The policy page outlines general guidelines and rules for the Clans and Houses of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood.
Clan and House Guidelines
General Clan Policies
- All Clans have a Consul and a Proconsul.
- Clans may grant a single Clan Name to members at their discretion. These may also be found on the Clan Title Census
- New Clan Names for a unit (that is, an entirely new name) must be approved by the MAA/DGM/GM. This does NOT refer to members being given the name, but entirely new names.
- Clans may have up to three Battleteams, plus an additional one per House. Battleteams may be aligned to the House level, or to the Clan level.
- Clan Titles and slots in the Round Robin Join Rotation are based on Clan status and are never decreased by probationary status of a Clan in regards to House number/total membership in the Clan as mentioned below.
Quarterly Fictional Clan Updates
Every quarter starting from January 1st of each calendar year will come with the release of a PulseFeed News Aggregator. This is a collection of fictional updates in the style of news broadcasts spanning up to two paragraphs. It is expected that each Consul provides an update to the Dark Council and they will be compiled (in alphabetical Clan order) alongside a general Dark Brotherhood fictional update in the same style.
Expected release dates for the Aggregator are:
- January 1
- April 1
- July 1
- October 1
Additional Houses
- Any House added to a Clan will have at least a Quaestor. The Clan in question may choose not to utilize the Aedile position, and especially for small Clans, this is encouraged.
- Clans may apply for houses to the GM, DGM, and MAA if they feel the activity is sufficient, and if membership totals are such that the additional leadership slot from the Quaestor position will be useful.
- House applications must include the name of the House, potential leadership of the House (at least the Quaestor), and how the House will improve membership experience in the Clan.
- All Clans are heavily encouraged to have at least one house.
- Clans with fifty or more members are heavily encouraged to have two houses.
- All Clans may have up to two houses. Applications for a third house are permitted but will be carefully scrutinized.
- In addition to raw membership numbers, The Grand Master or Deputy Grand Master will use participation-based metrics to assess whether to accept applications for a House. These metrics will include, but are not limited to, number of unit-level competitions members are participating in, Vendetta participation, activity outside of competitions (e.g. Clusters of Fire and Ice), and Brotherhood-wide competition participation outside of Vendettas.
New Member Designations
Currently, Clans receive new members evenly on a rotating basis. Clans will receive the same number of recruits regardless of the number of Houses they have. For example, if a Clan has two Houses, they will receive the same number of new members as a Clan without a House during a single pass of the round-robin system.
Formation of New Clans
In order to allow members to propose new and/or innovative ideas that strengthen the Brotherhood as a whole, we are adopting a policy on the proposing of new Clans. This policy follows a two step process: The first is a pre-proposal, and the second is a full proposal. If the proposal is accepted, the unit enters a probationary period of two months, after which the Dark Council evaluates the Clan once more.
Pre-proposals
The pre-proposal is a document worked on by a single or very small number of individuals. This pre-proposal will go to the GM and the DGM, and assuming a basic level of feasibility, the idea behind the pre-proposal will be socialized with the Star Chamber, Dark Council, and Consuls, as necessary to gauge the opinions of our wider leadership body on the value that the unit poses to the club and how it would impact our existing units.
The GM will then make a final decision on if the pre-proposal will be approved, based on feedback gathered from these leadership bodies. The two-step process here is to provide a clear indication to everyone involved at various levels of our club that the proposal has some chance of succeeding. A pre-proposal moving ahead is by no means a guarantee of success, but it does help us prevent members from wasting their time on ideas we think are already sufficiently covered by clans. Following approval, the submitter can move on to a full proposal. That is to say that the initial pre-proposal **should not** be widely shared and must not involve recruiting individuals to work on the project. In fact, from this point forward, authors of a pre-proposal that 'recruit' others to their cause prior to the approval of a pre-proposal will have their pre-proposal rejected. For those that have previously established groups interested in proposing Clans, we obviously are understanding that this process is new.
A pre-proposal should:
- Propose a name for the unit.
- Be written by a single individual, who will be considered as the leader of the proposal and the likely Consul. Contact the GM if you are working on a proposal but do not intend to lead the unit in question. Extremely small groups (e.g. no more than 3) will not be outright rejected, but any additional 'recruitment' of a team will cause the proposal to be rejected from here on out.
- Describe the unique fictional aspect of the unit proposal, and how it fills an existing gap in our current unit offerings. It is not designed to explain a detailed, fictional background, but the uniqueness of the unit. It is not meant to discuss fictional assets, provide any information on future members, leaders, or organizational plans save for where they illustrate the uniqueness of the unit.
- Be no more than a page and a half, depending on formatting, in a word document (~500ish words max plus formatting and the like).
Full Proposal
Following approval, the submitter of the pre-proposal may gather a team to work on the full proposal. The proposal can be circulated widely, and while direct recruiting is discouraged, the submitter can discuss their proposal on Discourse and the like such that they can find interested parties. Full proposals will provide a comprehensive outline for how the unit will function in our Brotherhood for the future. Part of the full proposal is a list of individuals interested in joining the proposed Clan. Any clanned members must talk to their unit leadership about their plans.
Full proposals should be completed two weeks following accepting of the pre-proposal (extensions may be granted for various circumstances; contact the GM, and must provide:
- A description of what the unit brings that is unique to the Brotherhood, and addressing any concerns laid out in the approval of said pre-proposal.
- The fictional background of the unit, including how it is related to the rest of the club, initial fictional assets (systems and any major personnel as well as fictional structures named, but not necessarily defined in complete detail), and how the proposed members are related to those structures (as an example, CSP as its own Empire with a Consul-Emperor). The full proposal must follow what was in the pre-proposal.
- Relevant paths that fit the unit.
- Initial leadership team, sub-units (Battleteams), and proposals for how the unit will cultivate future leaders within-Clan.
- The set of members that will be joining the unit, with at minimum 20 individuals, which should not appear to be drawn too heavily from any existing unit and whose membership should make clear that this is drawing on an unfilled niche. Proposed members will be transferred to the new unit if it is approved. **Members currently clanned will need to talk to their summits about their decision to support a proposal.**
- Detailed plans for events / major competitions for the first year of the unit.
Evaluating Full Proposals
Full proposals will once again be socialized with relevant leadership bodies. Proposals will be evaluated based on the unique contributions the unit makes to the Brotherhood, the proposing leadership team and membership body, and the overall plan for the unit in its first year. The Grand Master will make a final decision on the full proposal, which could include a request to resubmit the proposal based on feedback.
Probationary Period For New Clans
Newly formed Clans will be announced on the main page and formed on the website. The new Clan then enters a two month probationary period for evaluation of the new unit and its concept in action. During this two month period, the unit will receive a normal allotment of random joins and can receive transfers from the Rogues, but 48 hours after the initial announcement, the new unit will be barred from receiving transfers from other Clans. This probationary period is intended to allow the new Clan to further develop its identity and to demonstrate that the associated leadership team and membership base are committed to the unit and concept it brings by putting into place the action plan it had described in the full proposal. For purposes of the Covenant, the Consul of the new unit will serve as any other Consul on the Electorate. At the close of this two month probationary period, the unit will evaluated based on a number of criteria including, but not limited to, the following:
- Assignment of leaders and members to appropriate battleteams/subunits.
- Development and deployment of fictional assets and descriptions to the website, including purchasing of possessions and creation of Wiki articles.
- Level of activity in the unit maintaining what is typical across the Brotherhood.
- Demonstrated ability to engage and retain members, both old and new.
- Engagement and activity of the leadership team, relevant to their roles, e.g. the Consul and Proconsul participating in discussions among Clan summits and the Dark Council, and a visible leadership presence on Discord and email lists.