Actually, Professorship is pretty much the ultimate achievement, and basically takes up the entire range of guild ranks up to and including 19. That's what we'll be working on next.

Ileein, you remind me a lot of one of the old Nihilist systems, we've had a bunch. After GR3 you split onto paths and a seperate theology tasks. Paths were the main form of advancement and you could either do tasks related to combat, influencing and preaching, or study and rituals. Theology was then sort of an "extra" part for the hardcore RPer's and so on so that they could do indepth Nihilistic studies. I'd set up the different branches as something like that, something extra for the guild. I think most advancement systems should turn the dial up at GR3, at that point the boys should be seperated from the men. I know in the Nihilists you can easily stop at gr3 but a priest is gr5 and is far harder to reach.

And for those complaining about writing, you're playing a mud. I understand that not everyone is amazing at writing a 500 page book, obviously that is a talent, but no task should be asking you for one. Most guild tasks should be looking at effort over substance and if you can't write a small piece for your character in a mud then just go find a different game. This isn't for you. And to add to that, at least in the Nihilists if we're asking you to write it is so you can have some help developing your character and so that we can easily learn some things about you and see that you understand who we are.

I think this is valid enough, the bolded in particular. It's a noble reason for assigning the task, and having people sit down for a little while and think about their character's background tends to be successful.

Beyond basic things, I'm not a fan of written tasks, even for the hypothetical people who do have an unhealthy love for the activity. There's a prevalent opinion that "some people just like writing". Fair enough. Maybe they do. But writing is a solitary experience. Maybe you interact with others when you're researching the subject before you write it. Maybe you interact with others afterward, by asking them to read what you've written, and discuss it. But it's fairly self-absorbed and hermetic. Why not, instead of exploring the subject through an essay, just discuss it in a conversation with the senior - or better yet, the whole guild?

Something Caerulo and Furien touched on with the dirty secrets that I think is important is glamourising the high ranks. Mechanically, guilds don't necessarily have an overwhelming amount of carrots to dangle. Cities and orders have a good spread of powers across their ranks, but guilds become sparse after about GR5, particularly with many powers being gained by secs/etc. With some creativity, you can build up the guild's culture to emphasise the senior ranks, and make achieving them seem desirable. Never let them be bare of pomp and tinsel, or your members will probably decide that they aren't worth achieving.

I really think you mean GR5 here, at least. While the rp behind most of the tasks is not "write write write" the actuality of it is.

Looking at it from another's eyes, this set of requirements is rather off-putting as it appears to involve a large amount of actual work on a narrow scope that may actually require you to stop playing the game to complete, this is at a glance but if people have other interests in the game then they're not going to have the time to dedicate to sitting around msu'ing.


Comparatively, systems where there is a large degree of choice generally allow players to follow just about any interest that they develop, sometimes allowing for situations where someone has started doing something that someone else goes "Hey, you know that's a guild task right?"

The Hartstone had/have the stones which while, unfortunately, underused were actually fairly complete in what you could do. Loosely they were... Combat, Repetitive tasks that you need to meditate on, Commune related, Teaching, Histories, Working for guild betterment and then spirituality. Though that's off the original drafts that I still have but might be different.
One task was to be a Caretaker of the Trees for x amount of time, meditating on the cycles of life and then offering an explanation at the end. This is something the guild needs done and a way to favour people mingled with rp.
There was another to hunt down someone and kill them for crimes against nature or something.

There is a bit more formality there when compared to the point/mark systems and you can explain most actions away.

Just on a basic level, natural sciences could involve tasks like

1. Perform a survey on a prime location, preparing a report in the following format... = get out and explore a bit and, likely, hunt things relevant to your level. In hallifax this could even be cross guild interaction by having Sentinel tasks involving escorting Researchers on this task. (This also works for Aethereal Astrophysics as well as Metaplanar and Transdimensional Physics.)
2. Master the art of curing, either with the healing skill or not. Provide some reasoning as to the reasoning behind such. = Go learn curing / get a system, the second part of the tasks still requires you to look at things and think about the cures.

This sort of thing, when optional, allows players to... play the game, the guild promotes active interest in the game itself while dressing the tasks up in such a way that they are "scholarly". Some of the issues I've had with advancement systems in general is that they feel separate from the game itself, sure you might have some things that people can do in their down time but it has to be balanced out.

If I were you, I'd set each task up as a course and let people get credit hours in it. When you get enough credit hours, you go up a rank and/or get to add BTS or MNM or PhD.M or something like that to your title.