Creation of a Guild

[Seytra]

I can't think of any guilds that are poorly designed (at present) that have survived a long time (more than six months), but I don't get out like I used to either.

Neither do I, but even if there aren't any ATM, this is not an effect of the current system. In fact I expect some that exist now to last for several months.
Just to be sure: "poorly designed", in the context presented here, is not limited to ranks, structure and such (which tend to be the first things to be in place, anyway). It includes, among other things, the goals, recruitment policy, RP emphasis, background and, possibly most importantly, how well everything ties in with the setting of PS. The most prominent examples are race-specific guilds (some would argue about that), but also remote kingdoms and such fall into that category. Some even survive only because the members know each other IRL, or because the "goals" are so broad that they don't impact on the char, or keep anyone from joining. One doesn't need to go back to the days of "ELite" to find examples. And in terms of the forming period of a newbie, or an RP storyline that one follows, even a few weeks can be a long time.

Eventually they all die, but that happens to the RP guilds as well.

BUT is your conclusion that there should be a "council" that polices ONLY guild names (because any more would be difficult to do)?  So if they have a good guild name, they're in?  What have I missed?

Sorry to have been unclear. They were supposed to be different things. The "council" would do a proper evaluation, as it's more or less sole purpose would be to check and annotate guild applications. If no such council can be formed (likely for lack of time / acceptable players), then this cannot be put on the GM table, and so it would need to be reduced to a name check or something equally minor but still somewhat better than ATM. Even if it were to just check names, it would prevent the problems that retroactive changes create, and possibly serve as reminder to re-check the guild idea.

Edit:
@Zan: there should at least be some time (possibly months) you would have to have been ingame to be able to vote for a guild.

[Narure]

Sorry to have been unclear. They were supposed to be different things. The "council" would do a proper evaluation, as it's more or less sole purpose would be to check and annotate guild applications. If no such council can be formed (likely for lack of time / acceptable players), then this cannot be put on the GM table, and so it would need to be reduced to a name check or something equally minor but still somewhat better than ATM. Even if it were to just check names, it would prevent the problems that retroactive changes create, and possibly serve as reminder to re-check the guild idea.

Surely these forums are a form of this as more than a couple of people here will rip apart any below standard guild posts, making it compulsory to post could be the solution.

[Parallo]

With pleasure. The only problem is that much of what goes on here is opinion.

[Earl_Listbard]

(IC) where guild ideas can be presented and people can sign the petition for them or not. A guild would have to gather, say one hundred votes before it is approved and can be created. People could visit the board and sign their name under a specific guild idea, this way GMs are not needed and the action is completely IC.

Yes but many people who allow their IC relations to affect their ooc relations (applies to MANY) may not like the guild, not because its a bad idea, so much as they dislike the people, or the guild's cause.

-EL

[Garile]

Well I think Zans post already lists why public votes on this wouldn't be in the interest of quality.

I mean giving tria to someone to vote for something that is OOC? That is using IC power of money to affect something OOC.

The checking of a guild would be a tottally Out Of Character thing. Players will be judged if they wrote something their character could possibly come up with it and if the player doesn't bring in OOC elements. Therefor when judging any IC attachments can't play a role and so if the general public can't make that distinction they can't be the ones to decide.

Also it would require a lot of knowledge of the setting to be able to judge a guild application accurately and sent it back with what needs changing.

As for who would be judging I suppose it would mean new positions directly accountable to Talad and our settings dev Darkmoon as they are the only ones that know some stuff about the setting. However I still personally don't see it as such a big job that would need a huge team to complete. It would after all not be a quality police just a setting checker unless decided differently by Talad.

If the story is terribly boring but it complies with the setting I don't see why the settingcheck would send it back not allowing it. Lets just hope noone would join such a guild.

[lordraleigh]

True Karyuu, it's not how it was done in the middle ages but to be blunt that is no argument for why it shouldn't be done that way in PS. Glyphs didn't exist in medieval times either.

I do agree that the players don't always judge guilds right, this is why there won't be a duty to vouch for a guild but a possibility. Most likely those players who can't judge, don't care and they won't bother to look at the guild requests in-game. I do acknowledge the possibility of bribing players for guild creations, this is in character a possible way .. I don't refute that power gives money and votes in reality. The number of players increasing should probably be reflected on the number of signatures required to approve a guild though. That way it will always be hard to just randomly get people to vote for you.

As for the poorly made guilds ... I agree with Araye. If you look around you see that mass recruiting practically always wins against an excellent background story.

That would be fully OOC... how many characters(normal citizens) would approve the founding of guilds like "The Outlaws" for example?

"As for the poorly made guilds ... I agree with Araye. If you look around you see that mass recruiting practically always wins against an excellent background story."

Unless you do not care about having something written below name of the members of your organization and is willing to make the organization exists purely as roleplay instead of existing officially in game for as long as necessary.

About settings, you should give a chance for them to adapt and not just trash away an organization or guild immediately.

"It includes, among other things, the goals, recruitment policy, RP emphasis, background and, possibly most importantly, how well everything ties in with the setting of PS...but also remote kingdoms and such fall into that category. "

I hope that this (A Political, Economical and Social organization inside Yliakum and a conceptual "kindgom" that may become another legend like Kadaikos if the settlers succeed, fully isolated from Yliakum)is not included on these poorly designed "guilds".

But something is very important to remember, if Planeshift becomes too "Orthodox" about the grey area(not developed yet parts of the setting), the result will be that some people that make interesting roleplays will be very willing to leave.

[bilbous]

Now, regarding the wipe / bilbous: I, too, come from a P&P environment. However, I most definitely am one who does, in no way or form, RP wipes of anything. A wipe is nothing but OOC, and therefore must not have effect IC-ly. In P&P RPGs you may start over, but that is an uniamous group decision. In an MMORPG, this sort of thing can never happen, because it will be impossible to get every single player to agree. Also, it would not make sense in terms of the consistent world.
The only exception to this is when, at the same time as the wipe occurs, a significant change to the settings is released that more or less forces a reevaluation of one's character. However, this then is not a result of the wipe, the wipe is merely coinciding with it. Such changes can occur at any other point in time as well and require the exact same action. Wipes are being done to erase effects of OOC mishappenings like imbalances in the game mechanics, excessive abuse/cheating or loss of database content, and have nothing to do with RP, just as server crashes don't.

Any campaign I was in that ended was generally due to the GM deciding we had got too high level to make adventures for and he had these new adventures for start-up characters. The players rarely got a vote.

As far as in contextly events go, if you have had your character for say 5 years (might be a few that old??? I am a little unclear of the games timeline but if people keep recreating their characters...) then they would have aged a lifetime (30 game years) by medieval expectations  and likely have one foot in the grave. I would imagine climbing out of the DR takes a permanent toll and the older you are the harder it gets although this is far from the implimentation stage. If you keep your character another 10 years it will have aged 60 more years. I do not think exceptional lifespans should be taken as a given, in some mythos elves live forever except for mishap. I see no call for lifespans even as long as modern mans (around 80 years currently in the developed world) in a medieval setting.

Of course magic could be considered to extend life expectancy somewhat although there is no rejuvenating magic currently known. Surely the healing spells and potions are not effective against all diseases and age related effects (also not implimented).

As far as a context for a character wipe, it goes something like this: Laanx says "hey Talad, I'm getting bored of my worshippers, how about you?" Talad replies "Ya I know what you mean, it is the same old same old all the time, wanna wipe them all out and start fresh?" Laanx replies "Done. Lets hope the new ones are a little more entertaining." Gods can be so capricious at times. Who gets to be "Noah"?

As has been said, if your character feels played out, then you phase it out and create a new one. It should not be done lightly, and it's clearly a good idea to keep the old one around. However, if we had a wipe each 100th time some player feels their char is played out, we'd have weekly wipes.

You are putting the cart before the horse here, no-one is suggesting having a general wipe due to player ennui. We or I, rather, was suggesting that a wipe was a good time for a fresh start. New functionality, a major improvement is the likely reason to have a wipe. So a new age of the realm should have new inhabitants. I am not sure if the plan is to keep the current npc's for all eternity but I would expect that ultimately it is not and that the currently implimented npc's and quests are there as placeholders. I would assume that for a game that places a high premium on Role Play to have static npc's would be intolerable. What is needed and perhaps has been bandied about amongst the devs is a way to generate npc's and quests on the fly. I am talking about the dimest future and ideal outcome.

Guess that is enough rambling for one post.

[Garile]

As far as a context for a character wipe, it goes something like this: Laanx says "hey Talad, I'm getting bored of my worshippers, how about you?" Talad replies "Ya I know what you mean, it is the same old same old all the time, wanna wipe them all out and start fresh?" Laanx replies "Done. Lets hope the new ones are a little more entertaining." Gods can be so capricious at times. Who gets to be "Noah"?

hmm sure I just see that happening alright.

if you have had your character for say 5 years (might be a few that old??? I am a little unclear of the games timeline but if people keep recreating their characters...) then they would have aged a lifetime

Only been playing PS for 2 years and few who have played PS longer then me, let alone played that same character that long. It also doesn't give any reason to massively restart after a wipe, it only pleads that people should think about the aging of a character. As for how old someone gets Crystal says it will be able to bring back the dead at one time so powefull will it be and it heals almost lethal wounds in minutes. Also magic seems to be a very comon thing, just think how many magicians there would be compared to how many doctors we have. So yeah I think that would definately affect lifespans enough to not be able to guess it by comparing it to ancient times as magic seems to be about as effective as modern medicine nowadays.

If you look around you see that mass recruiting practically always wins against an excellent background story.

Very true. Although massrecruiting isn't all of it OOC leadership is also very important. However RP storylines seem to have little to do with it so the problem is it isn't something that will solve itself.

[bilbous]

I was really trying to point out the the mind of a god is incomprehensable to humans. Like it or not a wipe hapens twice in the bible, Sodom and Gomorrah get wiped, were Lot and family is spared, and the world gets wiped where Noah and family is spared. There may be examples from other religions as well as I have heard that the flood is represented in most religions though I do not know for sure it is true.

When the settings mention the crystal bringing back the dead does it make any mention about the state of being of those raised or is it possible this is some backdoor to zombies, skeletons and whatnot? Is there any mention of it being able to return old people to youthful vigor? I just don't see how you can legitimately role play the recreation of a character after a wipe so it kind of de-legitimises your whole role play if you try. "Yesterday I was a fully developed character with much skill in many things. Today the Gods have cursed me byreducing me to my original state of being and I must restart the long period of personal growth."  I suppose you could posit the alternate universe theory. Of course if you are one of those who prides themselves as being above training, ie. 'I am what I say I am and I don't need filthy stats to legitimise what I say I am', there would seem to be less problem as you can recreate your character with any old meaningless stats. I don't see this as being legitimate role play in the strictest sense anyhow. Talk about "little boy playing with wood...".

I am really just expounding on ideal conditions and I do not care much what people do and how they justify it. I am sorry if I remain somewhat off-topic but I think these considerations have an underlying connection with the deliberations at hand.

[Garile]

I was really trying to point out the the mind of a god is incomprehensable to humans. Like it or not a wipe hapens twice in the bible, Sodom and Gomorrah get wiped, were Lot and family is spared, and the world gets wiped where Noah and family is spared. There may be examples from other religions as well as I have heard that the flood is represented in most religions though I do not know for sure it is true.

First there is only one allpowerfull god in the bible and there are two in PS. If you read the story I find it highly unlikely they would agree on sometihing like this. This is even asuming they would be able to do this seeing also reading the setting compared to the god of the bible their powers are a lot more limited.  Therefor just saying "It's godly magic" is kinda the easy way out that sounds way to much like the "Im a prophet of this and that unknown god" newbness. I mean come on. All the heroes die and suddenly don't return from the deathrealm but all the peasant NPCs survive? One should never roleplay a wipe in my opinion in any way unless the devs decide to make an event of it what they have never done so far.

When the settings mention the crystal bringing back the dead does it make any mention about the state of being of those raised

It is presented as a healing branch. Necromancy seems more for the Dark way don't you think? Anyhow lifeinfusion is already in the game and just see how fast this is able to bring you back from the edge of death. We don't have any magical elixers in our society to make you younger. Still you become older becuase of healthcare and better food. Now I don't know how magic will affect the foodsupply but the healthcare is atleast a lot better then an ancient doctor that uses leeches as his main tool. The bringing back of the dead is just an example of how magic might even be better then our  healthcare, becuase if the dead can be brought back only old age would be the thing that can't be cured anymore. Just think how unbelievably high that would raise the avarage age.

However I don't really see how this is connected to the settingcheck yes or no of guilds.

[Ralleyon]

Actually, having a compex quest involved in the creation of a guild has been proposed to the devs before. However, it needs to be hard-coded into the game, or at least modified to work that way specifically.

The are ideas and various way to develop it, but until a programmer modifies the game mechanics to rewrite the guild creation process, it's still on hold. Hope they take a look at it sometime soon.

[Garile]

A quest for the creation of a guild?

Read some suggestions on it, but I would imagine there would have to be a main issue answered before you could even think of making something like that. Raised before but as far as I know never answered.

If you want to make the creation IC in such a manner, who exactly are you going to RP has the power to rule over all? I mean at the moment we have people using the guildsystem to form groups from royal houses to outlaws to priesthood. Can you really think of someone who is believable to have a say in the forming of all these groups?

[Karyuu]

A "Guild Registrar" NPC is not too crazy of an idea - if you do want to gain an official status, be given headquarters, merchant access and benefits, etc., it would do you well to register with a city. That's a bit like it was done "back then," anyway. But that would also call for various breeds of guilds - you wouldn't have The Outlaws paying coin to a town, so I would imagine numerous Guild Registrars of several city levels, underground being one of them.

There are many ideas and threads on guild structures - that's not really what this thread is about. Best to concentrate on ways to "weeding out" guild ideas that aren't really deserving of the status. As with many things, having a guild isn't a right - it's a privilege

[Under the moon]

Here is a little reading for those poor souls who have been confused by other games (such as WoW and GW) as to what an actual guild is.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gbetcher/373/guilds.htm

And yes, That is how I think official guilds should work. Secret or not so secret societies, 'clubs', and other things not related to business or crafting should have a different system. Otherwise, the true guilds are just demeaned.

[Garile]

Uhm I'm sorry to say Moon but I think you are the one confused by the name. Just becuase the devs chose the word "guild" for the system is no reason that we could only form true medieval guilds. It's just a word that was chosen and it could have just as well been "clan"or "organization". Also a very OOC chosen word so why would it have to limit what one creates IC? Don't forget the gamemechanics are tools. They shouldn't be OOC limitations to IC creativity, becuase no matter how many "structures" you make someone is bound to think of a group that wouldn't fit in those.

Calling something a guild in character while it isn't really a guild obviously is another matter that would need the discusion "what is a guild in PS?". As Karyuu said those are other discusions

Having a quest to get benefits for a guild that is interested in becoming a true guild for example would be a lot more realistic in my eyes then placing it at creation.