Mentors & Retainment

One of the things I have noticed in my search for an excellent RP Guild (a la Blue Skooma), is the lack of a process of intentional integration of new players into an RP Guild (OOC & especially IC). Do we have a system in place that would help integrate new players?

I have noticed this as an issue in my own experience, but I have noticed as well with new members joining us. Last night was a good example. One of the newer members (not recruited by me) tried to RP by describing what she was doing. Teeny attempted to RP a little with her as Tigrus, but Teeny logged into another character and no one else engaged with her. The character left the tavern with her last emote saying that "she stepped out of the tavern, looked back in disappointment and vanished into the night"...or something to that regard. I PM'd her and encouraged her to keep rping and we will get her involved asap. While I understand that new players need to just 'jump in' at some level, it seems it would benefit us if we had a process in place to immediately get people connected and rping so that we can retain as many new members as possible and grow the guild/RP.

I don't think its because we are mean or not welcoming to new players, but everyone already has developing stories and are involved in those.

So, if there isn't anything in place to help new players integrate, can we talk about developing something like that? I'm more than willing to be a part of whatever we come up with. I plan on Recruiting every day and have a personal goal of 10 new members a week, so I want to have a 'next step' for them in RP as they come in.

Thoughts?

We have something of a system as far as I know, a few of our officers volunteer to give OOC and IC walkthroughs of the town, Scavenger and Manguy being two of the most helpful in that respect, but most of our officers were busy at he meeting last night.

The other thing is the faction system, which was put in place recently to try and group people together for rp. Unfortunately, we need a char sheet or summery of a character before we can point them to a faction leader.

Otherwise, it's really just trying to get our characters to talk to new faces.

Tuesdays are usually a slow rp night for us because of the guild meeting. I try to have Styletta in the Tavern most nights because she's my friendly barmaid and will try to get people involved in the rp or at least make them feel more at ease with a little studdering elf taking their order but I had to log cause of RL issues.

I think the tavern and tavern employees are one of the best ways to get new players involved. It would be great if more people rp'ed their barmaid characters because usually they are the most friendly but if one is not around, then all anyone can do is just pull up a chair and chat them up. When I recruited, I offered to take them to see the tavern and would offer a little rp right then so their character would know at least one other character in the rp and usually it would help smooth out any newbie rp nerves they have. Then I'd let them know that events are Mondays and Fridays but rp is usually available every night and to just join in or poke at an officer if they needed a little help getting involved. With the holidays and finals coming up, there are less people rping right now so hopefully the new players will bear with us.

Yep, this is constantly a problem across most RP guilds. It's very, very hard to get new members in because of course characters have relationships with other people and tend to buzz around the people they know more. Like you mentioned, none of us are mean or are trying to be exclusionary, it's just difficult to get everyone to RP with new members, as well as to get the new member unafraid enough to jump in.

I think last night was a bad night because of the officer meeting, aye. When I'm around for RP I usually try my best to drag new members in, or at least shout out in officer chat about a new member and see if any officers can help bring them in to the RP. That's usually what ends up working best.

We do give tours and are willing to group up with new members to talk to them OOCly, or even set up meetings for RP, but that can be difficult to get rolling as it's all on request-basis and therefore the member is the one that has to approach the officer to initiate that.

Who was the character that left? I'll send them a mail and see if we can set something up.

Sounds good - so our integration process is more of an organic approach within the tavern, coupled with current members taking the initiative to introduce new people. Thanks for the clarification. Maybe I need to create a Tavern employee to help :)

I see you're trying to beat my record huh? Joking, I have no recollection of the most members ive gotten in a week but somehow you get like 1-4 a day you gotta teach me the secret :P

Honestly i think the biggest problem with new members is there's no easy ic way to get people involved without players just RPing with people outside of events, since the guild is just a town community and not a singular thing. I do agree though it would be good ttto come up with some way, if only wee had more game implementations for guilds to use but, thattt's probably not going to happen, so it's hard to eeven contact members that don't go on the site when wee aren't in thee tavern with them. I mean, other than officers who have reason, people aren't gonna really whisper trial members (Something I do quite a bit, because I'm loooonely :P) so, if someone doeesnt come to RP from itt being mentioned in guild chat, they wont really have a reason to be in town. And when they are, it may be crowded, where even I can run out of reason to stay in the tavern at that point (in other words my characters need friends)

Even without all the jokes, I have been thinking about this and scavs idea about doing tours is great, but unless he's got that in the welcome msg when they join, or he whispers every single person himself (or i do, since i forget i do those with him) itts not really something that can be very well known in game by new members. Over all, the best way to get aquainted in the guild is to really just, trial and error, sadly it seems new members are often ignored because icly not every charactter is going to crowd around new people (When I creeatted Niltsy's personality I had that in mind, for my own sake and for otthers)

Also ignore theee extra es and ts my keyboard likes messing with me for some reason

I would like to add that raccoon has been suggesting factions on character sheets which is amazing

I can edit the char sheet template to include factions. I can also talk to Scav and edit his doc for Raccoon and Find so that the greeting messages include something like, "If you'd like an IC or OOC tour of the town, contact @Sweet_Roll_Thief, @manguy7157, etc, etc."

I think that would be helpful. I feel like it is on us as a 'family' to go the extra mile to help people transition in and plug-in as quickly and seamlessly as possible. I think this is one of the things that can|will|is something that helps separate us from all other guilds. We go above and beyond to create a growing and engaged community.

Alrighty. Who, besides Haj and myself, would be up for giving tours?

I would

I don't think I can because Wadiq/Daytha is probably not in the mood to tour new townies and any of my other characters (A maormer, young khajiit kid who is homeless and collects trash, and an old Altmer I never use anymore) aren't really suited for it either or in the mood to.

I can do it as Spinner Ehloriel

Do we still have that Tavern Bulletin board thread where you can put up posters, announcements, job offers and stuff all In Character? (Or Am I thinking of SCC? Forgive me!)

We can post tours there.

Also- I'd be happy to make Sty give a tour if anyone requests one and no Officers are online at the time.

We do! Should be pinned. I'll go necro post it.

So I go me, Haj, and Find. Who else wants to give tours?

Sty can

Hehe, seems aronthorn will have an actual non-Public Event job now