/officerchat

(I’d like to start this out by apologizing for my silence. I’m in the middle of studying for a GRE subject test, so mostly I spend my days breathing into a paper bag. Once my tests are over, I should pick myself back up.)

Being tough is one of the best skills you can possibly learn as a GM and an officer. Some of my worst decisions came from my inability to say no. Check this for bad judgment.

-Allowing a player who stole from my guild bank back into the guild four times. To be fair, this was the preteen brother of one of the founding officers. I didn’t even throw him out after he cleaned the bank because his father, who is also a beloved member, grounded him. That’s got to suck enough, being grounded for your behavior on the internet. He rage quit a lot, after screaming that he hated us and I finally said no more. This took over two months. It was before I grew a spine.

-Allowing a player to blow up a drama bomb rather than just throw her out. This included her going absolutely ballistic in another guild’s vent. One my officers had benched her for no-showing six weeks of raids and she lost her mind.

Sometimes, you have to be a jerk.

I repeatedly have an issue where I have twelve people who signed up for raid and only ten spots. Now I have to pick my team and that means I have to be a jerk to two people. Sometimes I counter it by being funny, by asking all hatemail to be sent to my alt, because my main’s mailbox is getting full.

Generally, however, I have to be exceptionally transparent in my reasoning. If I bench a member who has issues with remaining connected for a run that is timed, I tell them that. If I bench a member because I have too many of their class already and they were the last to sign up, I tell them that. If I bench a member because their performance is just not going to work out, I tell them that.

It’s hard, sometimes, to tell someone no. Clearly we want people to be happy and to progress or we wouldn’t have taken on leadership. Sometimes it can be even harder to offer that critique to a player and it seems infinitely kinder to remain silent.

It’s not.

You also have to learn to cover your own behind. If you are absolutely transparent in your intentions and your motives, no one is going to accuse you of staffing raids via nepotism or just pulling compositions out of the air.

You also have to know when someone isn’t a good fit for your guild. Are you a PvE guild and there’s one guy who misses every raid because they are doing endless battlegrounds? A social guild and someone talks incessantly about raiding four nights a week and BiS gear? A leveling guild with a single lone 80 asking a sea of level 50s if anyone is up for a heroic?

Sometimes you have to step up to someone and say, “I’m sorry, but you’re not for us, and good luck finding a new home.” Unless you want to radically restructure your guild every last time a member wants to take it in a new direction, you have to learn when to stand up and say, “This is my house.” Yes, you want to do it with some degree of tenderness, but it still has to be done.

It doesn’t always mean you don’t have a headache. I have an ex-member (a Not A Good Fit) who is on ignore on all of my toons and my private yahoo IM because he would not. stop. yelling. at me. He still doesn’t stop and God help me if I pug into a VoA with him there. Still, because my guild actions and transparency, it hasn’t hurt our rep. And another member who was Not A Good Fit is still one of my absolute dearest friends, chats with me, gets me for runs specifically because I told her, “It’s not personal, but this isn’t going to work.”

Besides…  it might feel really good to get rid of that one kid who’s driving everyone up a wall.

Tough decisions that you’ve endured-  Go!