.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The thing is, a ten-person senate is probably the best makeup for a legislature. We can't sustain five 10-person senates, and with smaller legislative bodies it's hard to keep interest up.

There are five at-large seats at the moment and five regional seats, right?  Why couldn't we just remove two seats (one regional and one at-large) each time a region chose to secede.  I'm not advocating secession or even saying you're necessarily wrong about the ideal size of the Senate.  My point is simply that there is a relatively easy and logical fix if Senate size is your concern.  Another hypothetical possibility would be for each region to become it's own country (with a 3-5 person Assembly as it's sole legislative body) which would eliminate the need for a federal Senate.  Again, I want to stress that I'm not advocating secession; I'm merely considering how the game could adapt structurally to the secession of one or more regions.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The thing is, a ten-person senate is probably the best makeup for a legislature. We can't sustain five 10-person senates, and with smaller legislative bodies it's hard to keep interest up.

There are five at-large seats at the moment and five regional seats, right?  Why couldn't we just remove two seats (one regional and one at-large) each time a region chose to secede.  I'm not advocating secession or even saying you're necessarily wrong about the ideal size of the Senate.  My point is simply that there is a relatively easy and logical fix if Senate size is your concern.  Another hypothetical possibility would be for each region to become it's own country (with a 3-5 person Assembly as it's sole legislative body) which would eliminate the need for a federal Senate.  Again, I want to stress that I'm not advocating secession; I'm merely considering how the game could adapt structurally to the secession of one or more regions.

You aren't reading Hagrid properly.

He's saying that if all of the regions were to be different countries, then they'd each have their own 10 member senates, which would mean at least 50 active players.

Now I think you could probably make do with a 6 person legislature, but you'd also need to factor in governors, justices among other things, so the point still stands.

Couldn't a five person Senate work just as well?  That way you only need 25 active players.  It is still a lot, but it seems much more doable.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The activity of most regional legislatures in comparison to the national legislature, even when fully staffed, is usually anemic. If you got rid of the federal government you'd free up about a dozen (ostensibly) active offices. That's not enough to make five different countries bustling and the logistics involved in managing five different countries with absolutely any basis in reality (GM-like positions, separate supreme courts with more than just one person on staff) would completely burn people out and stretch active people even further than we have now.

So what do you propose we do instead?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The activity of most regional legislatures in comparison to the national legislature, even when fully staffed, is usually anemic. If you got rid of the federal government you'd free up about a dozen (ostensibly) active offices. That's not enough to make five different countries bustling and the logistics involved in managing five different countries with absolutely any basis in reality (GM-like positions, separate supreme courts with more than just one person on staff) would completely burn people out and stretch active people even further than we have now.

So what do you propose we do instead?

Nothing. If a region wants to secede then obviously they should be free to vote on doing so, but I am not one to hop on flavor of the week ideas, and I've seen plenty.

So if you were President and one or more regions did vote to secede, you'd have no problem with that?  How would your administration deal with such a scenario?  What if a state voted to join a different region?  As for doing nothing, we've essentially been trying that for quite some time and things have gotten progressively worse.  

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The thing is, a ten-person senate is probably the best makeup for a legislature. We can't sustain five 10-person senates, and with smaller legislative bodies it's hard to keep interest up.

There are five at-large seats at the moment and five regional seats, right?  Why couldn't we just remove two seats (one regional and one at-large) each time a region chose to secede.  I'm not advocating secession or even saying you're necessarily wrong about the ideal size of the Senate.  My point is simply that there is a relatively easy and logical fix if Senate size is your concern.  Another hypothetical possibility would be for each region to become it's own country (with a 3-5 person Assembly as it's sole legislative body) which would eliminate the need for a federal Senate.  Again, I want to stress that I'm not advocating secession; I'm merely considering how the game could adapt structurally to the secession of one or more regions.

You aren't reading Hagrid properly.

He's saying that if all of the regions were to be different countries, then they'd each have their own 10 member senates, which would mean at least 50 active players.

Now I think you could probably make do with a 6 person legislature, but you'd also need to factor in governors, justices among other things, so the point still stands.

Couldn't a five person Senate work just as well?  That way you only need 25 active players.  It is still a lot, but it seems much more doable.

No, that's why the regions fail.

Except the regions are also competing with the federal Senate, the cabinet, and the Supreme Court for active players.  We don't know how new countries would structure their governments.  For example, what if the Northeast only had a Chief Judicial Officer or something instead of a Supreme Court?  Plus, you throw in the former regional Senator and an unknown number of federal officials/immigrants, and who knows?  I think a region seceding and forming it's own country would be entering uncharted territory and it'd be a mistake to assume it'd fail just because the regions don't all work perfectly (and let's not pretend all regions have had the same amount of trouble with things like activity, it varies quite a bit and most regions have had their ups and downs).