How many munchkins do we want?

[Nicias]

This thread was originally started in August, 2004. I've resurrected it so we can have the discussion again and have the original conversation available.
 - Elttil

Financial matters aside, what size do you think Emerald City should be? The bigger we get, the more people there are to play games with. However, the more we are in dange or loosing the "small town feel" that we currently enjoy.

If you think we should grow, do you care how we grow? How fast? Any factors we should consider? Time zone of new munchkins? Native langauges? Games of choice?

-Nicias

[Hanno]

Well - I'd say just keep growing at a normal pace. Every town needs "new blood" from time to time, as "oldtimers" tend to have less and less time.

[Nicias]

Ok, do you care who makes up the "new blood," up until now we've had a rather "open door" policy. Do you think we should exercise some discretion over who we let in?

[Killmuse]

I think we showed grow. I like the small town flavor though so I don't want to get too much bigger. I think 50 or so would be a good number.

The fact that I feel EC should remain small brings up a interesting question. On what criteria do we admit people in EC?

I personally don't have strong feelings on this, but we probally want people who are excited about EC and the games we have. Time zone diversity is also a good thing for our town.
Does anyone else have any ideas?

Killmuse

By the way I trouble voting in the poll.

[Elttil]

I voted for 50 because I’d like to see Emerald City grow.  I don’t know exactly how big, but my guess is that 50 would be a nice balance between too small and too big.  It mainly depends on how many active players we have.  There are a handful of current citizens I’ve never seen or rarely see on BSW -- perhaps my times just don’t coincide with theirs.  The more I get to know the current citizens, the more I enjoy calling for players in the city chat and playing with friends.  But sometimes there are few munchkins on so I think having more citizens would be an improvement.

Two of my reasons for joining Emerald City were that it was small and international.  I mentioned in the chat a couple weeks ago that I’d much rather be a significant part of something small than a small part of something big.  Emerald City has provided me that opportunity and I deeply appreciate it.  The international flavor of EC is one of its best features.  I’ve really enjoyed meeting all the European players and would love to see the city grow in other parts of the world.  I also joined because the primary language of EC is English and I don’t sprechen sie Deutsch – at least not very well yet.  

I truly enjoy popping in to the EC chat and getting to know the other citizens.  I also like playing games with other munchkins so we can joke around and have fun while playing.  It’s more fun than playing with total strangers.  I feel I’ve made some friends in Emerald City and it has truly added to the BSW experience.  I get together face-to-face with a group of friends a couple times a month to play games.  The intellectual challenge of playing games with skilled players is part of why we get together, but the camaraderie plays a larger role.  I’m beginning to feel the same way about playing on BSW with other EC members.

However, with Emerald City’s current size, I sometimes find I’m the only one from EC on BSW.  I live near Seattle and am often on late at night after everyone else has gone to bed or before the Euro’s get up – though I often see Esterio get on before he goes to work. Being the only munchkin on BSW allows me to prance around the city acting like a lunatic and type all sorts of things into the city chat, but that quickly loses its appeal.  Since we are an international city – one of EC’s best features – we have people in a wide variety of time zones so our schedules don’t always match up.  If we can expand our city to include people from all over the globe we’ll have a better chance of finding fellow citizens online.

Egad, I’ve done it again – prattled on for several paragraphs.  No wonder it takes me so long to reply to messages.  What was the original question again?  Oh yeah, "How many munchkins do we want?"  Maybe 50 would give us good coverage in various areas of the globe, yet keep the small-town feel where everyone knows each other and is comfortable talking in the city chat.  If we need more than 50 to accomplish that (and if we can even get that many), then that’s fine.  If we find we need less then I think we should aim for 42 because that’s the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything! (RIP D.A.)

[porcupine]

What I love most about EC is the internationality and the fun I always have playing with fellow munchkins. I feel we're a small town and due to its size I can get to know the other citizens. But I think size only matters to some extent. I usually meet the same people (due to time zone and/or other schedules) and probably this is one of the characteristics of an international-time zone-crossing city. So even if we grow there'd probably be few more munchkins to cross my BSW path.
What I want to say is: GROW, but not too fast and not too big (I'd go for about 50). I guess the one important condition to join EC comes naturally: you need to be able to communicate in English. When growing we should keep in mind the international dimension, trying to get people from different places to join (time zones as well as countries). And most of all keep up the open-minded spirit, the small town atmosphere and the good humour

[Hanno]

That's true.
Here's an additional idea (anyone here with a little extra time on their hands?):
Lets put a world map (one with the time zones colored would be best)up on the E.C homepage with a little flag for each munchkin so you can see where people live.
Volunteers? ;-)

[Don_Quijote]

I don't have anything new to add. I just wanted to post my opinion too.

I think a city that is overseeable is nicer because it is more personal. Size is relative especially if people are from different time zones.

What I liked about Emerald.City when I joined was the international aspect, the relatively small size and the absence of strict criterias for Munchkins. It seemed to me very relaxed (which is something I still appreciate).

After being a Munchkin for a short while and the city-liga experience I also really appreciate the humour and the community spirit in this city. I guess it is hard to make a criteria out of this (unless we introduce a humour police. Of course I volunteer for it....  )

One more thing: perhaps we should check for ghost Munchkins: People who haven't been active several month in a row without notice could be sent an e-mail to ask if they still want to be Munchkins. If they do not reply the can be taken from the list. I do not suggest this as a membership criteria it is more to clean up from time to time so we have a better overview how many active Munchkins there are.

Don
-who is very happy to have chosen Emerald.City

[Esterio]

Hello all,

Thanks for your feedback about the future of EC and its ideal number of munchkins. From a personal point of view, I'm quite glad to see that what you mention matches quite well what I like about EC myself, namely the small town and international flavor.

Since it seems agreed that we should try and grow, we will try and recruit some new munchkins as soon as next month (it is much better to recruit early in the month, since the city then benefits from the new player all month long, and the taxes we have to pay for the new citizen are the same whether we recruit on the 1st or 31st). I am not sure how much we will be able to grow - we have to find new candidates, who would be interested in joining and who we would enjoy as fellow citizens, and volunteers might be quite rare, but we will discover that in the early days of September.

As for the internationality, I suggest that we try to grow in a balanced way between the various timezones and countries, but would rather not turn down someone nice and interested just because they happen to live in the "wrong" part of the world according to our growth plans. I would rather not set strict quotas, but just keep in mind which areas are under-represented in EC, so that we have a better chance of growing without unbalancing the proportions too much.

Inactive munchkins, in my opinion, should be removed periodically. We have to pay taxes for them while they don't bring any resources, and they don't contribute to the community feeling either. Of course, there is no reason we wouldn't accept them back once they are still active again - like it has happened before.

Please feel free to comment, especially before the end of the month, while it is still time to discuss this policy before doing anything. Also, if you know players in ARMfeld who might be interested in joining a city, please let them know about EC, and give us and them a chance to play a few games together before they can decide to become a munchkin in the next few weeks.

Esterio
(trying to write even longer than Elttil - tough job )

[Hanno]

What about munchkins who reached Lv 15 and bult their house in E.C? Does this count as a contribution to the city wealth? I would hate to see rooms and games go away just because a munchkin is idle for some time.

[Alexfrog]

I think staying small is beneficial to being able to support the town.  You gotta have enough cloth...

I think its almost impossible for anyone to play enough to personally create the resources to support one person.  You can do it if you are continually creating games in the town, that otherwise wouldnt get played in town.  The most beneficial thing for the town is just haivng lots of out of towners play in it...

I also like that its small enough that you can know everyone.  

I think it would be good if we didnt specifically try to recruit, but we allow anyone who wants to join, to join.  Also, I think we should probably drop players who become completely inactive (but not after only one month though, since people often get busy).

As long as we are not having trouble supporting the current size, there is no problem with growing, but I feel we should just take people who express interest, and not actually try to recruit people...

[Elttil]

We've grown by about 30% over the past year and are now at 40 munchkins. The town council is currently discussing guidelines for prospective munchkins as well as inactive players. We've always been pretty casual about these topics and I don't expect that to change, but we wanted to give everyone a chance to voice their opinion.

Do you like our new size?
Do you wish we were smaller/bigger?
Is there an optimum size you have in mind?
Any other thoughts or ideas about the size of Emerald City?

[porcupine]

I still think the same of what I wrote nearly two years ago. Although today I would add 40 feels ok, 50 would be the maximum (not a goal).
-pine

[reikja]

I still think the same of what I wrote nearly two years ago. Although today I would add 40 feels ok, 50 would be the maximum (not a goal).
-pine

reikja nods in silence.  I do love the nice little crowd we do have in town (almost covering all time zones by now), the diversity of nations and languages and our theme, related to both, the Seattle are where our city founders came from AND the Wizard of Oz theme.

and beware, cowardly lion, the scarecrow will be with you.. : ))