(Disclaimer: these are the inane ramblings of a person who has had too much time on his hands in certain parts of the last few years. I am not trying to accuse anyone of anything, and anyone who interprets it as such shall be shot, quartered and buried in the middle of the Himalayans, where Yaks shall be the only ones to bear the memory of your passing, you have been warned!)

I have been playing muds for far longer than is healthy, I started out approximately six years ago in the early days of Achaea, had a large dose of weariness for the carbon copy when Aetolia came out and witnessed the scrambling for positions when Imperian and Lusternia opened. I have undergone some very intense playing periods during some of the less happy parts of the last couple of years and even resorted to the occasional all-nighter here and there.

Yes, I have been an addict. (I like to think I am not so anymore, but I shall leave that up to others to decide.)

Regardless, that is not what this is about, for time and time again, over all four muds and in all involved organisations, I have always seen the same structures develop, the same problems occur and the same irritations drive people to the extremist actions we all do so like to be on the winning side of. In the various incarnations of my characters I have often pondered why these structures present themselves and why history always appears to be repeating itself in exactly the same way. Recently my elevation to godhood has provided me with a completely new perspective of these events and structures and I can come to no other conclusion than that these things are the rule rather than the exception. The recent problems with Glomdoring flaring up once more have inspired me to try and put my thoughts in writing, though they are in fact unrelated to this and of a more general nature.

Back in the early days (damn, why do I suddenly feel old now?) when probation was still considered normal and I was still a teeny little novice, I came into a structure of a guild which for privacy’s sake shall remained unnamed. In order to be considered a full member I had to undergo several tiers of training, the very same ones that so many of you undoubtedly know so well. In these days I didn’t know better and I struggled my way through them, mainly because I had too much time on my hands. My character was well over 25 before the mythical probation was finally lifted, having taken the long road to Rome rather than the short one.

At this point I looked at myself, came to the conclusion I had at least 20 vials which I was never going to use (and never did), had been forced to learn a variety of skills that in retrospect I would have liked to spend elsewhere, owned 50 of every herb imaginable, most of which are still in fact in the old dingy pocketbelts of this now dormant character and stuck with a mandatory character history which I came to hate a few years later when I finally started to realise what most of the world was really like. I had been forced through several sessions of interviews that covered aspects of things that I still find completely ridiculous, some of which lasted in excess of four hours. I had been forced to find my way to the most ridiculous locations in the mud, subject to the whim of my interviewee and was about 15 levels higher than I really wanted to be at that point in my career, not to mention the five essays that I had written. (They make me cringe to even think about).

At this point the very naive version of myself concluded that I was finally ready to start the game, I was finally allowed to obtain some guild rank (I was only guild rank two at the time) and get involved in the guild a bit. From where I am now I can safely say that I would never have put up with it had I started playing muds yesterday, I would have looked at the requirements, blinked once or twice to make sure I was in fact looking at the right help file and then hit X and started up World of Warcraft.

I then became tied up in an incessant cycle of the most dirty and brutal politics imaginable (or so I thought at the time, I have since realised that this was in fact quite reminiscent of what the word politics means in general). Guildmasters were deposed, coups were undertaken, tyrants installed and toppled, lots of people getting kicked out to be replaced by new and enthusiastic revolutionaries who then did exactly what their predecessors did and psychotic novice masters who ‘improved’ on the probation system time and time again. The end of my career came at the hands of a coup at which I was on the wrong side of, I was outguilded as a heretic, a danger to the guild and guild laws were changed on the spot to make it legal.

Since then I have often wondered how these systems uphold and propel themselves, appearing again and again, despite severe administrator interference, having led to the complete abolition of guilds in Achaea and the hardcoded system we have here in Lusternia. The systems still prevail however, which is proven by the example of the ‘advancement system’ in one of the Lusternian guilds (I shall be discrete here) which involves the slaying of a half formed in order to complete this path. (For those who have never assaulted the half formed, they are by far the most insanely difficult and involved characters to kill that I have encountered in any of the muds, summoning large numbers of allies and having attacks that can at times fell even demigods in a single stroke.)

In the many evolutions of these systems over the years I have since witnessed a sort of natural selection that appears to lead to extremism and eventually to stagnation of leadership. I have myself been guilty of propelling these systems in exactly the same way and that is perhaps when I first understood them, not knowing better at that time.

When I finally finished my long system of probation requirements in my first guild, the memory of how difficult and boring they were quickly faded, overtaken by the sort of fervour that often rules in these guilds. I myself had improved since having my probation lifted and struck upon the conclusion that some of these things might actually be very useful to know for future novices. After all, improvement of the system would lead to ‘better’ guild members who were stronger and more knowledgeable about the world in general, thus providing more esteem for the guild, which obviously had members that were superior to all the other guilds of the realm.

As such, the probation system was ‘improved’ upon, and while we were at it, we even thought to raise the basic requirements such as the general level requirement, the number of vials, the number of herbs and similar aspects. We were very proud of ourselves, having set a fine example of what was considered to be an excellent novice and probation system. And the beauty of it all was that it worked. The members now being promoted to full guild status certainly had a much stronger knowledge of the realm, were more likely to survive and more likely to continue and become ‘great’. The new full guild members also completely agreed with us that the new system was great, and not very difficult at all. It was easily doable, provided a magnificent basis and made certain that whoever was promoted to full guild status was in fact someone to look up to.

Then came the resignations.

The guild master resigned, wishing to continue in a function in a city. His wife, the one in charge of the probation system, followed him in this. The guild master was replaced by someone younger, someone who had undergone the new probation system. New secretaries were installed, a new probation person was appointed and the new generation of guild members integrated nicely.

Years passed as more of the old guild members slipped away and new ones replaced them when suddenly an idea took hold. There had long been complaints about the general quality of the full guild members, the system could be improved upon which would lead to higher quality members that the realm would look up to. The majority of the guild fully agreed with this, as they were all of the opinion that the system was too easy and many aspects were not covered. The probation fellow was commissioned and new aspects were added to the system, such as mandatory combat spars, basic healing ability and the ability to keep yourself alive under stress.

Everyone was happy, the quality of the members was improved yet again and the members that were elevated under the new system agree that the new system was much better than the old one. Obviously this system is beautiful for all it ensures is a higher quality of the guild members. And yet, when I look at it now I realise that the guild had slunk, more and more members were getting bogged down in novice positions or probation. The guild members agreed that they were lazy and did not deserve full guild member status and that it was all for the best.

When I was eventually on the wrong side of the coup I noticed that the same series of events happened again, leaving a programme in place that was very rigorous and leaving the guildmaster in place for over 30 ic years, all because there was no opposition: the only people to complete the probation system were people that thought exactly like the leadership that was in position at that time.

I have since started referring to this system as a sort of natural selection and I have seen it everywhere. People that come in charge of an organisation look for those who have qualities that they approve of. These people are the most logical to succeed them and then again look for people that think the same, requirements are adjusted to ensure that this would happen and the members that made it through these requirements did in fact agree with the people in charge that this was a good system and needed to be improved upon. Those members that had other priorities got stuck in the probation system and eventually left the organisation, or at least never rose to power.

This system often remains unbroken, even today, growing ever more difficult, restricting and narrow until such a time that the leadership really has no viable competition left and will remain in a stagnant state that they approve highly of. After all, those that make it through the system are in fact people to look up to and respect.

The portrait I paint here is a worst case scenario, luckily the cycle gets broken from time to time and people impose structures that improve upon the liveliness and health of the organisation, yet, for some reason the structures rise again, as the natural selection continues.

I present this as a philosophical problem, I provide no possible solutions, accusations or apocalyptic messages of doom. It is merely an observation, an observation which I have found to apply to more situations than I had at first realised.

Closing note: I welcome opinions on this subject and look forward to seeing them. However, concerning the heavy nature of this post I shall be moderating this thread heavily to keep it readable for others. (In other words, go do your forum trolling and post spamming in the idiots section). Also feel free to discuss how this applies to the Glomdoring situation, as that was at least part of the reason why I scribed this down.

-Elo

I noticed the same thing, and infact tried to change the way things worked in the ebonguard.

I think my tactic failed. One of the things that I really tried hard to do, was to take people who had drive but no experience and put them into positions such as secretary etc.

I think I promoted them too fast, because as soon as I gave them the position, they seemed to have not wanted to work for it anymore.

As more Guild Admins joined the group, they tinkered with the tasks a bit, (which were supposed to be codeabley objective, to fit in line with Lusternia's general methods of things) and so part of that cycle continues, but it appears that in this case, the old ways actually do work best.

For example, I find this little log intersting.





I find this log relevant to the conversation, I'll let you figure out why, as I can't really find the right words to say.

I think in part the nature of it coming up in these IRE MUDs is started for good reasons. People usually play these games for the RP experience. Combat is a MUD is complex and I would say not as "fun" as playing a game like WoW or another graphic RPG or MMORPG. So, I would say we are here to role-play, be in for conflict or for socialization.

Partially, I think all the requirements are designed to make sure people want to role-play and you don't have people speaking in Haxor, Leet, or LOLCATZ style ramblings, or being blatantly OOC. In this case the Peer Pressure is good.

But you are correct in terms of how power works. I think it's tempting for an organization to get power and retain that power because they like their established culture and want it to continue. Basically, players want to play a certain way...a group gets together, then they remove opposition to that, because they don't want things to change.

I think in many cases people worry too much about their legacy, or the organization. Personally, I'd love to see organizations change slowly over time, or at least flip-flop via politics, sort of how we elect Democrats and Republicans with their own agendas. I'm not sure how to accomplish that type of dynamic politics. Maybe you do that by setting up term limits, or maybe force the creation of various political entities within the community (orgs don't count, have a "hawk", and "dove" party, for instance), and rotate.

Term limits and political parties are definitly the only way to do that. Your legacy then depends on how hte party does, not on how you or the org is remembered.

The problem with this is that there aren't really "issues" for them to disagree over in Lusternia like there are in the real world. Someone running for guildmaster isn't going to make a platform on social security. There isn't really any way that a character in Lusternia can be liberal or conservative - really the only thing that varies a lot in this manner is the relationship with the other cities/communes.

I don't think is a MUD problem. Why does it happen? Because it works. Is it good or bad depends on which of the fence you stand. This is society as we read about in history books while aquiring our educations.

But that's exactly what you can do. Role-play requirements. Think of it this way. Here are three sample parties for Serenwilde.

The Xenophoic Moonies party:

* Cities-dwellers are not tolerated here. You may trade with them but do not allow them in Serenwilde.
* Glomdoring dwellers are banned and don't trade with them, they are heretics.
* We work to nullify the elemental and cosmic forces.
* We work to expand our territories amongst the villages. All must participate, save novices and their trainers.
* A Moondancer must be obeyed at all times by novices of any group.
* Public displays of affection are not allowed.

The Gentle Silverlight party.

* Maintain neutrality, don't start wars unless you have to, keep defensiveness.
* We will allow angels and demons in our woods, as long as they behave.
* We work to teach others our ways but we are not zealots.
* We will agree to political treaties with any organization, sharing resources when it suits us.
* We work to find a peaceful way to co-exist with the cities and the other communes.
* Go ahead, have PDAs wherever.

The Penumbral Alliance.

* Our brothers and sisters in Glomdoring are our lost kin. Though we are at opposite sides on the fae, they are better because they are still grounded in nature.
* We must work to neutralize the negative effects of the cities.
* We will actively hunt and try to circumvent the half-formed and their spawn.
* We will work to close down all rogue gates.
* We will actively seek to keep city dwellers and rogues out of Faethorn. We will also keep city-dwellers out of Torabolla valley.
* Our goal is to only take those villages that are near and dear to our hearts. We want the hemp fields and estellbar, we will ignore the others.


See...it can be done. Maybe if there was a way to allow players to form parties and then have them rotate in power it would work. It might be something beyond this MUD.

Actually, I think hardcoded parties would work very well.


Give each community two or three parties. (probabbly three parties)

Each charachter joins a party when they wish. PARTYJOIN 1

THe only way to leave a party is to reject your party, you can not be removed by the leadership of the party.

Each party has its own elections, for head of the party, then every 10 IC years, there is an automatic election between the heads of each party. Alternativly, the head of hte party can contest for a position whenever they like.


It would be really nice.

Also there is no restriction on what positions party members can hold.

We, in the Serenguard, have been (slowly) coming to the realization that over time we've accumulated far too many policies, requirements, etc. There's a plan to pretty much start over and get back to basics, clear out all the useless political garbage we've accumulated over the years because it's getting in our way much more than helping us. "This is who we are. This is what we do. Let's go do it."

I think then though that you just contain the sort of back biting that Estarra references in the other thread to a acceptable location. I also see TPtB in each org complaining about it being tedious. On the up side it could encourage truly committed political players by giving them a forum in which to play politics.

Yes, that would be the point of it.

parties would still have problems with any alledged alt creation+voting that happens or bringing out retired forum trolls to vote

I'm going to reply to this with an epic ramble of my own, combined with a rant.

This sounds all too familiar. I've noticed similar things in different MUDs involving stagnation of power structures, both in player-run terms and in admin terms. What you get at the top ranks is a sort of "groupthink" that precludes any really radical changes. In the case of a lot of the Guild and city/commune structures, you get kneejerk reactionists and ingrained responses to various stimuli. You then begin to get the same sort of RP and the same sort of thought in an organization over and over again, even when the young revolutionaries take power. Maybe especially when... these same revolutionaries have gone through the same process of training that's been passed down, and more to the point, to get to where they are now, they've had to make certain compromises in order to wrap their head around the politics and even the game.

A couple of friends of mine, former players of Lusternia, burnt out and quit. One of them has burnt out and quit more than once. Their issues with IRE's method of handling combat aside, their main beefs was the fact that Lusternia is very polarized... there's no middle ground, no matter how much Glomdoring might look like a new option, it still comes across as the 'evil forest'. And so you have evil forest versus good forest and good city versus bad city. While this creates a certain dynamic tension that makes things interesting, they, as roleplayers (anybody remember Eole and Jroem? Mary? Mal?), found it distasteful. Their roleplay isn't about crusading or bashing up to a certain level to make Guild Rank... it's about finding interesting things to do, whether it be hanging out and emoting at each other, or making cute newlywed banter over a couple of dead seagulls. Or singing to the Necromentate or the Grim Horror in Mary's case.

What I want to know are where are all the roleplayers? Where are the people who don't take :censor: so seriously when they die, or hold in-game decades long grudges across characters when somebody was OMG meen to them in-character? Where are the people doing actual NEW stuff instead of being coopted and stuck with organizational duties? As somebody who loves to roleplay, I find myself getting bogged down - granted, I volunteer for it - in organizational duties. Anybody who actually roleplays AND shows some spark of potential seems to get chewed up and spit out by getting stuck with doing work because nobody else is competent with it.

The roleplayers I spoke of who pulled off Eole and Jroem eventually quit due to that and being frustrated with constant pressure to PVP. Let's face it, if you're only playing this a couple hours a night, and not really getting that sucked in, why are you going to go to the effort/ expense of getting credits or buying a system or buffing a character?

This is probably going to alienate more than a few people, but I'm kind of okay with that.

Oh. Hint.

The solution to all of this is probably not hard-coding more player organizations in. Just saying.

Parties also make a limited number of views available and you have to shift everything to fit into your party. Parties limit characters to the views of the party.

As to elitism via established requirements, all the Harbinger leaders so far have worked to keep the requirements to the bare minimum of education (Get a healing vial. What does this healing vial do?) and all advancement tasks are optional. The Harbinger leaders have also always made sure to favour people who did good work, made the guild look good, or just for the hell of it. We even favoured people that we did not like. The Harbingers have always been small and we've made things as easy as possible to keep people around, and we have always been conscious of that.

I'm unclear on one point. Is the described evolution of "advancement/requirement" systems and the structure associated with them the problem or just an example of the problem?

I entirely agree with pretty much everything Elostian said. And I think my work in the Spiritsingers reflects that.

• We don't have requirements. We don't hold people back. No one has to do anything.
• No one has to follow any particular path or sequence to advance (though by popular request we do offer a linear advancement system as an option).
• In addition to "do something impressive", we offer a list of 36 different pre-determined ways to get a guildfavor. (Why have 20 guildranks and only use 5?)
• I've tried to limit the amount of structure and complexity, and above all, prevent it from growing more hidebound as time passes.

I'm not arrogant enough to say I've avoided the trap; I'll leave it to the rest of the guild to say whether they feel I've created a self-selecting groupthink. No one can deny the guild is small, of course. Just not sure if that's why.

But I wonder if these structured requirements systems and policies and stuff just one of the many ways this kind of self-selection happens, or if they're really the way.

The Spiritsinger advancement things are awesome. They are in no way limited, they guide and instruct if you need it, and you can move up guild ranks if you want to or chill at GR1 and that's cool. I think the SS advancement program is in nearly ways better than the Harbinger system, and I wish I would have made a SS alt and looked at your stuff while I was still GM.

I remember when I started playing that I needed to write an essay for the Nihilists. I didn't mind, I used it as a way to develop my character. I finished my essay and submitted it to the GA. I was allowed my deep pact. He then quit, got replaced, and a different essay was put in place and I was expected to write it. I didn't. I was not given the next guild rank though. I believe the essay requirement was changed again. I really didn't care at that point. The first leader then came back from being inactive. He gave me the guild rank on the basis of things I had done outside of the essay. I definitely got stuck in a system just because I didn't want to do a requirement again.

As for the Nihilists now, I think our novice test is easy. Same with our GR1. After that we don't have an advancement system. We are working on one though. It is designed to be split between tasks for those who would rather be a fighter, politician, or "priest". The tasks we have so far don't seem hard.

I do worry that it could become too much. The requirements for things might end up being a system just designed to hold people back unless they meet whatever it is that the guild leaders like. I don't want it to be, I don't think any of the leaders want it to be, but I can see it inadvertently becoming one.

Right, small note in between, I was trying to keep on top of this thread but then caught myself degenerating into randomness as I decided which posts were applicable and which were not. Apologies for this.

I'll still remove any obvious forum trollers or off topic posts but other than that, please feel free to continue.

I shall reply at a later time but not now as I am tired and have other things that need doing.