirm how different lectures will have changed Virtue Assembly membership, and highlight which elections people cannot vote in if they've moved assembly
- Virtue Fund posters - confirm total amount in Virtue Fund as at start of event, list donations from previous event, etc.