Greetings all,

With the release of the Discord Finale Fiction, we are putting a close to Great Jedi War XIII! But before we completely move on to new things, we wanted to also release our Great Jedi War feedback survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T55YHRR). We are looking for candid feedback on the War from members across the club. There should be ample space to offer your thoughts beyond the pre-formed questions we are specifically interested in feedback for. But I also wanted to touch on a few thoughts from the War on our end below, to clarify some of our design decisions, and address some pain points we observed.

On The War Plot

For the last few Wars, many members had expressed a desire for a "smaller scale" conflict to the War, wherein the Dark Council did not simply write in all of a Clan's fleet assets arriving at a single system to battle a foe, and an event that would enable alternatives to massive death dealing. So we took a different approach here, and attempted to make this more flexible for Clans in terms of how they would engage with the story, and for members in terms of what type of activities their characters would fictionally be engaged in. This had some successes, but we also understand that for many members, the GJW has a special meaning in terms of the scale of the fictional conflict, and so future Wars will take that into account when we decide on plot direction and scale.

Why We Went with a Clan Run-On and Co-Op Fiction

For a long time, run-ons at the Clan level were quite different from the small-team collaborative fiction / run-ons run at the Vendetta level. Several Consuls before the War voiced a desire to try a Clan-wide Run On, with specific rubrics/rules that were more lenient towards mistakes and the like. Our goal with this adjustment was to find a happy middle ground, in which organized teams could form (in the Co-Op Fiction), but where the Clan as a whole could explore the War story, potentially engaging (writing with) Clan members they hadn't had the opportunity to before. The resulting Clan Run-Ons were exceptional and enjoyable to read. In many cases, their "imperfections" made them more fun. Meanwhile, the Co-Op fiction allowed organized, small teams of members to really shine, and we had some excellent entries. So we are happy with both options overall, but we do want to hear from you on them.

On Gaming

We understand the immense frustration caused by numerous gaming competitions. I encourage members to voice specific feedback in the survey, but we will do our best to learn from this event for future Vendettas and avoid many of the issues that appeared in the War. Previously, Gaming competitions were some of the only competitions in the entire War with a single grader; due to the stress involved in the War in terms of scoring and handling submissions alone, we'll make sure there is another set of eyes on all competitions, including Gaming competitions, in the future.

On the Timing of the War

We did not ask a question about this specifically, but we deliberately held the War during the summer because this is normally a down point in Brotherhood activity, and we had started to get into a routine of having Wars in the fall, which prohibits another event in the Spring. So this was a deliberate choice, and one we know meant that some members/leaders had less time than they would have liked. I do want to stress that we do not plan on always holding Great Jedi Wars during the summer, but we do feel one role of the Dark Council is to provide members activities at various times of year, and so we may hold some events in the summer in the future again.

And with that, the end of Great Jedi War XIII: Discord.

With the final War fiction from our Voice released, we are putting the War behind us, but we will take your feedback - and our own internal notes - and learn from this event to make future Vendettas better. In the coming weeks, we will open two Dark Council positions to applications (position requirements and our ideas for the next Voice will be detailed tomorrow, and applications opened then) and start to describe some of our long-term plans for the club. We do not have another event / Vendetta with "meta" scoring at a Clan level scheduled until the Spring at earliest, but we will hold fun competitions for major Star Wars releases (I'm looking at you, Mandalorian and Rise of Skywalker). You will hear from us again soon!

Thank you all for an excellent War, and please don't forget to give us plenty of feedback!

Telaris "Mav" Cantor

Grand Master