Hello, all! It's been a while since I published a formal report, so I figured I'd roll a few policy announcements in with some talk about Discord.

A Little Discord

First, as you all know by now, we've officially relocated from Telegram to Discord. As part of the the transition, I've updated our Chat Policies to reflect the new Discord chats. The rules are largely unchanged from Telegram, and if you can only remember one rule, remember Rule #1: Be respectful of your fellow chat participants. If someone tells you to stop or to avoid a topic, be aware and willing to talk about it on the side (DM).

Next, I want to highlight one of the cool things we can do on Discord: event-specific categories. For the recently ended Pro Bowl event, which involved two teams (the Rotworms and the Frog-Dogs) drawn from Plagueis, CSP, CNS, and Vizsla, we created a Pro Bowl category on Discord, with a private chat for each team as well as a dedicated admin chat for the Consuls running the event:

This is somewhat similar to the four sub-faction chats we created on Telegram during the RoS, except that now with Discord we can more easily create and organize such chats and we can create team-specific roles to make adding people to the correct chats quick and easy (no more having to invite people with links!). Discord also now allows us to add icons to roles, which you've probably noticed: every member of a clan has their clan logo next to their name, and every DCer has the DB logo. For the Pro Bowl, thanks to Slags we were able to give the members of the two teams their own custom icons:

This was a trial run for how to handle large, one-off events on Discord. Going forward, I encourage clans to think about how they might leverage features on Discord to add some flavor to large events they're planning. If you have an idea or questions, please reach out to me!

Clan and House Policies

Finally, I have just published an update to the Clan and House Policies. The primary change reflects how we have been treating requests from Clans to open new houses this year: we no longer require a minimum number of members before a Clan can request a second house. All Clans are now permitted (and encouraged) to have two houses, as long as they can staff at least a Quaestor for each House in addition to CON and PCON. AED and RM are officially optional positions and do not require GM/DGM approval to leave unfilled.

The other major change is the deletion of the six-month Clan Probationary period that, under the old policy, would result in disbanding of houses based on membership and activity levels. From now on, we will evaluate Clans on a case-by-case basis without fixed thresholds to trigger increased scrutiny or mandatory closures. I want to make it clear to everyone that no Clan or house will be closed just because it is going through a slump in membership or activity numbers; any closure will only be the result of sustained, irreversible decline, and only after significant efforts are made to work with Clan leaders to turn things around. No Clans are currently at risk of closure.

Fin

And that’s it! There have been several big announcements from the DC recently (casual gaming, a new SWTOR Tribune, the end of grandfathered species, etc.), with more to come in the near future. Keep an eye on upcoming reports!

If you ever have any questions or concerns about the club or just want to chat, my door is always open. You can find me on Discord or shoot me an email.

Bubba

Prophet Dacien Victae
Deputy Grand Master