Oh my Force! Oh my Force! Oh my Force!

This month is December and in December The Force Awakens will release into theaters. Less than two weeks away!

That could be my entire report, but there are also tidbits about competition management, organizer rules, and golden recommendation updates.

THE FORCE AWAKENS!!!!!!!!

A Golden Competition

Tinkering with the Gears

James assisted in adding sweet improvements to competitions. First, there is a “Container Competition” type that can be used for parent competitions that may or may not give awards. These container competitions may or may not display a leaderboard; that feature can be toggled by the MAA staff per request.

The DJB Episode VII Celebration! competition is a container type, as an example.

Additionally, the competition page now has featured competitions that stick to the top no matter which options are selected. This is toggled by the MAA staff and will be used for DJB-wide DC-level events like, as you see, the December event.

I also did one thing: “Other” as an award category is now “None/Other” to cover parent competitions only used as containers.

New Rules

On the co-organizer front we have decided to crack down more. Easy to grade competitions like flash games may only have a single co-organizer. Automatically graded competitions like CF based gaming ones may have no co-organizers unless the main organizer is the student of a master, who may be a co-organizer.

People can email Howie and I to request exceptions (like a CON/PCON co-organizing a clan event), but generally this is how we will approve/remand.

Finally, we are making a change to the ability of organizers and co-organizers to place in their own competitions: they now cannot. Organizers and co-organizers cannot place in their own competitions. After much consultation, we needed to land on one side of the fence. Removing placement from organizers is the safer and fairer route. Organizers can participate for credit, but crescents go to other participants.

November marks the final month for Golden Recommendations as a competition. I have found searching through an entire month for one or two recommendations to award crescents for is too much. There may be four good merit medals and the competition requires somewhat arbitrarily selecting one.

At the same time, I want to continue highlighting good requests and recommendations. Specifically, I want to hear from leaders and members about specific types of requests they want examples are. Are you unclear what makes a good Journeyman merit medal? There’s already an example of that. What about a “minimum TiG” Equite promotion? Fair question; we will keep our eyes out.

Always and forever, email my staff and I with questions. We will highlight good recommendations and requests as they cross our desks. Congratulations to those who snagged easy crescents; let’s take a look at our final round up of winners.

August Example Recommendations

Straight Shooter Dark Cross

For stepping up and voluntarily combing through raw data in order to compile an accurate list of the native languages of all approved Dark Brotherhood species. This list was necessary for a new feature I wanted to implement, and Turel provided it all in less than two hours after I mentioned I would need it.

Sometimes a member performs a specific task that warrants immediate recognition, particularly small pieces of a larger project. James awarded Turel a Dark Cross for one such task. He outlines the task, gives a brief “he did it in two hours” note, and leaves it there.

Merits for Clan Events

Octavia was a huge part of House Ajunta Pall’s activity during the recent Restoration: Ascendant event. She submitted to nine of the total eleven events over the course of the competition and was a contributor to the first place battleplan entry. The 83 total points she achieved during the Ascedant feud were major contributions to the House’s victory. Outside of the feud, she participated in an additional two competitions to bring her total over the course of the competition period to eleven. Her continued presence, zealous nature to succeed, and remarkable activity level during Restoration: Ascendant show her to be very deserving of this award.

Major clan events and DJB vendettas are perfect moments to recognize activity. Clan Plagueis recently concluded a major event and awarded several merit medals based on the number of events participated in. Slagar highlights Octavia’s event work before making a note about her overall successes as a member to seal the deal.

September Example Recommendations

Glorious Sacramental

Sacramentals can be awarded for general activity/leadership and specific projects. In this case, Evant wrote the primary recommendation for Wally’s post-CS 2.0 Amethyst Kukri. A deserved award for a massive project, Evant walks us through the lengthy development process and highlights how Wally managed the beast start to finish. While everyone knew about CS 2.0, Evant’s write-up details specific hurdles Wally worked to overcome. The supplemental recommendations, some from project staffers, help round things out, but Evant’s provides the core information for everything else.

Promotheus is only Half the Battle

Sparky has completed the trials to advance to the next stage of his DJB career. As a strong and active member, he has more than earned this advancement. He has co-organized 3 competitions, earned 40 Clusters of Fire, been active both on IRC and on Telegram, participated in 11 competitions, ranging from House to Clan to DJB-Wide level, passed both Leadership Reports and Competitions and finished an over 1000 word fiction. This is all fantastic work Sparky, and welcome to the rank of Lieutenant! Drinks are on you!

While a promotion is warranted once you see a member’s Promotheus hit 100%, a bad recommendation will still result in a remand. Xen wrote a straight forward Journeymen request that sums up the activity and skimps on fluff.

October Example Recommendations

Leadership Round Up

When reviewing requests seen in October, this was an easy winner. Between 10 October and 15 October, Xen and Eetherbiail, CON/PCON of CSP, submitted fifteen merit medals for members throughout their clan. All were general activity medals, most in the Dark Cross to Anteian Cross range, that highlight the responsibility of leaders to, at intervals they determine, simply review your roster and see who hasn’t been recognized lately.

We’ve seen too much “building up activity” in recent months that results in a member suddenly being eligible for a promotion and missing out on that Steel Cross three months ago. There’s no need to give someone an AC every four months, but if a member does not have a Steel Cross, that’s a good next step goal for you as their leader.

We love seeing ten merit medals hit our desk at the same time. That’s good leadership and members love it.

Scheduled: Knighting on the 8th

Like clockwork, the second the ‘time in rank’ requirement ticked over the threshold Teikhos was once again immediately ready to be promoted. For anyone who has been following the promotion’s that Teikhos has received, you will already know what a fine member of House Satele Shan and Clan Odan-Urr he is, But this is a very special promotion and as such I will take the time to say it all again - Teikhos is one of our most active and friendly members, he started his journey in the Brotherhood as a Shadow Academy Whizz, completing Course after course and garnering himself a lot of attention for the sheer amount he was doing, after a short while he spread his wings a bit and displayed his talents in fiction writing, having written Character Fictions and participated in a few Fiction competitions as well (and many other competitions.) He joined our Telegram chat and rapidly became a well liked and outgoing member of our House and has become friends with everyone and anyone who talks with him. As a Leader I can say that I am more than happy to put Teikhos up for his promotion to Jedi Knight and that I can’t wait to see what he get’s up too after jumping this hurdle!

As far as requirements for his promotion goes, Teikhos has fulfilled a decent variety of them; Teikhos has received more than 2 Major competitions awards (He has achieved 6 Crescents, 1 Ruby, 2 Amethyst and 3 Sapphire) and participated in 23 total competitions, as well as being an active participating member he has also co-organized two competitions (DJB Duels and Star Citizen PVP), By being an extremely active gamer Teikhos has more than doubled the 150 Cluster Requirement and currently sits on 362 Clusters with which he has also achieved Rank 4 in the Grand Masters Royal Guard Society. Furthermore, Teikhos has shown his fiction writing talent and has written more than 3000 words of Character fiction which I (Mar Sûl, House Satele Shan Quaestor) have reviewed and approved; Finally, Teikhos’ penchant for the Shadow Academy has already been mentioned countless times throughout his time in the Brotherhood, he currently has four degrees to his name (Dark Maven - Galactic History, Dark Maven - Lore, Dark Maven - Web Design and a Dark Savant - History and Lore) and is a Rank 7 member of the Shadow Academy Society.

The step-up to Knight is no small one but for someone like Teikhos it’s a step that should be taken with pride; After joining the Brotherhood he managed to come in and find fun in almost all activities that the Brotherhood has to offer and in doing so has made many friends, myself included, at the end of it all I can simply say that Teikhos is a shining example of what a member should be looking for when they join up, fun and friendship. With that, I have nothing else to say to you Teikhos except well done, you truly have been an exceptional member and I hope you will continue to be one - Congratulations, Jedi Knight Teikhos Seleukides!

While the final Promotheus step, Knighthood, is given a 100% check, DJB tradition dictates the event be more memorable than one paragraph of “he’s earned it.” Here, Mar Sûl discusses Teikhos first as a member, then outlines the activity, then sums it up with “reaching this step is no small thing” words of acknowledgement. The write-up is not too short, not too long, the facts are easy to find, and there’s room for less objective notes on the member’s personality and charisma.

November Example Recommendation

That Final Step into Equitehood

I’ve highlighted examples of EQ1/2/3, so I close out this series with an example of EQ4, supplied by Cethgus for Sang. Sang’s activity and leadership leading up to EQ4 is spread out time-wise, if anything due to TiG requirements, so Cethgus takes us through it all in chronological fashion. He highlights specific projects, specific leadership positions. There’s a lot of detail in the lengthy recommendation, but achieving EQ4 is a major accomplishment that highlights a major amount of work done to earn it.

I currently have tickets to see Star Wars on Saturday…Sunday…and Monday. All with different groups of friends and family, so I only feel partially weird. All the same, I am beyond excited. I’m playing tons of Battlefront. I recently bought the TPB of Shattered Empire. This month is going to be awesome.

I know next month and the month after and the next will be awesome for the Dark Jedi Brotherhood. We will have a better sense of where this great galaxy is going and can start figuring out how we fit in it.

Who knows…maybe an entirely new DJB universe warrants entirely new expectations for medals and promotions. Only time will tell.

The Numbers Game: November

• Promotions Approved: 77
• Medals Approved: 54
• Medals Remanded: 14
• Competitions Approved: 132
• Competitions Remanded: 42
• Name Changes: 16
• Unit/Path/Order/Tradition Changes: 73
• AWOL to Rogues: 46

TL;DR

• Container competitions, featured competitions, and toggled leaderboards
• Organizers cannot place in their own competitions
• Let me know what sort of requests you would like examples of
• Congratulations to the Golden Recommendation highlights from the past seven months

MAA Resources

• MAA Wiki Category
• Promotion Guidelines
• Golden Recommendations
• Medal Statistics
• Rank Statistics
• Leadership Rewards SA Course
• Leadership Competitions SA Course
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