Business Blog #1 - Organizational Structure & Rules

This blog doesn’t fit into my normal Storyteller Blog category but I wanted to take time to share some of the thought that is going into how we are structuring the business and give our customer (YOU!) a look at why we are doing things the way we are and what we hope to accomplish by doing this. I am a strong believer in transparency. This means I don’t like rules for the sake of rules, or actions that cannot be easily understood. I never, ever want to create the environment where people have no understanding of why things are being done the way they are.

We are not a “membership” or “fan” organization, we are a business. That is the first thing that must be understood. The difference there is important to understand. The Staff are also customers of our product, but in the end it is always about what makes a better product. Our product, clearly defined is, our own version of a World of Darkness in which our customers can participate and with the assistance of the Staff tell THEIR stories and experience the story of others. It is a world for you to interact in and that reacts to you in logical ways, all towards the goal of creating a greater sense of realism combined with a Social Community for fans of the genre (ie; Supernatural Horror).

The decision to do this structure was the first and probably single most important one at the start of this venture. A clearly defined structure differentiates us from other organizations that deliver similar products. It also starts the definition of how we organize the business.
In the coming months we will be announcing Staff Positions and we will be publishing an Organizational Board/Chart that shows the structure of the staff. This will clearly show you who handles what issues you might have, or if you need something, you will be able to see who to go to for that very thing. All of that is in progress in the background right now and will be made public as it gets completed.
Today I wanted to talk with you, our customers, about the rules and why they set us apart. I want to define what our intentions are as we modify and edit rules covering both game mechanics and Player Points and general interaction in this social community.
Every existing rule on the site is going to be reviewed and measured against a single stick, which is it clearly defined and definite. As much as possible it is our goal to eliminate rules that require the phrase “at Discretion” of anyone. Rules need to not be grey like this. They should be clear cut, if this happens, this happens. We realize there are situations where we absolutely will not be able to achieve this goal, so there will be exceptions to the rule without a doubt, but we can minimize those instances.

So what does this gain us? It gains us a major difference between us and other organizations. That difference is we can avoid even the appearance of arbitrary rulings that can be attributed to cliques, inner circles, or friendships of any kind. We can remove any sense of favoritism if the rules are clearly defined and spelled out in writing, with little room for use “at discretion.”

An example of this was the recent continuity rewrite that happened in the game. While this affected a large number of players, we have a clearly defined rule that if the Storytellers make a mistake large enough to cause issues in the continuity, we will implement a rewrite and all players will be given 5 Player Points for their trouble. This was not an arbitrary decision, it was not made to benefit one player over another, it was a clear cut Storyteller error as defined by our rules and the rule was implemented.
I hope this gives our customers a bit of insight into how we are building this organization and our intentions as we continue to grow. Also you may note changes in the way some rules are on the site, now I hope you will know why they are being implemented and what our goal is with any rules changes or additions that you will see coming down the line.