I wish to voice my support for Wally's award. He has done an excellent job managing the Character Sheet 2.0 project. He put together a large team of volunteers focused on specific areas, and later cut the team down to one with greater focus. During the entire project, he remained committed and positive, giving excellent direction and advice and listening to everyone's opinions – and there were a lot to listen to. From discussing mechanics to wording to judging implications to fiction, the CS 2.0 team hammered out an excellent system under Wally's guidance, and were able to deliver this in a reasonable timeframe considering the scope of the project.

Wally was a major part of this, keeping us on track with gentle nudges, reining us in when our ideas got too crazy or unbalanced, and writing up half a dozen new Aspects. He also contributed re-writes to existing material to bring them closer in line with what the Iron Throne was looking for; Wally personally re-wrote every single Force Power, and several of those re-writes became the final product. Out of our new and revamped Feats, Wally was by far the greatest contributor, penning 46 of them himself.

He was very easy to approach with new ideas, like the Slow Force Power, which A'lora invented and explained. Seeing its merits, Wally had it implemented as a replacement for Stasis. He also kept us informed with regular emails on important updates and matters, and led discussion on several key points as well.

He was a visionary; he had worked with Sarin, Mav and Shad previously and had a firm vision of what he wanted to deliver, and he was able to outline this, through species and venues, Force Power and Skills, Feats and Aspects, there is not a single piece of this project that Wally did not have his hands or mind in.

What beggars my belief, however, is the incredible patience he has shown in dealing with the aftermath of our launch. During this time, many questions and criticisms were leveled at him and he has smiled and discussed and provided answers to each of them, answers which almost always resulted in discussion amongst the team. Given the amount of feedback received, his patience in dealing with it all was a staggering example of professionalism and ethics, making it clear to me that Wally cares quite passionately about improving our club.

That is, ultimately, what the CS2.0 project represents; an opportunity to provide tremendous benefits to our club, by introducing a more open, more flexible and more powerful system than before. The amount of blood, sweat and tears he has put in to directing and contributing to this project actually makes him the MVP, though the compliment was certainly appreciated ;)

Congratulations Wally, on a well deserved award for your incredible work on this project. Well done, mate!

Mandalorian Darcy Avarik, 2015-09-06 21:35:45 UTC

I could probably take a paragraph saying how awesome Wally is as a dude, but I’ll leave that to the folks who know him far better. I’m just going to get straight to the point. Wally, when you boil it all down, was the glue that held the CS 2.0 team together and kept us working well as a unit. In order to get the best possible product, Wally brought together a group of folks that had a wide range of backgrounds, skill sets, and experience in the DJB which included most if not all the clans. A number of these people were leaders or former leaders and many had very strong opinions. We’d argue, debate, and bicker about topics both important and not and Wally would hear out every one of those conversations. In the end he’d be there to make the call when it needed to be made and not a moment sooner or later. He also did his best to make sure we had all the information we needed to do our jobs and made sure that we all stayed on our assigned tasks, redeploying resources when needed. Dealing with a group and process like that might be worthy of an AK all by itself, but that’s not where it ended.

What really mattered in the end is that Wally made sure we put out a good product. I might not have agreed with every decision along the way, but in the end I knew that Wally had the big picture in mind. He made sure that the end result of all this work was a product that would please as many people as possible while being readily able to be applied by judges and others down the line. That took a lot of effort and probably more than a few sleepless nights to accomplish and thus can’t be ignored.

I want to close this with one important thing. While during this process Wally and I disagreed on things, sometimes vehemently, in the end I have to say he was a pleasure to work with. That, I think, is the most important thing I can say.

You deserve this man.

~ Battlelord Kz’set Magistrate to the Voice

Grand Inquisitor Arden Karn di Plagia, 2015-09-06 21:35:16 UTC

My first contact with Wally was when I submitted my first character sheet with rudimentary custom aspects. He took the time to give personal feedback and encouragement to a snot-nosed Padawan and his passion for helping all members of the Brotherhood engage with the character driven aspects of the club inspired me then and inspires me now after having the privilege of helping him with CS 2.0.

Wally's tireless work as Combat Master and member of the Voice staff is something that should be held up as example of what a leader and an Elder of this club should be. He doesn't forego sleep coding feats into the site, pour countless hours into relatively esoteric google documents or wade through the sea of strong opinions on how a character sheet system should work for pointy stabby things or to have his name in lights. Wally sincerely does what he does so each and every one of us can have the best experience possible and tell the stories we want to tell.

I was brought into CS 2.0 fairly early in the process last spring to help neutralize the very dark side legacy disciplines and branched out from there. I got to watch as he assembled a team of some of the best and brightest in the club and skillfully parsed us out to work on the various pieces that would become the new system. He made adjustments, gave encouragement, patiently argued the various issues and most importantly he led from the front. Wally isn't just a project manager, he's a leader, he probably wrote more of CS 2.0 himself than any single member of the team, almost to a fault. There can be little doubt that it was his will, his passion and his drive that kept things on track and on time.

A few characters on a dossier line or a image on the site are a small payment on the debt we all owe Wally for all the time, effort and himself he poured into this project. On behalf of all the members you've helped, inspired and been a friend to, great work boss, now shut up and take your shiny.

Councillor Turel Sorenn, 2015-09-06 21:36:09 UTC

While I might have been late to experience the earliest goals of CS 2.0, Wally brought me into the project just after Disciplined underwent their initial draft. His initiative to building something for the masses without including personal bias towards certain facets of the development process is something that I have admired since the beginning of working with him on this grand achievement. Weighing the merits of each argument over the mailer and Telegram channels, Wally listened to each of our debates and was decisive in drafting a course of action that was both fair and favorable. This in itself is the one quality that I feel made Marick so successful in managing one of the best-organized project that we have seen thus far in the Brotherhood, as he made each of us feel as though we had a voice in shaping the future of the Brotherhood.

Where some leaders will decide on a course of action without thought of making further adjustments,Wally’s response to changes that might not have been favorable to some made it clear that he was open to new ideas that might be better suited towards the topic of interest. He’s an open-minded person, and his commitment to making things favorable to the masses is something that speaks of his character.

This aside from the mountain of feats, aspects and adjustments he wrote for the project makes him someone that we can all hold up as an example whenever we decide to manage something on a similar scale. Having worked with him for the release of this project strengthened the respect I have for Wally as our Brotherhood’s Combat Master. That being said, someone of his talents deserves some recognition for his efforts. He’s done one hell of a job, and is more than deserving of one hell of a reward.

Seer A'lora Kituri, 2015-09-06 21:36:37 UTC

Though more of a late-comer to the Character Sheets 2.0 than some of the others of our team, I can say for certain that Wally was more than the coordinator, executor, and driving force of this project: he was its beating heart.

It is, I think, my recruitment for the latter stages of this task and its post-release that allow me to comment so surely. It's easy to have energy when you first start a project, especially an exciting one. You're usually pretty hyped, full of grand ideas and plans, just starting to put together a team that looks all shiny. At first the work is enthralling, the tentative camaraderie strong, the goals just on the other side of the horizon. And then...you get to work. You hit roadblocks. You discuss, edit, discuss again, then throw things in the trash. You go back to the drawing board. You get rejected. You come up with something new. Discussions turn to arguments and small squabbles, and people get cranky and tired. Maybe one or two pieces are half-done and well-liked, and everything else, it seems, is in shambles - and it's not even been a month yet.

Not a lot of people can take their ideas and execute them through all of that. Not everybody reaches the finish line. Wally did. He encountered all these obstacles and more, particularly once the project was actually released and the real critiquing could begin. Throughout the entire process of the CS 2.0 project and ongoing ACC revamp, Wally assembled a team, delegated each member tasks to which they'd best be suited, steered them with deadlines, and held them all together through disputes and discussions alike. This is a busy, opinionated team that could easily turn up about 300 - 500 Telegram messages on any given morning, let alone any given day, debating the specifics of a single Force Power and coming up with explanations and solutions to its usage and incorporation into our system - and that besides the scores of email threads and legions of different documents and spreadsheets the team worked off of. Wally not only mediated, directed, and managed all this, but also did so tirelessly. His dedication, energy, and patience in the final stages of the project were what I would've expect from someone bright-eyed and just beginning, not someone who had been handling such a large endeavor and all its associated pieces and parts for weeks upon weeks, sacrificing sleep each night and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears.

But that's just how Wally operates. What he does he does well, because he cares, and he encourages his team to do the same. He asks for solutions, not just opinions. He asks for feedback, and listens. He effectively disperses workloads as to not overwhelm any one person while still accomplishing all that needs to be done. He answers questions anyone has, even implementing an FAQ for the CS 2.0 release, and creates resources like the CS-related wiki pages for members. In short, Wally doesn't just throw out ideas and see what sticks: he seizes those ideas, finds a way, and passionately sees them through to their end. He is a builder, and a namer, and deserves a good deal of thanks for all that it took to finish this project, and for all his responsiveness in further improving it thereafter.

Congrats, Wally, and thank you.

Atyiru Caesura Entar

Consul of Clan Arcona

Master Ruka Tenbriss Ya-ir, 2015-09-07 19:14:46 UTC