Tundrra’s Branch Leading Guide

First off, Thank You! The guild could not continue to be, if it weren’t for branch leaders seeking out new games to play in or to continue on the current ones so many of us call home!

There are a lot of things that go into running a realm of *NOR/ and to keep it growing. This is a outline guide of the things I did when running and advising Branch Leaders, with a little bit of explanation of why. I hope new branch leaders coming in can adopt their own flare to it all.

Guild Charter

• We are an old guild full of tradition and standards. Over the years we have developed rules that we want all of our realms to follow so as our members come and go between games they feel a sense of familiarity and consistency. As a Leader it is important to be aware of these expectations for when you need to make decisions for your new realm of the New OutRiders, every game has its own unique features that you will need to choose during your reign. Charter Link

Choosing Officers

• You have your own Realm! You are building your Legacy within the guild! You want this branch of the guild to live on after you have gone off to the play the next game. So, you need to find your successors, your officers that will help you with all the stuff that goes into running an organized group of players and it cannot be done alone easily, so you will need look for players that can help with some of it.
  
  You will need to pick officers who you can help with tasks like these:
  • Viewing applications and actively checking who needs a guild tag.
  • Perform Squiring and Promotion ceremonies.
  • Monitor guild chat and keep the officers informed of potential drama.
  • Are able to give their advice on issues, so the branch leader can make the best choice for the realm.
  • Monitors the official game forum looking for qualified recruits looking for a guild.
  • Appoint an officer (aka Herald) who will keep up on the online roster, tracks who is being tagged, inactive/active… someone who loves administrative work.
  • The DMG : players that can lead and schedule the endgame events these could be non-officers that are experts at endgame.

• When choosing your The Count/ess they will need to be someone who will be able to fill your shoes if you are away, a branch leader in training, the one you consult with the most, along with your HC advisors. This player ideally will take over the branch if you ever have to leave:(

The Roster

• The guild’s out of game roster is the core of the guild’s long history, without it we have no record what games the guild was established in, who lead the guild who even played or how long it was around. The Roster is truly the one thing I think that gives the guild its legacy and rich history. We have what I call the “Archive” years of spreadsheets and text documents that list all of our players and their ranks. Each month during the High Council Meetings when Realm check-ins happened the leaders would submit a copy of their realm’s members for storage. These were all collected and stored in the Archive…unfortunately there were some dark ages, where nothing was tracked or maybe only one random file survived for a game…but we will not discuss those sad time… Instead Lord Emeritus Lasarian brought us into the light in 2013 when he created the Online Roster! Now we have a interactive, database of all of our players, with a history of their time with us, but its up to you to keep track of your new realm!
• Its easy, don’t worry:) When a recruit fills out an application and you accept it, they automatically get added to your realms roster, easy enough. Once you promote them in game, you will be able to edit their online profile with the new rank and it will record it in the records, they stop logging in after a couple months, we log that to! wa la its that easy:p
• As far as the Archive, each month one of HC members can download a single file for all the realms at once and take a snapshot of the guild’s standing, so no more spreadsheets to track:p

Newsletter

• We are a multi-game guild its great to show a unified presence when we can, where a member can go to any of our games as if it were their home game. So it is important to stay apart of the bigger picture. The newsletter is posted on our website and social media sites so old Members and can see it, it reminds them to comeback and try out newest games and a great way of keeping the guild informed of what’s happening in the branch you control.
• Some content ideas…What are some of the great game updates coming out they may want to come back and try? Who are the Newest Officers? What big Raid Boss was defeated? Get them excited about the current accomplishments the guild has completed. What new events do the members look forward to doing.
• And a screenshot or two please:)

Discord and Communication

• Discord has quickly become one of our most used communication method. So be sure all of your officers have it and set up a officer group so you can easily and quickly check in with your leaders or email. It is great to for coordinating with them on the regular, like keeping track of New recruits needing a to tag in game.
• The Website, is wordpress, it’s very easy post up guides for your members, post walkthroughs on boss fights, whatever you like!
• The forums have gone by the wayside, but they are still a great place for announcements that allow for discussions and event scheduling. Once these are posted it’s a good idea to send a quick post in Discord with a link to the discussion.
• The monthly newsletter is for guild wide announcements, updates on the branch and a state of the realm messages.
• Social media we use for game updates, raid kills and upcoming events.

Welcome letter

• Once we have the recruit fill out a application, we need them to get tagged. Every game has a different way it allows us to find members. Currently there is a auto response email that sends the player a link to our Welcome Letter, it tells the new recruit how to register for the NORboards, and Discord. If you have trouble getting these recruits tagged in game after being recruited then I recommend sending an additional welcome letter that is branch specific. The email can answer any questions they had in the application and it tells the recruit how to find members inGame to get a tag. This is also a great place to point out any additional need to know information about the branch.

Recruiting

• Finding new players has to be a top priority, when a new game comes out. We normally have a good month or two of existing NOR filling the ranks trying out the next big thing, but then they slowly start to go back to their old branch or decide the new game isn’t for them. So from day one while there is a lot of activity we need to bring new folks in and the best way for recruits to find us is the official game forums.
  
• Recruitment Post,
  Players that are serious and know the importance of a guild will do their research and find out about a guild on the official forums. Sometimes we get lucky and meet a good player in a PuG group and they will take our word on how awesome we are, but a majority of your veteran players will go to the server forum boards and either research or plead their recruitment case.
  
  So as early as you can, Alpha, Beta and launch post a great recruitment post on their forums. In your signature put a link to it and check the forums regularly for good potential fits.
  
  Even old branches have to keep new blood coming in, or they will start to shrink and fade out:(
  
  Examples.
  Neverwinter
  The Old Republic

• Watching the recruitment server forums,
  
  As I mentioned before veteran players use the game forums, we have to have a daily presence looking for quality recruitment posts. Players will state they are looking for XYZ in a guild and we should be replying to those posts with ways we meet those expectations.
  
  Be picky when replying to these posts, there will be tons of them that are players who will not meet our charter and standards or they are looking for something other then what we currently offer, we don’t want to spam every post. However those that we do approach and answer their guild request normally become great members.

Events

• Now that you have new members and recruits we need to keep them! Players join a guild so they don’t have to play by themselves. A guild that plays together stays together! Schedule recurring events that players can plan to attend. Making them the same time every week makes it easier for players to schedule themselves to come.

Endgame Events

• The most important events to schedule are the Endgame events. The first few months of a branch it is difficult to do, because players are so spread out in level. However the players that are going to be sticking around long after the newness of a game has worn off are the raiders and Endgamers. Ideally finding members that understand the mechanics of endgame and are great at coordinating PuG groups should be considered for a DMG. A group of players that will take the guild through advancing the final levels of the game.
  
  The older the game is the more important the end game usually becomes, small guilds will fall apart after time and their members start to look around for active guilds that are still doing endgame. New players come along and see these high turnout of events and look forward to becoming high enough level to participate.

Thanks again for helping the Guild continue on for the next generation of gamers.

Lord Tundrra
*NOR/LD-HC