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The conflict system of Ritterheere/Knight's Honor is proven to lead nowhere but to standstill.

Today, values like honor, pride, respect and chivalry don't dominate people's actions and nobody has to fear an enormous loss of reputation and social position, if he doesn't care for those values - or at least successfully pretends to care for.
But you can't simulate medieval times, a knight game, without.

So there's only one possible conclusion:
You have to "force" the players to play their knights accordingly (but one could still refuse rp completely).

The actual conflict automatism doesn't prevent "global cuddly course", but it's just another option for irresponsible action, that's exactly the wrong way.

So, what can we do?

We have to abstract those values, reward actions that coincide and punish actions that don't.

After some thoughts, here's my proposal:

Each knight has another value: "reputation" (at start and max.: 100%, min 0%)
If his value is too low he can't:
below 90%: be chancellor
below 70%: be count
below 60%: duel
below 50%: have a fiefdom
below 40%: break out of jail
below 30%: battle
below 20%: train

A nation's "reputation" affects all nation's knights' reputations as multiplier (at start and max.: 100%, min 0%, the "free" are no nation).
If the nation's reputation is too low, the nation can have:
below 100%: max. 5 nations set to "don't attack"
below 95%: max. 4 nations set to "don't attack"
below 90%: max. 3 nations set to "don't attack"
below 85%: max. 2 nations set to "don't attack"
below 80%: max. 1 nations set to "don't attack"
below 75%: no nation set to "don't attack"

-> automatic reduction !!! (not doing the same "sin of omission" like with counts)

first (list) of actions for reward/punishment:

- declaration of war only 2 scorings before battle-scoring: -5% nation's reputation
- declaration of war 1 scoring before battle-scoring: -10% nation's reputation
- no declaration of war before battle: -15% nation's reputation

- properly rp-answer to declaration of war within 3 days: +2% nation's reputation

- not answering an end of war offer within 3 days: -5% nation's reputation

- not answering an official contact request of neighbours (e.g. castles not more than 7 army-moves away from own castle) within 3 days: -5% nation's reputation

- nation's reputation every kh-year: +1%

to avoid endless game-mechanisms and non-sense postings, we need referees and a list of rules like the one above.

The rules and the reputation values of each knight and each nation (with recent changes) must be public for control of referees.

Special rp-boards should be reserved for "actions" to be rewarded, not or less punished (e.g.
- one board "declarations of war (separate for each nation)"", only attacked nation may answer, title always: "war against X"
- one board "end of war offers (separate for each hostile nation)", only hostile nation may answer, title always: "end of war offer to X", answer-title always: "denial/acceptance of end of war with Y"
- and one board "official contact requests of neighbours (separate for each nation)" title always: "contact to X"
).
So control stays easy.
To avoid "flooding" of a nation with requests and/or end of war offers, there has to be a limit for them (e.g. one offer or request per week per nation).

Okay, these three boards (only for kings and chancellors) would suffice for now for the nation's reputation and could be controlled by just one person (Hoern?).

Now, what's to mention for every knight?

proposals:

to punish:
- breaking of rp-rules (-5% each (in all rp-boards)).
- acting against rp definition* of knight (-10% each)
- acting against rp definition* of nation (-10% nation's reputation each)

to reward:
- writing of rp definition* (+1% for knight's or nation's reputation).
- knight's reputation every kh-year: +1%

*rp definition: limiting the nation/knight in its possible (re)actions (by any nation's/knight's characteristic, simple examples: a knight, who has fear of height, won't climb italian alps, or a knight who's afraid of open water, won't travel by boat)

according boards:
"rp definitions of nations" (only kings and chancellors of a nation can write (not edit) here, title always: name of nation, only one thread for each nation)
"rp definitions of knights" (every knight can write (not edit and only answer if author) here, title always: name of knight, only one thread for each)

This would work, but:
How could a community, where hardly anyone cares for consistent rp, provide the necessary referees?
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