I think the Serenguard have the potential to be a great guild. We have the active membership and a clear, strong RP purpose in Serenwilde. Yet, we just don't have atmosphere to back things up. We are a pretty stagnant guild, which is what I want to change.

Have any of you got any tips on how we can make the Serenguard work?

Hunt together, get to know your guild! Even if you have to pull and drag everyone together for a guildrite. Encourage a SG inside only joke, something slightly relaxing to lighten the mood. Hold meetings, ask questions about what everyone would like to see happen. After all, you serve them!

Sheer force of personality and an endless slew of social activities. Recruit your own personal Shayle.

For some reason, I've always found that "darker" guilds had a stronger personality. If that is just because people there can play "evil" or because the guild draws a different sort of player I really don't know... maybe it's also just me, who knows.

That's just the difference between negative and positive.

Dark or evil guilds promote positive action. By that I mean, they tell you go out, smack this, hit that, lick the demon, stab yourself for lolz. Active things, around which it is very easy to build strong roles.

The light guilds have a little bit of a harder time of it, because they promote negatives. Don't smack this, don't hit that, licking demons is bad, emo stabs belong elsewhere. Negative enforcement, around which it's a bit harder to build strong roles that people really get into.

Not that there is a lack of things to smack, hit, lick, and stab. It is just more focused.

As a point of interest, the Ebonguard 'suffer' from the exact same thing. I say 'suffer' because I enjoyed Ebonguard a lot; the ability to do pretty much whatever you wanted without having to think about any particular duty/event was fun.

Yeah, we're pretty weird. We don't do much with each other (I've been hit by the apathy and frustation bugs ), but people seem to get by really easy and enjoy themselves when they come.

We also strangely enough go up Topguilds quite often, but we have the weird tendency to ignore each other.

Large population guilds tend to be plagued with problems of lack of activity with each other and a lack of communication. Low pop guilds tend to have these problems handled, because well... they are low pop, but have their own large cross section of problems that come from having fewer people, namely a more stagnant leadership and a higher chance to develop strong ruling factions that support each other and lead to apathy.

The answer seems pretty straight forward. You need some strong RPers to pull you out of a rut. A core group that will arrange Guild events, get others involved on a regular basis, and make sure RP killers like the snugglies and l33t speakers are either fixed or shooed away.

If that fails, then your RP might not be what most would call "interesting." It's just more interesting for a lot of people to play one extreme or the other since our every day lives (compared to a fantasy world) are very mainstream. From an outsider looking in, Seren is the most mainstream of the Orgs, and warrior is about as mainstream as you can get in fantasy environments.

I'd say the first step would be to define more clearly to yourself what you are trying to change, what you want the guild to be. Start with vague generalities like "less stagnant" and then try to define that in progressively more tangible and specific ways. By the time you've figured out precisely what it is you want, in terms of specific behaviors and actions and consequences, you'll have already figured out how to get there.

"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." - Bertrand Russell

For example, ask yourself, "If the guild were just the way I want it, what would that look like?" You might answer something like, "well, the members would do X and say Y". Ask yourself, why do you want them to do X, what would them doing X represent? That might suggest that it's not the specific action X you want, but something behind it, some feeling or sense or motivation Z. Then you could ask yourself why Z is so important, and thus by steps you'd get to where you could put your finger on precisely what you wanted. Defining the target with that level of precision is far more important to hitting it than anything else.

The Serenguard sort of lack a "hook" to them. Basically they live in a keep in the woods. They were formed timeline wise after the whole thing with the evil druids that nobody really thinks too hard about. They live in a keep and have a pretty loose "native american tribe" feel. Sorta. But, not really. There's paints and stuff. And we call the leaders Chief. That's pretty much it.

Of course, in the guild histories, when they were formed, they were largely a bunch of assorted knight-types from different walks of life who were cobbled together in the interests of defending the Wilde. So I suppose a certain lack of focus makes sense.

If I could change things, I would probably try and lose some of the more explicit "tribe"/native american terminology, and make it more about a group of "barbaric" warriors with their own codes of honor and pride and such, and play to the strength of the Serenguard- a lack of focus allowing for a greater degree of individuality. Have no standard custom titles or ranking system, and so on.

I've always thought the Serenguard should be that way, when I made my first character in Lusternia and joined them, I thought it would be. That's a very good idea though. I always imagined the Serenguard as being a more primal form of knight, honorable but a bit vicious, or "barbaric" in nature.

@Rika: I think you should make a character on Imperian and join the Wardens in Ithaqua (you're char will need to be male, though), and maybe get some ideas from how their guild is set up. I think everyone here agrees that you need more of an identity to unite the guild around, and I think you could borrow a few things from the Wardens, which is one of the coolest guilds with the best role play in Imperian.

If you got the guild set up something like that, I'd be sorely tempted to join. Credit loss would be way too much at the moment, but maybe someday in the future.

I'm going to have to disagree with Rainydays' perception of what Serenguard should be and agree with Deschain. Of the original guilds in Serenwilde, both Serenguard and Hartstone (skills and history) were based off the american indians tribal styles, unfortunately, in stark contrast, the Moondancers were very much based off the witches and wiccan styles of organisation and rituals. During the first two years, due to the popularity of the Moondancer class, and the guild making up more than 50% of the commune's population, it is no surprise that eventually the more "westernised" teachings and culture got spread from the Moondancers to the Serenguard/Hartstone. This got even more diluted when the friendliness with Celest increased tenfold, bringing in now, what one would consider as 'knightly' virtues, leaving behind tribal lifestyles and values. Two possible solutions, one is either to go with the flow, forget the historical meaning and create a new future one. The other is to go back and take a look at the old original plans of the Serenguard. (I know there were some good structural and conceptional ideas originally.)

Any change, be it structurally within the guild, or perception and enthusiasm of guildmembers to help each other, do things with each other, will take make game years to see any fruitation. I will admit that with a smaller guild it is far easier to achieve, but it is not totally impossible to do so in a large guild. You will need a handful of dedicated and experienced guild members to work their way through the ranks, building up rapport with newer members, and moving up the ladder to include older ones.

If you are serious about this, I sincerely wish you lots of luck. You will face much of a roller coaster ride in this attempt.

Building up a strong bond with guilds is a lot of hard work. It mostly relies on the leaders (for some reason if the leaders are more active, you get more people joining the guild), who are already busy doing other things. A really important thing to keep in mind is to keep talking to the guild members. Joking around and having a good time within reasonable roleplay is usually best, I've found. Also, little things about the guild - rituals, for example. A cool ritual goes a long way and leaves a great impression, especially on new players.

Identity, interaction, and purpose. These are three essential ingredients to a healthy, working, interesting guild. They've all be implemented in different ways. Let's discuss, briefly.

Identity is straighforward - being a member of the guild needs to mean something to its members. This has been developed in many different ways. The Blacktalon, for example, developed a lot of identity simply by being a center of the political opposition for decades in Glomdoring. The Cacophony, on the other hand, have developed a lot of identity by relentless pursuing their role as performers and poets. This, is sounds like, is one of the weaknesses of the Serenguard. And yet, as Akui mentioned, you could almost jujitsu that into identity.

Interaction often goes hand in hand. This is time the guild members spend interacting beyond the bare minimum of instruction. To draw from my two examples, in the Blacktalon this is often the mandated time spent during the Assemblies interacting with other druids as you talk about the aspects of Crow and philosophy. In the Cacophony, this often consists of poetry readings, plays, and other performance gatherings. Finding ways for the guild members to interact with each other and form social bonds is essential, but it has to be done without feeling overbearing or too forced.

Purpose is a slightly more nebulous phrase, but important - the members of the guild should feel like they have something to do. Wiccans gather and deal with fae, guardians often preach, druids tend to trees, bards promote culture, warriors...well, warriors can suffer the most in this area, though it has been leveraged into a hunting/fighting focus. The essential thing to realize here is that this doesn't need to be required by the guild, and often doesn't work as well when it's strictly required. The Ebonguard, for instance, though they have little interaction and little feeling of identity, tend to have excellent purpose - the members are generally happy to hunt, quest, and find ways to pass their own time. The best thing to do is support activities without creating overly rigid structures - and this is easier said than done.

Different combinations, emphases, and lacks of these three factors can be found in any guild, and there are others to consider as well, but promoting these three is what I see as a key way to promote a guild's 'health'.

So, I mulled over Veyda's well-thought response, and decided that I have to disagree and still go with sheer force of personality.

Guilds work off of social bonds and nothing else. For a guild to thrive, people have to feel an obligation to each other to perform certain tasks, and they have to feel that the social network is worth the RL dysfunction required to be an active Lusternian. The only real catalyst for that is a heartless, charismatic leader. You need a Shayle.

So, who has a Shayle they want to lend us?

Only one Shayle in a lifetime, if even that. Best thing to ever happen to Glomdoring, period.