LA Platform Thread: Cloud

[CloudDancing]

Simply, I want Alfa to continue on its current course unfettered by discontent and controversy. I see ample opportunities for PR work, which up to this point, I have done as a volunteer. I decided I did not want an official title, but to do public relations when I saw an opportunity. This includes getting in contact with the NWN Podcast, posting on various forums and blogs about Alfa, and creating a video advertisement for Alfa.
I believe I can do more with social media, write a comprehensive article that would describe the development of this unlikely community, and reach out to other players interested in an immersive gaming experience.

I believe:
1. Campaign style play is the best thing we have going for us at this time. This is because it is most convenient for the Dms and players. It allows them to focus their play and be assured they will have company for their excursions. I have not seen players so invested and interested in roleplay in a good long time. As well, I have not seen Dms so excited about dming and coming up with great ideas every week for their players.

2. Playing in a rich, diverse, and functional set of persistent servers should be a continuing goal, especially for servers that have lacked certain technical support and programming. Persistent content should allow for roleplay. Persistent content should be challenging and have appropriate risks for the environments that are travelable (like main roads regularly patrolled by local military/merchants/mercenaries should very rarely (like a 5% chance) of lethal level (CR3 and up) encounters.)

3. Wealth standards must be maintained by judicious dms that are trained in the art of providing in character adjustments when a character advances to the next level. This adjustment would be representative of the characters personal growth both internally and externally in their world. Ideally it would involve a custom item or a grant of land/housing/ship, or a title with requisite wealth included.

4. The rules as they stand are adequate and extensive. I find no reason to bend them or create new Alfa-wide rules and regulations. I believe most things that lie outside the Alfa rules should be dealt with on a case by case basis by HDMS, the DMA, the PA, and the Admin as a whole voting unit.

5. The strength of Alfa is its players. And thus the entire goal of Alfa is to create a place where players can express themselves, have dedicated DM time, and to have their roleplaying goals met in a friendly and fair manner. This comes with a caveat; that Alfa player are both intelligent and eccentric. It comes with an understanding that we all are human and on a day to day basis, humans make mistakes. It requires a daily dedication to forgiving each other for our superficial differences in order to maintain that community.

(For those of you unfamiliar with a Lead Adminstrator, they are responsible for the public face of Alfa and providing public relations help, connecting players with resources to help them on their Alfa journey, and to be a voting member of the administrative board of Alfa. They do not have the ultimate power to do any thing to Alfa, nor does their ideas or plans override the ideas and plans of the other administrators.)

I will try to answer any questions you ask in regards to the duties and responsibilities of a Lead Admin.

[Zelknolf]

How do you feel about the LA veto and, if you are elected, would you use it / how would you use it?


How do you feel about the PR aspect of the open server (MS)? Would you have done anything differently with the change if you were LA at the time?

[CloudDancing]

How do you feel about the LA veto and, if you are elected, would you use it / how would you use it?


How do you feel about the PR aspect of the open server (MS)? Would you have done anything differently with the change if you were LA at the time?

1. I think the veto comes with a great responsibility to the players themselves. We know each person involved has their vision of what Alfa is and what they think it should be (as evidenced in recent threads.)

However, I feel that one has to detach themselves from their personal vision (especially when it deviates from the general consensus of active players and dungeon masters) to accurately and fairly assess changes and proposals. I believe I can determine when a course of action is originating from a personal need over a community need for change or additions to the existing environment.

As per my vision, I have strong feelings about the player experience, and I would use that power of veto to prevent or promote any action/ruling/proposal that would constrain the enjoyment and freedom of the players.

At this point in time, I believe we've reached an equilibrium i'd like to maintain. And I'd hate to upset that balance.

2. During the first open server event on MS last December and then the later after OAS decision, I did my best to promote both events. I made posts in various D&D related sites, had an update published on the NWNvault, and updated our PW description. Insofar (you must correct my estimate if I am wrong) we have had about one new player log in and try out our servers per month. We still have people trying to apply through the usual means as well, and I often inform them they can play on our OAS (pointing to the fact we need more blatant postings about the OAS where people visiting the website can see them.) I think we could do better if we had more players casually promoting Alfa, even just one post a month or one shout-out on a social media site.

Public relations and NWN are in a difficult position right now. Ideally, people would aim to find new players to NWN2 entirely. However there are some obstacles that prevent an average gamer (18-25) from plugging in and playing outright. They have to be walked through the installation and walked through the installation of Skywing's Client Extender to regain full MP functionality. So for a new buyer with no tech support, they may feel like they bought a broken game.

Our public relations unit then needs to focus on two aspects:

1. Developing new players through social contacts and social media with the proviso that we need to serve as helpers to make the installation of the game easy as possible.

2. Reaching out to existing players via social interactions and social media on other persistent worlds. We need to let them know they can try out Alfa with no stress of an application (surprisingly, when I tried to recruit from the inside on one PW, the application and the threat of rejection was cited as reasons not to apply here.) I've found that most sites frown on posting information about "rival" PWs and will remove your post. Still, I know when our players play on more populated servers, they often have the chance to share with others that there is a more sane place with moderated RP vs the insane sort of things that happen with unmoderated RP on other servers.

[Veilan]

Hey,

thanks for volunteering your time & energy.

Two things mostly caught my attention. I hope you don't mind that I bring them up head-on:

3. Wealth standards must be maintained by judicious dms that are trained in the art of providing in character adjustments when a character advances to the next level. This adjustment would be representative of the characters personal growth both internally and externally in their world. Ideally it would involve a custom item or a grant of land/housing/ship, or a title with requisite wealth included.

Which portfolio do you believe wealth awards and wealth standards fall under? I'm a bit puzzled you mention them extensively in an LA platform; do you think it is a positive way of influencing the DM corps / DMA and achieving the captatio benevolentiae you would need to bring your vision about?

As for that vision itself, forgive me if I misread it, but to me it kind of sounds as if you mean to tell DMs they should automatically raise a character's wealth when they level up through some contrived reason, rather than create opportunities to earn wealth (with awards adjusted according to the character's current wealth level, as per our current guidelines) from taking risks and overcoming challenges (which may not have to be exclusively combat, but should include a real chance of failure with adverse consequences). Do you believe the current system of adjusting wealth (upwards, for many PCs) is undesirable, or just not properly adhered to?

Our public relations unit

Who would that be? Or broader: What staffers do you have lined up, and in what roles would they serve?

I'm somewhat partial to the "cabinet system" introduced by HEEGZ as then-DMA, and being a staff head (for IA), I'm always curious what happens to the people having served with the previous administration, so bonus points if you'd touch on that too.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, and best of luck!

[CloudDancing]

Which portfolio do you believe wealth awards and wealth standards fall under? I'm a bit puzzled you mention them extensively in an LA platform; do you think it is a positive way of influencing the DM corps / DMA and achieving the captatio benevolentiae you would need to bring your vision about?

As for that vision itself, forgive me if I misread it, but to me it kind of sounds as if you mean to tell DMs they should automatically raise a character's wealth when they level up through some contrived reason, rather than create opportunities to earn wealth (with awards adjusted according to the character's current wealth level, as per our current guidelines) from taking risks and overcoming challenges (which may not have to be exclusively combat, but should include a real chance of failure with adverse consequences). Do you believe the current system of adjusting wealth (upwards, for many PCs) is undesirable, or just not properly adhered to?

I can see this is a touchy subject. I can't force my beliefs about wealth guidelines on any DM because I believe they deserve a certain autonomy in that area. My belief is that adventurers need compensation to continue on their journeys. Without level appropriate compensation they are left greatly unprepared to deal with the challenges at their level of play.

As a DM I believe that when a character levels (especially past level 4) or when a campaign ends, it should represent a turning point in the character's career as an adventurer. Thus something does not really need to be contrived to reward them. Something needs to be created out of the idea of a great roleplaying opportunity.

What needs to happen is an honest and creative recognition of their advancement in whatever organizations, affiliations, or religious faith they belong to. This is an opportunity for characters to get a little personalized recognition for their work in whatever area they work in. Adventurers are exceptional people in their world. Everyone deserves (at least once in their career) a little march up the great steps to kneel before the king/princess/priestess/whatever and be told they have done their job.

(Plus I realize how bitter this could make PCs who don't get DM time at all and who are fighting it out in with persistent content. However, thanks to the +10 PC thread, at least I do recognize and attempt to reward them in order to bring them to a decent wealth level.)

The rewards are an essential part of the D&D experience and I think that is sometimes forgotten when you find level 8 characters trying to subsist on CLW pots and scrolls because, despite the extreme risk to their life and limb to save people or to champion various causes, the NPCS only throw them little scraps.

And we see a tremendous wealth discrepancy between the characters who's dms pay out according to their levels. Their players have the privilege to say yes to adventures that are a little more dangerous and feel confident that they might actually survive fighting the great evils that plague this land, or survive to betray their party and steal the great treasure.

At the same time regulating individual character's wealth based on their merits allows for that character to feel special and recognized, even if it is just once in a campaign or once in their entire career. And that is what keeps people come back for more, recognition.

And really as an LA, I can't force this on Alfa, but I can promote things that help encourage appropriate rewards if they are offered up by the PA. And mainly, this is just my personal opinion as a DM.

Who would that be? Or broader: What staffers do you have lined up, and in what roles would they serve?
I'm somewhat partial to the "cabinet system" introduced by HEEGZ as then-DMA, and being a staff head (for IA), I'm always curious what happens to the people having served with the previous administration, so bonus points if you'd touch on that too.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, and best of luck!

In the past Veilan and Rumple both asked me to take an "official" role as a PR coordinator. Both times I refused because I wanted to work independently and on my own time towards PR efforts. I also believe that is the Lead Admins role to serve as the main PR administrator. They are the public face of Alfa and it is their main job to make a consistent weekly/monthly effort to promote ALFA via public relations. So that is something that should not be passed on to someone else.

I firmly believe that public relations should be a group wide effort. If we believe in this project each one of us needs to take the opportunities that appear before us in public interactions, in social media interactions, and in online interactions to give a little plug for Alfa. I want to promote this by creating new materials to pass on to new players and making our online face and information more web-friendly and digestable to the neophyte web browser.

Still, if there was a team of people or a unit of people who wanted to do PR, i'd be glad to support them. I know the Swedish contingent has been doing all the above and getting friends to try out Alfa and I would love to see other folks trying what they are trying.

[Ithildur]

Hi Cloud, you're insane for running for an admin position, but thanks for being willing to step up.

A. Lead Administrator—Oversight of Administration, Veto & Referral Authority, Election Oversight, and Public Relations. Also responsible for resolving disputes over domain classification of any particular issue.

Do you feel that things like DM rewards or ACR (you discussed 'rules' in your OP which is a bit unclear whether it's refering to ACR or stuff like charter/pillar, etc, but I'm guessing it's ACR) are topics that are important for the LA to address? Somewhat concerned as one of the responsibilities described above for the LA is specifically facilitating resolving disputes over domain/jurisdiction etc between admins... We've had some challenges resolving domain issues between say, DMA and TA in ALFA at various times; would be concerned to see a LA in place who might potentially add to such difficulties rather than helping resolve them.

Perhaps a question more on topic for a LA, how do you see yourself facilitating good teamwork among the various admins of ALFA? Do you feel this is an area that could be improved, and do you have specific ideas on how that could be approached?

Do you have specific thoughts on what kinds of decisions should be DMA's domain and what belongs to TA beyond the general descriptions in the charter? If there is dispute over such, how would you help resolve them?

What do you think of the proposal Castano came up with a couple of months ago about charter reform?

http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpBB3/view ... 65&t=50209

[CloudDancing]

First, I think it is a fairly easy job to determine which issue belongs to which admin's domain and I am well educated in the arts of delegation, consensus building, and management. And I would welcome any group input if an issue came up with controversy attached to who would administrate over it.

Over the last five years, I've developed relationships with each of the current admin. I believe I understand each of their motivations. And I believe we all have a shared goal, to maintain an equilibrium between creating an interesting, engaging play environment, and then seeing that the boundaries of the community protect that environment.

As per the charter proposal, I have always been a proponent of finding a consensus over a strict majority vote. Our environment is so sparsely populated that a majority vote really does not represent the needs and wants of a community (and that is mainly because so many people don't vote.) So as Castano stated, the time for consensus comes when there is a major proposal that will entirely reshape the face of Alfa or "the game" as we call it. I think as an act of trust and transparency each Admin should bring these big ideas to the collective table and discuss it fully before any implementation.

[Rumple C]

Finally, a candidate with the stones (and time) to really have a go at PR.

*edit: not sarcastic

[Ithildur]

First, I think it is a fairly easy job to determine which issue belongs to which admin's domain and I am well educated in the arts of delegation, consensus building, and management. And I would welcome any group input if an issue came up with controversy attached to who would administrate over it.

Over the last five years, I've developed relationships with each of the current admin. I believe I understand each of their motivations. And I believe we all have a shared goal, to maintain an equilibrium between creating an interesting, engaging play environment, and then seeing that the boundaries of the community protect that environment.

As per the charter proposal, I have always been a proponent of finding a consensus over a strict majority vote. Our environment is so sparsely populated that a majority vote really does not represent the needs and wants of a community (and that is mainly because so many people don't vote.) So as Castano stated, the time for consensus comes when there is a major proposal that will entirely reshape the face of Alfa or "the game" as we call it. I think as an act of trust and transparency each Admin should bring these big ideas to the collective table and discuss it fully before any implementation.

That sounds nice.

Can you address the questions/concern that have been asked please? Not trying to be mean, but seriously... those are some hefty Dodge bonuses.

[Heero]

Have you come around on my opinion that public shaming is a good deterrent to unwonted behavior?

[Heero]

Have you come around on my opinion that public shaming is a good deterrent to unwonted behavior?

And not only behavior unwonted but behavior unwanted, as well.

[dergon darkhelm]

Have you come around on my opinion that public shaming is a good deterrent to unwonted behavior?

As we a wont to do?

[Heero]

It doesnt count if I catch my grammatical error before you have a chance to point it out!

[CloudDancing]

I figure I should respond to each of these sections in the original post:

Thread to discuss freely and brainstorm about changes to the charter.

My general thoughts

Changes to ALFA can be classified into major changes to the game world and what we can call medium changes and then minor changes. Minor changes would be like adding an NPC to a server. Medium would be altering a spell to PnP rules set or deciding how to host the vault. Major changes would be changing wealth standards, XP standards, source books, definitions of # of PCs, CvC and Powergaming, Maintenance of our URL - among others. We can hash out a formal list later if this takes wings.

We do not need to legislate minor changes or medium changes. I think major changes should be done by consensus - they have been in the past most of the time but not always, but there is no charter requirement that they be done that way.

So this is why I addressed that I agree with major changes being done by consensus. Minor and medium changes are easily handled by the admin whose area they obviously belong to.

If you look at a non profit club say a lions club or a golf club (for the record I do not have a gold club membership - too poor for that) there's always a board of directors who vote on major things and then administrators (sometimes these are the same people wearing different hats) who handle everything else under their domain.

What I am proposing is a number of board or admin positions, say the 5 we have, where to do something like change to 4.0 rules would require a majority vote. Right now the issue is DMA or TA depending on who you ask, have the domain power to do something that drastic (e.g change source books). While our current admin would never do such a thing, the fact the office has that power by itself is an issue. No one person should be able to do game breaking stuff. Whether that is DMA, IA, LA, TA or PA

So he proposes here that we develop a board (of directors?) to use for when we need to make major changes via majority vote. He says he believes that no admin should have the power to make sweeping changes that would drasticaly change the face of the Alfa gaming experience.

I don't see the harm in having an assemblage of people , perhaps consisting of all the subordinate administrators like HDMS, DMS, the Membership unit, the Alfa Reps (AR), and so forth to build a board of directors. Then again I don't see a problem with asking the entire populace to sound off about what they want in regards to sweeping changes like we did when the 2 pc policy idea came up.

I do not like the idea of majority voting unless the populace's ideas are properly represented in that vote and that one can expect some intelligent discourse prior to the vote (which will happen between the board and the admin.) Ideally, I would seek negotiation and consensus if there was a dispute.

My other misgiving is adding another layer of complication to the existing rules and another set of demands on the volunteer staff. However, I could see them also feeling valued at being called into vote on major changes to Alfa.

A good club charter can see ALFA lasting many years past us assuming DnD is still played by the next generation. We could put major things into a board vote structure, majority rules.

Ideally, I'd see the populace voting if they want a board of directors to be assembled and not just the existing admin. Maybe it would be more like a special task force that is called into function when this issue of major changes come up?

I hope I addressed this clearly.

Heero wrote:
Have you come around on my opinion that public shaming is a good deterrent to unwanted behavior?

This is most likely a joke, but I've stuck my foot in my mouth more than a few times as well as put myself up for public ridicule due to my behavior at various moments of weakness or pure stupidity.

I don't like it it happening to me, so I can't imagine anyone else liking it as a tactic to prevent future "aberrant" behaviors. It is hard enough admitting you were in the wrong and apologizing.

And recently this came up in a thread, a rather abrupt calling out of a player who was accused of rules breaking. It was the sort of claim that should've been handled by an AR and taken to the PA privately. We don't need to go back to the days of rampant trolling and flame wars. Like I said before, people here are intelligent AND eccentric. This means that we need to check ourselves constantly and apologize if we go to far and offend someone. We don't need to be shamed for being human.

[Zelknolf]

I believe the referenced dodge was the matter of the admin domains with regard your platform statement about rules and wealth levels of PCs. Specifically if you believe that the LA has the power to make policy changes to matters of PC wealth or the contents of the ACR, and/or to clarify points 3 and 4 from the platform.