By: X Priest42 X

I. Introduction

A. Introduction

I have been a RuneScape member since early 2003, and lead my first clan in 2004. I don't even remember how I did it as a nonmember without the RuneScape forums and clan chat. I have decided the time has come to pass my experience on to others, so, without further adieu: The clan leader's guide!

B. Table of Contents

I. Introduction

A. Introduction/Welcome/About
B. Table of Contents

II. Starting A Clan

A. What to have before starting
B. Recruitment
C. Diplomacy
D. Wars

III. Members

A. Recruitment
B. Activity

1. Activity Tracking
2. Keeping Members Active
C. Ranks

1. Promotions
2. Limiting Ranks
3. Rank Duties

IV. Operations and Policies

A. Rules
B. Discipline Policies
C. Clan Chat
D. Thread

V. Command

A. Who leads and who follows
B. How to delegate among officers
C. Command Conference

VI. Diplomacy

A. Allies

1. Gaining Allies
2. Maintaining Allies
3. Supporting Allies
B. Enemies

2. Notating Enemies
C. Wars

1. Declaring Wars
2. Preparing For Wars
3. War Conditions
4. Fighting in Wars
VII. Events/Activities

A. When to hold events
B. How to make sure all members can participate
C. How to delegate event leadership

II. Starting A Clan

Perhaps the hardest part of becoming a clan leader, unless you inherit a clan, is starting one. I have yet to find a 100% effective way to start a clan, and usually it’s hit or miss.

A. Before Starting A Clan

Before you start a clan, try to decide how you want the clan to run in the long term, also try to build a list of friends who don’t have a clan, but might be interested in joining one. I recommend having a co leader, and one general already signed on before you open the clan. Perhaps the main thing to do before starting a clan is to decide if you want a level requirement. Oh, and DO NOT under any circumstances forget to create a really bad-ass name!

B. Early Recruitment

When trying to recruit for a new clan, have a few friends join first, and ask them to get more of their friends to join, and try to branch out and get people. Then, once you ave a nice full clan chat, go to a really popular place, on a full world, and recruit. Perhaps most importantly though, is to NEVER recruit at an Activity involving group combat, usually, those people are not committed to join a clan.

C. Early Diplomacy

At first, one very commonly unthought-of of thing is to gain allies. The best way is to investigate clans in which your friends are members, talk to the leader, tell them how you want your clan to work and how you see it in the long term, and ask for their support. If a clan denies ally-ship, do NOT flame them, or insult them in any way, that is how you make enemies.

D. Early War Policies

Until you have a strong ally base, and moderate member count, I recommend politely declining all challenges to clan wars. If you chose not to, be sure to check the other clan’s thread or chat to get an idea of whether or not it will be a fair fight. REMEMBER, there is NO shame in declining an unfair fight.

III. Members

One of the staples of running a clan is being able to manage, recruit, and maintain membership. A clan is worthless with more allies than members.

A. Recruitment

There are many different concepts of good recruiting. I prefer some over others,

My personal favorite method of recruiting is a “Recruitment Parade”. In a “Recruitment Parade”, on leader remains stationary in an area, and handles all applicants, while another leads a train of clan members around RuneScape trying to recruit people.

Another method of recruiting is to create a separate thread in the recruitment section of the RuneScape forums, aside from the clan home thread which will be discussed later in this guide. This isn’t the best way to recruit people, as it is hard to find a good clan based solely on a thread.

The last major method is to find people who seem to be good candidates for membership in the “Looking For a Clan” section of the RuneScape forums, and post a recruitment invite on their thread. Make sure it details why they should choose your clan, the requirements to join, the QFC for both your home and recruitment threads, or if you don’t have both, the one you do have. Also include the name of your clan chat host, and a personal message.

One major trick to recruitment is to not force people to join, and instead too let them join at their own pace, and by their own choice. Do NOT promise a rank, or other things which you didn’t promise to the other members. Also, don’t flame anyone who declines your offer, otherwise, word might travel and cause other people to decline an offer to join as well.

B. Activity

Activity is the best way to determine how committed members are to your clan, and to determine who deserves reward of rank promotion, or other privileges.


1. Tracking Activity

Tracking activity is very tough, I found that assigning certain points to certain activities, or other things that benefit the clan is a very effective way of tracking activity. You can also add a post to the thread, showing how many activity points each person has.

EX: Bumping thread – 10 points; Attending an Event – 50 points; etc. etc.

I think the most useful part off using an activity point system, is to set a minimum activity requirement for gaining a certain rank. More about this can be found in the limiting ranks section.


2. Keeping Members Active

Having incentives for maintaining high activity, and performing member sweeps on a regular basis often help prevent inactive members. To do a member sweep, simply require all members to reply to the forum saying they are active, or contact you (or a leader) in game and tell you they are active, not just “hey...what’s up?”.

C. Ranks

Ranks determine leadership within a clan, and the delegation of duties.


1. Promotions

Rank promotions should not be a random occurrence, you should give clear ways to earn higher rank, and only award higher ranks when these requirements are met. One of the most important things, is to not promote people, regardless of meeting the requirements or not, if there is no space, or they are not a good leader. To find more about not enough space in a rank, see the next section.


2. Limiting Ranks

Limiting ranks is the key to maintaining a balanced clan, only allow a certain number of people in each rank based on the member count, for example, for every 10 members you gain, add 1 general slot, 2 captain slots, and 3 lieutenant slots. The lower three “enlisted” ranks, can have as many of few people as desired, as leadership should rest on the officers.
3. Rank Duties

Some of these references may sound corny, but they do make the point. Those of you associated with Venturing or Scouting may notice some similarities. Part of delegation is to have certain jobs for certain ranks, this primarily rests with the officers, in this section I will discuss ranks, and a rank tree, delegation and specific duty breakdown will be discussed in the section V-B (Delegation Among Officers).

The basic Jagex provided (clan chat) rank system is as follows:

Recruit -> Corporal -> Sergeant -> Lieutenant -> Captain -> General -> Leader

I recommend remaining with this, and of course using the smiley (clan friend) for allies and clan friends, the reasoning is, this is a simple way for members too know their exact rank, the only changes I would make, is specific duties to certain people of a rank (to be discussed in V-B) and adding a co leader position, who would still be ranked general.

IV. Operations and Policies

This is how the basis of the clan is run, and how members are controlled, and the mass amounts of people you help monitor as leader is dealt with.

A. Rules

Rules are what prevent a clan from being in total and constant conflict. There are several basic rules, below, I will outline what they really mean, and the impression they give.


Be Respectful – This could mean anything, try to be specific.
Be respectful to allies, enemies, members, and other RuneScape players alike – This is a better version of the above, if you with to use one or the other, use the this one.

This brings up a good point, make sure your rules are specific, so no member can break them and say “I didn’t understand what was meant, therefore I am not at fault.”


Be Mature – This makes it sound like it is meant to be a good clan for those who are experienced, but this only works if the rule is followed, if you can’t follow it as a leader, don’t make it a rule.


Follow Jagex Rules – This is redundant, and makes it seem like you just threw some rules out and don’t really care. I NEVER recommend this, as it should be a given.


Attend at least # events a week – This pressures members, and makes it hard for some who want to be in a clan, but have no opportunities, or are busy during event times, also, do not EVER kick a person from the chat, or the clan for not attending an event, that is just mean; it’s their account and their game, so let them play it how they want. Encourage them to come, do not goad or force.


No Multi-claning – This is one you REALLY need to be specific, some people like to join other clans for a temporary basis, for things like Soulwars and Pest Control, or even fun Clan Wars. This should be added as an “except clause”.

B. Discipline Policies

It is very important to have a clear discipline policy, this way, any leaders can handle discipline in the same manor as others, so there is no discrepancy in the handling of issues. I recommend not having fines for punishment, as this is considered a violation of the RuneScape rules.

There is a limited amount of ways to penalize rule breaking, and the ones I will outline are on the assumption you have followed the basic outline of this guide thus far.


Loss of activity points, increasing with each offence.
Loss of rank.
Temporary ban from clan/clan chat.
Permanent ban from clan/clan chat.

C. Clan Chat

The clan chat is perhaps the most useful clan resource, it allows mass inter-clan communication, and it is a shame when leaders do not utilize it properly. In order to have and effective clan chat, there are some little known features to take into account: Ranks with kicking power can only kick people below their rank. This is a useful feature, so you can appoint more than just yourself or generals to kick, and not worry about a feud which ends with mass unstoppable kicking in your absence.

Another handy trick is to know how to reset a clan chat when someone has been kicked and needs to be allowed back in, to do this, ask everyone to leave the clan chat, open the control panel, disable it, and re-enable it by entering the name. This effectively allows anyone who was kicked back in.

My last cool little feature is the ignore list, people on the ignore list will not be able to enter the player’s clan chat, no matter their rank, or the setting of people allowed to enter it. Adding someone does not kick them, but it does block them from returning after they leave.

D. Thread

Threads are very important for communication with other clan members, I recommend maintaining two clan threads.

The first is a Recruitment thread, it should include: home thread QFC, application, joining requirements, list of clan events, clan chat host name, and other basic clan information.

I also recommend having a Home Thread; this should include all clan info. Such as: members list, rank list and jobs of rank, event schedule, Recruitment thread QFC, basic clan info, an optional clan history, rules, requirements to join, discipline policy, application, and other detailed clan info.

There are a few things to be sure you account for when making a clan thread, the first is to SPELL CHECK. I recommend making the thread in a program like MS WORD, not just for spell check, but to upload without breaks.

In order to upload without breaks, simply make a thread, and reply with “reserved” until you have the desired amount of pages, then simply copy and paste each post into place.

V. Command

The command is the group of clan members lieutenants and higher who help lead the clan, in their respective assigned methods.

A. Leaders vs. Followers

There are two types of leaders, leaders who follow other leaders, and leaders who lead other leaders. The best type of leader is one who does neither, and is not afraid to make a decision without consent of a higher rank, knowing they will smooth over any issues as they need to be. A good clan leader will always remember this and keep a level head when their commanders do such things.

B. Delegating Among Officers

Perhaps the most important skill of a clan leader is to be able to delegate jobs to officers. This enables the clan to be capable of functioning when the leader is gone for any amount of time, in fact, one of my past clans died because I failed to delegate responsibility, left for vacation, and returned to find the generals had “impeached me”; leaving me with a massive 16 members of the original 97.

The best way to delegate is by assigning certain specific jobs to generals and giving the same job to all captains and another basic job to all lieutenants. For example, one might have a general in charge of events, a general in charge of diplomatic relations, and a general in charge of recruitment. Each general would handle their assignment, and the co leader would help the leader delegate, and lead in the leader’s absence.

This might seem like a bias, but ti is always a good idea to pick a close friend for a co leader, because they will know what you’d do, and usually won’t double cross you. It also helps if they’re been in a clan, or lead with you before, so they have some experience with how clans run.

C. Command Conference

One of the things I actually took from my time as a Venturing Crew™ member, is a “Officers’ Conference”. This is a meeting of just the senior leadership (generals, leader, co leader, captains) where you review the time since your last meeting, and discuss how to resolve issues within the clan. You also pick a top clan member, and a top officer. The clan member should be of sergeant rank or lower, and the officer of lieutenant rank or higher. The leader and co leader are not eligible.

VI. Diplomacy

Diplomacy is not just allies and enemies, diplomacy is interaction with any and all other clans, including wars.

A. Allies

Allies are very valuable during wars, they often provide support normally not found in clans alone.


1. Gaining Allies

The best way to gain allies is to add leaders of clans that are very similar to yours, and just chat with them a little bit, and tell them you’re interested in becoming an ally. If a clan has an application on their thread, you can also use that.


2. Maintaining Allies

Many clans clean out inactive allies over time, and actually can become enemies with ones who abandon them during wars and other times when they need it most. The best way to maintain allies, is to bump their thread every so often, or just ask the leader how their clan is going. Most importantly, when they need help in a war HELP!

B. Enemies

All clans have disputes with other clans, sometimes, and usually they are talked out, sometimes clans go radical and declare war or just spam like crazy. The best way to fight this is to just either accept their war, then beat the crap out of them, or respectfully decline, with the statement that “We prefer to talk out issues, and obviously you refuse.”


1. Notating Enemies

Enemies should not be notated on your thread, this is somewhat facetious, and may anger people, or make you seem immature as a leader. Think about it, if you were applying to a clan, and saw they had more enemies than members, would you join??

C. Wars

Wars are often to settle cross clan disputes, determine who’s stronger, or maybe just fun among allies.


1. Declaring Wars

If you choose to declare war upon a clan, be very careful to be as nice and inoffensive as possible. Disrespect will not get you any closer to your goal of having them accept your challenge.

When you declare war, make sure you clearly define the limits (No potions, foot, ancients, etc.) and the field of play (clan wars (specific one), PVP, etc.). Also, be sure to make sure the time zone of the war time is known to all; I once showed up to a war to find it had already taken place.

2. Preparing For Wars

When preparing for war, you should post a recommended list for your members, and make sure your clan knows everything the other clan does. Before accepting or challenging a war, make sure your clan is ready to fight its opponent.


3. War Conditions

The following are a select number of war conditions:


No food
No drinks – potions
No Ancient Magic – I recommend this unless you want to sit in one place frozen.

Those are the basic three, I will add more eventually.
4. Fighting in Wars

When fighting wars, some clan leaders have set formations and other things; I find these are very difficult when you don’t have fine motor control. So I recommend a general area. The leader runs to the front and checks the opponents and decided to hang back and wait, or push forward. This he should communicate to his clan.

VII. Events and Activities

Events are what shows how active a clan is, and also how much time the leaders demand.

A. Scheduling Events

When scheduling events, I recommend planning only one every other day; and list somewhere along with them “There will be a mystery event on all days without an event, starting when we have enough people in the clan chat.”

Try to list any items they will need, where the clan will meet, and something about what it is. I have, in the search for more things to do, made my own events in the past. Things such as; Priest12100’s Hide and Seek from Hell®.

B. Ensuring Participation

The best way to ensure participation is to make it mandatory to attend events to remain in the clan, I prefer to just have them worth a certain number of activity points; this way, if a member doesn’t have time for any events, he can still be active in other ways.

C. Event Leadership

Event leadership, this can be the clan leader, a general in charge of events, or the highest rank on. Either way, make sure there is a leader for EVERY event, regardless of whether you as a leader can be there.

And thus concludes this guide, I hope it helped!

solid + thumbs up!

Two thumbs up for this guide

Wow! Thats a great guide Priest! Thanks for puttin the time and effort in, must have taken ages but it realy shows

It's copy and paste from one I made on the runescape forums...

Ahh ok, sure it helped the people on the Runescape forums aswell then! And i've realy g2g now its 12pm here and got to get up tomoro lol.. Bye

Do not post racially offensive, shouting, and otherwise inappropriate material here. I expect far better, especially considering you're a moderator.

-Priest

Yea...not funny...

That could offend people, not cool dude.

Like it did me...now that I'm on my computer and not my phone, I'ma hide it all...

Lol Looking forward for you to do that more often.