[MUD-Dev2] [DGN] Multiple Guild Membership

[John Arras]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 6:48 AM, Jon Wright <jon at wright.org> wrote:
> Just a quick introduction:  I've been a long-time lurker on the
> MUD-Dev forums (since about 2002 - ok, so not _that_ long) but this is
> my first post.  I've searched through the old archives and can't find
> this topic discussed in any depth so figured I would punt it out there
> and see if anyone is interested...
>
> Does anyone know of a MMO which allows membership to more than one
> guild at a time?  Where the guilds become little more than group with
> it's own invitation only chat-room?
>

This is an interesting idea, and I think it relates to how many different
types of gameplay your game has and whether or not they are variations
on a theme or truly different. For example, we make horse breeding games and
within the games players can make clubs dedicated to certain kinds of breeds so
that they can join the clubs associated with specific breeds.

I think the first step toward making multiple guilds per character
viable is to make
the characters different enough in their goals that it makes sense to
want different
things from different guilds.

Maybe a "character" in a game isn't a specific avatar or person, but a company
or family with a common last name designating which account they belong to, and
a first name for each avatar. The game should allow for dramatically
different types of
advancement for different avatars, so specialization and differences
are the norm.
It should be radical enough that the game has solved "Marian's tailor problem"
meaning if there is combat, it is possible to advance without being
skilled in combat or
having to worry about it. It would also mean you wouldn't need a
"grinding alt" or
a "raiding alt" to get materials and such for tailoring. You could
just be a tailor
if that's what you wanted. Maybe it could be a multiclass system where players
pick a handful of classes or professions on your single character to
advance, but
you could choose to be a generalist between combat and noncombat classes.
The system could be more like a skill-based systems with an allocation
of points across
different areas. There are a lot of ways to do this, but the idea is
to have different
paths of advancement and different sets of goals for each avatar. In
cases like this,
it might make sense to join different guilds on the same avatar or
with linked avatars
have them join different guilds based on the paths that each avatar is
following.

Then, you mentioned guilds just being a private chat room. I would work on this
by giving each guild bonuses to doing certain things. When players set up a
guild, they choose what kind of guild it is and the guild gives bonuses to its
members when they do that thing. Maybe the guilds could advance in some way
and gain greater bonuses or have a chance at getting a special unique bonus
for that guild (like making a specific item cheaper or with more power) as
a reward. Maybe an alchemist's guild could discover a unique recipe or
a blacksmithing guild could discover how to make a stronger form of steel.

This would lead to drama as people would help a guild to advance
and then the guild leader could boot everyone except a few friends to have a
monopoly on the unique bonus. I don't really know how to solve this as people
have always been able to ninja the guild bank alt, but maybe some form of
punishment would be possible, such as removing the advancement gained
from the booted players, or assigning the bonus to a player and if they leave
the guild, the bonus is lost. Or, maybe by let booted players remember
a certain number of these bonuses so if they really like it they could start
their own guild and advance to the point that they would be offered the
chance to use this bonus in their guild. (Instead of one being randomly given
to them as the guild advances.)

At any rate, I would make radically different advancement paths and
then let players set up groups that give bonuses to different parts of the
game and then see what happens.