I hope you don't take offense to this, but this sounds like you have never worked on any kind of software project before.

It truly works like this:

You have several teams. One works on a project called bards while another works on a huge project called the undervault (let's not forget that there have been coders and designers working on this for around a year). Now, the second project gets finished and is ready to release! You now have two options. You can move all of the workers over to work on bards, and double the number of people there, or you can begin a new project, which we'll call monks.

If you add to the people working on bards, you will only slow things down. There is an old programmer adage that says the more programmers you add to a project, the later it will become - and the same is true of designers. The people who have been working on bards will continue working on bards (as the admin have assured us several times). Those who were working on other things will now be working on monks instead.

So, just like before, two big projects are going, and probably more are going on in the background. The only difference now is that we as the players get to see them both, where before they were doing the work behind-the-scenes. Bards have not been put on hold, and most likely won't even notice much of a slowdown.

There are plenty of problems around for us to complain about without jumping on unrealized problems. When the bards actually stop getting attention and updates, then we can worry about it, but for now these complaints aren't really founded on anything.

It is in some way reassuring to see the precise same issues that I have been railing against all this time being expressed in the other bard guilds, even though I knew that they must be in the same situation. I've tried to keep the Spiritsingers from being too bound to the totem spirits in the same way and for the same reasons. I've also been wary of leaning too much on rituals because that would also be redundant with the Moondancers. (I want to come up with some "interactive rituals", where there isn't a script and everyone present gets to be at least a tiny bit creative, both because I find that more interesting, and because it would differentiate ours from others. But those are remarkably hard to write.)

We have been focusing, however, even since before the founding of the Spiritsingers, on the Ancestor Spirits. They're already part of the Serenwilde, but they're not really the province of any one guild (Hartstone has a partial claim on them, but really their claim is more accurately made against their specific ancestors, not Ancestor Spirits in general -- it's a fine line, and I'd rather claim something without that kind of ambiguity, but really, we're desperate here and that's the best we can get). We even have one ancestor spirit mob who is an important part of our commune quests.

Trouble is, we can associate with Chuchip all we want, I can write all the songs about his place in Seren history I want, but none of that is going to get the other guilds and their members to take us seriously, include us in things, heed our words. Heck, we still have trouble getting a few people to come listen to songs or play a creativity game with us (and I keep hearing we're doing better at that than anyone), how are we going to get people to think our lays of history and admonitions of purpose actually have any spirituality or authority?

One little prophecy, just a few words, from Chuchip, could make so much difference for us. Every chance I can, I do the quest for his prophecy in hopes he's going to toss us a bone. It would take so little. But as long as we don't get that, we'll just have to do the best we can without any support behind us.

Once, just to prove the point, I wrote up a one-page treatment on how a simple change of nomenclature could have made bards integral to their nations and their spirituality, important and needed by their communes and cities. It focused on what is now called nexus worlds, constructs, and colossi. In my version, things would work essentially precisely the same as they do now, mechanically. Only the names and meanings change. Nexus worlds would instead be a songscape, a physical place representing a song -- the Song of the Moonhart, the Song of the Engine, etc. The descriptions of rooms and mobs would be what it would be like to walk around inside a song. A construct would be a Harmony: a strengthening of the Song which in turn strengthens those who are bound to that song, giving them powers or enhancing them in some way. Raising a Harmony would take about twice as long as it now takes to raise a construct, but teams of bards could perform a ritual before them to hasten it, up to a minimum that's just faster than we can now raise constructs. What we now call colossi would instead be Discords. Bombardment would instead be projecting waves of disharmony. All this could have been done without any changes in coding from what we have now, or only trivial ones; but it would have put bards as integral to their communes and cities as the other guilds already are. (Plus, in my opinion, it would have been massively cool. I would love to write roomdescs for walking around instead a song.)

I hope that whatever they do with monks is along those lines, maybe not that big, maybe not that cool, but at least giving the cities and communes a reason to a) need them, and b) listen to them.

To reiterate a key point the admins have already made, software development doesn't work this way.

If you have ten developers, they are not all working on the exact same piece of functionality. That would be almost impossible. You have small groups or individuals working in parallel on various responsibilities.

Imagine building a house (although software development isn't entirely like building a house, either). You have 20 people on site. They are not all doing the electrical wiring. Some of them are. Some of them are putting up drywall. Some of them are installing windows. Some groups may be moving faster than others. Some groups might do a crappy job with their responsibilities. But it would be absurd to say, "Oh no! Some contractors are working on the windows! The electrical will never get finished!"

So, if you want to criticize what has been done with Bards so far, that's your prerogative. But it doesn't follow that because developers are adding a new thing to Lusternia that all development on Bards has stopped. In fact, you've already been told point blank that this is not the case.

EDIT: Ninja'ed by mitbulls.

None taken....
but what is the key idea here? Is it quantity? or is it quality?

You're missing the point. The problem isn't building something inside the guild, it's getting those outside the guild to take it seriously. I, for one, would be just as happy if the admins didn't do one bit to develop my guild's culture. But they can support that culture in the eyes of the rest of the commune better with five words (placed in the mouth of someone like Chuchip, Miakoda, or Trialante) than I can with five decades of all-out exhausting effort. If they want to use those five words to support my vision, great; I'll even provide the words. If they don't like my vision and want to push us in a different direction, great; I can adapt to that. But either way would be better than just plugging away and hoping one day Hartstone and Serenguard and Moondancers spontaneously, and for no particular reason, decide to include us, take us seriously, and grant us the same kind of relationship with and influence over and authority within some part of the commune, the same way they already have with their parts of it.

If you have concrete ideas, post them on the Plots board or keep talking to mobs until a Divine notices and plays along. I'm sure the admin'll be very supportive of attempts to define bard culture. (Kamilah had an idea like that - to make Harbingers look up to Lhiannan as the Dark Muse - but, er, we didn't get around to it?)


Whoa, that is really cool. And would've totally made bards feel relevant.

It's a balance of the two. The admin can't stop working on everything else and put everything toward bards - even if this would improve the quality (which it won't), it would sacrifice all quantity, which would bore everyone else who plays.

At the same time, if they started 50 projects with only 10 coders, they will never get anything done well, so people won't have anything to actually enjoy.

As it is, they're working on a couple of things simultaneously to get both quality and quantity.

... That idea really sounds massively cool. I'd absolutely love it.

EDIT: I don't get what relation nexus worlds have to everything else in the realm anyway.. but okay.

We've actually gotten some strong, and very appreciated, support from our patron on GT about our current direction, but that was quite a while ago. Now that I see the scale of what's been keeping them so busy, I can appreciate why we were also warned it might take a while!

The main thing I don't like is there isn't much flavor text at all when playing songs. For instance when I play Undeadblues I just see myself play my instrument in a certain way and I become Undead without even feeling anything, it is so boring.

That can't be helped. All the guilds, when a new archetype is introduced, will cling to their old power, come hell or high water, regardless of what they actually SAY.

I agree with the bards being included more in the culture...after all, every great real world civilization had people who would form dramatic groups or some form of entertainers...bards are meant to spread history and great stories. For example, it's possible that my Cacophony illithoid may very well start writing down a history of what it was like for him in the Undervault. (Since, because the whole situation of "slaves to the kephera" is so vague, may be just something pulled out of my own head.) Before written language, stories were passed down orally and in song. Even after writing systems developed, the main populace was mostly illiterate, so bards would travel from town to town and relate these stories to different audiences.

I therefore propose that bards should be given some sort of sanction (not -completely- unrestricted, of course) to travel throughout the Basin and hold their performances in the different communes and cities. It'll make it far more interesting, and more entertaining than just reading books in the Library.

Traveling performers would be great, but there's always anti-org things. The forests are usually meh to cities, and vice versa. Celest isn't going to applaud Mag. Glomdoring isn't going to applaud Seren. That's what makes Bards as preachers (like the Cantors once tried) impossible- the org barriers and ideal barriers.

I wasn't saying anything about preaching ideologies...but I see your point. *sigh*

....though it would be funny to go to Celest and do a parody of Mag, then go back to Mag and do a parody of Celest. XD That is, if Bards could actually be a neutral conclave, or something. If there were a neutral sort of town/artist's enclave for bards, travelling performers wouldn't be a problem. But Halifax and Dairuchi kind of...fell off the face of existence way back when.

Shayle and I came up with an idea to make the Harbingers kinda preacher-like but that wouldn't really work out, since it isn't really viable for any Glom to go into Serenwilde, let alone go in an talk about the glory of the Wyrd, and I can see the cities not caring either. Nirrti has been helping me with some good stuff though, so maybe I'll come up with something good!

Hajamin once explained it to me like this:

Managing director of a massive IT company walks up to the chief coder and says "I have this project and I need it done in a month, how long will it take you to finish it and what quality will it be?"

The chief coder looks at the project and says "That would take me about six months to finish and I think it would be reasonable quality."

"What?" the managing director says "That's just way too long, how long would it take you if I gave you 10 coders?"

To which the chief coder replies with "Then it would take about a year and the quality would be mediocre."

"Very well," the managing director says "you shall have 100 coders."

The coder smiles and says "Then the project will never be finished."

Excuse me, after reading all this debate I got really curious... Do you already have 10 coders in Lusternia?

Now, seriously, maybe the problem is that while being given much public relevance to monks development, maybe it looks like nobody talks about bards development so nobody must be working on it. Just would need to make the team of coders working on Bards to also admit to it and ask for player input instead of saying "shhhh we're working on it, believe us" that might make people lose hope.

Roark is obviously working on Monks, so that would be Sior working on bards

They gave Sior the envoys, if I'm reading things right.

You get them to take you seriously by being serious about it.

How many people believe that Glomdoring's canon RP is isolationist, insular, heavily ordered and regimented, and lawful? Everything written says expansionist, opportunistic, adaptable, and cultureless. "Nothing matters but Glomdoring" doesn't mean "Shut up and fall in line" in its original context. It meant that everything is negotiable, barring Glomdoring. Two players changed that inexorably.

Nirrti made reference to some aspects of Blacktalon culture that stuck around for a long time. The wraiths, the Black Flame, Crow Tongue, all of those came out of thin air. About three people were instrumental in this. Most of them have been completely stricken from the collective memory and replaced with a new spirituality. Two people were instrumental in the upheaval.

I've come to realize that "culture" is mostly the verbiage and argumentation favored by the loudest subculture in a group. When Glomdoring's old guard fell out of favor, the farewells were peppered with Crow references. Now that they're back, the shadow things are heard more often. Since the Spiritsingers are a large enough group, just invent something creative, persuasive, and palatable, and make sure that your guildmates will fall in behind it. A combination of morale and the zergling principle will do the rest.