Reviewing organisations: Final recommendations

[Kelemvor]

I've made this a poll, but with a view really to only satisfying myself that I've accurately reflected the majority player feeling.

Taking into account the thoughts and opinions posted by players (and a big thank you to you all for your input ) as well as the requirements of the Imm team and the current size of the playerbase; these are my recommendations for the organisations which we currently have:

The Knights of Myth Drannor
Remove as an in-game organisation. Area to remain available with a view to allowing a group of players to apply to use it as the basis of a player-run organisation.

The Spy Guild
Revert to its original purpose as a guild for good-aligned rogues to join to enable their 'thief' skills. PC head to remain as currently to promote the roleplay which is a key function of this guild.

The Waterdeep Watch
Unchanged

Shadow Thieves
Revive as a world-spanning organisation. Who is responsible for this and how it is done will be a topic for future posts. As a game organisation a minimum level of player and Imm involvement will be required to revive it.

Night Masks
Demote to the status of a guild which would allow rogues to join to enable their 'thief' skills. This would require only minor modification of the area and open up more trainers and shopkeepers to the Thief class.
There is potential for establishing a PC head (to allow this guild to run as with the Spy Guild) where recruitment would not be automatic, but via roleplay. This will be a topic for future discussion.

Bregan D'Aerthe
Revive as an organisation, though possibly not as an Imm-sponsored world organisation. My preferred option would involve attracting a group of like-minded drow players to turn this into a player-run organisation.

Harpers
Revive as a world-spanning organisation. Who is responsible for this and how it is done will be a topic for future posts. As a game organisation a minimum level of player and Imm involvement will be required to revive it.

Zhentarim
Revive as a world-spanning organisation. Who is responsible for this and how it is done will depend upon the outcome of an application currently under review. The submission already envisages a minimum level of player involvement and will hopefully be decided shortly.

The Merchant Guild
Create as a world-spanning organisation. An organisation with aims and goals which could be created solely to promote roleplay and develop storylines not restricted by canon sources. Responsibility for creating this new organisation would initially fall to the Imm team but a minimum level of player involvement can be expected.

Help Files
These will need to be extensively re-written with greater detail about the varioius different kinds of organisation and their role within the game. I will take on this task once we have agreement on the results of this review.

Feel free to post to this thread if you feel I've missed an opportunity, but please do realise that if you didnt post your opinions in the original threads when you had the chance there may be less can be done about it now

[Dalvyn]

Night Masks
Demote to the status of a guild which would allow rogues to join to enable their 'thief' skills. This would require only minor modification of the area and open up more trainers and shopkeepers to the Thief class.

As far as I'm concerned (which is, the area building part), I think that this modification would not be minor if we want to add a guilding quest for thieves. Extensive work for evil thieves has already been done by Kregor on two guilds which can cope with a large variety of rogues (from the "stupid brutes" to the "refined rogues") so I'm not sure this is a good idea to devote "building zots"[*] to that project.

[*]"zots" is an imaginary unit that is sometimes used in game development slang. The idea is that we have a limited number of builders, each with a limited free time ... that creates a limited amount of zots that we can spend on various things, from upgrading old magic armour items to creating new areas to adding support for new guilds, and so on. Since the number of zots is quite finite, it's important to determine where they are better spent.

That was my only comment. Thank you Kelemvor for taking the time to run those threads and summarize the results.

[Aegir]

I think the listed plans work well going forward, so I only have one comment:

Night Masks
Demote to the status of a guild which would allow rogues to join to enable their 'thief' skills. This would require only minor modification of the area and open up more trainers and shopkeepers to the Thief class.
There is potential for establishing a PC head (to allow this guild to run as with the Spy Guild) where recruitment would not be automatic, but via roleplay. This will be a topic for future discussion.

As Dalvyn mentioned, there are already several guild quests around the MUD (3-4 just off the top of my head), so converting this one probably isn't needed. I'd say make it something like the Spy Guild, but without the coded quest: the area can serve to train thieves, and a PC can apply for leadership, while not being a full-blown org, per say.

[Lerytha]

My only objection is calling someone a genius against my will.

In all seriousness, good summary and working of all the posts, Kelemvor!

[Moloch]

All looks to be in order, well done Kelemvor . Thanks for taking the time to help revive these things.

[Selveem]

Is this the first time ever in the history of the MUD that there was a unanimous decision?
18 votes yes, 0 votes no? *boggle*

[Moloch]

Simply because you said that, someone will vote no.

[Kelemvor]

Taking on board Dal's points about the Night Masks, that particular organisation will be moth-balled for a bit until we can look over the area file.

It may be that we will wait for the establishment of a PC leader and the roleplay recruitment before reintroducing it to the game.

For now it's a decorative piece (Unless you're already a member of course)

[Velius]

With the Shadow-Thieves becoming a world organisation, would you be able to join both lets say the Larrikans and the Shadow Thieves, or would it be one or the other? Would joining the Shadow Thieves give you the bonuses as your everday thieves guild?

[Hrosskell]

I think there's a difference in the Shadow Thieves organisation and the Darromar thieves' guilds. Those are pretty local, too, I think. But anyway.. Yes, and then some?

[Kelemvor]

Refer to my other posts for the definitions of the various different 'other' organisations.

Class guilds such as the Larrikins enable a rogue to become a thief.

Organisations such as the Shadow Thieves are places where like-minded folk can cme together for roleplay and likely learn related skills.

I'm currently working on the text for the various related help files, so hopefully that will be available by the end of next week.

[Velius]

Alright... will the same restrictions apply in being in different orgs?
F.E., can you be in both the Spy Guild and the Shadow Thieves? ( What will the restrictions be? Curious because I am thinking of having one of my characters joining the Watch and I don't want to limit what my other character can do in the future )

Thanks!

[Kelemvor]

One or other of my children have been down with Chicken Pox in the last three weeks and in the last week they've all come down with a vicious flu bug.

I say this in advance, because that's the reason I haven't yet submitted new Help Files which will answer these sort of questions

Regarding the questions posed. No, you wouldnt be able to learn thief skills from the Spy Guild and then join the Shadow Thieves because of the alignment difference.

However, there would be no problem with one of your character's being a good aligned rogue/thief who learned from the Spy Guild and having a nother character who joined the Shadow Thieves.

With global Organisations, as opposed to guilds and class training organisations, the likely restrictions will be in the areas of leadership.

That is, if your character assumes a role of significance in one organisation you the player can not then do likewise in another organisation with a different alt.

[Kirkus]

Just a quick follow-up question.... so we will be allowed to have a character in each group, just not leaders of each group. Correct?

[Kelemvor]

That's correct. I see no need to block someone's general roleplay by preventing different characters from joining different, even opposed, organisations.

The restriction on leadership/recruiting positions is for two reasons.
1) Even the most accomplished player would find it difficult to roleplay two different leadership roles without OOC and IC conflict in their decison making.
2) I want to avoid the situation of one player being absent from the game impacting on several different organisations.

BUT...
The usual stipulations in Help Multiplay still apply. You can not make use of information gained on one alt to further the roleplay or progression of another alt.

[Orplar]

Anyword on when we should start to see things opening back up?

[Kelemvor]

I've held off on submitting the new Help Files or posting about the next stage while we discuss the Zhentarim proposals. I've also had a few other plans and projects to put into place.

I can't really give a timescale right now, but as soon as things start to move again you''be informed via the forums

[Orplar]

Fine. Be that way!

Just joking, thats fine by me. Looking forward to everything.

[Travis]

This sounds great!

*bows*

Thanks for putting in all the time, I think I speak for more than just myself when I say that we'll make sure it was worth it.

[Harroghty]

Yes, I think these all sound like viable ideas, and productive ones. I've little reason to be personally excited about the thieves guilds and all of that but I believe that reviving the Harpers and the Zhentarim will be an interesting roleplaying experience for everyone.

I am looking forward to seeing how this all turns out.