Nominations for GM of US Undergeared

For this to get anywhere good, we will need a GM. As the bankroller (if we go that way), I know I have some pull, and I've been talking like a leader about this so far, but I really do not have the time to do a GM role justice, so I don't want to back into it just because I have strong opinions and write well. I run a business and we have a major product rollout coming early next year, so... If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.

If you have the energy and willingness to gm this outfit, please give a brief (1-2 paragraph) summary here of what you will be like as a leader and how you see this project going.

We'll vote on it after nominations have been open for a couple days. If we don't have any reasonable nominations, I'm still willing to give out some starter packs to people who roll on my server in hopes one will emerge, but eventually nobody willing to do this will scuttle the project.

gnomeofzurich wrote:For this to get anywhere good, we will need a GM.

If you have the energy and willingness to gm this outfit, please give a brief (1-2 paragraph) summary here of what you will be like as a leader and how you see this project going.

We'll vote on it after nominations have been open for a couple days ... but ... nobody willing to do this will scuttle the project.

I'm in full agreement with GofZ - I started the ball rolling, and have also been acting like a leader, but my job demands full attention with spikes of extra time as well. Happy to stay an officer with GofZ but can't commit to the GM slot.

That said, I would ask that GofZ remain GM in title only, not action, to retain the ability to boot the GM if we inadvertently find ourselves with a M&S. He can make a special officer title for the acting GM, who would otherwise have full powers.

If we end up moving to a different server (and the poll isn't leaning that way so far...) I'll make the new guild myself and retain the same ability. The biggest hurdle we have is that Gevlon isn't in North America - so reserving the right to boot the GM for non-performance is potentially important.

As far as the poll itself, I'm calling it done Friday evening and the final decision made. That way, people can get started for real as of Saturday.

So who wants to act like Gevlon and run with this experiment?

I volunteer to take an 'officer' level position . I'm active prime time in the US and I have experience as an 'enforcer' in a guild.

Kerouac wrote:That said, I would ask that GofZ remain GM in title only, not action, to retain the ability to boot the GM if we inadvertently find ourselves with a M&S. He can make a special officer title for the acting GM, who would otherwise have full powers.

All right. As the primary stockholder of this venture, this makes sense. It will mean that any actions requiring the guild control interface will have to be done by me, and I do not promise to be on every day, in fact, I will be away over Christmas break with family and possibly not playing at all between the 25th and 2nd.

I'm also happy to write up a few bits about philosophy and rules, etc. as we flesh out. I'm not as much of a misanthrope as Gevlon, but I don't have much patience for morons and slackers either (I just don't consider a world where they starve to be Utopia, not being in my guild, company or social circle is good enough for me), so I'm happy copying his rules until there's a problem unique to the US project that warrants a change.

If we have enough active officers who can be trusted to invite and distribute bags to new characters, kick obvious M&S or trolls, I might be ok to sit, but I'd greatly prefer it if there is a co-GM people can look to for final decisions that short of gross incompetence or a complete failure to follow the basic mission, I will stand behind.

I do expect that the people in this project will be self-motivated and not need a whole lot of herding. The folks that need herding are exactly those that should be kicked at some point because we won't successfully raid anything past Naxx in blues without 100% self-starters.

Newtron wrote:I volunteer to take an 'officer' level position . I'm active prime time in the US and I have experience as an 'enforcer' in a guild.

Newtron's idea of being an "officer" is by ignoring all personal messages without using a DND message and then being a smartass about it after. What a joke.

It's a shame, I had high hopes for the US side of the blue-raiding project, but when you have officers who don't have a clue about how to run a guild, the US side is bound to fail.

However, I will continue to follow Gevlon's EU side of the project and hope that goes well.

Here's a rule issue. You have a problem with an officer. Now you are posting about it on the forums, instead of taking it up with me. No, I haven't been online since last night, but I am expecting a certain level of self-rule here, as noted in my US rules, and in my above comment.

There's in game email, and there are private messages on this forum. You can be heard by me without being on at the same time.

This is a *casual* endeavor time-wise, which means I do not intend to be online 5-6 hours a day to run this guild. When we start raiding, I will make a point of either being on or noting an absence during raid times, but that's the only general promise I'm making about when I will be online.

Seriously, if you expect officers to be on-call 24/7, this is the wrong project for you, and I doubt you'd see a whole lot of difference on the EU side.

I don't expect anyone to be "on-call", but if you are online and present at keyboard (running instances and not just AFKing in a city) intentionally ignoring everyone is a bad idea, which this "officer" has done on numerous separate occasions.

Lets review:

We're trying to replicate Gevlon's experiment. But we don't have Gevlon, and no one stepped forward to GM the guild. Gnome didn't want the hassle of it, and neither do I -- so essentially the guild runs itself. We just try to follow his precepts - and officers are a mix of people who post / or are on alot / or seem brighter than the average alt. There is no magic to it, the officers can get booted or demoted just as quickly as anyone else. Until we hit 80 and the raids begin, its just leveling - so seriously, let it go.

This is a good section of GofZ's u.s. rules post: Feel free to influence ... decision(s) by making your case to an officer. Do not say it in guild chat, and do not post it on the forum, say it to an officer. If you make good cases, we'll probably make you an officer, we need people on the watch to nip problems in the bud quickly.

"Ignoring" people just doesn't matter unless its raid time, and we aren't close to that yet. If we miss a M&S I'm sure they'll trip themselves up again later.

orangedude wrote:It's a shame, I had high hopes for the US side of the blue-raiding project, but when you have officers who don't have a clue about how to run a guild, the US side is bound to fail.

Did you really think Gevlon would inspire anyone to set up a 'typical' guild? I'm not convinced about the boundless failure.

What would the primary responsibilities of this "co-GM" be? Simply being the "ultimate" voice in the guild?

That's the idea. That said, I don't think we're taking nominations anymore, the time to just grab the job has passed. At this point, we have some initial experience. People of "ruling council" rank I expect to act like GMs when they are online alone, consult with me or each other if it's a difficult question, and appeal to me if there is no consensus.

If somebody appears to be taking primary responsibility among us, I'll talk to that person and others on the council about whether it makes sense for them to be co-GM (which means they are effectively the GM except that they need me to change things in guild control, and can be deposed by me if necessary).

Right now, if you want responsibility, talk to a council member about being an officer. Best if you demonstrate the ability first by answering questions in gchat/forums, running in guild groups and being good, peer policing chat, etc. You might not even have to ask if you do those things.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out, guild wise. I've been in guilds before where there is no clear cut leader, ran instead by a "council" or just the officers, lets just say they didn't work out well. I realize also that we are here for a very different reason than most guilds, we have a somewhat clear cut rules system laid out by Gevlon.

We are also not loot driven at all, that will play a huge roll in guild dynamics, there is no dkp or other goofy system of loot distribution to hurt feelings and anger people.

It is an interesting experiment and I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out. I wish to see the guild succeed, and I think its a very likely possibility, due to gear not being a motivating factor here.

Removing the loot aspect of raiding kills about 95% of common guild issues. Taking out vent removes another 4%. That last 1% can easily be managed by almost any sort of hierarchy.

I think that, regardless of the setup, the leaders are primarily going to be concerned with optimizing raid composition (something an overgeared, non-bleeding edge guild rarely/never bothers with). That variable alone will likely skew my arbitrary statistics heavily towards the 1% -- perhaps turning it into a beast more along the 95% portion.

So, with that in mind, I would agree that a ruling council is a wiser arrangement than a single GM -- mostly for the benefit of multiple insights into the same problems (which casters to bring to General Vezax? which melee to Thorim? etc).

Addendum: a ruling council based on performance also removes the cheap out of, "So-and-so just hates me, that's why I don't get to raid" -- which I'm betting will be a MAJOR theme prior to the effluvium being shed.

seriously, i think gnome and kerouac hit upon the solution somewhat subconsciously. We have them as "board members". what we realllllly need once we have enough 80's is a RAID LEADERS. not officers/gm's whose position because of "m&s ape subroutines" will only cause drama. look at the posts already about "not getting officer's attention while online" and you will understand what I mean. we are a guild of leaders for even attempting this. We just need the direction of those who will lead in the raid. we have the rules which are simple and provided by gevlon. ie. LET THE RULES BE OUR GM.

I agree completely. Raid leaders are what we will need, and people who stand out in theorycrafting while maintaining professionalism, especially of fights, will be the primary choice.

I do not plan to stay in the raid if I cannot keep up. I'll take the Gevlon edge and figure that if I am within 5-10%, I get to stay as the bankroller, but more than that, I will pull myself., and I certainly expect others who are currently in officer positions to do so.

What I wrote about guild members taking responsibility and owning up to their mistakes, and pulling themselves if they can't fix them, goes double, triple and ten times for those in positions of authority, including the council, and raid leaders once they are appointed.

If you want to be a leader, you will be holding people responsible for a certain standard, you have to hold yourself to that same standard, if not a higher one. And I'm taking that personally as well. Even if I'm within the 5%, if my 5% seems to me to be the difference between success and failure and I can't bridge the gap, I would rather see the guild succeed without me.

For the record, I'm currently the GM of a guild that operates similarly to what the gnome (and others) have discussed. There are raid leaders, who run the vast majority of the raids and I generally only handle 'background' stuff like gbank, policies, recruiting/promo'ing, resolving disputes etc. We've found it works out pretty well as long as people are mature (which is kind of up to the GM to ensure that mature people are in those positions) and lines of responsibility are clearly delineated.

GL on the project - I look forward to reading more about its results.