Simplicity

When I first joined IVV, one of the five founders said "My last guild had pages and pages of very strict rules. I don't want to do that here. For one thing, it would be impossible to enforce."

Guild rules all boil down to respect. In some guilds, the screening of applicants is so brief that too few rules allow members to run amuck without giving the officers the power to check them. In other guilds, there are so many rules that the officer core has to be significantly broadened in order to be able to enforce everything.

There's also the issue of getting members to read your rules. No matter how lovingly you put them together, no matter how short and to the point they are, you'll still have a segment of players who just assume that if they behave (more or less), they'll be fine, and another segment of players who are the opposite -- this segment makes sure the rules are enforced, no matter what.

I believe that any guild can function more or less on the following rule:

Thou shalt respect thy fellow guildies and thy guild.

Most of the time, this means not ninja looting, showing up unprepared, or being a total jerk. In a family guild, it goes deeper to include interpersonal relationships. They request that members not do or say anything that will make someone else uncomfortable, which in our case means a language restriction in public channels.

The beauty of simple, flexible rules is that officers can make judgments of a situation without being bound to dole out harsh punishment. If, for example, a member with a sterling reputation ninja loots something and claims it was an accident. If the guild has a "no ninja loot" policy and the group is crying for his/her head, the officers are required to punish the offender. In the same instance, with a flexible policy, the officers can offer lenience to people who have earned their trust through prior actions.

In the same way, the officers could take a harsher stance with someone who has a less trustworthy reputation.

Reputation should not be mistaken for favoritism. Some guilds use members to achieve goals for the core. This sort of guild structure is unstable, full of people acquiring unfair advantages.

Reputation, on the other hand, is subtle and widespread. Rather than a few people enjoying perks that disrespect the time, effort, and feelings of the people around them, a good reputation often goes unnoticed by the bearer and can sometimes be mistaken for favoritism by people who have lesser reputations. People with good reputations often get invited to more groups, conversations, and have better or closer relationships with the people around them.

In most guilds, a good reputation means being able to keep your head down and do your job, not causing conflict, and giving to the guild bank. In family guilds as well as social guilds, it relies a great deal on getting to know the people around you and investing your time, effort, and emotion in them. An unhealthy guild might have cliques that people find it impossible to break into, but a healthy guild will try its best to include anyone who makes an effort. Gaining "reputation points" in a family guild is not about (or should not be about) material goods. It is about investing oneself into other members.

Members who are needy, greedy, distant, or insecure will have the hardest time gaining a good reputation in a family guild. I've found that of two members who recently vented about being on the outskirts of IVV, one had never read a single member page, where members post details about themselves, and so didn't know about the most obvious relationships: like how one of the earliest guild members is my brother or that his wife's little brother is a raid leader; and the other member suffered from massive insecurity and always assumed nobody liked her, which couldn't have been further from the truth. But once we convinced them to post their own member pages and read ours, essentially starting the "getting to know you" process, they've been getting more conversation and group invites, more of those "perks" that they used to think was favoritism. In fact, it's just familiarity.

When people are comfortable with you, they include you more. It's a simple and inevitable truth. It also makes the task of enforcing rules easier, because as familiarity brings people together, they gain respect for each other. And a guild functioning with respect is a guild that will last.

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Beth Blevins is an officer in In Vino Veritas.

She's a writer, artist and avid blogger.

Beth's been married since her junior year of college.