10 tips to make better communities on lotc

[Ark 2835]

Hi, I'm Ark. I’ve created a few different communities in my time on LotC and the community creation aspect of it has always been my favorite part of the game. I’ve decided to distill my almost decade of experience of creating online communities, specifically on LotC, to help those who are currently making communities, have a community, or just would like some tips on things they could do.

 

#1. Find a good niche and stick to it.
    When we created Haense, the idea was to have an all encompassing northern faction that united the many different “northerners” at the time. We fought hard to keep this niche and timing really helped us as the Starks from Game of Thrones were really popular around the time we started it all. Describing our faction as "We're basically the Starks" had huge appeal and made many new players join us for that reason alone.

 

Though your niche doesn’t have to be that, generally the larger you want to be, the more popular of a niche you should take advantage of. Just try to find something popular and advertise the hell out of it. It’s alright to stick to a popular niche. It's a popular niche for a reason. 

 

    If you have a hard time describing your community to a new player in more than one sentence, you should take another look at your niche and see if there’s something more succinct you can capture. 

 

#2. A good team beats a great person every time. 

    Some of the friends i’ve made leading communities on LotC will stick with me for life. @Eddywilson2 and @ErikAzog.

 

A community is a group of people centered around a common goal. If you’re anything like me you are going to try to do everything yourself because you’re a perfectionist and if you do it, at least you know it’s done right. But you will get burned out and disillusioned. 

 

Something that has helped me is to figure out swim lanes that people tend to excel in. I am really bad at military conflicts in LotC. I’ve lost nearly every single one that I have been the main commander. Eddywilson2? He’s really ******* good at it, so I let him deal with that. I’m very good at making active RP hubs through community engagement and events, so I do that. Taking a step back and realizing, “What am I good at and how that can contribute to the community” will save you friendships and hours. 

 

#3. Be honest OOCly 

    Even if you’re going to fight against someone, be clear about that. Rarely do snakes get anywhere. You only have a single reputation, people will respect it and it will make every single conversation you have in the future easier. 

#4. Choose a side.

    Every single time i’ve had two groups that I thought would easily merge, there've been troubles. People protect their status and any change to that can be very threatening. Without cutting out one of the groups, it always leads to more infighting and drama down the line. Picking a side and sticking to it typically leads to the most troublesome leaving and the rest integrating. It’s not always bad to take a small hit to build back better with one consistent vision. 

 

#5. Help people do what they want to do. (Within reason).

 The most motivated people in a community are those who are allowed to do what they want to do. I’ve had lots of people come up to me in communities, towns, cities, with pretty crazy ideas. Most of the time I'd allow them to go for it. As long as it wasn’t totally out of the scope of what we were doing, i.e. no space command in our medieval kingdom, I found that people appreciated the trust and worked harder at projects that were their own. Even then, sometimes the projects fell through but they appreciate your trust in them, and they are more willing to run a project that you know would be useful. 

 

#6. Remember it's a game.

    I’ve been really bad about this at times in my lotc career, but there are real people behind the screen. They can become great amazing friends who might change the course of your life, treat them as such. Using people as an end to a means will only have people regretting ever getting to know you. Shoot the shit, have fun, chill out and remember it’s just a Minecraft server. 

 

#7. Spreadsheets.

    Spreadsheets are literally the most valuable thing I learned from lotc. From keeping track of rallies to events going on in your town, you should be using them where you can. This habit has helped me in my career immensely, just learning to organize information allows you to make better decisions and see what’s working and what isn’t much quicker than a blind approach.

 

If you do not have a spreadsheet for your community, please go make one right now. If people are interested in what I mean by that, let me know and I can make a little mini-guide on how I use them to run communities on lotc.

 

#8. Your bar owner is the third most important person in the faction.

    If you want an active city, get an active bar owner with a vision for their bar. They will work harder, put on their own events, and generally create a RP hub that’s separate from the traditional “Keep, barracks, etc.” I like to have 2-3 RP hubs in any community, with enough space between them to prevent RP overlapping but play around with it. Even after 8+ cities or so I think there’s other stuff that could be done. 

 

#9. Culture is written on the forums, but made in game. 
    I really do think cultural posts are valuable, but without anything tying it to the game makes it useless. People aren’t going to start doing something just because you wrote in a post that’s what you do. Coordinate your community leaders to start doing that and people will follow because we all mimic what we want to become. 

 

#10. Your middle leadership, (Lieutenants, Stewards, etc.) are incredible resources and listen to them.

    With community's being on the scale of LotC (100 people being close to the cap), it’s easy to think you can make every decision or understand how the community feels about a certain thing. But generally it’s good to run a 10-30-60 rule. 

 

10% being your head executive leaders, these are the people who are making the big decisions, ie. who are we warring, what niche are we going to be, etc. 

 

30% are the leaders who make your administration actually function. They are the people collecting taxes, helping to write posts, officers in your army. 

 

60% is everyone else. 

 

Generally I see one or two things happen, you have a lot of people who listen to the 60%, so whenever people start yelling and getting upset at a certain change or event they make drastic changes but if you’ve planned out what you’re doing you shouldn’t change just because the mob says so. 

 

Or, you have 10% of the player base dictating everything for everyone else, which leads to burn out among the 30% who are seeing bad decisions being made because the upper 10% doesn't understand the playerbase. If your Stewards, Officers, and other officials are telling you something, I implore you to listen.

 

Anyways, thanks for reading. A lot of these ideas have been stewing in my brain for years and since I'm satisfied with the communities I've built on lotc over the years I hope this inspires some people to make better communities. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask. 

 

Also I have a twitch stream now that I'd like to shamelessly plug. twitch.tv/TrainingArk, if you’re interested in self improvement and want a community that will support you in that, consider joining. 
 
 

 

[HurferDurfer1 2978]

he got jacked so i gotta side with ark on this one

[satin 7600]

yes

[FredrickTeufel 356]

14 minutes ago, Ark said:

#1. Find a good niche and stick to it.
    When we created Haense, the idea was to have an all encompassing northern faction that united the many different “northerners” at the time. We fought hard to keep this niche and timing really helped us as the Starks from Game of Thrones were really popular around the time we started it all. Describing our faction as "We're basically the Starks" had huge appeal and made many new players join us for that reason alone.

 

 

We are basically Russian High Elves.

[Dogged 2879]

this guy would be a good nl ngl

[Ark 2835]

1 minute ago, Dogged said:

this guy would be a good nl ngl

this guy would be a good peactime nl ngl*

[Ardory 2978]

46 minutes ago, Ark said:

#10. Your middle leadership, (Lieutenants, Stewards, etc.) are incredible resources and listen to them.

Never listen to anyone but yourself, the rest are palebeasts. I always hate the palebeast.

[sergisala 3451]

Very interesting post, king 

[seannie 7443]

treat yourself like a king, even oocly 

[Macaroniminx 295]

We need gyms all around each nation so our characters can get peak gainz

 

[ErikAzog 3575]

+1 king

[----- 838]

i miss greywater and the brotherhood of horen. good times

[AnimeWolf0080 1509]

👌

[exanimated 1363]

now hear me out. . Snake everyone.

[Hanrahan 2983]

Very hot take but sometimes I think this community needs some space to be really just honest in our language and sometimes I think we don't really do that. I've been told off many a time for using bad language, but I've never really thought of it that way. When someone bandits a flavour event to build activity for a community, what are they really adding to LOTC, and our shared story and creative process?

 

I don't think they add anything, and I think they're stupid mean fuckers who take delight in making other people upset. But for some reason, we shy away from saying these things, at least, as blunty as I do. I think we should say these things, and say them loud and publically.