Ten Ways Players can Improve OWBN

1. Read the charter and bylaws of OWBN at www.owbn.org. Then read them again. Talk to your Council Member, your STs and your fellow players about any problems or opportunities for improvement you see as you read.
2. Read through your chronicles disciplinary procedures (all chronicles are required to have written disciplinary procedures) and charter, if there is one. Discuss any problems or opportunities for improvement that you see with your STs and fellow players. If your chronicle does not have a charter, talk to chronicles which do have one, and consider whether your chronicle would benefit by having one.
3. Put an ST contact email on every IC email you send, and encourage others to do likewise. An ST contact address makes it easier for inter-chronicle plot to happen smoothly. It helps us to create the image of a cohesive WOD.
4. Mentor a newbie. Its sometimes very hard to get established when you are the new gamer in a game that's been running for a long time. Help a newbie figure out how to find her or his niche in your chronicle. Sometimes just making sure you say "hi" when you see a new player can make a big difference.
5. Read your character's clanbook, and read the materials available at the clan website, and from the clan listserver.
6. Create web content for the OWBN pages, chronicle pages or for a clan page. Share your knowledge, roleplaying expertise, cool stories, sense of humor, and opinions. Help enrich genre and preserve OWBN history. To get something to the OWBN webmaster, send it to webmaster@owbn.org.
7. Encourage civility in OOC communications. Flame wars are bad for community, and never help problems to be solved any faster. Insults get in the way of good, cooperative solutions.
8. Get involved in the administrative aspects of OWBN. Volunteer to help out a Coord, narrate, help the STs out with organizing an event---whatever you have the time and interest for. Subscribe to owbn-ooc and read through every vote that gets posted, discussing your opinions with your fellow players and your Council Member. If you believe something needs to be improved, don't wait for someone else to do that; take action.
9. Give more positive feedback to fellow players, STs, Council Members and Coords. Far too often, the only feedback people get is when they do something that others don't like. That fosters a really negative atmosphere, and is bad for everyone's morale. Make sure you let people know when they impress you with fine roleplaying, outstanding sportsmanship, or excellent creative or administrative work. Let them know, even if you don't usually get along with them.
10. Think about how your actions affect OWBN as a whole, and take responsibility for that. Every player impacts what sort of organization we are, as well as affecting the quality of the individual games. We are all creating OWBN together.

Cass Whittington