Clan Council

[Feneon]

We’re posting this ahead of December 1 to set clarity what we’re working on related to LS clans and how you can help.

We are going to standardize clanning features (ranking, demotion, clanning, etc.) and allow this to be done by the members of the clan to reduce the administrative workload on Council.

We’re going to also expand the way the notes are made to Council awards and then work to create more agency to reward Roleplay or pushing storylines with your team members (through tasks, etc.). This will not impact the White Tower or be rolled out to them.

What we’d like to see is Council having a more forward and enabled role to direct a story or plot through the game. So, in preparation for December, we’re suggesting you have a conversation in your clan about the expectations of the clan (or the council) and add a process for Council removal.

In January we’ll be trying to have prepped a new plan for Council moving forward, but in December we’re hoping to see more momentum from Council to drive clan intention and action that we can support. We’re hoping to help this role lead clan RP as well as push storylines in game.

Our plan is to participate in the story telling from roleplay choices through in game responses. We’ll audit council awards throughout the month then share that information with players.

Generally speaking, if you’re driving action as a Council against a clan you also have a council member in, you should probably disengage one of those Council members. If you’re pushing your clan in a way that aligns with what you want to accomplish for an alt, that is also problematic. It is likely better for us all if you have a discussion with your clan on what you want to do, let a Council representative drive the action, and then treat your alts as supporting characters in the overall story.

This will give us a month with players to give us a sense of what is working, what is not working, and then either adjust or abandon it entirely.
This thread is for questions or clarification if you need it. We’d like to give back more agency, we want to do this while players are returning through the holiday in hopes that this helps the retention by empowering players. We hope this agency can be done in a way that gives you the tools to support your clan and create activities for them.

[Feneon]

While we may have additional holiday festivities, our general plan for this season is to support player-driven activity and aim at these events (as well as this change) to facilitate seasonal awards.

[Artorias]

So then we aren't having the smobbing,tar, other events this year? We have to do something ourselves?

[erulak]

SBE post on the first try, nice.

[gok]

Maybe you can rp smob loaders by dropping gear on the ground after you kill the smob. If you get creative you can rp a tar and post it for qps.

[Kiltwich]

Maybe you can rp smob loaders by dropping gear on the ground after you kill the smob. If you get creative you can rp a tar and post it for qps.

make the mob load a cursed weapon that takes the appearance of a random craft rare. Put the fade cloak drain on it, and make characters unable to drop it or put in containers (but they can give it somebody else), and mobs auto-drop it.
When picked up or received, make it give you a 2 round bash stun + poison + contagion + chill + deafen + silence for 10 tics.

I'm sure this addition will make for a lot of happiness and holiday cheer to be spread across the player base!

[Feneon]

So then we aren't having the smobbing,tar, other events this year? We have to do something ourselves?

Good question. When we are online and see groups playing we plan to make it a point to actively award and engage those groups. We're not building a zone or something with loads that end up lumping most players to one-side and increasing more frustration as well as pushing people away.

TAR isn't being turned off, but Korsik does want to improve it so any attempts or chances submit logs to him.

Prior years of holiday experience have led to more burn-out than retention and we want to try and supplement player driven activity with opportunity, rather than drive our own narrative, and hope for the best. We're hoping this leads to larger engagement.

[Feneon]

Specifically to clan planning and dynamics as well as council activity, many people on the game have talked about how they desire to tell stories with their characters. Council is a coded role where you can get elected to it. Right now that role is mostly administrative. We're moving most of those administrative features to the clan as a whole so all you need to do is catch someone.

Now we're hoping that this might give council reason to get their people together and do stuff. And maybe when we see that we can have the environment react or participate in the story telling.

Is this making sense? Does anyone have any questions or want to engage this topic?

[Sarinda]

Specifically to clan planning and dynamics as well as council activity, many people on the game have talked about how they desire to tell stories with their characters. Council is a coded role where you can get elected to it. Right now that role is mostly administrative. We're moving most of those administrative features to the clan as a whole so all you need to do is catch someone.

Now we're hoping that this might give council reason to get their people together and do stuff. And maybe when we see that we can have the environment react or participate in the story telling.

Is this making sense? Does anyone have any questions or want to engage this topic?

I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and transparency around this topic, and I think the rationale is really great. Obviously I know that Tower is a different beast altogether, for better or worse, so some of this might not translate to my favorite organization. But I just wanted to say that I appreciate staff's efforts to reward the healthy behaviors you are trying to cultivate in the game and its community.

I am wondering if you could maybe give an example with some more specifics, even a hypothetical one, on how you think this might play out? I'm not quite sure I understand how the Council role would look or what the scope of their "authority" might be with this update.

[Mikhan]

I think this is an exciting idea and I would be more interested in investing time in a WoTMUD that actually had more of this community-minded/old school D&D aspect to it.

If even a handful of us players collaborated on something like this I think we could have a pretty good time and would end up dragging more people into it. We've already got immortal support for making in-game changes as a result of us doing PRC stuff...in my newb days, this was pretty much the dream