Clan Bible

[Led]

Long ago while PLA was in its infancy, someone directed me to the "clan bible".

It has some good stuff in there, imo, and a good part of how we run PLA--which has beat the odds and has lasted for four years and counting.

http://www.atomicwarrior.com/clubs/clanbible/index.html

[Darth Gamer]

Helpful this is, yes.

[Unit 33]

Amazing formatting.


Although the greatest clan I was ever in had none of these features listed!

[Led]

heh, 1999 was quite the year for computer graphics

[Joseph]

Thank you. It was an interesting read. I will remark on a few miscellaneous things.

Recruitment issues.

There are several models for recruitment among swbf clans, on a scale ranging from "promiscuous" to "selective". Most noob clans have no recruitment criteria whatsoever, and are typically led by a child age 8-12 who wants a small flock of sheep to herd around. (In my estimation the appreciation of higher clan structure, history, diplomacy, etc., is very low among these players. They may know what WUSI is, but they don't read WUSI's guestbook, they don't know WUSI's clan relations, and they don't know what Wu was, what WUSI's ally in the GGW3 was, or even what BASS was.)

On the other end are clans which are "selective" in some sense. PLA is an example from this end. Potential recruits are courted for weeks or longer, and a relationship is formed between the clan and the player before any recruitment is done. This is a successful and well-thought-out strategy. However, a few peculiarities of PLA may be noted:
   1. New recruits seem to be culled almost exclusively from the stock of players who play in pla's servers on a nightly basis, particularly when Led or Bytor are on. This leads to an evidently acceptable selection bias.
   2. PLA has no rank system to "ease" members into responsibility, making such pre-joining courtship advisable.
   3. PLA has a significant talent spread.

An example of a clan that falls, say, 1/4 promiscuous and 3/4 selective is FC. WUSI is perhaps 3/4 promiscuous and 1/4 selective.

FC's model works well. FC does not recruit untalented or noob players. All players have attained a certain level of skill ingame that brings them to the attention of the recruiter. Nevertheless, some players are more trustworthy than others, and since (a) there is no real courtship process as in PLA and (b) FC has a large list of unsavory enemies, there are bound to be bad apples in the recruitment stock. Oh well, throw them back! That's why FC has a meaningful rank system.

As a general rule, try to avoid recruiting anyone who asks to be in your clan.

Why join a clan?

A decision for joining a clan should take a few things into account, in this order.
   1. How much fun will I have?
   2. Do I respect the leadership?
   3. Does the clan properly balance competitiveness with a general sentiment of improving the community at large?

Guestbooks

are important. The quality of discourse on certain guestbooks recently has not approached that of, say, Donne, but  they are vital for the following reasons:
   1. Permanent and official information dissemination (i.e. more than a private message).
   2. Upkeep of camaraderie. Players have phases where they play a lot, and phases where they don't play a lot for various reasons (work, school, other games, and so on). But in my experience most people will still read/post on the guestbook regularly, because they are really friends with clan mates. The _(VS)_ guestbook was/is, at least in certain periods, a good example of this.
   3. Public messages from other clans.

A non-xfire site is preferable because lots of other clan information and history can be publicly displayed in order to impart a sense of heritage and community otherwise obscured.

Involvement in tournaments

You have to do this, or at least make an effort to, in order to gain respect as a clan that is interested in raising the general competitiveness of the game. There are a few players who only play the game "for fun" (in their words) and who do not care about significant skill improvement, or competition with other players and clans. Typically these players burn hot for a few months and then lose interest because they have hit a brick wall of enjoyment that they can derive from the game.

The effort involved in gearing up for and participating in an inter-clan tournament (the GGW, say, or the GGCW until it was profoundly destroyed by its admin) is, in my experience, the most rewarding part of SWBF gameplay. These days are apparently over, which is shameful considering the resources which are funneled into other aspects of the game. (It takes (a) hard work, (b) time, (c) relative clan neutrality, and critically (d) a pair to organize these things. Most of us are deficient in at least one of these areas.)

Clan badges

Just kidding