Poll - How many Clans should players be allowed to have?

[FutureSojourner]

Oliver, "deep pockets" has to do with as you pay more hard currency for a game, you get more game benefits which makes you more powerful.  Those with lots of money in their pockets, then, can "buy" major game advantages creating an unfair situation for players that are just trying to struggle along.

I plan to have the costs structured entirely differently these days.  As noted on my web site front page, what I'd like to do is allow people to play all the positions in all the games that they would like, all for a single $5/month fee.  This means you'd only be paying $5 instead of $100 for all the fun you can have - not exactly a financial boon for me but I hope to make it up by gaining many players.  I feel like everyone should be able to have as much fun as anyone else.

However, that assumes that I can automate most processing and reduce GMing time to a very low level.  My major concern right now is the GM time needs for special actions.  But I'm hoping to automate most of the easy stuff that used to require special actions, such as construction projects, "contracting" for tasks to be performed for payment, clan-to-clan heliographing, coordinating cooperative clan movement and actions, picking up simple rumors in the local taverns, and hopefully even training for skills.  The more I can automate, the less GM labor I'll be required to do and the lower I can keep my costs.  But if I can't cut out enough, I may have to add extra turn costs for special actions beyond the automate-able stuff.

Gotcha. I like special actions and I trust that Penn and several others do too. It is what helps with the role-playing aspects of the game and always made Midgard stand out. I think playing a 190 retainer clan is boring. But if there was a flat fee of $5 I could play a few boring clans to do boring things with no special actions. Construction was always my thing, so larger clans made that more fun and I did build up some of my clans. I got to experience a lot of the game during Zan's tenure because I would pick up clans that other players dropped and let go. I would pick them up and run with them and that was fun to experience the game through several different lenses.

You could have a set fee of $5 or $10 a month and then make $5 per special action. Some clans would just do construction, patrol, etc... but the main clans would do special actions.