Now that we have a healthy number of Members....

The Faculty! of wizards of course coz we ROCK!

*does a nice dance*

Funny you should say that ...
We've been discussing all week various things about to take off when the paperback hits the bookstands. This has implications for everything from how the forum, website and things like tournaments are managed to whether we need more servers and bandwidth to how do we develop the community. One idea we've had for a long time is creating communities (ote the plural) within the wider Thud community. These might be called clans or groups or whatever and, although we have some ideas for what they might "do" we are interested in what you all think and what you might get involved with providfing clans provide X, Y and Z, etc. Answers here please

Errm, yeah; why not. If we get (workable!) ideas in such that we can get them off the ground quickly then you lot will be the thudgame pioneers bagging prime real estate, as it were, in the thudgame landrush. Note: a premium will be placed on creativity in all things, including namechoices. Names that could (should? ) be in Discworld and in keeping with the Discworld spirit will almost certainly be preferred whereas exact names from books will be frowned upon, and probably not just by us

Now this is an interesting one as we have a lot of time for you all who have "been there", as it were, from the beginning (or in the hardback era). Whlst we won't name anything "lilac", any rank, etc with the name "Founding", "Founder", etc. will denote someone who joined the Guild before the paperback came out and serves the same function as the lilac in "Night Watch".

Now along those lines, for maximum kudos and to reserve one's place in Guild and Thud history, can I point all in the direction of the Patronage page and the Guild membership page cunningly disguised as the Tournament sign-up page.

Yep, we know you all are a creative bunch so come on and blue-sky brainstorm with us. Whaddya wanna see thudgame.com do for you??? Reply here (and thanx to WP for opening the ball!! )

EDIT: (by Mr Scrub) - fixed a link

i wanna see ninjas! and wizards!...

NINJA WIZARDS!

and bears!

with like, laser beams in their eyes!

gee that would be cool

i would love to a Faculty group as previously mentioned, bovious contenders whould obviously be me (as archchancelor of course ) and our good frind Mr Poons. if anyone should join with a wizards name i would take them under my wing.

You could also have groups such as:

Guild of Assasins
Guild of theives
Guild of Beggers

etc....

Guild of Newbies?
Guild of Spammers?

There definitely needs to be a group of Grags!

don't encourage them!

all in favour? AYE!

For those that don't know what ponder's refering to (just click on "weblog/mortor" just below the "Download the file" heading).

MS

EDIT: corrected one of the classic & far too common typos (jsut for just)

That's funny Ponder...perhaps we should have a

Guild of Fools

Actually the thing I like about my name I can be either in
Wizards - Coz I am one or
Undead - due to the whole zombie thing
Ahh decisions decisions...

Actually I do like "The Faculty" - well done Ponder YOINK.

Oh and I have another one

Clackers - We have to give Sanealex a group (course it sounds like some kind of venereal disease)

The question now becomes though - how do we Bag One? Do I send a message to Lee or Dewi and Say "Register the name The Faculty"
and I will be it's undead mentor? and the people I want in my group are

X
Y
Z
and Ponder?

and the fee for setting this up will be? (hey you guys have to get paid for your time)

WP

weee-eeel we could storm the building, pilaging and looting and generally making a noise....

OR we could ask nicely....nah

MAN THE CANNONS!

Ah, that's what I've doing wrong all those year It's mordor

Anyhow, I'd be in the Guilds of Newbs for now *frowns at postcount*, but while I'm here I'll just drop in my two sans.

If you want to have different groups/clans/guilds/teams whatever, they need to have a reason to distuinguish themselves. I've been playing various text-based online strategy games throughout the years, which most of the time feature guilds that battle eachother. Logical conclusion would be that on this board, tournaments would be held with thudguilds battling for immortal glory. You might even get something like the chess/go competitions you have on national level, with team rankings, when playing for your team and inner-team rankings when practicing inside your team. You'd then get stuff like team champions, which would be honourary positions, maybe even rankings inside a team, with captains of a quad, stuff like that. A forum would then need the facilities for group/guild leaders to distinguish between their members and give them rankings according to their positions inside the team.

Other way to distinguish yourself would through some sort of roleplay or storyline, but I've seen little to nothing of that kind here on the forum, so I'm not sure whether that would apply here.

And above all, the way your community works: is it all fun and no games, all work and no play? A mix of the two? What kind of humour (Pratchettian of course, but I'm sure there's other) works there etc.

As a curious Newb, I'd love to see the following idea realized: to be taken in by a guild/community, receive a personal coach to guide me through the basics, then get together with people inside the guild which live in my own timezone, to practice, have some fun on the boards, play my first tournament outside the guild, get up in the ranks etc. Stuff like that.

To sum it up: communities/guilds/clans sound fine to me, but they need to have a reason to distinguish themselves, and the thud community as a whole has to provide those reasons (by tournaments/roleplay/rankings/clan-only boards and so on and so forth). Carry on.

Lee/Dewi,

Only 104 looks at this thread. I think we need wider coverage - perhaps you should make a separate thread in the "announcements" section. If it comes from Dewi and Lee rather than me then maybe everyone will look at it

I'd also like to see some more colour around how we would go about organising this. An Idea would be that the finalists in the tournament could each have a clan/usergroup to get the ball rolling and invite current players across to the usergroup. That way we don't get all the thudmeisters in one clan hammering all the other clans - and me

Perhaps also a division by name is not the way to go. I'd like to go into a Troll clan - my troll game being far better than my dwarf one and I'd still like to stay with my current moniker of Windle Poons rather than Brick - formally known as Windle Poons

This should also limit the number of clans so that we don't end up with clans of one or two people which would make things inequitable.

Just my two cents worth

WP

i think i agree with brother poons on this one - maybe clans should not be on nicknames.

although i do think that the names of the clans should be discworld orientated, such as the guilds and what have you.

I was looking forward to count the members of the tourist guild

which asks ythe question: could you be in more than one guild/clan/wossname at the same time? For example: You could be in the guild of tourists and guild of trolls at the same time

just a musing

i like that idea..clans would be good to compete in tournaments of slowfire and also quickfire (the online version) as well....coming to mention that can i have a copy of the thud map for a slowfire version?? i found a link earlier but it didnt work

http://www.million.nl/thudboard/download.html

We appear to have got off topic.

BUMP! And see my other thread in Suggestions.

WP

WP's absolutely right. Dewi and I have some ideas for where to take the Thudgame community but we prefer to consult with the community on this and see what kind of ideas there are out there. If we don't hear anything we'll just have to go with what we think is best but as the paperback's out in a coupla months we need to start putting finger to keyboard VERY soon.

Please contribute your ideas

i have decided (yes me!) to lock this topic so it means more poeple will be forced (well gently pushed) into posting in the direction of the topic in the suggestions thread. if any one has an objection please do PM me and i shall unlock.

Ponder

Edit: Nahh, leave it locked; I just put the link to the other thread in
-Lee