Change the Culture (Part II)

Changing the Culture Part II

In the first part, we discussed that we should all as a group, move to bettering ourselves for the sake of our community as well as our own personal growth. We want our organization and environment to be friendly and helpful, through an through.

There are a few topics I’m going to cover in part II. All of which are focused on explaining why I believe we should shift our thought processes on some things a bit in one direction or another.

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I want to start by talking about the topic of favoritism and tell you why I believe that we’ve been doing it wrong for all of this time. Favoritism has been beaten into people to be only a dirty word. Favoritism is only a bad thing if other people are forced to suffer as a result, and I believe that this does not have to be the case. Sure there is in fact bad favoritism, but there is a version of it, that is part of life, and if embraced can be made positive. As my most specific example, I believe that no one knows what people need the most, other than their own friends. When I hear someone tell me that so and so, ran an encounter for their friends, they expect my reaction to be that of anger, when in fact, my actual inclination is to say good. That person probably knows that their friend needed that special attention to have a good time at the game. Good on him/her, now lets try to do that for as many people as we can, and then learn how to get to the point were we can do that for everyone, all the time, on a regular basis. No one is more invested in making sure a mod is cool and fun for a particular group of people then someone who is close to them and perhaps even in charge of their in-game group. Going into the new year I am going to attempt to set up a system where the Lords/Ladies or Knights of a land, write and run mods for their lands on a semi-regular basis. I want to attempt to work this into the MM system, which means I need a MM from each of the lands who is willing to run a monthly or bi-monthly mod for their friends. There will be plenty of safeguards in place to make sure the situation is fair, but rest assured this will be a great thing. A very large number of players will be covered through this, but then the challenge will be making sure that those who do not align with a land also have someone paying special attention to them as well. We will do our best to work with this new paradigm, and I believe strongly, that come the end of next year, many of you will see this as one of the best changes we have made.

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I will challenge some of you to please stop being concerned with the fact that Bill got a full re-write, and Janet was allowed to change her race five events into game, or that Bob was allowed to unretired his character. Stop being concerned with the favors that other people get, because sure enough one day your time will come, if it hasn’t already. Do not turn an act of kindness that I have done for someone into a crime. There is truly nothing more disparaging to me than when people do this, especially when it comes from people who have been the recipient of such kindness in the past. Instead, try to be happy that you are part of an organization where the enjoyment that people have is more important than the letter of the law. If you concern yourself less about what other people get, and more about how you could enjoy the game better, you will be a much happier person.

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Always think about the newest generation of our members. Knight Realms is not only about playing a fun and immersive game with friends, its also about an environment to make new friends and relationships each and every month. Relationships that can last a lifetime. Your character may be high level, you may have been to the game for over six years… but even a brand new player can very quickly become your greatest new friend. If that same new player came to their first event, and didn’t have a stellar time, they may have never come back for a second event, and you might have never had the real opportunity to make that new friend. Certainly the game itself holds the brunt of responsible for making sure people have a great time at it, however think about what an important part you can play in this as well. Each and every one of you can go out of your way to make new players feel welcome and feel included, with very little effort on your part. Your payoff is the possibility of making great new friends for life. Imagine one of the great people you met at the game; maybe it is a best friend, maybe it is a significant other, maybe just someone you really like. Now imagine that person never made it to their second event at the game… you might have never had that opportunity to have them in your life. Going out of your way to help new players have a great time is a personal investment in possible future friendships. Im sure this is no ground breaking news, but I doubt many people really sit down and think of it this way. Well sit down and think about it this way... because it’s a true and poignant perspective. At your next event and every event thereafter, look for the new players at the game; ask them how they are doing, role-play with them, put a silver sword in their hand and tell them “Common, lets go kill some undead!” The part that you play, could earn you lifelong friendships, and sometimes that just has no comparable value.

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That’s it for now. Please consider these things from a perspective you may not have normally seen them from or agreed with. I think that if we can change the culture of Knight Realms and larping in general it will be a very positive thing to ourselves and to our community.