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The Society is a neutral organisation. It is not evil, nor is it good.
One faction wants to change this: the Silver Crusade.
The Exchange and Liberty's Edge have offered multiple opportunities for Pathfinder members to support private interests against the advancement of the Society's leadership. I've seen very little interest from players in those choices.
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Even in a “good” organization you wind up with parties interested in exploiting the power potential and misappropriating the rights of other members. The question is more about preventing that from happening than directly opposing the interests of the leadership.
Don’t look!
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Central Europe
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I hope we get rid of the Ten in PFS2 or at least they get a bit more screen time in season 10 and can show what qualifies them to lead the Society.
So far the interactions with them were very rare and the only time we get to know a bit about them in Eyes of the Ten was quite disappointing because
they were:
A. dead
B. evil
C. incompetent
D. all of the above
Personally i prefer the leadership structure of the Starfinder Society a lot and i hope we adopt something similar in PFS2, maybe not with a single elected leader but with some sort of leadership council if some sort of internal conflict is preferred. But whatever is done leaders need a face and a personality.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The Society is a neutral organisation. It is not evil, nor is it good.
It's not really neutral from a real world perspective. Most of the activities you do for the society align with the evil stuff you see in Eyes. Even Torch's situation involves doing something a bit evil
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In the blind, here, because I haven't played EotT yet, but part of what hampers the Society is in the very basic fundamental behind it -- Explore, Report, Cooperate.
There are things that *should not* be explored, and have been set up to *not be explored* on Golarion, and then the Society comes along, finds them, and sets them loose, either by accident or by misguided good intentions.
And then it becomes a race to try and undo the damage that this sort of thing causes.
See: Sky Key, The Hao Jin Tapestry, the current events in Mwangi, certain Runelords, Sky Citadels, etc, etc.
Admittedly, in some cases it was a race to prevent these things from 'falling into the wrong hands', but with no definition of leadership, there's an inability to determine whose hands are 'wrong'.
Would making the Ten public produce more accountability? Or would it result in political concessions that would reduce the Society's capability to function as explorers?
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The fact the Shadow Lodge cares even less than the Decemvirate about collateral damage is what makes me unimpressed.
I believe you are conflating the "modern" Shadow Lodge with the private motivations of Grandmaster Torch. It is pretty obvious he was using the organization for his own vendetta, and got carried away. Since his departure there have been missions that involve the current Shadow Lodge still working inside the Society. In one scenario they fund a rescue mission to save agents that the Society does not deem to be important enough to expend the resources on.
Edited to add "modern" in front of shadow lodge, to differentiate it from the season 2 organization, which was despicable.
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Does the Modern Shadow Lodge empower the agents to Resist! ?
Is there any means by which to truly resist the impunity of the Decemvirate without abandoning the Society?
Assume for a moment that Torch and his associated actions are absent, yet the combined energy of the Shadow Lodge agents persist - is there any actual power to bring change to the table or are the agents just pawns to be quashed by the Decemvirate when their voices get too loud?
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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In the blind, here, because I haven't played EotT yet, but part of what hampers the Society is in the very basic fundamental behind it -- Explore, Report, Cooperate.There are things that *should not* be explored, and have been set up to *not be explored* on Golarion, and then the Society comes along, finds them, and sets them loose, either by accident or by misguided good intentions.
And then it becomes a race to try and undo the damage that this sort of thing causes.
Well the major issue is very often no one follows the cooperate part which is why I say the society often leans on the evil side. A huge fundamental plot hole that never got addressed is the society never really cooperates with the locals. We often just run roughshod over them.
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The running roughshod aspect is something we can all take personal accountability for, if we are willing.
Assume for a moment that you have a group of good-minded agents, cooperating with the common man, supporting the local ecology and economy, and the Decemvirate runs roughshod over them. Perhaps just removes them from active duty, deletes all their chronicles, moves the discussion behind the doors of Skyreach.
What next?
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Why would I do that? I have real questions about the campaign leadership that I am genuinely interested in?
Besides, that would just get my posts DELETED!
Then you probably should have kept up the fiction that you were talking about the fictional leadership. Parody as defense against persecution doesn't work if you admit that is what you are doing...
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I’m actually still interested in my questions about the Decemvirate and the leadership in the Society campaign. It may be easy for you to conflate the Golarion leadership with the “other” leadership, but it shouldn’t be.
I’m Seeking a meaningful discussion on the actual topic of the post, which is hard to come by. My original questions still stand. You are mistaken if I am defending anything or making a parody of anything. Metaphor as life when appropriate.
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I'm probably a bigger proponent of transparency than you'll ever be and even I think this is dumb.
The original question is dumb or the fact that a discussion of appropriate channels of communication regarding abuse of power happens to correlate with real-life issues through a thinly veiled metaphor is dumb?
Please, in your support of transparency, speak up. Now seems like a great time to do so.
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Stop with any veiled commentary. If this thread is intended to discuss the issue of real life OP leadership than just say that and say what you have to say. If the intent really is to discuss the ingame decemvirate, than let’s do that. The duality of this thread is irritating.
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If the intent really is to discuss the ingame decemvirate, than let’s do that. The duality of this thread is irritating.
While I agree, the duality of this thread definitely makes it difficult to read and somewhat irritating, I think that there is an interesting regional point to make (even if an entirely different one from the Original Poster's).
As someone in the NC region, there is a lot of love for the Shadow Lodge as an organization (which I haven't heard when talking to people from other areas). While some of this stems from a certain set of scenarios and their... less than flattering portrayal of the Ten, and some doubtlessly comes from great local GMs putting a lot of care into core NPCs, I think a lot of it comes from the comparisons between the in game events and their real life counterparts. It's an easy place to project discontent, and NC (and, judging by a lot of posts the South-East as a whole) has had a lot of that for a long time.
As was mentioned on other threads, issues like the current ones don't brew over night. In my opinion, the reason that five years after being disbanded as a faction the Shadow Lodge is so popular in the NC region is that exact duality, as it offers and easy frame of reference and analog.
