mccoyed

That's a lovely sigfig. Mitgardia will provide a good home for you, as they did for me when I first joined! It is was the best Guild!

Hey. I still love you guys. Just saying. :P

With my Mitgardian sigfig in Yureishima (with more adventures to come), it's time to try a new Guild. I'm excited by the opportunity to help shape something new on GoH and I love the in-depth lore and descriptions offered here. Varlyrio seems to offer a lot of possibilities and I like the "warring merchant princes" concept. So, count me in. This is my new character/sigfig in her adventuring gear (sorry about the lazy build here, but I've been working something way bigger which will feature this character): Her name is Fel D'Gatto, of the East Coast D'Gattos (they're a big lionell/catfolk family with typical roots in the wastelands). She's the oldest daughter in an old family that has long tried to gain a foothold in Illaryian. Unfortunately, lionells sometimes have a hard time even in cosmopolitan Varlyrio and the D'Gattos face prejudice for their connections to Wastelander bandits and pirates. The D'Gatto family business is antiques and artisanal furnishings and art (though they've also dabbled in githril smuggling and other sordid enterprises). Fel's interest runs more toward lost relics and rare artifacts, making her the "tomb raider" of the family (:wink:). She is particularly interested in recovering items that prove the existence of a legendary catfolk empire, a passion that often takes her to Historica and especially Kaliphlin where her family enjoys some influence with prominent lionell families. In all her pursuits, Fel struggles between a strong sense of justice and a pragmatic willingness to get her hands dirty to accomplish her goals. This tension means she can walk a tightrope between many levels of society, with reputation and rumor following every step. Even as she pursues her own goals, her mother pressures her to return to the family estate more permanently and take a larger role in D'Gatto affairs as the future matriarch of the family. Expect to see more D'Gattos, and their allies, in builds to come. Bonus Shots:

Those rafters rule and I like the look of this fig a lot. The hair and expression work well together and I like that he's got an axe instead of the usual sword.

Great scene. Love the forest scout hiding in there, that's a great shot.

No worries. I've said what I wanted to say. I don't have any hard feelings toward anyone so I'll back off for now and see what happens next.

Wait a minute. Didn't I use the word "voluntary"? Why are you preaching to me when we're almost saying the same thing? You've got me all wrong. The business analogy is about showing that things die when they're neglected. They shut down. They end. If we agree that's a problem, and we seem to judging by the posts of others who did actually play AG1, we need to look for causes and solutions so that we can a) prevent the problem in future and b) deal with it when it becomes a problem. Bob doesn't owe me anything nor do I expect him to cater to me. That is not what this is about. It's just about the fact that volunteering to be responsible still makes you responsible. Backing off without a contingency plan is irresponsible. Your characterization of my "sentiments" is inaccurate. I don't believe it has to be Bob that "does something for free". The only one who believes that is Bob. I want there to be a structural solution, which means allowing other people to step up when volunteers like Bob have to step down. Your post is unnecessarily confrontational as is, but it's a little condescending on top of that for you to suggest to me that I should do x, y, z when you have no idea what projects and proposals I've already been a part of. Others can attest to that. Even AG started with planning that I contributed to and posts I made ~3 years ago about starting a scifi/space version of Guilds of Historica. Over the years, many such plans have been made. Some don't get support and die out, others become big successes like BoBS or AG1. Eurobricks has a structural division of its volunteer labour: staff and admins who are closely involved with projects like AG1. You can't cut them out and they often aren't around to be pitched on things, hence the issue of long hiatuses with AG2 and GoH. GoH has a team of people who are willing to delegate responsibility to others and step back from their old roles as they no longer have time. That's a solution. BoBS did active recruiting among active members of other games for its own staff. That's a solution. Other solutions and volunteers have been suggested in this thread. What solution are you offering, exactly?

People like Ska and Bob need to have a backup plan. It's totally understandable that life gets in the way of hobbies and all of this is voluntary anyhow. But communities don't survive when power over them is disproportionately in the hands of a handful of people who a) can't handle anyone else being in charge and b) routinely abdicate their responsibilities. It's not personal, but I do want to challenge the mindset I keep seeing that there's any excuse for any of this or that we should be patient for years on end because a few people are too busy and too disorganized to keep things running in their own absence. If this was a business it would be out of business.

Oh man. Destroyer is pretty bad but Conan the Barbarian is a classic. In my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made.

I like it. I think it's amazingly succinct.

I was definitely hoping someone would expand on my very poor summary of the Guild Lore. I was only around for Book 2 and it's been years since I back-read all of the old GoH threads and storylines. That was a monumental task in the first place and I believe it might be impossible now due to changes to the forums and archiving. I hope someone with an encyclopedia for a brain can provide a summary that satisfies our esteemed leadership.

If it doesn't interfere with what I'm doing (big plans), sure. But I'm the only one consistently posting right now. I know I'll see more from Luc because we've been talking about it for months. Everybody else is in a holding pattern -- just like on GoH until recently. I don't want EB's RBGs to keep being this:

My position is: drop the coding. Let AG2 be like GoH for the next series and revisit the "game" of it all down the line when there's more time.

Yeah, this is the other side of it. Everybody wants to know what Book 3 is even going to look like before committing. But I'm still surprised there aren't more freebuilds.

I think there will be relaunched Guild threads for Book 3 once it launches or maybe a bit before. For now, just post in ALL the threads :P

Yeah, I'm actually kind of surprised we aren't seeing more activity in general. I'm working on something, but it won't be ready til closer to the end of the month.

Yeah seems too soon to front page Book 3's launch. I would bet it'll be front paged when the story is unveiled, as I expect we'll see some pretty wicked builds in there. Dude, I think you're just projecting onto an anonymous, supposed group of people that there's no way to know even exist. Namely, these "intimidated weaker builders". It's clear that you have these concerns and that's okay, but you have to realize it takes years for people to get "very, very good". I'd say I'm fairly mediocre and it took four years for me to even get there. Guys like Ecc, Soccerkid, and the longest running GoH members have spent the better part of a decade collecting Lego, sharing builds, refining techniques, etc. Every few months we get people on RBGs, but particularly on GoH, who fret about stuff like this. Just build as best you can with what you've got. It sucks that you couldn't bolster your fantasy Lego with LoTR or The Hobbit stuff when those themes were prevalent. There are a lot of Ninjago, Star Wars, and other bits that work well for GoH, though. For example, the recent Aquaman in Atlantis set (more of a battle pack) had lots of goodies for a fantasy MOCer. I also definitely recommend using Bricklink to piece together 'figs using their component parts. I've been known to buy heads, torsos, legs, etc all separately and it's quite possible to do this affordably as long as you're not looking for rarer 'fig pieces. Ultimately, there aren't enough new members to do a contest just for them. That kind of thing, if even considered, would need to wait until Book 3 was well underway and GoH had some life breathed back into it again. Newcomers should focus on learning and commenting on what precious few new builds have been presented here lately. Feedback is a big part of the draw for posting stuff, and feedback has died off drastically on EB in general. I think new people could really help there.

Wow. So this is what you've been cooking up. Very impressive work on all counts.

There's no fuss in the way you mean. Just trying to throw some shade, be silly, and get some energy and activity built up. If you look around, GoH is still incredibly quiet and in the past there has been a lot of chatter around new events. I don't see that this time and it does kinda worry me. You're probably right that people are just in hibernation waiting for Book 3 but in the meantime, getting some juice flowing in the Guild threads can't hurt.

The irony is that Nocturnus is the most active guild thread right now. Doesn't seem like too many Mitgardians, Avalonians, or Kaliphlinites have come out of the woodwork since the announcement of Book 3. Or maybe they're hiding and biding their time. Or I'm trying to drum up some Nocturnus activity so the staff don't close the guild!

It would be interesting if Varlyrio staged an invasion/colonization of Historica to take advantage of all the chaos and the disunity. I thought the Guilds were more unified than they are, so Book 3 is set to be more politically interesting and chaotic than I expected.

My theory is that they're trying to hammer out storylines but ZCerb did say earlier that Varlyrio is "clearly going to be an option" so what is up in the air presently is whether Nocturnus will be. I think the best way to help them decide is for us to reach out and get people to drum up some activity on the GoH boards. It is hard to tell, except by using outdated info from a more active time, what level of interest there is for Varlyrio and/or Nocturnus nowadays.

That'll be interesting, Mike.

So then Kali is sort of barely more unified than Nocturnus, but the Desert King is at least nominally the leader, or at least represents Kali interests to the Queen?

So many great builds. Makes it hard to consider leaving Mitgardia!