Just to change subjects subtlely, I think it's the guild's own business how it manages advancement programs and novice induction/training.

I haven't been in a guild for quite a while, though, so I couldn't really say much of influence...

I'm not sure if this has already been said because I've not read the entire thread. But, this is a game. Sure, there should be some challenge and a sense of achievement, else no one would stick around. However, if I wanted all work, I'd just stick with real life. Muds should be as life-like as possible, without the sense of work. If it becomes a burden, people won't want to advance in a Guild. I have fun just bashing, pking when I know enough about a game to do so, and making friends in an organization. I'm most certainly not interested in writing a thousand essays in order to advance in a Guild. If I wanted to do that, I'd go back to school.

If you did read the entire thread, I think you'd find that was the general consensus


That is true, but the entire point of this thread was that a Guildmaster wasn't terribly fond of his guild's advancement program and wanted suggestions for other sorts of programs, which he could talk about with his Administrator. The thread was a guild (Hartstone) ASKING for criticism.

Although I haven't been fond of our program that wasn't necessarily what I was getting at with the thread. I like options and theorizing so I wanted to see what other people did even if it had no direct effect on my thoughts about Hartstone's system. Plus, I wanted to let other people who may have the same kinds of frustrations have somewhere to go for a thinktank too!

Here's my idea for a Hartstone system.

Get novices through Novicehood with the basics they're going to need for survival. After that, their mission is literally pointed out to them to be "Live life and learn everything you can from your experiences. If you stumble upon a question, ask it, and it will be freely answered."

At the end of every IC year, a person either writes a letter or has a discussion with a guild official (sec/undersec.. the ammount of people in this positions might need to be raised a bit, but that's ok, because they become the "mentors"). The discussion is about what they've learned.

Then, based on how much they've learned and how common/obscure the subject is, a favor is given of roughly corresponding strength.

Yes, it would take some time to temper a proper scale, but it sets a very unique goal in my opinion, and offers as much flexibility as is possible. They learn whatever they want, and get rewarded for it.

In my numerous years of experience.. i.e 6 I have found that if you are willing to have a leadership position(GM, GA, GC), and if you are willing to play the game for 8 hours a day, then you can easily create a system that is Mentor based and very personal.

However, if you are just a secretary and trying to come up with a system for others, even if you are on 8 hours a day it won't work, unless your GM, GA, GC is on for 8 hours a day. (If you require my reasoning behind this let me know)

If you arn't able to do that, the most "hands off" system you can come up with works best, aslong as you don't expect people to have good culture and RP skills. No matter how much you write in the scrolls, its not the same as experiencing it from your "teacher"

Also, the more the goals of your guild coincide with the goals of an individual player the better. For example... Telling people to do patrols of the terriritory is fun for maybe 2% of the people. (for the sense of immersian) However, telling people to say... Donate 10,000 gold to the guild works for just about everybody save the ones who have issues with authority in general. Because while donating the gold may not really have any unique rp value, making gold is something a player will allready be wanting to do, and it makes the player give up a sacrifice for the guild that they can understand.

Personally, I hate those donation schemes, but I have to tell you, they worked.

If the Hartstone start selling GFs, I'll quit the guild.

Its not "selling gfs" anymore than saying "do X Y AND Z" is "selling GFs"

Whats the difference between, "gather 10,000 gold" and "gather 1000 power", except that gold gives a player more freedom? or "Gather 25 of each herb"

I don't think requiring a donation is selling a guildfavour but I do wonder what the guild would do with the money. I look at our accounts now and I can't really see what we'd do with all the money.

Unless we wanted to screw with the credit market.

Who knows. but you can always improve your guildhall and add special items.

one thing I wanted to do, and was going to have but Shikari left, was these etchings in our guildhall that a guild member could intereact with. These etchings would be of each spirit, and the spirit would tell the guild member a bit about what the spirit ment and represented and all that jazz.

Shikari said it was about 100,000 gold per etching.

Thats actually a really neat idea.

I thought so. Shame that everytime we found an emphemeral to work on it, they dissapeard the next week and never got back to me. I must have sent the same email to 4 different people back then.

Hartstone can also purchase an alembic for their guild hall (Lisaera said Wiccans and Druids were able to do it) or custom objects, or new rooms, all sorts of stuff can be done with gold by the guild.

Guild money can be spent to expand the guildhall, make books, add things to the guildhall like an alembic, buy new clans...

It isn't that pressing though.

I so went ninja on your ass

Oh, and respond to my PM, dammit!

Looks like the cost is the same in all IRE games for those kinds of items.

We actually discussed this on GT a few days ago when I was just trying to brainstorm some ideas in general. I don't think we'd need or want to add on to the guildhall but I've wanted to put interactive items in there for a while. The thing that gives me pause though is not knowing exactly what one item we already have can really do. I don't want to have unnecessary duplication you know.

The alembic could be something.

I'm too busy now to play in that game I wasn't when it was proposed... Can you find someone else?



Shorlen has an idea for what it could be used for, but I'm not sure it does anything specific right now. I mean, you can play the drums, but apart from that...

I have this nice ritual half written. I should finish that sometime.


Personally, I'd love it if the Moondancers and the Hartstone each bought one, and then the Commune one was locked until the war was over

That would be great. Probably not even close to being cost-effective, but great.

Meh, what else are we gonna do with the gold?

Talking squirrels.