As I'm sure all of you know, there have been some fairly significant changes in how things have run over the past year in the HPD. I'm starting this forum to allow all of you to understand what I would personally like to see happen after we have a new lead in place, and to give you a chance to comment on or add to this list. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to share them here, or contact me in-world if you'd prefer them to remain a bit more confidential.
1. A re-write of the current rookie guide to be more comprehensive and less scattered. As it stands, it's rather difficult for a new member to look at one place and get a good idea of what they need to do to get started.
2. A simplified HPD manual. A lot of work was put into the current manual, but it reads more like a rule book than a guide. I'd like to make it a bit more common-sense and just give a general overview of how things should be done rather than a numerated list of "don't do this".
3. I'd like to take another look at how promotions are given out. As it stands, once people are promoted they seem to forget that an increase in rank carries increased responsibilities. I'd like promotions to be given out primarily based on initiative for training rookies and helping plan events as well as activity and time in grade. They will also be given out in a similar fashion to what Locke has been doing, by evaluating IC behavior.
4. New special units will be introduced, with the first ones being K9 and FTO. Once those are established and organized, we may introduce new ones as we go based on interest and activity. There will be a chance for people to propose ideas for new units when the time comes, that way you guys have more control over your RP experiences in the HPD.
5. Hot-sheets and briefings will likely be introduced on either a weekly or monthly basis to keep everyone up to speed on what's going on and to reduce notice-spam. These will be an IC and OOC asset for you to see what's happening, and the briefings will give you an opportunity to discuss these things IC or OOC with brass. Essentially I would like brass to be more accessible to everyone on both levels. Keep in mind that this will just be an ORGANIZED time to discuss issues, but everyone, myself included, is more than willing to field questions and comments at any time. This will hopefully prevent issues from going unknown to brass for any length of time. A lot of the issues that were brought up on the survey, I for one had no idea existed. It's incredibly difficult for issues to be resolved when no one knows about them. Hopefully this kind of system will make that infinitely easier to prevent.
6. I am toying with the idea of "shifts" for supervisors. This should by no means indicate that you are required to be on during these times, but would instead be based on your typical online times. This way we can promote people in such a way that players in all time zones have an increased chance of being able to talk to a supervisor in their time zone, preventing people who are online at odd hours from standing there going "Where's everyone at?!?" Again, if no one is around, send a notecard to a supervisor and it will be addressed ASAP.
If you have any comments on these ideas, or suggestions for more, please feel free to let me know here or in-world. These are hardly set in stone, and I'm more than willing to tailor them to fit what you guys want to see out of the group. I want the PD to start to be more about having fun, and less about following rules, so let me know what you think can be done to help make that happen.
