Community

We've been delaying this update for a bit as we await the resolution of a few details. However, we know that folks are clamoring for news, so here's what we've got at this point:

Guild Name

A name has been chosen based on popular consensus: DDM Guild. Long live the DDM Guild!

Guild Leadership Structure

The DDM Guild will operate initially with the following leadership structure:

Guild Team

Guildmaster: Responsible for the overall operation of the Guild.

Chapter Lead: Works with the Chaptermasters to ensure the Guild is fulfilling the needs of the individual chapters and the chapter membership as a whole.

Chaptermaster: Works with the Chapter Lead and individual members of a chapter to organize and report events, as well as to feed input from the chapter members to the Guild Team through the Chapter Lead.

Community Liaison: Works with the Chapter Lead to feed input from the community as a whole (including special interests, such as fan sites like Maxminis and Hordelings, as well as geographic areas, such as Europe or South America) to the Guild.

Organized Play Lead: Works with the Chapter Lead to determine formats to sanction; establish a sanctioning process, ranking system, and sanctioning and reporting rules; and works with Chaptermasters to provide judge resources and prize support.

Guild Crier: Responsible for maintaining mailing lists and promotion of the Guild and its operations. Coordinates, edits, and sends quarterly newsletters and frequent email briefs.

Design Teams

Design Lead: Responsible for overall set design, rules design and development, as well as organizing and implementing new formats as designated by the Organized Play Lead.

Development Lead: Responsible for working with Chapter-masters to playtest new rules, cards, and formats prior to their official release.

Design Team Lead: Leads an individual team through the process of designing a set of cards, as well as working with the Development Lead to incorporate comments from chapters to prepare a final release.

Current Guild Team

Guildmaster: Kevin Tatroe (Ktatroe)
Chapter Lead: Jim Ansaldo (JohnnyQuest)
Organized Play Lead: D. Garry Stupack (Tried)
Chaptermaster: Varies by region -- expect a call for volunteers soon
Community Liaison: Peter Scott (Alepulp) and Brian Mackey (Kiddoc)
Guild Crier: David Paul (Vrecknidj)

Original Edition (1.0) Team

Design Lead: Bert the Troll
Development Lead: Vacant, position available
Design Team Lead: Varies from set to set


Revised Edition (2.0) Team

Design Lead: Kevin Tatroe (Ktatroe)
Development Lead: Paul Grasshof (Grasshof)
Design Team Lead: Varies from set to set, but past leads have included D. Garry Stupack (Tried) in California, Keith Tatroe (Sienar) in Colorado, and Kevin Tatroe (Ktatroe) in Washington


Guild Crest

Justin Bass of Indiana has designed an exquisite coat of arms for the Guild. Among other applications, the coat of arms will be used on the backs of cards when/if the Guild offers printed stat cards.



Guild Mini

Tony Gullotti (Dagaron) of Indiana is point person on the design and production of a custom DDM Guild miniature. The miniature will be available by Gen Con. Polling the community resulted in a win for the Guild Master concept -- a tribute to E. Gary Gygax. Here is rough concept art by Greyhaze:



Guild Logo

This week, we'll post a poll to gather community input regarding the selection of a Guild logo. Here are some of the contenders:



Now that a name has been settled upon, I imagine that some of these entries will be revised, and new ones will be submitted.

Guild Newsletter

The Guild Crier is busy working on the first quarterly DDM Guild newsletter. Keep your eyes peeled!

Organized Play

The Organized Play Lead is busy working on updated floor rules and a judges' test. These documents will be ready to debut at D&D Experience, if not sooner.

DDM Oracle

The DDM Oracle team is busy working on a conversational rulebook, which will debut no later than D&D Experience. Also, the Oracle's Comprehensive Rules Guide recently has been updated. In addition, the Oracle team is requesting community feedback by beta-testing two proposed rules changes. Feedback may be posted on the WotC forum or Hordelings.

D&D Experience

The DDM Guild will officially launch at D&D Experience 2009. We will hold a Guild Meeting on Friday, January 30, from 5-5:45 PM. Check out all of the great DDM events at DDXP, and look for us at the Community Draft on Saturday night!

DDM Original Edition (1.0) Update

DDM 1.0 retro-conversion efforts are being led by Bert the Troll. Most of the work and communications have centered on the Maxminis forums. The Guild membership has yet to decide on a process for official sanctioning of 1.0 retro-conversions.

DDM Revised Edition (2.0) Update

The WoTC-trained freelancers are still doing their freelance design thing. WotC remains committed to finishing the updates and releasing all sets by mid-year 2009. As some folks have finished their term of service, new reviewers have been invited into the set update process, and work on updating Aberrations has commenced, with Giants of Legend to follow in December. Blood War is now tournament-legal, and feedback has been largely positive. We hope to see published stat card updates for War of the Dragon Queen by December or January.

Regardless of its structure, the guild will be not for profit. It's not likely to be a registered 501(c)(3), because doing so would require so much work and money that we wouldn't have any time to do anything game-related and may eliminate the possibility of non-U.S. members (which would go against our core goal).

Any money that comes in would go directly to Guild efforts -- printing cards, maps, and other giveaways.

In the long-term, I'd love to be able to pay the freelancers that work on future sets, art, etc. something approaching fair wages for their work, since the Guild will need to take ownership of that work, and it's only fair that people get paid for honest work.

The Guild leadership will not be paid for their Guild leadership duties.

When we do ask for donations for specific tasks, we will try to keep a public tally of how it's going. For example, we might decide "it costs us $4,500 to produce 3 maps for a Guild Championships, not counting the costs of the art, which ktatroe is donating directly (with a value of $N,000). If we get pledges for that amount by this particular date, we'll do it. Otherwise, we won't." We'd use a site like Fundable to ensure that no money changes hands unless the total amount necessary for the task is pledged.

Then, if we get the funds, we'll print the maps and distribute them to each Guild member. If we don't get the funds, then we have some fallback plan.

The DDM GUild crest ....rocks

I´m happy all is happening...
a bottle of wine for D&D and Gary Gygax

Garidius wrote:

The DDM GUild crest ....rocks

I´m happy all is happening...
a bottle of wine for D&D and Gary Gygax

Much agreed. Gorgeous work!
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I knew ktatroe was talking about Vrecknidj when he said they were trying to convince someone to do the newsletter.
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Thanks for the update guys! Great work, and I look forward to the future!

ktatroe wrote:

Regardless of its structure, the guild will be not for profit. It's not likely to be a registered 501(c)(3), because doing so would require so much work and money that we wouldn't have any time to do anything game-related and may eliminate the possibility of non-U.S. members (which would go against our core goal).

Any money that comes in would go directly to Guild efforts -- printing cards, maps, and other giveaways.

In the long-term, I'd love to be able to pay the freelancers that work on future sets, art, etc. something approaching fair wages for their work, since the Guild will need to take ownership of that work, and it's only fair that people get paid for honest work.

The Guild leadership will not be paid for their Guild leadership duties.

When we do ask for donations for specific tasks, we will try to keep a public tally of how it's going. For example, we might decide "it costs us $4,500 to produce 3 maps for a Guild Championships, not counting the costs of the art, which ktatroe is donating directly (with a value of $N,000). If we get pledges for that amount by this particular date, we'll do it. Otherwise, we won't." We'd use a site like Fundable to ensure that no money changes hands unless the total amount necessary for the task is pledged.

Then, if we get the funds, we'll print the maps and distribute them to each Guild member. If we don't get the funds, then we have some fallback plan.

So in the future whom are these freelancers?Who picks these freelancers? Who says how much they get paid.

Shouldnt it be an open contract and the Guild members get to choose? Or would the board members pick these freelancers? I think it should be open contracts also to let the members know whom and why certian people got paided.

And when will the guild get to vote for board members?

I do like the chances to check the accounts out. Does this fundables.com let people see and account all banking transactions.?

So when will people be able to vote for changes of the board members?