Proposed Guild System

(Please note, this document is not the official word on the now-implemented guild system. It was a proposal -- developed in cooperation with Origin -- for the system that eventually became implemented, but details may differ from what is actually available in the game. Where possible I have tried to update the proposal to match the actual implementation, but specific information may be wrong or out-of-date.)

Within UO, probably the most relevant part of a feudal system will be guilds. In order to implement this in a fair way, guilds would have to be somewhat formalized with in-game support. This in-game support will be part of Designer Dragon's upcoming changes to the notoriety system (see Bob Hanson's excellent FAQ on the new Reputation system). The guild system will provide a way for players to engage in combat, which will promote roleplaying (see Xavori's comments) and hopefully address the issue of anti-social player-killing.

(The details below include "wish list" items of mine, which are indicated by italics (not to be confused with italicized single words or phrases, which indicate menu options!).

Guild Maintenance:
• When a guild is created, the founder uses a "guild charter" (purchased from a provisioner) to create a "guildstone" which is used for all guild maintenance. This stone would be placed in a building or on a boat, designating that structure as guild headquarters. As the guild expands, it should be possible (but difficult) to transport the stone to the new location; in order to discourage this, the stone should be very heavy and would be set at its location for a certain minimum length of time. I would also like to see an option to create the guild charter with Inscription to allow players to create a guild without visiting a provisioner.
• Creating the guildstone establishes the guild. The founder is prompted for the guild name at that time. In order to prevent people from abusing the system to found dummy guilds (i.e. to create guilds with desirable abbreviations), Origin GMs should be able to intervene in cases of guild name abuse.
• All actions available to the leader (described in detail below) are accessed by double-clicking the guildstone. The leader maintains his status by having more followers than any other guild member; see the subsection on Hierarchy for details on leadership status.
• When a normal guild member double-clicks the stone, a selection window appears with options to Recruit a new member, Declare Fealty to a new lord (and that person's lords, all the way up to the leader), View roster, or Resign from the guild (a member can also resign at any time, anywhere in the world, by saying "I resign from my guild"). One can also View candidates for membership, View charter to see the guild's charter, and Toggle abbreviation to change whether the guild abbreviation shows in the character's name.
• A non-member who is being Recruit'ed is considered a candidate. A candidate accepted by the guildmaster double-clicks the stone to join the guild. A recruiter can sponsor a candidate as long as the candidate is not a member of another guild and is with the recruiter at the time of the recruitment. There is a limit to the number of pending candidates.
• By default, the recruit is loyal to the current guildmaster; he can use the Declare fealty option to change this.
• The guild members are informed of the new recruit, if logged on.
• The guildstone View roster option brings up a window listing the members of the guild. This list shows 20 names per screen. (It would be nice to see this as a scrolling list like the existing skill list. The scrolling list could be presented hierarchically, with the member's connection to the leader and the member's immediate followers shown by default. See the section below for details on this idea.)
• The Remove option brings up a list of members (based on the View roster hierarchy) that the character can remove from the guild. An action button (like the "use skill" button) is provided to remove anyone who has sworn fealty directly to the character; this also removes that person's followers. The guild leader can remove anyone at any level of the hierarchy. If the guild leader removes himself (this should probably require a confirmation window), he must target a new leader from among his followers; targeting himself (or any other non-member) disbands the guild. A new leader cannot disband the guild without a reasonable time delay.
• Hierarchy/Miscellany:
• The current system will not use a visible hierarchy. Players will be responsible for tracking hierarchy by hand, and the members list will not be organized or organizable. I would like to see a visible, user-maintainable hierarchy, as explained below.
• Anyone can challenge for guild leadership using the guildstone Declare Fealty option and targeting their own character. If the challenger has the support (has more followers than the current leader would have without the support of the challenger) then he is the new leader, and the leader becomes his follower. The count of members for this does not include recruits less than one real-time week old. Possible enhancement, not currently planned: anyone can Declare fealty to multiple guilds. Characters whose lords swear fealty to a second guild are not automatically subjects of the second guild, however; note that this is changed from previous versions of this proposal.
• The leader is identified by a title, which can be changed, and by a line at the top of the guildstone window.
• The guild leader has additional selections available in a list of sub-options at the guildstone:
  Guildmaster Options:
  • Set guild name allows the leader to rename the guild. Likewise, Set guild abbreviation allows the leader to specify the guild's abbreviation. This can only be changed once per real-time week.
  • Each guild has a charter and an optional web page associated with it. The leader can change this by choosing Set guild charter.
  • The leader can change his title with the Set guildmaster title option, and members can be given titles with the Grant title option. These titles are shown with the guild abbreviation when the character's name is displayed on-screen. Any guild-related title must pass through the standard obscenity filter, which renders some obvious titles ("Ambassador") unacceptable.
  • Candidates are Accepted or Refused by the leader with the appropriate selections from the guildmaster menu.
  • Members can be removed from the guild by selecting Dismiss member.
  • The guildmaster should be able to specify minimum or maximum reputation or skill levels for recruits.
  • Eventually, the guildmaster will be able to send messages (with an effect similar to an Origin GM's worldwide "tell" command) to all guild members.
  • The leader will also be able to levy a guild-wide tax and specify the rate. Normal members can levy taxes on their immediate followers which override the leader's tax rate for the followers. There will probably not be a separate bank for the guild, because this would be exploitable (since guilds can be as small as a single character, people would use the guild bank as additional secure storage).
  • Only the leader can declare wars or alliances.
• Changes to guild names, or the disbanding of a guild, are announced to all guilds. Other changes to a given guild (membership, abbreviation, titles being granted) are announced to all members of that guild, immediately if they are logged on or at login time if not.
• A vendor, NPC hireling, or pet that is owned by a guild member can be designated guild-owned by bringing it to the guildstone and Accept-ing it as a member, allowing all members to access it as an owner or friend. [This does make an assumption that vendors are more mobile than they are now: I propose that vendors behave like normal NPC hirelings in this respect, and be unable to vend unless in close proximity to their building. See also my comments on vendors.]
• There should be a guildstone option to allow a person to join the guild as a mercenary. Mercenaries would not count in fealty calculations or other peaceful guild functions, but would be considered part of the guild during battle in the sense that they would be able to fight notoriety-free against the guild's declared enemies. Any details of the arrangement (payment, etc.) would be worked out between the guild and the mercenary. Should the guild be forced to surrender (see below), the mercenaries would suffer the same penalties as a guild member.
• War!
[Note: it is my firmly held opinion that guild wars would have to be declared mutually; otherwise, all combat would be notoriety-free, since everyone would just declare war on their victim before attacking. This proposal reflects that, as does DD's system.]

• To declare war, the guild leader uses the Declare War option from the guildstone's selection window, which brings up a list of known guilds (perhaps all the guilds; "known" guilds would be those whose abbreviation has been viewed by the leader or one of his followers, either on a paperdoll or on the guildstone). The leader selects from the list and is prompted with a confirmation window: "Do you wish to declare war on The Shadows of Britannia?"
• If both sides declare war, all members receive notification (assuming they are logged on) and notoriety-free combat is allowed between the two guilds. Members of an enemy guild appear red when targeted.
• A member of both guilds in a guild war can be attacked by either side, and can attack either side, without notoriety penalty. (Obviously, this applies only if membership in multiple guilds is implemented.)
• To end the war, there are two guildstone options for the leader. Peace would allow a mutually-declared peace: after one leader uses it, the other leader has one day to follow suit to end the war. The war continues normally in the interim (and afterwards, if the second guild does not agree to the peace). Surrender, on the other hand, can be used without the consent of the enemy. The surrendering guild is then no longer allowed to attack the enemy, but the enemy has a short period (perhaps a few real-time days) to continue to attack until the war is officially over. This would encourage guilds to sue for peace, with the losing guild agreeing to pay a price in items, buildings, and/or gold in exchange for the winning guild's declaration of peace. There should be a secure-trading method of receiving a peace treaty. Another addition to the surrender option would be an "ante" concept, where the two guilds agree to terms of surrender at the time of the declaration of war, and if the war ends with a surrender, the terms (probably a fine, in gold) are carried out.
• Alliances: the leader chooses the Alliance option at the guildstone and chooses the future ally from a list; the ally's leader does the same. Allying with a guild at war results in war with that guild's enemies, and starting a war puts all the allies involved at war as well. This gets tricky with allies being at war with each other: war overrides alliances, and allies at war fight each other notoriety-free. The same method is used to end the alliance, although that can be done unilaterally.

Another important feature of the feudal system would be to make it possible for the taxpayers of a town to elect a leader. My idea for electing the leader runs like this:

• The system works through an NPC resident of all towns called the Town Clerk who functions as the "guildstone" for the Town Council.
• The Town Clerk recognizes the keyword election. If it has been at least one real-time month since the last election, or there is no current Council leader, a bulletin board (and newspaper, if implemented) announcement about the election is made.
• The election period lasts one real-time week after the election is first announced. During this period, the Town Clerk mentions it to passers-by ("five more days left in the election period!").
• Mentioning the keyword candidates lists current candidates. The key phrase run for office is used to become a candidate.
• The Town Clerk takes votes with the vote keyword. All citizens (current taxpayers, see the Taxes section of the community essay) can vote. This functions much like the fealty option, except that swearing fealty to a candidate's follower makes you a direct follower of the candidate (i.e., flat hierarchy). Candidates should also be able to hire NPCs to represent them (as targets of vote) while they are not logged on: NPCs should respond to a keyword to identify their preferred candidate during elections. In order to prevent abuse, there would be a limit on the number of NPC stand-ins.
• After the election period is over, the new leader is named (announced) and his paperdoll shows "Mayor" before his city affiliation: The Great Lord Faramir (YFG President), Mayor of Ocllo, Master Archer.

Once the leader is elected, the system would work exactly as it does for normal guilds, with the "guild" replaced by the Town Council. Of course, "joining" and fealty would no longer apply: all citizens (see the section on taxes in the community essay) would be part of the "guild" and the hierarchy would be flat. An odd (though realistic) side effect of this would be that a citizen of one town might actually pay more taxes to a different town because of his buildings there; this would be an inducement to change citizenship in order to have more control over his property taxes! Origin could direct a percentage of the taxes collected for the town into the bank account of the Mayor, who could use the money to hire a militia, stage feasts, etc. (Or, the Mayor could just keep the money!) If the taxation system for guilds were implemented (as explained above), this could happen automatically, with the additional benefit that a Mayor could control the tax rate (both for property and for citizenship), thus making his city more (or less) appealing to residents. Note: the Mayor could abdicate (requiring a new election) at any time by telling the Town Clerk of his wish to do so; however, there would not be an option to appoint a successor. A city with no Mayor would collect taxes at the rate established by the previous Mayor, but the money would disappear.

Fancy Rosters
I am in favor of a more hierarchical and more user-controllable display of the guild roster. Hopefully this is an enhancement that we could see in future updates to the system. In this system, each entry in the scrolling list of members has a tab (like the one that accesses skill groups in the skills list) that allows the user to "open" that person's followers, as known to you:


Guild Hierarchy
v Jim Leader
  > Joe Subleader
  v Jed Subleader
    v Me
      > Follower 1
      > Follower 2
    > My friend
  > Ned Subleader

"My" view of the list automatically updates when someone swears fealty to "Me" or when "I" swear fealty, or when there is a leadership change. Other updates must be done manually as loyalties are changed and discovered:
• Unless otherwise shown in advance (i.e. if "I" am already a member and know differently) the hierarchy assumes that my lord ("Jed Subleader") is directly loyal to the leader; intervening levels must be learned in conversation and changed by dragging the entries in the list.
• New recruits are automatically added to "My" hierarchy when "I" open their paperdoll and see their guild affiliation, and their entries can be dragged around within the hierarchy window (by default, they are listed only as immediate followers of the leader).
This self-maintenance system allows for intrigue and confusion as some members of the guild attempt to gain power, claim loyalties, and deny associations.

This page hosted by  Get your own Free Home Page