Liberal personality trait

[zijistark]

[ Originally started as a proposed liberal and conservative personality trait. Conservative was eliminated later, however. The definition of "liberal" probably needs to be modified slightly to suit how it'd thus be applied in-game, and that trait may be renamed. ]

[Not to be confused with political crap-- these are personality traits.]

What do you think about adding 2 personality traits? I'm generally very conservative about this topic, but these 2 opposites actually better sense than a number vanilla traits in terms of utility and clarity and are independent of all the others. And I'd like to write event chains with access to them. Actually distinct axes of character personality.

A common path would to be liberal when young-- might be something that gets revealed on_adulthood-- and tend toward conservative as you become more of a part of the old guard.

It would have a very clear and distinct meaning that would be very useful immediately as modifiers in most MTTHs, ai_chance, etc. It would be helpful, e.g., regarding centralization acceptance, religious and cultural tolerance, would [ideally] impact events at feasts and such wildly. Definitely has more clear meaning than most personality traits, in terms of how to use it in the game (e.g., diligent vs. ambitious, cynical vs. zealous are a clusterfuck of ambiguity in terms of how to consistently apply in-game).

Chance of starting out conservative or liberal might be influenced by your relationship history + opinion with your father, mother, and mentor or other VIPs in the child's life. Thus, it's likely that conservatism (and liberalism to a slightly lesser extent) will run in families to some extent. Actions you take as an adult ruler will have clear awards/retractions/award of opposite trait effects. The traits themselves have some pretty clear modifiers.

@thefinestsieve Kan I Plz Haz Icons? But most importantly first, what do you think?

[thefinestsieve]

I can definitely see their potential usefulness. And I think my usual reluctance towards new personality traits is somewhat ameliorated by the status of these as being closely tied into specific, and new, mechanics. My default position towards new personality traits is definitely one of wariness: I wouldn't want to fall down the rabbit hole of trying to implement the trait everywhere it could possibly be used, but I also wouldn't want to do what most personality trait mods have done and have the traits be ineffectual.

Are you thinking one or the other would always be present? Or, say, something like a 3/3/3 split with those without either trait representing folks who are neither particularly liberal or conservative?

[zijistark]

Yeah, the hard qualifier for adding new personality traits is effectively: Are the traits truly independent of the other personality traits? If so, them not being accounted for in vanilla modifiers is no problem. Modifier sets are incomplete all the time. Further, their interpretation will always be clear, and thus they will almost never have an ambiguous meaning in any in-game context where you can use them. And, naturally, there must be a, hopefully not arbitrary, mechanism for awarding the trait initially and managing it throughout the lifetime of a character through events.

3/3/3 Split. Most folks (6:3=2:1) usually tend to lean one way or the other, especially because it's a part of everybody's life by definition (there is always the new, strange, or radical which can either be embraced more willingly or not, and usually, folks that are younger to be more accustomed to being forced to embrace the new and strange).

Obviously will get used a ton in the VF [Yes, it's the Vassal Faction, as of today. I'm on a "Simplifying Things Kick" now.] Probably most any event chain I write would incorporate these leanings. They're so fundamental to the way we act. The only thing that's sad is that they can't liberal vs. conservative on different topics. In fact, for some apps we can track something like that, but these traits give us a start on AI leanings at least.

Any idea what the icons would look like? I'm honestly a bit at a loss to express these concepts as icons. Perhaps this will help (in general)

A liberal-leaning personality would:

• be more likely to take risks
• be more likely to accept new ideas
• be more culture-blind and even religion-blind (which is not to say it's not an important topic for them, but tolerance of others' beliefs would come easier to them)
• be less likely to accept others directing their lives or telling them how to live
• be more diplomatic, on average
• tend to be more a man of the common person (or all of the classes more or less are as easy to relate for them)
• have more friends
• more likely to have creative (though not necessarily productive) leanings but may not be as good at thinking on their feet
• new / young / fresh
• buck social norms
• blue

A conversative-flavored personality would tend to:

• be more loyal
• favor the aristocracy > theocracy > republican > artisan > serf classing
• be less likely to try new things
• not gamble so readily
• suffer from intolerance
• similarly, be more prepared
• have an established de jure set of principles and standards and not take well to them being violated
• would respect authority
• would respect power for its own sake
• have more difficulty relating to different types of people
• have fewer friends
• have more trouble thinking out the box, but at the same time, tend to be men of action that know what to do automatically
• old / aged / tried-n-true
• "just a simple man"
• care what society thinks of them
• respect society
• gold

That tag cloud help at all?

[thefinestsieve]

Nothing is immediately springing to mind on the graphical front, so I'll do some research and give it a little thought and get back to you on that.

[zijistark]

Also, liberal:

• More free (iconography comes to mind here, like "free like a bird")

Conservative:

• More chained to de jure approaches (obviously, chains, but that's negative, and the icon should be natural, so I'm thinking iconography along the lines of "de jure")

[zijistark]

After some careful consideration into the fundamental concept behind conservatism, we've decided that it really doesn't deserve a trait of its own: it's simply the default. Liberal remains. Conservative dropped. Any political baggage also dropped, hopefully. And a difficult-to-represent trait icon dropped too.

🎯