The Great Guild Meeting II

[Huntress]

*slams sword into globe... again* Yeah, I have this condition that makes me prod the guilds on a regular basis till the day I die. Gypsy curse. Long story, don't ask.

Would be nice if these meetings were annual, but pers'nally I just bring them up whenever I encounter something that I feel needs the input of whoever's still around and ticking and needing an excuse to pipe up again because we all know what initiative is like in the guilds. So as she who issued summons, I once again convene this, the second Brethre... fine, it was only funny once. The second Guild Meeting, to be held once again here aboard the White Weewoo because we can't afford a meeting hall in Tabloid Town.

Today's topic I'd like to bring up with everyone who takes interest, and you'd better take interest because it's something we should've had four years ago when this place got founded:

• The purpose of the guilds.
  

Really, what is it? As in, what do we even do here? I can tell you that back when the guilds were created, even the mods didn't know, it was literally just "hey, let's make a guild board, it'll be fun". Needless to say, the original pirate-ninja wars didn't last long because there's only so much mutual HQ-burning you can do before it gets repetitive. The guild board description simply says "A place for you to join and be active in a variety of guilds! Whether you're a Pirate or a Ninja, a Knight... or just Supremely Awesome... this place is for you!" which isn't exactly captivating PR for newbies. And won't be, before we figure out what the guilds are for. We've always been low on activities, a game only lasts so long before getting repetitive and anyway we have the Games and Interactive board so why would anyone want to go through the trouble of joining a guild just to play a game like any other game on the Games board?

Just about the only poor lil one-trick pony we have around here are roleplays, which've proven themselves as actually capable of activity (till now xD Yo, pirates, we've a new roleplay going, go post.) But those tend to be exclusive because not everyone likes to roleplay, so at this point all still-active guilders are just roleplayers. Which gets one-sided.

Long story sho- eh, slightly less long *may or may not have a problem*: judging by the guild activity throughout the years, I'm thinking that the guilds could, in their purpose and existence, be something like a book series, similar to Harry Potter or Discworld. We have the long, cooperative, canon-defining, worldbuilding stories that go mostly chronologically and act as the backbone of the guilds. And then we have the merchandise and Movies of the Books: the games, the behind-the-scenes info and Words of God, the fanart, the manuals, stuff like that. That way our main goal in the guilds would just be... collective writing/worldbuilding?

Mmyes. Thoughts?

[Zylaa]

I would like to open by saying that I thought your first sentence would read "I have this condition that makes me slam swords into globes on a regular basis," which I think would be an excellent and hilarious curse to build into the canon. But that is largely irrelevant.

Your idea makes me quite happy. The canon we've built up with the guilds is pretty impressive, and we could easily turn that into our main stated purpose. On the other hand, if we turn that into the main purpose, we need to have our canon and backstory easily readable so we don't intimidate prospective guildies into fleeing forever.

Speaking as an Old Fogey, it was quite nice to have the Ninja and Pirate guilds spring up every few months and attack each other. It would be quite fun if we had something similar to that, whether in-canon or not. Guild Capture the Flag? XD

[Draco]

*tosses a kunai into the globe*

First thing I want to add, I was thinking about having another meeting around last week XD I just didn't want to double post in the other meeting say, "Should we have another meting?"

Purpose of the guilds... Personally when it started, I thought of it as groups of people with similar interests towards a certain persona/class, in which we would be able to create RPs and Games to have them interact with each other in different ways.

Now it's more along the line of creating a whole world, with stories and events thrown inside to make it more interesting. There is a lot of RPing, which is the strongest thing about the guilds right now. The games are fun, but soon die out over time, except for a few here and there. Events never seem to last or finish (We are STILL doing the shop wars and Guildympics if you haven't noticed ).

So I'm going with Hunty about the flushing out of a world and stuff. That seems to be the majority of what we do now XD

---
Oh, as for the RP. This Snark sounds interesting

[Jina]

I think what Hunty said about it being like a book series sounds about right. In terms of making the backstory accessible, we already have short summaries for the pirate RPs, and sort-of for the first two GWs.. they might need fleshing out, but they're pretty much the sort of thing we want. We just need something like that for the other RPs.

About events and games not lasting for a long time... well, with games it's sort of inevitible that they'd die out, but they can be revived easily. If you want to bring them back, just go post on them. x3 With events... was there ever actually a set end point for Guilympics or the Shop Wars? The way I see it, if the event has no goal, people give up on it. (Come to think of it, if it's got no goal... it's not an event. It's a game.)

[Draco]

I think we were supposed to get medals or something for Guilympics, and no idea for Shop Wars >.> I just know it died before round 2 XD

[Zylaa]

At any rate, I second Jina in that with games, it's fine if they die out. XD (I was just thinking of either reviving or awarding the winner of the Pub Bragging contest from ages ago, so one of our outside-roleplay events might reach conclusion). The greater part of the games is a) having fun and b) giving my weasels musical instruments. *shot* But seriously, even unfinished events can bring us much fun and joy (The Disney Guilds thread still warms my heart <3).

[Draco]

Sept 19, 2010 17:53:57 GMT -5 Zylaa said:

At any rate, I second Jina in that with games, it's fine if they die out. XD (I was just thinking of either reviving or awarding the winner of the Pub Bragging contest from ages ago, so one of our outside-roleplay events might reach conclusion). The greater part of the games is a) having fun and b) giving my weasels musical instruments. *shot* But seriously, even unfinished events can bring us much fun and joy (The Disney Guilds thread still warms my heart <3).

And thanks to Guilympics, and me, the weasels now have little shiny instruments to play

[Celestial]

We need a world to actually interact in. So far, it has been a little sparse so ideas are limited. The map is all well and good but if you don't have anything for the location beyond a description then it lacks a good bit of life.

First of all, perhaps we could gather what we already have and put it on the NTWikiF or have a seperate thread for guild mythos which might make the canon a little bit more newbie-friendly. And we need a few mini-plots outside of roleplays with an actual point of completion and a purpose. =3 (I need to get to work on the Escaped Books plot. >>)

Plus backstories for the individual guilds and their beginnings could be good too. The guild leaders could work on them and then throw them out for the members to add on and/or approve of?

[PFA]

I think I ditched the guilds and just brought my characters to the Icy Taco instead, I'm such a bad guildmate I am sorry.

At any rate, I guess I think of the guilds as kind of one massive roleplay series, as others have put it. Kind of the in-character corner of the NTWF world, I guess.

As for ways to make it active again, I'm the kind of person who has a limited attention span so that's probably my problem. XD; I think all my brain would want to focus on right now is spontaneous and informal stuff, if anyone's up for some more stuff in that'a direction.

[Zylaa]

I'd say if we're making our primary purpose story-building, we need to let it be known that stories can be as small or large as members want to make them. So if I want to write a story about my own backstory, or some random adventure I get up to in Tabloid Town, all I need to do is write it up and post it on a hypothetical thread which we provide. If I want to do a story with another person, we can create a thread of our own and write out the story there ourselves. And so on.

Guild backstories can be decided on however people want, I should think... for example, we Pirates have our origins roleplay which was never finished but I think is considered canon.

[Huntress]

Sept 19, 2010 19:19:11 GMT -5 Zylaa said:

I'd say if we're making our primary purpose story-building, we need to let it be known that stories can be as small or large as members want to make them. So if I want to write a story about my own backstory, or some random adventure I get up to in Tabloid Town, all I need to do is write it up and post it on a hypothetical thread which we provide.

Hypothetical thread was provided a long time ago xD No really, that thread could probably use more life anyway; with the roleplays as long and epic as they are, there's obvious need for something shorter and simpler a la the Guilds' Fanfic Corner.

The thing with that thread and reviving games and old events, though, is the fact that most people - especially newbies - are pretty set on the rule that Thou Shalt Not Dig Graves. Most people don't like reviving old threads and it's entirely possible that a newbie who runs upon some old game they'd like to revive won't do that because they're afraid of getting smack'd. So we should probably encourage that within the guilds. I sorta recall planning to go over the guild shops and tally up all their points at some point, I just never got around to it x'D

[Draco]

The problem with the Ninja Guild Shop right now, is it was run by someone who hasn't been in the forum for ages >.>

And I totally forgot about the NTWFwiki...

And I've been playing around with a idea for a game we can do with the guilds in teams. Either guild vs guild or just random guild members teamed up.

[Strife]

Sept 19, 2010 19:19:11 GMT -5 Zylaa said:

Guild backstories can be decided on however people want, I should think... for example, we Pirates have our origins roleplay which was never finished but I think is considered canon.

If you guys ever finish it, be sure to let me know so that it compliments FableQuest's plot. xD; The games takes place before the events of the first war.

Buuut anyway, we've tried time and time again to think of new gimmicks to revive interest in the guilds, but nothing's really brought back the enthusiasm that we had during GWI and II. Maybe the vast majority of the members just have more important things to do in their lives nowadays. ^^; That being the case, your best bet is to bring in new faces.

[Jina]

But getting new faces has it's problems, because the forum as a whole isn't exactly getting a whole load of new faces. And the guilds have definitely been slowing down faster than the rest of the forum, so it is down to lack of people willing to join in, not lack of people able to join in.

I agree that we need to encourage reviving threads, but the games board doesn't exactly enforce that rule either, and they don't have a problem.

[Draco]

Sept 20, 2010 18:05:42 GMT -5 Jina said:

But getting new faces has it's problems, because the forum as a whole isn't exactly getting a whole load of new faces. And the guilds have definitely been slowing down faster than the rest of the forum, so it is down to lack of people willing to join in, not lack of people able to join in.

I agree that we need to encourage reviving threads, but the games board doesn't exactly enforce that rule either, and they don't have a problem.

The problem with getting new faces is that most come and then disappear (either from the forum itself or just the guilds).

The other problem is the time of the year... This is around the time most people put school before the forum XD I never did it (just lucky at winging things instead of studying, or I did homework while on XD) >.> But I know most do So a lot of people leave, making it seem kind of empty for new comers. Also a lot of the people who would show up, are busy with school to

Something I kind of noticed is that there are quite a few people who are only in the Neopets/Neopian Times part of the forum as well. It's always a surprise when I see one of these people for the first time anywhere else and they have been around for some time. So maybe people can start lassoing them out of those boards

Now for reviving threads... I think it's because the main guild area is a bit jumbled We have RPs, Games, Stores, Meetings, etc all kind of thrown into the same area. Of course I also find making new boards to organize things tend to kill them >.> So yeah.... No real help there I think...