The Great Guild Meeting

[Deleted]

*raises hand in support of Cele*

Also, for the Mercs, Scar has been saying he wants to do more for the guilds and whatnot but it takes a fox to kick his butt into action. I'll ask him when he wakes up and see if he's interested. He did used to be the mod sponsor, after all. Other possible merc candidates would be Squishie or ... I think Bacon has Clint, his merc charrie?

This also begs the question ... leadership in RP vs. leadership outside of it. In character, Ikkin is still the Mage leader but she's sorta AWOL. The Knights RPs have King Kabe but outside of it we have Wolf and Shade. So, do we have two leader lists, one for RPs so that newer guild members know who to refer to in the RP, and one practical leadership list with ranking systems.

Feel free to shoot me if that doesn't make sense.

[Deleted]

I'll support Celestial too. ^^

[Zylaa]

*cough* My apologies for getting off the topic of leadership, but what're people's thoughts on having a mini-event rightabout now alongside GW3? I had a fun idea-- or at least, I think it's a fun idea-- for something that anyone could participate in, no long-term commitment, just random frivolity-- plus a flexible end time so it doesn't just wither away. I think it would be a great way to keep people dabbling in the guilds even if they aren't in the massive roleplay.

And Sarn, the Guilympics did wither away, but seriously, that's the way of almost all forum events with the exception of the GWs and the 'bloids. It was a heck of a lot of fun while it lasted, and if it didn't finish, well, we're all human. Humanoid. 'xcept for the talking animals... and Nova... and Goosh... *shot*

[Celestial]

I'm not really sure, everyone seems to be focused on GW3 right now so a mini-event, no matter how frivolous and simple just wouldn't get the attention.

Currently GW3 is artificially simulating full guild activity and events which would normally we welcome are overlooked. Still, it sounds like a really good event so keep it until after the roleplay finishes. ^^

[PFA]

As for the mercs, like I said in the GW3 OOC thread, I could probably turn Jernath into some kind of de facto leader if no other mercs are stepping up, but I dunno if that's necessarily the best idea, seeing as I'm not really that confident in my guild activity much in general. XD;

[Jina]

I say do the activity. xD There's no point waiting until GW3 is over, really. Plus it won't be over for a while, and you might forget the idea. At least this way it can be revived after GW3 if it does die.

[Tam]

I would probably take part in a side-activity, depending on what it was -- see, it's not the actual writing-and-replying part of GW that takes so much time for me as it is the reading-to-get-caught-up part. So, barring freakish bursts of activity and flurries of posts coming in from all directions, yes, I would be game. ^^

...Although, at the same time, it's kind of unfair to people already participating in GWIII, because they likely don't have the time to be involved with something outside the roleplay.

[Deleted]

If it's easy to write posts for, maybe. XD I'd kinda like to see what all my current characters together would be doing interacting.

[Strife]

Just so you guys know, I asked Ikkin about her leadership of the Mages on MSN. She says that her character would be willing to appoint Celestial as a second-in-command to run things when she's away. Once that properly occurs after Celestial's done being evil, then the Mages should be all set. :3

[Celestial]

^_^ Brilliant! That alleviates one of the worries I had about Ikkin and what she'll say.

[Huntress]

Jan 17, 2010 23:10:48 GMT -5 Tam said:

I would probably take part in a side-activity, depending on what it was -- see, it's not the actual writing-and-replying part of GW that takes so much time for me as it is the reading-to-get-caught-up part. So, barring freakish bursts of activity and flurries of posts coming in from all directions, yes, I would be game. ^^

...Although, at the same time, it's kind of unfair to people already participating in GWIII, because they likely don't have the time to be involved with something outside the roleplay.

Dunno, that thing is really pretty slow right now. Not very difficult to keep up with. And the problem with focusing on nothing but GW3 is, it alienates all guilders who aren't in it. If we won't have any other activities in the guilds besides that big epic of a textwall collection, the guilds will become really rather exclusive. The GW is currently our one-trick pony, the one thing we always do because it's proven to work, but we can't drive that pony alone. And it won't get any newbies in either, unless those newbies love catching up to big epic roleplays very much, and that's hardly a demographic to target.

As for the whole leadership thing, this isn't really about having a leader of the guild per se (although it'd help, of course). This is more about finding at least one person in each guild who's sufficiently active and assertive to speak for that guild when it comes to coordinating events and deciding the policies of the guilds. What their rank is like in the guild really doesn't matter that much by comparison. Remember how Cyborg drove the entire merc side of GW2 despite really not having a leadership rank to speak of? That kind of assertion.

[Draco]

That's good, since I can't see Draco in a leadership roll exactly yet But soon...

[Huntress]

Well, that's about as clear as we'll get on that topic for the time being, methinks. Might as well move on to some of the other important points that oughtta get cleared up sooner rather than later.

So here are a few points for the guild leaders whoever-you-may-be-at-this-point to nom on:

• Political relations. As in, how is your guild connected to other guilds? Doesn't really look like we have much in that respect right now. The Pirates have that Fleet alliance, and that pretty much sortof happened as a Redemption side-product, but we regard all other guilds - ninjas included - with a kind of cold indifferent 'so they exist, big deal'. And when it comes to the guilds, any relations, either positive or negative, would be better than cold indifference, am I right?
  
• Guild agenda. As in, what does your guild do and does it really do it? With the pirates, it's easy: we're supposed to be a bunch of careless adventurers who live one day at a time and get in and out of trouble with varied success, and we seem to do that a lot. But we have guilds like knights and mages that supposedly also have an agenda (protecting the realm and whatnot?) but I don't think I've seen a lot of their coordinated action happening in any of our past roleplays so I'm just not sure. And a guild is a guild exactly because it bands different people under the same purpose. So what's that purpose?

And a few other things for everyone to nom on:

• Advertising. We need new blood. As of now, new blood would come to the guilds, see that there's nothing going on besides a textwall roleplay and just not stick around. So how do we get people to come here and stay here?
  
• Activities. Ties into the previous point. Not everyone likes roleplaying, especially big and hard-to-keep-up-with kind. We need stuff to do that actually lasts and won't get stale and repetitive. I've heard suggestions about having smaller roleplays, mebbe resurrecting the old duel threads, so that newbies would have something to do when they come in.
  
• Dead guilds. Was brought up earlier. When does a guild die and what happens to it when it does? We never had a set policy on it and the line is hazy (up until recently, the ninjas were effectively dead but are now back in the picture, right now the knights are effectively dead but some knight members are very much around) but unless you're in it, all guilds look the same and a newbie would happily join any one of them that strikes their fancy, and then have nothing to do if the guild happens to be de facto dead, and we'd lose a potential active new member. So there's probably a need for some sort of outward structure/activity supervision/regular activity audits or whatever. My brain's kinda drawing a blank in this respect.
  

There's probably more, but it'd get confusing to address everything at the same time >>

[Celestial]

Concerning advertising, I believe we should utilise the banners of the NTWF and draw a couple for that advertising the guilds, thus putting the adverts in plain sight and encouraging both newbies and just non-guilder members to join. Something about who we are, what kind of activities are available (if any) and in general the benefits of joining a guild (RPing, intereacting with forumers, fun and games, plain old insanity. etc.)

I'm not keen on being very strict with dead guilds, since Real Life does tend to happen which we cannot help. At the same time, something has to be done. Therefore, I propose we have an inactive list to which a guild gets added to after a certain amount of time until a leader figure comes up and says they'll take responsability and shows that they'll do it. At such a time, the guild shall be removed from the list. The list, if it goes through, should be stickied and linked to on the main page (perhaps we could also have a thread of Guild FAQs as well, to help newbies out).

Alliances, if a leader wants to propose an allience I suggest they just PM the respective guild's leader and they arrange it. After that, the formal alliance should be made in a fairly short and simple RP, where the guild members can either reject or support the alliance. Whether it goes through or not depends on what they say. (The RP thread should be shown to everyone via collective PM to all active members.)

Activities, I like the sound of old duel threads and maybe some games too. A guild-style Mafia perhaps? Some dice games (what happened to Inter-Guild Random Crap Poker? That was fun. =P) and others. I don't have many ideas for that at the moment.

Those are my two cents anyway. ^^

[Jina]

Jan 18, 2010 19:52:17 GMT -5 Celestial said:

Concerning advertising, I believe we should utilise the banners of the NTWF and draw a couple for that advertising the guilds, thus putting the adverts in plain sight and encouraging both newbies and just non-guilder members to join. Something about who we are, what kind of activities are available (if any) and in general the benefits of joining a guild (RPing, intereacting with forumers, fun and games, plain old insanity. etc.)

I reckon making banners would be good, but for the sake of killing two birds with one stone I think we should have a guild banner contest, judged by non-guildsmen.

Though it doesn't need to be informative. Just "Hello, we're the guilds, we exist" and then letting them investigate themselves is still good.