It's been a long road

This is my final Grand Master report, and possibly my last leadership report in this club (but who knows?) I won't bore with you a long discussion of all of the things I've done as GM, but I do want to take a brief stroll down memory lane. Muz appointed me Headmaster in April 2014, and I held that job through the Dark Crusade epilogue (Fading Light) and GJW XI. I stuck around long enough to vote for Sarin's nomination to his second term as GM before deciding the time was right to step aside and take a break, much like I'm doing now.

This club has undergone many changes, large and small, since my appointment as Headmaster. Among them, in no particular order: We left IRC for Telegram and then we left Telegram for Discord. We created the Cluster of Earth to reward PvE gaming with other DB members and then we deprecated it and rolled it back into the Cluster of Fire. We launched the Inquisitorious, the Shroud Society, the leaderboard-based GMRG, and then the battlepass-based GMRG (breaking news!). We created the honorifics system, started the process of splitting dossiers from characters, and created custom disciplines. We launched a new logo! We recognized and encouraged RP as a DB activity and created a society for it, and we completely revamped the ACC society and grading system. We killed off Rollmaster and like three different versions of the Recruitment Tribune. Launched the possessions system and completely changed how we award activity with XP. Abolished our old Orders and added NFUs (and more recently Nightsister powers). We split HM in half and created EMS. We ran six GJWs, two RoSes, and now a year-long Season. We closed Tarentum and opened Vizsla. We celebrated an incredible 30 years as a club and lost a great friend and leader.

Projects Bubba wanted to see through but shrug

GMRG Battlepass
And as always, there are more changes to come. As I noted a year ago when hiring Turel's replacement as Fist, Turel developed a great plan to change the GMRG from its old leaderboard/DC accessory system to a points-based battlepass system. Well Donny (with help from his staff and Turel) has run with that idea and you'll all get to enjoy it this year. Here's a little sample. Expect a launch announcement from Donny soon:

Website Changes
As Erin has been noting repeatedly, there are more website updates on the way. The major feedback to the beta so far has been that it all looks a bit too samey and bland, so Vyr and Erin have been hard at work to make it prettier and add images. I won't share any images of it now--I'll leave that to them and James--but I think you'll all be happy with the changes they're working on. Vyr also has some exciting longer-term plans for redesigning the website layout, which I expect we'll all hear about eventually.

The Big Comp and Crescent Revamp
Finally, though certainly not the only other project in the works, I think this one is the most important. Earlier this year, when we were considering changes to cluster and crescent XP to reduce puzzle and other low-effort spam comps, I asked Arch for his thoughts on the matter. He responded a few weeks later with a 17 page proposal to fix--and I quote--"What Sucks About XP". The Council and Consuls have all since had an opportunity to weigh in on the proposal, and pending James-time, it will likely roll out in 2026.

The gist of the plan is to shift away from a competition system based on the organizer and target unit to a system based on whether the activity is DB-centered and whether it is collaborative or solo. Under the proposed system, competitions will fall into the following categories:

• Tier 1: Promoted Activity
  Activities intentionally promoted to the highest level by club leadership regardless of what tier the activity would normally be. This allows us to steer attention towards certain activities by significantly boosting the value of participation, organization, and placement. Unlike First-Level Crescents, T1 activity does not need to be organized by a Council member. It should also not be automatically applied to anything run by Council members or staff.

• Tier 2: Collaborative, Brotherhood-centered Activity
  Collaborative means that members have to directly interact with each other in the course of participation. Brotherhood-centered means that the activity must center around the club’s setting and/or systems, including but not limited to the CS System, Possessions, Factions, and Supported Gaming Platforms.

• Tier 3: Solo, Brotherhood-centered Activity
  T3 activity is Brotherhood-centered but does not require members to directly engage with each other.

• Tier 4: Other Collaborative Activity
  T4 activity requires members to directly interact but isn’t centered on the Brotherhood. Aside from trivia, this is relatively rare.

• Tier 5: Other Solo Activity
  T5 activity is anything that counts as activity but doesn’t involve member interaction or the club setting or systems. In other words, it’s stuff members don’t need the club to do.

Additionally, crescents will change in line with two principles: higher-tier competitions award better crescents than lower-tier comps, and beating a lot of people gets you better crescents than beating a few people. Under the new system, Crescents will be awarded solely based on the number of participants, and will not have fixed XP values but will be valued proportional to the value of competition participation. For example, a Cr-T is worth 100% of the competition’s participation value. For a T5 competition, this is 15 XP. For a T1 competition, it’s 55 XP (exact numbers subject to change).

What is the effect of all of this? For most members, we don't think the changes will be significant. We are aiming to nudge activity towards our traditional pillars and away from low-effort, DB-agnostic solo comps, not to materially rebalance the XP system. The revamp is guaranteed to change behavior to some extent, and based on recent numbers we expect overall XP awarded to be somewhat lower, mainly because low effort solo comps (like puzzles) will be worth less. Based on the first half of 2025:

• 91 (33%) members would have earned more XP under this system than they did in the real H1 2025
• 26 (9%) would see no change
• 158 (57%) would have earned less

For a very small number of members, this was a big nerf:

• The greatest change was -10327.5 XP, nearly an Amethyst Kukri (11533)
  
• 8 members (3%) had a reduction of at least a Sapphire Blade (5125)
  
• 15 members (5%) had a reduction of at least a Grand Cross (2278)
  
• The greatest positive change was a relatively small 972.5 XP over six months
  

That said, the XP reductions for most members are very low and could easily be overcome by running or participating in higher tier comps under the new system. The purpose is not to penalize members or add an arbitrary amount of time to accumulate enough XP for a specific medal or promotion. However, because the current XP system heavily rewards doing large numbers of competitions regardless of the content, members who understand the incentives have accumulated massive amounts of XP very quickly. The kinds of competitions these members run and enter at scale are de facto receiving a significant nerf, which will dramatically decrease how much XP those members get going forward.

And to be clear, all of these proposed changes are prospective only. No changes will be made to competitions already participated in, crescents already earned, or XP already in the bank.

This is one project I had really hoped to get out the door before I resigned, but life happens. Look to hear more from Atra and his team about this in the future, and keep in mind that there may well be changes to the plan along the way, especially once James start his work.

A New Sith Lord

Last but certainly not least, in addition to the Diamond Sword I awarded Atra this morning (go, read it and congratulate him), I have granted the title of Sith Lord one last time. Here's the recommendation in full:

Arch is constitutionally incapable of not doing DB work. Thankfully, he's a model leader: open, reliable, levelheaded, always willing to do "extracurricular" work when he sees a need, truly dedicated to improving the club and the member experience, and--most importantly--exceptionally good at what he does. So, what has he actually accomplished?

As COUCon, he maintained and built upon the momentum that Turel sparked in the clan. As our first Exarch (a position created for him), he laid the groundwork for recognizing RP as a distinct activity. As HM (the first time), he cleaned up the SA and began the ongoing transition from the old school essay-style courses on esoteric topics to the more streamlined, largely autograded, and practical SA we enjoy today--and then he helped me chop HM up into bits and reassemble it as HM and EMS.

When he stepped down from HM, he didn't go far. I appointed him P:GM and put him to work on spreadsheets and super secret projects that involved spreadsheets. A few months later, his successor as HM had to step down for personal reasons, and Arch was ready and willing to step back in, right the ship, and pave the way for another orderly transition (to Turel because time is a flat circle). Also he was Combat Master at some point.

For my entire term as Grand Master, and to a lesser extent before that, Arch has been my most trusted, most reliable, and most pedantic advisor. He's finishing up work on a project that will redefine how we run competitions in the DB, and I won't be around to give him the extremely sharp medal he deserves for that. So in what's likely to be my final official act as Grand Master, I am granting him the title of Sith Lord. Few have done as much as Arch to earn it.

End of an era

Today is not my last day as GM. The Electorate is doing its thing and, pending Star Chamber approval, Atra's election is on track to be confirmed by the end of next week. I'll keep GMing through that, but this is my last report and Atra's DS and Arch's Sith Lord title are probably my last official acts as GM. You'll be in good hands with Atra and whoever he surrounds himself with. As for me, I'm looking forward to a break. I don't plan to vanish but I look forward to enjoying the DB at a slower pace as a member.

It's been a wild ride and I'd like to thank you all one last time for letting me drive the last couple of years.