Every online roleplaying community I can remember having been a part of has always had a section devoted to guilds or guild recruitment on their forums, or whatever the equivelant of an organised group was called, except for this community. When you first join these forums it actually takes you quite a bit of searching to discover where to find information about the current DM factions and PC factions. So here is my suggestion, a "Guilds & Factions" section.
The title of the thread really says it all, but since this community is such a tough crowd to please I have explained the suggestion in more detail below.
What is this suggestion for a "Guilds & Factions" section?
A new forum section, just like the "Roleplay Discussion" or "Biographies" section, but with the single purpose of allowing organised groups and factions to create their own individual threads.
This forum section will allow a unique thread for every existing supported faction, player-created faction and even small organised groups where you can quickly find everything you need to know about said organisation in a single thread. As well as whatever other information the faction wants to communicate in the thread, this can be a more detailed original post with a recruitment section or detailed ranking structure, but it could also be in the form of regular updates about storylines or notifications on the faction's current recruitment status.
Supported factions will of course still be a stickied thread, whether all in one thread or seperate threads, so that they remain central and do not end up somewhere on page three.
Why would we want a "Guilds & Factions" section?
Currently there are two threads hidden away in the Ravenloft Discussion section of the forums, one for player-created factions and one for supported factions. These threads contain a lot of inactive organisations and suffer from a lack of consistent updates, there's really no quick way for members to see which faction is active and which has not been around for a long time. And not every faction allows you to easily contact them in-game (some of them are very secretive) nor to easily reach out through personal messages, this is made especially difficult if you discover the faction is no longer active or recruiting which often means finding out because you are not getting any response at all. On top of that new players often have trouble even finding these threads.
With a designated area on the forums devoted to guilds and factions you can tell which factions are active in an instant simply by looking at the most recent activity of the threads. Or by posting a reply and inquiring about the organisation? Information on organised groups and factions will be easier to find, it will be easier to update and moderate, it will be easier to communicate with said organisations and it gives each faction more room to explain what they are all about or have been up to recently.
But perhaps most important of all, this will encourage players to get involved in factions more and it should make it easier for them to do so.
But...
There is always a but... I know the Prisoners of the Mist community has their own ways and partially covers this subject by granting a lot of factions their own private forum sections, but this solution only covers the larger and more supported groups. And it does not adress the issue of wanting to make forum navigation simpler and encouraging connections between players, making it more accessible for especially new people to get involved in all the good stuff. This suggestion is also not meant to replace these hidden sub-forums, but merely to compliment the forums and promote character connections.
There would also need to be rules for this forum section to work, exactly like how the "Local Gossip" section also has its own guidelines. The one pet peeve that immediately comes to mind is the constant senseless bumping of threads. This section should be used to inform people of the existing factions and encourage them to participate, but not to bump threads with twenty minute intervals before a player event is about to start. I am sure most people here have been a part of different communities before and know exactly what the purpose of a "Guild & Factions" section is and how it should be utilised, but it is probbly still worth noting that a sticky with some guidelines would be in place.
Optional
A small sub-section of this new forum section labeled "Character Connections", a thing quite often seen in roleplaying communities lately. This section encourages players to post threads that either ask for specific roleplaying connections with other people or offer them. And sometimes it is nothing more than a compilation of characters with similar connections which the other characters may recognise when meeting them in-game. This can be in the shape of family ties, similar backgrounds, shared origins and even racial heritage or pastime activities your character may have, from professions to common ground in religion. We have a couple of similar threads already currenty, but spread out across various different forum sections. Just an optional addition in the form of a sub-section to the suggested "Guilds & Factions" section.
Thank you for bothering to read this suggestion or at least scrolling down to the bottom of the post!
P.S. I honestly do not care what the moderators decide to name the section if they do implement it, the name "Guilds & Factions" is also only a suggestion.
