I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not for the removal of the Order Leaders. It would be a little more benefitual to understand what the OHC and SHW do, because I have not seen much from them. On the other hand, Telona has done some great things with KHP, and think it should continue to be so. If anything, they could play the role of head creators of the Rights of Supremacy, considering the excellent job Korras did the the ORoS.

In the interest of consistency and having to look and answer in only one place, please put discussion of this announcement into the linked messageboard thread only.

However, I shall briefly address your issue about the RoS. You are somewhat right about the RoS type Vendettas. However, since Orders are now fictional and no longer tied to specific activities, the recent RoS were essentially small GJWs with just a minor focus on the "original" / "traditional" activities of the Order. Which doesn't mean they were worse than the old "Writing only" RoS of the Arania and Mairin age - but we have more or less been keeping four people to deal with the creation of these rather similar events (the DGM as head of Vendetta and three OLs). There is no reason why RoS level events should not be headed and created by a multitude of experienced leaders, but they will be selected and coordinated by the GM and DGM on a case by case basis, not as a job - a job that they most likely would do only once considering with 2 RoS per year, every Order got one only once per 18 months - longer than the average tenure of an Order Leader.

I would fully expect to see this authority and task being given on a per-project basis with occasional calls for concepts similar to the call that was thrown at the DC for the next GJW.

"t would be a little more benefitual to understand what the OHC and SHW do, because I have not seen much from them."

Precisely. Right now... not much.

Its been that way for a long time. Even when I was SHW a year ago the OLs didnt do a great deal. Sure, you have ONE Order Leader running ONE Rite of Supremacy, but... what do the other two do while that's happening?

Again... not much.

Its a waste of resources really. Perhaps KHP has always had something of a more defined "role" but OHC and SHW cross over so much that the need for two individuals is unnecessary, and encourages people to slack off and hope the other OL does the work.

Take the release of any new game, the feedback the Dark Council usually recieves is that they didn't do enough, not enough competitions were run, a server wasn't created in time, etc. The big problem is even the Dark Council itself, even the Order Leaders themselves, don't really know what they're meant to be doing either.

Take Empire at War in a months time, in the current set-up with OLs the situation would proceed as follows:

(a) Empire at War is released.
(b) OL: so which one of us is meant to do something about it?
(c) Confusion.
(d) Something eventually gets done, albeit far too late.

And thats been going on for, well, years. JA, BF, RC, BF2, every time we've had a new game the Dark Council just hasn't really known who should handle it. For a while we had the Lord Marshal position, but even then, that was just seen as "Order Leader #4" and people still didn't really know who should be doing what.

Flashy titles, fancy names, all that stuff might be nice, and while I can agree, especially considering I am a former SHW and will miss the position, I also accept that we've gone on far too long without an efficient structure. Nostalgia is nice, but ultimately a more efficient Dark Council that gets something done and actually produces results for the club is more important than "Oh, lookie! A cool sounding position title!".

I won't go into more details until Jac releases the rest of the proposal tomorrow, but... lets just say flexible roles and the ability to have as little or as many managers as we need is far more desirable in my view. New game comes along? Cool. Hand it to the Gaming Guy, or else create a new Gaming Guy #2 to handle it if Gaming Guy #1 is already too busy.

Can't do that with OLs though, OLs you've got three, no matter whether they're underworked or overworked. And, as many AWOL OHCs have proven in the past, they've often been underworked, and, as the present OLs have proven over the past year or so, are now overworked. Back in the day when the OHC just had to deal with JA and the SHW XWA it was a piece of cake. These days though, with so many different games and activities flying around, and no one person really being able to manage the whole lot we're in need of something much more flexible and dynamic.

Taking my earlier example, come next month when Empire at War is released I'll be much happier to see a scenario where we go:

(a) Empire at War released.
(b) Gaming Guy: Cool! My job!
(c) Competition released.

Than a scenario of:

(a) Empire at War released.
(b) OHC and SHW: so which one of us is gonna do it?
(c) OHC: fine, I'll do it.
(d) Member: so EaW is Obelisk? transfers Obelisk
(e) SHW: THERE ARE NO ORDER PLATFORMS!!!!!

Goat, you mean as opposed to:

(a) BF2 Release date comes near
(b) Jac: "Korras, do something"
(c) Korras releases cool competition to take place 3 days after game (theoretically) hits stores, information is up even a week prior to release.
(d) Members: "Store gets it next week", "$ how many, can't afford before Xmas", "My GFX card doesn't support it", "The game has bugs", "Doesn't run under my version of Windows", "*&$§% Connection Lost"...
(e) Competition ends with about 5 members having played.
(f) It takes ages until a company is found that would run a stable, affordable and actually AVAILABLE server for BF2.

Bottom line: It's not always the fault of the DC but sometimes the best efforts are undercut by the desire of the games manufacturers to get the best features and performance over criteria like price, sufficient distribution in stores and stability.
This however doesn't change the wisdom of Jac's changes - just defending Korras and Jac against any ideas they might not have done their job on the BF2 release.

Hehe, I know Kaiann, thats actually why I picked EaW as the example :P

BF2 possibly wasn't as bad as other games as it was actually quite a multi-order friendly game (ground stuff, space stuff, etc). RC might be a better example, where, even to do the day, lots of people just see it as the OHC's responsibility, simply because its a FPS, so apparently should be the OHCs job as its "Obelisk".

This doesn't always manifest in existing OLs that much, because they absorb new things as they come, and manage fine. The biggest problem is when you get a change of OL, I think this point was addressed by Jac in the proposal, as new DC members rarely talk with their predecessor, so only end up doing what they think about doing, and quite often a lot of stuff gets lost in the process. Priorities change from person to person basically, which in such loosely defined roles as the OLs poses problems.

If Korras retired today for example, and we needed a new OHC tomorrow, the new one might not care about BF2 or RC, and might expect the SHW to handle those. This is the big danger with unclear position descriptions.

A good example actually is the difference in approach between me and BF as SHW, as we were both VERY different. I was probably more traditional to be honest, as I mostly just stuck to flight sim stuff, whereas BF has branched out a lot more, doing more with things like Allegiance. True a lot of this isn't due to each of us personally but the atmosphere at the time, but its a good example of how exactly what an OL does depends greatly on who the OL is, which sometimes might mean some people end up feeling left out because a particular person doesn't think so much about the things they prefer.

Looking at it in reverse, I didn't make anywhere near as big a deal about Allegiance as I could have, which the Allegiance players probably didn't like. Its very easy for OLs to end up focusing on one thing they care about more, and forget about another group. That's something that can't happen under more clearly defined positions, but, similarly, its hard to have clearly defined positions without going back to Order Platforms, which have all kinds of problems of their own.