Celani and Godhood Q&A

Nicola

To support the Celani call that will be opening tonight, the Garden team is also going to be here for the next couple of days to answer all your questions about becoming a Celani, the Celani process, Godhood, and all the surrounding fun involved there!

But this comes with a twist. So that those who ask questions aren't outed as a new Celani should they go dormant in the coming months, all questions need to be PM'd to me (Nicola), I will then post these questions here in the thread and I and the team will answer them!

So PM me your questions, we're eager to help!

Nicola

Question 1!
How long would I have to be a celani before I can be a god?

We do have some minimum hour requirements, but beyond that as long as it takes to complete the celani and demigod training!

Question 2!
Can I bring back a dead god?

The dead gods are gone, but what the future holds for new faces is yet unknown.

Nicola

Question 3!
Can we play Gods in the same orgs we played in?

This is possible, it's most important to us that each god loves their godrole.

Nicola

Question 4!
Do you /need/ to take on a god role, or could you be a Celani/demigod forever?

We encourage all our of celani and demigods to aim for godhood, a lot of the enjoyment comes from being the godrole and we find that this can help keep volunteers around, but we won't force someone into a godrole that they don't love.

Nicola

Question 5!
What are the chances of getting your character back in the future should you retire your god role?

Very high, most volunteers are able to return to their characters, or Achaea should they wish to.

Question 6!
Do you accept applications from people who have been gods in other iron realms games and does this history help or hinder the application?

We do! Whether this is a help or a hindrance depends on the history of the applicant.

Question 7!
Are Celani allowed to step into denizens for (seemingly) random interactions with players, or is that limited to Gods only?

They are, in fact we encourage it!

Question 8!
How many Celani/Demigods are there, currently?

Not telling!

Question 9!
Would a new foray (or several) serve as a good building project for a Celani?

For the right Celani, new forays are a great building project!

Nicola

Question 10!
What are the chances of a God stepping into a coding related position instead of becoming a order running divine upon completion of celanihood?

This depends entirely upon the applicant, although we'd recommend those who specifically wish to become coders apply during a coder call. This will be an RP celani call, with the focus on writing, eventing, and roleplay. (The celani process is slightly different for coder applicants if we know they're aiming to be coders in order to better focus their skills.) But it does happen.

Question 11!
How flexible is ire with applicants to positions such as these from members with zero experience in real world coding but a steep history in lua provided by mudlet?

Again, this depends upon the applicant! But @Makarios can probably comment more here.

Question 12!
How long does typical celanihood training last (I'm sure the range is vast so an approximation will suffice)

Fastest have been 4-6 weeks, but the motivated average is 2-3 months for celani and another 2-3 for demigod.

Dalinor

Hi! I'm Dalinor and I'm not @Makarios but I'm one of your diligent coders. Some of you may have heard from me in issue responses or followups from bug reports. I started about a year ago when a coder call went out, later to become an Associate Producer, so I'll be pitching in to answer more coding-specific questions as well as possibly contributing to some more general celani questions (since volunteer coders go through a lot of the same training early on, and I've been through it!) As Nicola notes above, we are looking specifically for celani, not necessarily coders, this time around but the answers can be enlightening! I did want to weigh in a bit on a couple of the questions already asked...

Question 10: Not going to disagree with anything Nicola says above; in this round, we are looking specifically for those interested in being a Celani, with an eye toward Godhood someday. But, the training for celani and volunteer coder is very nearly identical for the first few months! At the beginning we are looking to help a new volunteer understand how things work in the Garden, and how they work with the rest of the team. You'll get exposure to a lot of different types of activities that we have to handle in the Garden! And plans can change... sometimes coders like to do events and building more than they think, and we can definitely account for that. Or a person might decide they want to go the other way... and for the right person we will definitely account for your preferences! So, it is more a question of the right person, and we'll make it work for you and for us!

Question 11: For celani, we don't require any coding experience at all, so a strong Lua history is nothing but a plus. There are certain tasks we have that would definitely benefit from such experience, even for celani/builders/RP, but we hope these systems are learnable even for the barest lua newbie who just uses a public system! For coders, we definitely have some different interview questions to make sure you've got the right mindset... depending on the depths of lua knowledge it could definitely be enough even for that but we'd test those who went that way separately. Combining the responsibilities of both coding and being a God with an order and building tasks and various roleplay events is... intense! So we wouldn't expect this to be the case except for the most dedicated volunteers! 

Again, we're not fishing for coders this time around, but I have been through mostly the same process, so I will kick in my own experiences as questions come up, and feel free to submit questions to Nicola!

Nicola

Question 13
You said the future may hold possibilities of new God roles, would that God role be decided upon by the producers or would the Celani have a say in what kind of God they might be interested in?

This would be a collaborative effort, no volunteer is ever made to play a godrole that they do not wish to. But any creative addition to Achaea of such scope would always require Producer signoff.

Question 14
What sort of character/player history would make someone less likely to be chosen for the Celani call?

This is very subjective and not something we can easily answer. We do look at divisive personalities as the Garden team is a relatively small one and we're very protective of the volunteers. But even this can be balanced against outstanding work and creativity.

Question 15
Is there a test on writing skills to be able to be chosen for a more RP based role?

It doesn't get more RP based than celani with an aim to be one of the Gods! There are basic writing tasks in the application, those who cannot fulfil these don't tend to make it to the interview phase.

Nicola

Question 16!
Here's a Celani question: for planning purposes, what should we expect in terms of average weekly time commitment?

We ask that our Celani and Demigods make 12 hours a week minimum whilst they undergo training and fit in with the team.

Nicola

Question 17!
I have a lot of friends in Achaea and I love talking to everyone on a daily basis. I understand I'd have to cut off contact, but is the garden really quiet, are you working on your own a lot of the time?


This is a great question and new volunteers coming from the playerbase can experience something of a culture shock as their social circle narrows from hundreds of players to the much smaller team. Everyone is working on their own things, but we tend to congregate at one location and there's always conversation going on whether it's discussing ideas, soundboarding RP, proofing and improving each other's work, offering help with problems, or just chatting about whoever is on vacation right now and how jealous we all are.

Part of celani training is creating a room, we call these (most imaginatively) celani rooms. We encourage the celani to use this room for testing, but try to make sure that no celani just goes off and lives in their room, cut off from the team. A bigger part of the celani process is meshing with the team and getting comfortable with everyone and we think that's very important to success in the garden.

Nicola

Question 18!

Will I still be able to access my character's forum account for OOC reasons? Would continuing to post (presumably entirely OOCly) be acceptable?

No and no. As part of the transition from player to creator, no celani or demigod are permitted access to the forums. They can browse as a guest, but this time includes an important process to switching the mindset around from being a part of the community to becoming someone responsible for creating the community. This also helps to divorce an admin from their player ties, and helps to create the obscurity behind the godrole.

Question 19!

Would it be frowned upon to step in and help others with OOC troubles related to clients, coding, etc as a Celani/Demigod/etc?

Outside of the bugs and issues system, and occasionally guides) this would not be permitted until training was completed (Godhood achieved.)

Nicola

Question 19!

If I have a ship with multiple captains, can I leave it for my friends and others to enjoy while I'm a Celani?

You can, but I wouldn't recommend this due to the control that the owner of a ship has. Celani isn't something we offer with the aim of the person going back at a later date, we hope and train all celani for a permanent transition to the team.

Leaving a ship owned by the player who had become a volunteer means that this ship's captain list can never be changed to add or remove people, and should the volunteer decide to retire their mortal character (which we do allow) the ship would be removed from the game. Due to the restrictions on communication between volunteers and players this could leave a number of players in the lurch without warning.

We'd recommend transferring ownership of the ship to someone who can handle matters.