Basically, what do other guilds do to get people into Undersecretary roles?

At first it was offered only to GR3, then I dropped it down to GR2. Not to mention we offer GF for service every year.

What do I have to do to get people in?!

...interest in the guild? ^^

What she said.

What good is an undersec that doesn't enjoy helping novices?

Interest in the Guild? Yeah, there's that, but you need to consider that most of the people who are attracted to bard guilds are either there for the combat, guildhopping, or there for the RPs... calibrate your system accordingly! Some of the requirements for advancement in the Cantors are mildly silly - I've heard things from previous undersecs and secs - Eole and Jroem, for example, about the need to eliminate the Starhymn requirement to encourage the growth of (gasp) non-combat-oriented players.

What you may wish to consider doing is retooling the requirements slightly.

I'm interested in getting more into the Cantors myself, but as a newbie, am having trouble hitting all those requirements. Once I'm a bit higher up in the Guild, I'll probably express some interest in it.

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Cacophony has that sort of a problem too.. But than last time i actually asked for help on a matter. I got DF'd for not reading a Help file that wasnt there.

Do you mean you require GR3, or offer GR3 as reward for doing the job?

I only require that they read a lengthy GHELP and then comment on it. Anyone who offers an idea for improving it gets in automatically. Otherwise, they get the job if I feel that they can do it -- some get it right off if I've seen them being helpful, some I want to watch trying to help novices first. They get a guildfavor after a year of doing it.

If you're requiring a particular GR to do the job, that seems silly to me. All that matters is willingness to do the job and some ability to do it. In fact, one of the things listed in GHELP GRADUATION (to which everyone is directed on graduation) is the possibility of becoming an undersecretary.

Requiring a guildrank for undersecs is silly. If you have people that want to help newbies, then let them help them. And offer incentive to do so. Undersec is a good way to get involved in the guild.

And that's why the Spiritsingers have been elected best novicehood-thingy.

We don't require guildmembers to have a certain ability to advance, or what not. Just do Advancement Tasks in your own pace, or not at all; even if you're GR 1 you can become an Undersec...and being an Undersec for an IG year gets you a GF.






P.S. We have Ialie, Lendren and Zia, too...

We used to have formal training for undersecs but we no longer do. Now it's simply a question of the GA and our appointed 'head of novices' to judge whether they're ready or not.

We do, however, require GR3. That's mostly my preference ^^ I don't know how getting to GR3 works in the Cantors, but we have a series of tasks that have to be completed to get GR3. These are chosen by the member, there are 27 tasks that they get to choose from. Because GR3 is 'full member' for us, it seems wrong that we would have anyone who's not GR3 teaching our novices. Some of the tasks we offer serve as training for teaching novices too, so that helps. I'm trying to find a way to explain this that isn't condescending to GR1s, but it's so easy to get to GR3 that it's not like we're being unnecesserially harsh. For us, interest in the guild is shown by duty to your Conclave (what the tasks are in) and thus getting GR3.

If that didn't make much sense I'm happy to explain it another way

You guys make it too complicated. Watch people- if someone sticks out more than the rest of them, and has that "special something" that a good novice-helper needs, pull them aside for a chat about the possibility of becoming an undersecretary.

If you set up "guidelines" and differnet requirements to become anything in the guild, no one focuses on the actual guild-related stuff anymore. They are shown how to get power and will, inevitably, become all about getting it. Once those driven people get it, they wind up sucking out because they've achieved their goal. There's really no more reason to work once that goal is reached.

That isn't everyone, of course; there are selfless individuals that actually WANT to do the job they reach via requirements, but it's really unlikely. In my experience, the people that wind up doing the best jobs are the people that are actually observed and selected by the guild administrators.

The Spiritsinger system is nice, and I think Tahtetso use that too, but we don't want to be completely mimicking others either now too Cantors have a roleplay-related mandatory requirement at GR1 and 2, and then a choice of 4 to 8 other options to choose from that can be combat, knowledge, arts, or just gaining a certain level and explorer rank. For GR1 they do need to master music in order to be able to compose songs though, the purpose of which was not supposed to be combat-related, but if it becomes a huge problem then we'd have to give that a closer look. But people get GF'ed for doing exceptional things anyway (and our new admin implemented the GF a year, or 2 years can't remember, for undersec/sec service too), and lately I've noticed a lot of GFs being given out so people are definitely moving up in rank regardless of completion of tasks.

ANYWAY with that said, while I was admin I found that you can throw as many incentives, freebies, and be as nice as you can to people, but sometimes there are factors that are just out of your control.

It's so weird to me to read all of these different requirements. We had lots and lots of stuff for people to do in the guild, but never really required things (except for the Triad). Once finished, we would just delegate guild "chores" to people.

And no one ever had trouble rising in guild rank- we would just WATCH people. If they did something good, and someone with the ability to guildfavor was made aware of it, it was doled out. It really worked out well; people who HAD that power were more inclined to pay attention to the guild because it let them feel good about themselves for making someone's day. We had lots of fun watching everyone stumble over each other to be noticed, and they had fun roleplaying it all!

Totally not dissing anything you guys are doing. It's just weird to me to see it all. We were a very easy-going environment (as long as people followed the rules!).

That works a lot less well when you barely have any guildmembers to start with, is the problem.

I've found the best way to get Undersecretaries is to be an excessively aggressive GA. I post maybe once every 2-3 IC years asking for more Undersecs, and every once in a while someone answers. But mostly it's what other people have said, going out and seeking people who seem to really want to help novices (the whole purpose of Serenguard Undersecs is to train new novices). No matter how many times you say it most people aren't going to go off and read everything they can (let alone the few things they are asked to read), so expecting enough people to find out about becoming Undersecs on their own is a path to disappointment. You have to get out there and let people know about the need.

Offer payment. *nods* If undersecs get a reward based on how many novices they teach, and how far those novices go, aand for how long they are undersecs, I think you'd see people clamoring for the positions, even if it was just for the rewards--so long as they have to actually work to get the rewards, what's the problem?

Actually, that is HOW we built the Shadowdancers up from having no one in the first place. It's really the BEST way to build a guild. Sod the requirements, work with the people who are actually present.

Take away the guild relationship-building credo and... you get what we have now. You just have to have a very concerted effort in the right direction; make sure the leadership knows that success begins with building novice relationships and it'll start flourishing. And if you do it right, you don't NEED to pay people anything- it's rewarding enough to have that interaction.

I think Shiri meant the Moondancers being selective about their undersecretaries only works in bigger guilds, and if not, he should have.

In a guild the size of the Moondancers, where you're swimming in people and it's easy for people to just fade into the crowd, the problem you have is so many novices that it can burn people out, and a lot of them will be people who aren't really serious. So on the one hand, you can afford to be selective or even restrictive about who you appoint because you're swimming in people; and on the other hand, what you need from them is to be well-informed enough to weed out the serious novices from the others. When you get a very large percentage of the novices you can afford to lose some.

In a smaller guild like the Spiritsingers, the biggest problem you have is a lack of momentum. What'll drive people away is coming around to find only one or two others online, or no one at all. Obviously, a self-perpetuating problem. To build up past that, the most important thing for an undersecretary is to be enthusiastic and encouraging. That's far more important than being heavily trained. The goal is to encourage as many of your few novices as possible to stick around even through the dry times.

Incidentally, here's an interesting fact. I've been counting how many novices join each of Serenwilde's five guilds for quite a while now. With startling consistency, it's always in direct proportion to where the guild appears on the list you see during Nexus newbie character generation. Serenguard are the first listed, and they get far more novices than any other Serenwilde guild, about 35% of the total. Hartstone appears next, and consistently gets around 23%. Moondancers appear third, and get about 17%. There's one exception to the "farther down the list means fewer joins" rule, and that's whatever guild is newest always gets a sizable boost. Even now, the Shofangi still come in well above the Spiritsingers despite being one position lower in the list, though the Ninjakari's release has been eroding that, and I bet Shofangi will eventually fall into place about tied with or just below Spiritsingers. (Right now Spiritsingers get one novice out of every 16., or about 6%, while Shofangi is still up at almost one in 6, or 16%.)

I bet the same rule would apply in other cities: subtract out the "flavor of the month" factor for the newest guild, and the rate of joins will be directly proportional to your place on that list. True newbies apparently just read until they find something that sounds all right and then stop; very few actually will go through the whole list to find the best option for them. So encourage your undersecretaries accordingly, but don't agonize yourself too much over how many or few novices you get, and whether you could do better. Most true newbies have never heard of anything you've done or not done, and will be making their decision based on wanting to get to the fun part sooner, regardless of what you do. What you do or don't do will matter in terms of retention, not recruitment.

I think if you're going to reward people for being in any position, it should be based on how much they actually do, rather than how long they are in the position for. I see too many people in the Serenguard being given 'payment' for their positions even if they are mostly inactive or just don't bother doing anything as part of their position.

Lendren makes a good point. A lot of people would go 'wtf is a Cantor' I'm guessing... I know I did when they first came out

Anyway I don't know if the problem is entirely in the requirements and such, Cantors were fairly thriving during the past summer *twiddle* Hmm you do have to be careful of the rewards you give out too, like Rika said. But favours aren't always the most encouraging rewards... yay I'm GR6, now what?

Poke me in the game Arin and we'll think of some stuff