The purpose of a guild charter

The new Star Wars MMO is about to go live (Early access starts tomorrow, full access a week later).  To say my friends and I are excited would be substantial understatement.  We have a guild ready to go live at launch.  Its a small guild, only 5 individuals or so.  I expect we will be recruiting, since we expect to need 8 for a raid.


During the last year and change, I attempted to assemble a raiding guild in World of Warcraft.  While I had played in several guild before, I had become extremely frustrated with the horridly inconsistent "leadership" that I found in other guilds.  Unfortunately, my efforts were also inconsistent, I never felt the guild was really ready to recruit outsiders.


In reality, I think this was part of the problem: I was unwilling to let strangers into the guild until I felt like I could control and separate them from the guild members I knew personally. One of the reasons I felt I didn't have the appropriate control was the lack of a complete guild charter. 


In the real world, a charter lays out an organization's rules and purpose.  Due to the variation of purposes of organizations IRL compared to in a MMO, it is more important for IRL organizations to have a unity of vision to be productive.  Also, IRL, the charter is important so organizational rules are explicit for legal reasons, and provides explicit expectations of individual responsibilities and a framework within which punitive measures may be taken against organization members that fail to fulfill their responsibilities. 


Having a clear purpose for a player-created organization is important to provide focus for the guild.  However, since there is substantially less variation in purposes of organizations in an MMO.  Therefore, the the greater value of a charter for an in-game organization should follow the latter of the two purposes described above: making explicit the responsibilities and expectations of the organizational members, and the charter should strive to accomplish these goals.  With an appropriate charter in place, one that does a fair and equitable job of dividing the responsibility of running the guild, members will be informed about what is expected of them.  Furthermore, punitive measures taken by the leaders of the guild against members in violation of the charter will appear to be legitimate and measured instead of arbitrary.


As we move forward, and we refine our charter, I hope to post more about its contents and changes that are made to it.  For now, I need to get to sleep and hopefully be productive tomorrow.


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