Welcome to Gaia! ::

Let me begin by saying that I've had a great time so far in this guild. At the time of this post I'm participating in two chronicles (Demon and Vampire)each led by a fantastic storyteller (Redford Blade and Daidoji Kensuke). From what I've seen around the forums we have a good following of interesting, literate, and active roleplayers. Unfortunately, there are also many who are not active at all. This cannot always be avoided because people have real lives too, but for those of us who are joining a chronicle, we want to be playing with people who are more or less reliable. Now, we're a fairly large WOD guild and as a result we tend to always have at least a full game's worth of the former type of gamer. But how many WOD gamelines are there?! I argue that if we increased our membership we would inevitably increase the number of dedicated players at any given time which might allow us to run more that one or two games and appeal to a greater range of gamer.

Ok, so your probably asking where we could find more members. Standard ideas would be to ask members to recruit friends, make announcements in the towns, maybe advertise somewhere. These are certainly all good ideas but I hereby propose another plan. There are so many other WOD gaming guilds out there, most of which are smaller than our own. Some have membership issues, some are more active, and some less. In any case, I believe it would be prudent to approach some of them about potentially merging.

You have to get crafty when searching for WOD guilds. Some, like our own, can be found by typing "WOD" into the search function. But a whole host of others appear when you actually type out "World of Darkness". The rest of my post reflects my research under these two search criterion. However, when one searchs for individual game lines such as "Vampire the Masquerade" there are even more results. I will try to compile information on them in the future. Below I list a guilds name, its apparent leader or representative, and a description. I try to list the number of total users, though the actual membership might be less.

Name: ---Arkham Asylum---A WOD RP---
Guild Rep: Tanquol
Description: A 12 user guild that focuses on Malkavian characters, though on their homepage its seems that they are willing to branch out.

Name: World of Darkness RP / Discussion Guild
Guild Rep: _Ahranite_
Description: A guild very much akin to ours with 54 total users. That's less than us but they have almost 12 times as many posts. Clearly they are an active and dedicated bunch.

Name: ~ . Autarkis . ~ . World of Darkness . ~
Guild Rep: Wist
Description: A guild with 30 total users dedicated to VTM exclusively. Perhaps they are too specific for us but surely some of their players might be interested in joining one of our VTM games now or in future chronicles.

Name: World of Darkness: Welcome to Hell
Guild Rep: Velma Touched My Tralala
Description: This 20 user guild has a very interesting method of roleplaying. They seem to only have one game going from what I can tell, but the way they set it up is quite astonishing. The game forum has a large number of subforums dedicated to specific locations. I'm not certain but it seems as if a player would post in the "park" subforum if thats where they were, and then in another subforum if they change location.

Name: World of Darkness
Guild Rep: Ivera
Description: This 11 member guild is a mystery. Their forum in only member accessible so I wasn't able to ascertain any information. If their name tells us anything, however, then one could assume that they are a fairly well-rounded gaming guild like ourselves. They only have 37 total posts though, suggesting that they have membership issues. Thus they might readily work with us in some sort of merger.

Name: Rayven's World of Darkness RP Guild
Guild Rep: Rayven Nightwing
Description: The greatest misfortune faced by this guild is its size. With only 7 users it seems that they only are able to sustain one game. Otherwise they seem to be very dedicated and willing to engage in any sort of game. They are definitely our sort of role-players.

Name: World of Darkness
Guild Rep: Xeth Katan
Description: The second guild to bear the World of Darkness name, its 7 users seem to be on the fence regarding an issue or two. The most critical of these is that they are deliberating about whether to use the WOD system or BESM. This could be an issue for us but they also seem to be in their infancy. That is to say, it doesn't appear that they have any games running yet. Perhaps, they might be persuaded to adopt our system in exchange for the benefits of being a part of a much larger organization.

Name: City of Hope (A World of Darkness RPG)
Guild Rep: Michael Geist
Description: Not sure what to say about this 7 user guild. The forum is unaccessible to outsiders, though from the welcome page it seems that the whole guild is centered around a single story in Hope, Arizona. Still, it wouldn't hurt to reach out.

Name: World of Darkness: New York Guild (for Vampire Requiem, Werewolf Forsaken, Mage Awakening)
Guild Rep: Akriel
Description: This tiny guild has only 3 members and 4 total users. With just 51 posts I'm not even sure it they ever got a game off the ground. Not to mention the last post is from late 2004. Still we might consider contacting its ex members through Private Message and attempt to recruit them. If they were dedicated enough to create a guild then they are probably also dedicated players.

Name: Anime Meets WoD: Let the Games Begin...
Guild Rep: spacebike64
Description: Hmm...this 9 user guild might not be our style. If they have vampiric Naruto characters running around fighting possessed pokemon we might have a problem. Otherwise they might be a potential candadite for merger.

I dont know what other people in the guild think about this idea so please give me some feedback. At the very least I would like to accomplish the feat of opening a dialogue about the idea. I would also like to talk closely with our upper leadership in more detail. I would be willing to work as a sort of ambassador if we decide we like this.

eek I've been in and out of a few of these guilds and guilds like this, and lemme tell you;

if I see one more player claiming to be a 6th gen Old Clan Tzimisce floating down the street on a blue flame of pure awesomness I'm liable to hurt someone.

Just warning you.

I think you are right on the money, Abel, at least in regards to the smaller guilds and their founders. As for some of the large, active guilds, though, I feel like outright assimilation might be pushing too hard. In those cases, perhaps we might consider some sort of mutual membership agreement, where some of our members join their games as well, and they do the same for us.

Also, after our offline discussion, I've given more thought to your ideas of forum re-organization (Check your Google-mail account). I'll be presenting some of my thoughts in the Crew Forum (for any of you Crew who happen to see this.), and after consideration and revision, I may post it to the main forum for general viewing.

Regrettably, there has been nothing in the Crew Forum. The thread I created, which combines several of the Initiatives that you and I had discussed, has lain dormant. Edit: Daidoji has given his approval. It may be necessary to PM some of the other Guild crewmembers, like Sven and Traara.

As for the Outreach Initiative, it may be best to simply start contacting the heads of the other guilds, and discussing what their status is. Perhaps a few will be interested in joining, if their own guild is not satisfactory.

I'd say that there are still many in this guild who like the new system as well. As it stands our current games do seem to be using OWoD rules. But that just speaks to the point of this thread. With more dedicated players who bring their varied tastes and preferences to the table we can cater to more. Perhaps even start a game using NWoD rules. In the meantime, I would encourage you to give some of the current games a shot, because although the rule system may not be up to your standards we certainly do have some good storytellers and players. And if you ask me, that is the primary factor contributing to a game's stability.

Small update on the outreach effort, I tried joining the Guilds listed in the OP as well as some others not mentioned, however there hasn't been any reply to my join requests. After a little checking a some of the Guild owners and moderators haven't logged on in some time.

Next step will be to go through their member lists, see who's still active and contact them directly.

Hope y'all don't mind me posting, since I'm a new member and all.

I was actually a member of a W:tA guild on another account of mine. It started out good, with lots of planning, but they never got the games off the ground. After a while, folks stopped coming in, and the guild hasn't had much activity since. So my two cents is... contact as many people as you think would be interested. Sometimes the guild may look active, but if all they're doing is planning and never playing, some folks might be itching for a good game -now-, not later.