Who is the leader of Lions and the Heart and what does he want for the Guild?

Let me start with a little bit about who I am at least as far as gaming goes. I play Caellon Silverwood, Augustaes Tenarien and Corwyhn Lionsheart on the Xev Server.   I tend to be a leader although sometimes the work and effort involved has caused me to shun that role. I started D&D gaming back in 1973 and have had a continuous campaign running from the early 80's to mid 90's. I haven't done a lot of offline gaming since then as I got hooked into online gaming.

My first online game was Realm and I didn't really get involved in guilds at all. I mainly just ran about helping people and playing. Next came Ultima online, I started in that as soon as it went public and made l lot of friends quickly. I soon had a guild though there were no rules in Ultima at the time to create or form guilds.... I simply had a lot of people who followed me and one day I realized I had a guild. For those that know UO Online the clothing is much more customizable and our guild uniform ended up being what I generally wore. Which was funny because it was green and brown so I could hide from the PKers (player killers as UO then had no non pvp option at all). None of us had gotten far enough to port and in the early day we spent a lot of time riding places. And oh did we look sharp when 20 of us were riding down a road in uniform and column of twos.

I spent my time on UO Online running the Knights of the Gryphon (my guild) and fighting AND...running my house decorating business. Yes... I had a flair for decorating homes in UO and got paid for it. I had a large house for a long time and I could kick myself in the head for never doing a screen print of it. At one point I vacationed on a new UO server and loved it.... there was a newness to it that was very appealing with so many actual new players. I left my second in command in charge of the Gryphons and I restarted the guild on a new server but I kept it small. On the old sever we had gotten up to 60 or so very active members and it was a lot of work because I tried to do too much of it all myself. On the new server I still did a lot of it all myself but I kept the numbers down.

One day a large number of friends left for the EQ beta. Not so much guild members but other guildleaders I knew well and various friends I had outside of the guild. They kept trying to get me to jump ship but that was not something I could easily do. I loved my Ultima . What actually sparked me to leave was that I had several friends who had gotten into some situations that were all too soap opera-ish and were coming to me even though they would not listen to my advice. I found I was spending more time as counselor to others then playing the game and decided maybe it was time for a change.

This was a couple months after the EQ beta had ended and it had gone public. I started playing with a friend who had left UO for EQ a month before me and after a couple weeks of learning the game we both went over to another server where friends of mine were running a guild. Again, this was the very early days of EQ. They had guild rules sort of initially though it was all very manual. I was there for when the guild actually formed as a guild and spent a lot of time as simply a member. The leadership was good and the vision she had was very much in line with my own so I felt no need to be a leader. I became very well know on Tarew Marr as I did a lot of grouping. I can't say I crave power....though perhaps some can, but I did more often then not be a group leader when I played. My main concern was that everyone was treated fairly. I was always the last to zone in a bugout and usually the one dead just short of the zone. But it was fun and I loved it. Corwyhn was my main and except for my ghoulbane and a few pieces of bronze I can say that up to about level 40 I had gotten all my own gear. And being too lazy and bored with selling I had to do that the hard way. I made my money and either quested the items or bought them. It was fun.

One day on Tarew Marr I met two ladies in Oasis while playing Augustaes (who was 7th level at the time). These two ladies were a few levels ahead of me. And they were Meridian and her sister. We all loved to role-play and it was grand. And Meridian has became one of my best friends. I never played with Bayer a lot but he was already well into his crafts by then / It was while we played together that we got the idea for Lions of the Heart. At this point, Tarew Marr had been around sometime and it was not easy getting that critical number of members. After a couple periods of almost getting their only to have people leave because we didn't have the numbers we decided to retire the guild for now.

I had left my old guild Riders of the Storm before starting my own and when I couldn't get Lions off the ground I decided to experience some other guilds. So the rest of my time on Tarew Marr was split between two different guilds. But Tarew Marr was very well established and I missed newbies. I had always spent a lot of time helping new players. Not the ones who begged or nagged me for help but the ones I would find doing things for themselves. Meridian and I were playing together every day and we spent a lot of time helping others together; I had just had an extra year of doing it having been in the game longer.

When the Xev server came up I took the chance to move to a new server as did Ozy, Meridian and Bayer. Not many made the move from TM to Xev and most came from Povar the other server who had the option to split to Xev. I played for a while before starting the Lions again. It was Jan 1, 2001 that we became a guild.

What did I want for Lions? Oh, I wanted some role-play that was for sure.... and where is it now? Well not dead but not as active but I found what I wanted even more so was to have a guild of nice people. People who were honourable and more concerned with having fun together then in being Uber. I have spent more time in EQ then most on Xev I would think but there is so much of the nitty gritty of the game I don't now. I just have never really been too concerned about learning all the little bits and pieces. Its not wrong to learn all that, it just wasn't me. I wanted a guild that was going to be more concerned with treating people nicely and in having fun. And I learned a few things about leading a guild.

I was asked about what I do as a leader. One of the most important tasks is to ensure you have officers who will share your vision. Having five people doing some of the work each is much better then having one person do it all. I am also the person who gets a tell when someone has a problem with a guildmate. I also try and listen to the concerns of guildmates that are brought to me. Will I act on them all? No. I will try to explain why I wont. Again it comes to having one vision and avoiding pitfalls I see. Can people try to convince me something is a good idea that I don't like? Yes.... do it nicely and I have no problem with that. Turn it into my disagreeing as me being a powermonger and saying disagreeing just to exercise power and you are in the wrong position. If you believe that is the sort of leader I am you do neither yourself nor anyone else a service. I don't back down to intimidation be it done in a tell to me or in open guildchat. BUT, I am here to listen and to provide direction. No I wont personally do all the work for everyone's ideas. People can be very good about proposing things but a lot of the time they don't think of the work involved. One thing I suggest is whenever anyone has an idea think of being the one responsible for making it work and being the one doing it for a week, two weeks, a month, a year. And think about who might want to take it over if you leave. I am not saying lets not do things but you have to be sure if it takes a fair bit of work that you have people who like doing that work. This is a game and if someone isn't getting any fun out of their duties they will at some point decide its just not fun.

What else do I do? Choosing officers is the hardest part of the job in some ways. Why? Because you need officers who will respect your authority and understand that by being an officer they are accepting that authority. You need someone willing to do some work and take on some authority of their own but also understand that there is a chain of command. An officer's duty is to support their guildleader publicly. Its simple enough that there is not always ONE right way or ONE wrong way of doing things. An officer has to be able to buy into their leader's vision and accept that sometimes they may see it differently. That's what an officers forum is for. To speak among the officers and discuss these things. Now all that being said is it easy to find people to fill the role of an officer in this way? No, trust me I speak from experience that is hard to find officers with everything you are looking for. I have had my experience of butting heads. And the even harder part is sometimes you realize that maybe a choice you have made isn't working out. This is NOT referring to anything current at the moment. I have had to speak to officers about becoming general members again in the past.

Once you have picked your officer you have to get them to understand a bit about what being an officer is about and that isn't always easy either. if you have been very lucky you have picked someone who knows. In some ways its very simple. Being an officer is people management. Its being a conduit for the guildleaders vision and helping spread it and foster it within the guild. The rest of the duties are really the easy part, leading some raids, organizing some events. What an officer is not is a Porting or Buffing service. They are not the select CR specialists of the guild. When we help each other we do that AS A MEMBER not as an officer. None of my officers should feel they have to port people around whenever they need it. When someone asks for help of that nature they are asking the membership and being a fellowship of players we help each other when we can and accept it when we ask for help and no one is available. And I think we are pretty good at doing that.

and I cant organize all the events. So far with Lions I haven't become burned out on leading the guild. That's because I don't try to do everyone and be the one organizing everything. I concentrate on ensuring that the vision I have for the guild is followed. I am much more effective having several officers following that vision with me.

You have to avoid burn out as a guildldeader. I have seen some fantastic guildleaders who do all sorts of amazing things for their guild and they try to do the work all themselves. Problem is they burn bright but they don't burn for long. I have had officers burn out trying to do the same thing. And related to avoiding burn out is something that parents learn in raising a child. You have to be able to stand back and let them do some things for themselves. You can encourage them and help them but you don't do anyone a service by having them rely on you to do everything.
Lead a guild member on a raid and you give them one raid, teach them to lead own raids and they have raids whenever they want.

The guilds vision. What is it? Well we are a social guild. As EQ has evolved that has actually come to mean some very specific things. I think mainly it is that we are not primarily loot or goal driven. We mainly exist to be a group of people having fun and interacting together as we journey forward getting our loot, experience and seeing new things. One of the things I think is important is that guildmembers help each other because they like each other NOT simply because they are in the same guild. I have never believed in guilting people into helping each other or in forcing the responsibility of it on them. If you are a druid or wizard you should not feel any obligation to be porting members around. You do it when you want to do it and because you want to do it. That might mean that one day you let all know you will spend an hour porting people anywhere they want and it may mean that on another day you are busy and cant offer or agree to port anyone around.

When you have extra items I like to see people give them out on their own as gifts. I don't really want the guild to be responsible for equipping members and taking away things when someone quits etc.... I think I have been pretty generous myself in handing things out to members but I don't advertise it at all. I do it because I enjoy that. And I never give anyone anything when they come asking me for it. That's just who I am.

When people need help on something you do it because you want to help. There was a guild member who is no longer with us that came to me and said that no one in the guild would help him do a quest. I thought about my response then I told them to first ask for help from those in the guild they usually played with. What a surprise, they never played with anyone in the guild. They expected help simply because they were in the guild and that was it. That's not how it works. Yes it is true you might get help from others in the guild you don't play with but when you interact with no one in the guild you shouldn't "expect" help. if you decide to ask and you get it that is great. But if you don't you shouldn't feel you are being neglected. You get what you put into it. Should this person be in the guild? Well.... its not as easy as all that. I like to think we can include anyone who is a nice person. They can choose the level of interaction they have with the rest of us. But that also will have some effect on how everyone else interacts with them. If they can understand that they can be very happy I think. Some might not group much but be very active in guidlchat. Some might offer to help on quests but not group or talk much. There are different ways of interacting. Making the guild wasn't done for the purpose of making people help each other. It was to gather together people who would like to play with each other and would want to help each other just for who they are not for what their tag is.

A guild tag also gives us a chance to share in a common reputation. Each EQ world is huge and none of us know all the players. As a guild, or group of people sharing common ideals and views, we get to share in the reputation of every other member of the guild. Its like being one person playing 60 accounts instead of 1 or even 3 . That's a simplified view as we "are" all individuals but the point is there. I think we have a group of people who are honourable, kind hearted and mature. That is what I want to hear others say about us.

And yes having a group of people who play together and know each other allows us to organize and do things that would be hard to do by randomly gathering individuals together. We group together in a guild all acknowledging the authority of a guildleader and through her or him the guild officers under them. Humans are tribal and that is human nature and that small surrender allows us to have some organization and control and to do things we cant do as individuals. We will do Planes Raids and other Raids and in fact we have already started. Some might say we haven't done them on our "own" though. Some things we have done with Omerta. And that's one of my jobs.....to be an enabler...we might not have the numbers to do these things all on our own but we can do them. And one day we will be able to not only host a raid somewhere but run the big ones all with Lions if we so wish; though I must admit I would hate for us to become so insular that we were always excluding those outside the guild. Fresh blood, its not just for vampires anymore .


I admit it is easier in some ways to run a guild with a lot of hard and fast rules and you obey them that's it and they don't get bent or set aside do to any situation. You do your duties in the guild not so much because you want to do them but because you do them or you are out. As a member I wouldn't want to be in a guild where everything I did was covered by a rule. As a member I don't want to be in a guild where people are excluded because they didn't cross the T on their RSVP for a guild raid. Procedures and rules are well and good for dealing with most situations BUT although they were made for a reason they will not cover every instance and we have to know when that is. The rules and procedures are their to help us not to shackle us.

I don't want to hand people their gear or regulate their game play I want a group of people who are good people to be banded together for the purposes of enjoying the socialization we have with each other as we get our phat lewt and journey to new and dangerous places..... I want it to be more about the journey then it is about achieving the destination. I do want us to have goals and achieve them but lets enjoy getting their and do it together.

Caellon Silverwood - 53 druid and Guild Leader of Lions of the Heart. (aka Corwyhn Lionheart 53 paladin, Augustaes Tenarian 53 cleric)