Guildmasters: Help other Guildmasters Here

Esmerelda Sharkfellow said:
We've had to kick many drama kings. If it's officers that are giving you trouble, the GM should demote them to veteran so if they continue to be a problem, you can kick them if you need to. You never want to lose guildies but it's much better to get rid of trouble makers fast. If not, a lot of good may people leave that won't put up with the drama in guild chat.
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I learned that lesson the hard way - lost a few really good people thanks to one drama pirate who I gave a second chance. As much as I hate booting people from my guild - I gotta agree with Esmerelda on this - do it promptly.

We have a policy in my guild that the Officers vote on promotion to Officer, and for when we need to boot someone from the guild. I feel that this really empowers the Officers and helps them to enforce our guild's guidelines (we don't use a Co-GM title, the Officers are our "Co-GMs").

One way I've found helps with incessant guild chat is to get the people causing the drama to use crew chat (not whispers) - it keeps the whole guild from hearing them, and often they begin to notice that they aren't invited on material runs or looting parties - so they either shape up, or leave the guild on their own.

We (Officers & I) recently had to deal with that when a couple split up very vocally on guild chat - moving them to argue in crew chat saved everyone from reading their bickering, and actually caused them to have better quality discussions because they weren't airing each others' dirty laundry quite so publicly.
 
Shamus The Brute said:
As GM of your guild, does anyone ever have those moments to where you "wish" you could get away with smacking some sense into yer guildmates, lol?


* I do... :cool:
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OH MY LORD OH MY LORD LOL XD ROFL!!!!!!!!:lol1::lol1::lol1::lol1::lol1::lol1::lol1::lol1:
Esmerelda Sharkfellow said:
We've had to kick many drama kings. If it's officers that are giving you trouble, the GM should demote them to veteran so if they continue to be a problem, you can kick them if you need to. You never want to lose guildies but it's much better to get rid of trouble makers fast. If not, a lot of good may people leave that won't put up with the drama in guild chat.

I'm not a meanie, but you have to enforce the rules. I had one guy for instance who kept begging in guild chat for a promo. He said "Please can I get a promo? Please please...." An officer said "Don't ask for promos" - I love when an officer backs up the rules - but the guy kept it up... so I said, "You want help? Here's your help"... *click remove member* the guild chuckles but also knows you're gonna stand-by the rules. What's sad is when you have to demote a friend. The GM should assure the guild you're going to enforce rules when he/she isn't on. Good luck!
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Good Job :D Truly a GM
 
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I do have one important thing to say as a guildmaster. I created a guild called Green Phoenix this year, and one thing I learned is don't let just anyone be Officer. At first I was just promoting on lv until I got up to a certain amount of people, but unless you can really trust the person then it is a bad idea. The reason is because Officers can remove up to 5 members a day, and that is what happened in my guild, I lost like 20-30 members by one of my Officers. Lesson learned, and I have recovered since then, but not by much. So moral is don't promote unless you can trust the person.
 
Matthew Darkpain said:
Officers can remove up to 5 members a day. So moral is don't promote unless you can trust the person.
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That's a terrible thing to happen. It happened to my guild a couple of times also. After the first time when an officer kicked 5 people, I realized there were many officers in guild I had never met. (It's how the guild was when I took over gm). It forced me to go through the members list and demote many people. I was co-gm a while and knew who was active and who was not. Now I personally know each of our officers and trust them.
GM is a tough role to play sometimes, but worth it when you know your guild appreciates and <3 you. :iagree:
Now wait... Who's paying us?? ;)
 
A happy note (and of course, advice) to this thread:

I have remained friends with many of the pirates who have moved on from the Ocean Warlord guild. I was on a material run with a couple who had left due to the behavior of a pirate that we subsequently booted. In the course of our conversation they discovered that the offending pirate had been ousted, so they both dropped their guild (they had started a new one for themselves) and rejoined Ocean Warlord - that made me feel so good!

So I guess the advice is to keep good friendships whenever possible! :daggermouth:
 
Rick said:
So I guess the advice is to keep good friendships whenever possible! :daggermouth:
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I think this is one of the main things that makes a good guild: Friendships.

Here's me own assessment of how a GM should act (Mind ye, I have only been a GM once, and then very briefly.)

-- A Guildmaster should be patient, kind, friendly, and unprejudiced (What I mean by unprejudiced is that ye should listen to every single member equally)

-- A Guildmaster should be firm and consistent with their beliefs, and not change them to please others.

-- If a Guildmaster makes a rule, they should enforce it to the best of their ability, along with others that have the authority to enforce the rule, and not "give quarter".

-- If someone in a guild breaks a rule, they only have one more chance to remain in the guild, and if they break the same rule or some other rule, then they should be expelled from the guild.

-- If an Officer, Member, Veteran, etc. finds a possible recruit for the guild, the Guildmaster or the Co-Guildmaster, along with a few trusted Officers, should interview the candidate and then discuss what they think about the candidate for at least one day before making a decision.

-- If a member of the guild is promoted or somebody is recruited, it should not be based on a pirate's level. It should be based on the pirate's inner strength, demeanor, and/or willingness to obey orders or carry orders out.

-- If the Guildmaster begins to have problems with their role and their real life world, they should openly tell the guild that they should look to their Officers or their Co-GMs for temporary leadership until the Guildmaster becomes fully active.

-- If a Guildmaster chooses to pass the actual position of a Guildmaster to another person, the action should be a permanent one, and not a temporary "power switch".

And that is what I believe a Guildmaster should act like.

Ben Cabingrin
 
Hmm,

Excellent idea Punkin and some good responses... From the bottom up

Getting a Guild talking is not an easy thing ; There is a sneaky trick that I like to use, it's called recruiting a couple of Chatterboxes. You'll be surprised once you have 2 or 3 chatterboxes in the Guild, there will be so much noise you'll be wishing for more quiet. :p

Trouble Makers ; I deal with them very swiftly and simply, start trouble, beg for Promotion. 1 Warning, they do it again and they get the Boot! ALL My Officers know and follow the Policy and it's in our Guild Charter.

Passing the Crown ; Well, personally I haven't done so apart from actually departing a Guild, however I have a Heirarchy of First Class Officers who should I decide to take a break, they Know and Understand to Chain of Command, they also Know that the Highest Ranking ACTIVE Officer would be given the Reigns for the duration of any absence.

Whispers and Teleporting ; I'll cover both at the same time. My Guild has strict Policies on both, only First Class Officers are allowed to Teleport without first asking and NOT for Looting Purposes... The allowance is there for the purpose of Discussing a Guild Members Ambitions, Plans, etc, Issuing Warnings or Booting Members / Veterans or (heaven forbid) Officers for Breaching the Guild Codex. Since Warnings and Bootings are given directly in person, with reason for action (Warning/Booting). Whispering is a similar thing, I cover in the Guild Codex the use of appropriate Chat Methods (Public, Crew, Guild or Whisper) and also that Spamming of any is an automatic Boot Offense, as well as Harassment of other Players (not only within the Guild).

Now : My problem... <drumroll for dramatic effect> Recruiting : in short, I stink! (my recruiting skills smell worse than Darkhearts feet) Anyway, I figure I just need to really find that First, High Quality, Recruiter and the rest should fall into place. Problem is, I can't seem to find that first Recruiter. Suggestions?


Kriss.
 
KrissMan said:
Hmm,

Excellent idea Punkin and some good responses... From the bottom up

Getting a Guild talking is not an easy thing ; There is a sneaky trick that I like to use, it's called recruiting a couple of Chatterboxes. You'll be surprised once you have 2 or 3 chatterboxes in the Guild, there will be so much noise you'll be wishing for more quiet. :p

Trouble Makers ; I deal with them very swiftly and simply, start trouble, beg for Promotion. 1 Warning, they do it again and they get the Boot! ALL My Officers know and follow the Policy and it's in our Guild Charter.

Passing the Crown ; Well, personally I haven't done so apart from actually departing a Guild, however I have a Heirarchy of First Class Officers who should I decide to take a break, they Know and Understand to Chain of Command, they also Know that the Highest Ranking ACTIVE Officer would be given the Reigns for the duration of any absence.

Whispers and Teleporting ; I'll cover both at the same time. My Guild has strict Policies on both, only First Class Officers are allowed to Teleport without first asking and NOT for Looting Purposes... The allowance is there for the purpose of Discussing a Guild Members Ambitions, Plans, etc, Issuing Warnings or Booting Members / Veterans or (heaven forbid) Officers for Breaching the Guild Codex. Since Warnings and Bootings are given directly in person, with reason for action (Warning/Booting). Whispering is a similar thing, I cover in the Guild Codex the use of appropriate Chat Methods (Public, Crew, Guild or Whisper) and also that Spamming of any is an automatic Boot Offense, as well as Harassment of other Players (not only within the Guild).

Now : My problem... <drumroll for dramatic effect> Recruiting : in short, I stink! (my recruiting skills smell worse than Darkhearts feet) Anyway, I figure I just need to really find that First, High Quality, Recruiter and the rest should fall into place. Problem is, I can't seem to find that first Recruiter. Suggestions?


Kriss.
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No suggestions, other than doing it yourself. No matter how much your loyal officers want to see the guild exceed, You should care more than them and take charge of this yourself. Good luck! ;)
 
I find that I'm pretty good at recruiting - but retention is tougher.

We're not terribly tolerant of the super needy who cries for help every 2 minutes or (worse) the bossy who inform the captain of a ship on a materials run that they need 10 Kingfishers and we should get them now.

Between that and the general lack of pirates that are online these days, I've noticed a sharp decline in members who are online.
 
Here is a good rule I have had presented to me:

***Don't continue your recruitment efforts if you feel that current instability on the game may in fact compromise your guild's own safety. (Enforce this rule short-term and communicate it to all officers/veterans).

Adding a few addition pirates (during such times) is not really worth the risk, savvy? ;)
 
Shamus The Brute said:
Here is a good rule I have had presented to me:

***Don't continue your recruitment efforts if you feel that current instability on the game may in fact compromise your guild's own safety. (Enforce this rule short-term and communicate it to all officers/veterans).

Adding a few addition pirates (during such times) is not really worth the risk, savvy? ;)
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Agreed Shamus. We do not recruit. Guild doors are locked, shades are drawn;)
 
We're still open to new membership, but we really don't recruit.

Part of the problem has to do with the very attributes we look for - loyal, fun pirates to game with - most are already loyal to the guilds they're in.

We used to be VERY competitive in the leader boards, I think we're still in the top 20 overall, but there just doesn't seem to be much to motivate us from the Mouse's side...
 
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