[quote=@Crowvette]
I feel like it'd be kind of fun to have a split of old-world nobility and more contemporary people of power, there could be tension there where neither generally see eye to eye but have to interact since they're all playing on the same field. Perhaps that could be the difference between nations where some have nobility still and others (probably like America since it was brought up) have different systems entirely.

Perhaps Saint Valerius has a pretty well-defined amount of classic nobility students, but has got attention from other people wealthy or powerful enough to send students recently, and have got a number of people who may be foreign to the overall culture but are still there for the education offered? It could be a small side plot if characters "from abroad" are made.

<Snipped quote by Animal>

Magical firearms would probably be way easier to write duels with than actual ones if we're having any at all, though I'm not married to having them either way.
[/quote]

If we really wanted to spice things up, we could do things similarly to Fire Emblem Three houses and have students there that aren't necessarily there because they want to be but because of politics, they are there as an olive branch or a power move, etc.

[@Expendable]

I'll post the Headmaster and some of the example pairings soon. The example pairings were never super fleshed out, but I can give rough ideas of their dynamic. 

[@ERode]

That's pretty good! I think we could potentially take bits from that to our world. Like, commoners typically don't have magic. And it's outlawed for them to have it so when little peasant boys and girls (the common folk) have powers, their parents force them to hide it or their children risk getting taken away. 

As for the drama bit, I don't necessarily mind that as long as we're all able to interact. My biggest concern with "solo" anything is that the player will get stuck by themselves and basically write their character in this little bubble, separated from others. Which is fine for a time, but I just want to avoid that. IF you join a public, large group RP to write by yourself, good on you. But maybe just go write by yourself. So, to reiterate, yeah I'm fine with pairings changing and for there to be solo knights or nobles. Maybe a Noble lost their knight who went to become the knight for a more powerful noble, or maybe they died along time ago? I think there's some potential there for fun. 

[@Crowvette][@Expendable]

Hmm... That wasn't necessarily in the original plans, since a Knight/Noble pairing is meant to be a strong bond, but I suppose if we think about it their first Knight might not always be the best fit. I certainly don't mind having a first week were there are little to no pairings and the characters are getting introduced to one another [b]however[/b] I do find that moments like that, we tend to get lost in the weeds, so to speak. We'll spend so much time on the intro and pairings that we'll never get to the good story bits. That's my only caveat to that. 

Otherwise, I'm perfectly fine with whatever we'd prefer to do with the pairings. I certainly do like that top knight and top nobles get paired, but I also think that we might run into trouble with that potentially? Feel free to shake me out of my thoughts if I'm being weird or too critical but if Rank 1 Knight and Noble are incredibly good together, how does one fall rank before the other? How would Rank 1 Knight lose their position with Rank 1 Noble or vice versa?