Fun Role-Playing Groups That Function

With much good feelings, a group of friends decides to formalize their social circle into an official RP group, give it a name, permissions, have officers and management, and start recruiting.

Weeks or months later, the group is a shambles. Nothing is done. People leave. Recruiting is hard. The officers/leaders/committee that runs it becomes desperate, but they can't change the rules, or get rid of lazy bums holding positions, because that could be the straw that breaks the back of the group. The group eventually dies off.

If this sounds familiar, as a group on a MUCK, or an entire MUCK (it's also the fate of most startup MUCK/MUSH/MUD/MOO/etc.) then this article is for you.

I am going to start off by saying that I don't have any great insight on this topic. I'm not a genius about management theory or social dynamics. I have, however, read the management theory, and watched very successful groups and very unsuccessful ones. You can disregard what I say if you wish, but before you do, think about it. You may also think about it and decide I'm wrong. That's fine. Philosophers for all of human history have disagreed on similar topics.

You might also not like what I say will work. Not liking something doesn't make it not functional, or not correct. Remember, we don't like a great many things that are real (such as death and taxes for two classic examples). Be very careful that "I don't want this to be true!" doesn't lead you to believe something isn't true that is.

That said, the number one key factor to organization success is to have a clear concise mission statement that says what (not how) your purpose is. Redwall MUCK's statement is as follows:

To support and encourage the enjoyment of the players

Now, if you read the full mission document in "news mission" it's a lot longer. That's because the mission statement is the foundation of the group, the shared part that everyone agrees on. For instance, had Redwall MUCK had a mission statement of "ensure all RP has long grammatically correct poses in place of speaking and spoofing" then the MU would be very different.

A good mission statement is hard. Most of the time, they start long, and then get ruthlessly chopped down until they are small and easily memorized. By everyone.

Next, a written statement of the principles of the organization is needed. Not rules (rules follow as the end part of this). But always start with principles. Principles are much more general than rules. For instance, a rule might be "No profanity." A principle is "Consistent with juvenile literature." Profanity is not consistent, but neither is sexual innuendo or graphic violence. Principles allow the group to be consistent in its actions and standards. They let members and non-members alike understand what is to come. After your principles, you list your specific rules. The role of the rules is to clarify those areas where people tend to not grasp your principles. Your rules are details, but your principles are the key.

Third, your principles drive the notion of "ideal." This is where you set your standards expressly, and set them very high. For instance, "Our members will always be graded as excellent or exceptional on standardized evaluation forms given to our customers." That's typical of how a business sets up metrics for measuring success. For most RP groups, the standards are more mundane, such as "Descriptions will always involve at least two senses" or "No newbie will be put down or excluded." Again, you want these things written down.

This document needn't be long. If you read 'news mission' on Redwall MUCK, you'll notice that it contains the above three things. I wrote that before I'd had much experience, so they aren't as well delineated as they could be, but they are there.

Be sure that you don't get into the mess the European Union is in right now with their Constitution. You don't need a super-long document. You just need to get your basics stated once in terms clear and concise. You need to be able to refer to the written document to explain why something is good/bad/allowed/forbidden. This is also why the focus on principles. You can apply a principle anywhere; you can only enforce a rule that has been explicitly listed and broken.

The fourth and final step is the most controversial one: there must be a single person with executive authority.

Democracy is a wonderful thing in theory. However, in practice it leads to enormous turmoil and little work being done. This is why the United States didn't choose Democracy as the government in the Constitutional Convention. What they chose instead was a Republic.

What's so bad about democracy? Why can't a group of three or four friends just get together and through synergistic debate come up with a solution far better than any of them could have on their own? In fact, sometimes this works.

Most of the time, and any time the number of people involved reaches more than four or five, it takes an enormous amount of work to come up with an agreed resolution. In fact, people use the collection-making process as a way of evading responsibility. This has been a common problem for years. "I couldn't help it, the board decided!" Great, you couldn't help it, who could?

For this reason, the US government has an Executive. The President. Now, in a real world government, you must have checks and balances, or else people will lose their freedom and their lives. In a social organization, such as a club (on or off a MU), there's no such issue. If you don't like the rules of a club, you quit and find another, or start a competitor.

Thus, MUCKs typically end up with a wizard in charge. Chief, Head, whatever. This is also typically the person that owns the computer, pays for the account, etc. Redwall falls into this category. On the MU, there's no "checks and balances" to what I do. If I got annoyed and erased the whole DB one day, well .... I could. However, if I were known for doing things like that, I'd have no players.

Now, having a single person with authority solves a lot of problems. It doesn't mean that only one person decides everything. Most of the MUCK runs without my intervention at all. In fact, the only areas I intervene are problem players and canon groups. Otherwise, I'm mostly a programmer who helps spark RP every now and then. In short, I don't get involved in most decisions.

I do, however, have final responsibility for what happens. It is my game. That's the down-side to being in command. Wouldn't it be safer for me to have a team run the MU instead of me?

Safer, yes. But it wouldn't work. Consensus management means that months go by during which there is furious politicking. Imagine this: one player with lots of friends makes a demand that half the leadership team hates, and the other half likes. The player further says, "Do it my way or my friends and I quit." And if the player quits, it will seriously drop the game's membership. Wow, that's a hard choice. The consensus has to decide between bowing to blackmail, risking the loss of the game's membership, and resolving the dispute internally. The obvious thing to do? Don't take a position and see how the wind blows. The game is doomed.

That happened on Redwall MUCK a few times in the past. Normally, it's "Let BanishedPlayer back or we all quit too!" My answer has always been, "Bye." As a single executive, right or wrong, I have the responsibility to decide, and I have the authority to act. The committee has no responsibility (it evades it) and thus has no authority.

Now, does this mean you don't have a management team or committee? Not at all. I do. And I delegate to them the authority to do their job. When their jobs are done right, the credit flows down to them. Hence, when people say "Wow the MUCK is good!" my normal response of, "Credit goes to the players who've done all the hard work."

When things go wrong, responsibility flows back to me. I am stuck cleaning up disasters.

I expect people working on staffs to use their intellect and their judgment. But I have the final say. When a command decision is needed, "Do we do X, or do we do Y?" I can take suggestions and feedback, but the decision is mine to make. If it works, then I credit the team for their input. If it fails, I take the blame.

Congratulations on getting this far! To recap:

1. Mission statement, short and sweet
2. Principles and then rules
3. High standards
4. Leader with both the authority and responsibility to carry out the above

This is the basic starting-point for forming a group. Or a company, a nation, a church, etc.

Now, go forth and show everyone where the best role-playing can be found, in insert your group name here!

Written June 30,2003