Community:The Bear Tavern

Overview
The Bear Tavern is a community of players dedicated to forming a social gathering spot in New Britannia in the form of The Bear Tavern. This requires planning and coordination, from ownership of the building, crafting and sales of beverages, entertainment, and resources; thus the Bear Tavern also acts as a guild for those involved, including a small militia for dealing with threats. The Bear Tavern has been featured twice on Portalarium's Community Spotlight.

The Bear Tavern, while ultimately a community in its own right does operate a guild at its core. The guilds primary aim is to ensure that the tavern runs as it should fulfilling a number of vital tasks which keep both the beer and the ambience flowing.

Perhaps less hierarchical than most, the tavern guild operates a simple structure supporting both specialists and generalists. Staffed by a small cadre of officers which form a governing council, the guild operates largely without the emphasis on rank and station. There are currently 57 members as of July 14, 2014.

Key Structure
The structure of the Guild is as follows:- Whilst every member of The Bear Tavern is of great importance, order must be a constant. We will have a simplistic style hierarchy that every member will fit into.

The guild effectively operates within 6 groups, 5 of which are specialised by trade with a generalist group. Each is run by an officer, who is responsible for all guild members within their area. The five trades reflect the major areas of tavern live, giving the opportunity for guild members to band together based on their chosen professions. The vast majority of the membership operate at a single tradesman rank, within their specialty (ranger, cook, barkeeper, craftsman etc). The only exception to this lies within the guards, where a more military role requires both non-commissioned officers and slightly more structured subgroups (by timezone).

Senior Officers
There are a number of administrative positions which are held by a select group of guild officers. An overview of the role that they fulfil is as follows:-

Tavernkeeper - The defacto head of the guild. As effective owner of The Bear Tavern, the tavernkeeper squarely holds ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the enterprise. The tavernkeeper commonly deals with the tavern's direction, development and major issues. Commonly found surrounded by a mountain of administrative paperwork at his desk, crying softly.

Assistant Tavernkeeper - The second in command, the assistant tavernkeeper's main role is to assist the tavernkeeper in ensuring that the tavern runs as it should. When the boss is away, the assistant has the authority to act on common issues in their stead. More often than not the assistant acts as the tavernkeeper's effective understudy, being groomed for eventual command. Often sly, conniving and downright devious, the assistant has managed to backstab their way up the chain of command. The assistant tavernkeeper spends most of their day plotting to kill off their superior using a variety of creative methods in order to take 'the throne'.

Officers
Guard Captain - The head of both the tavern guards and the militia, the guard captain's role is to ensure that nothing happens to the tavern or its environs. Often large, brutish and violent even by guard standards, the Captain is commonly seen terrorising his subordinates at home or in the field. One of the few individuals who rather concerningly enjoys the thought of a siege.

Master Barkeeper - The head of the tavern's entertainment and bar service, the master barkeeper is commonly if not always, drunk. The master barkeeper's main responsibilities include ensuring that the bar isn't drunk dry, the customers are happy and that a constant wave of passable acts are booked for the evenings. Often found shouting out back with the Chef.

Master Cook (Chef) - The head of the tavern's somewhat questionable kitchens, the Chef is responsible for ensuring that food is readily available for the guests to... enjoy. Often highly strung and temperamental, the Chef is also responsible for ensuring that food stocks are maintained. Commonly found shouting at the master barkeeper.

Master Craftsman - The head of the tavern's small army of crafters, the Master craftsman's main job is to ensure that the tavern doesn't fall down due to disrepair. In his secondary role, the master craftsman also handles the supply of basic equipment including tools and equipment, as well as the arming of both the guards and the militia. As a consequence the master craftsman is often quite busy, spending a considerable amount of time trying to hide from a mountain requisition orders. Usually very intelligent yet quite mad.

Master Ranger - The head of the tavern's small cadre of rangers, the master ranger is in charge of meeting the tavern's insatiable demand for resources. Being commonly fit, healthy and irritatingly athletic, the master ranger will spend most of his time selling the ranger life to anyone that will listen. This commonly makes him despised by many of the other trades who are not as 'lucky to spend their time out in the wilderness'. In times of war the master ranger leads his group to augment the guards and militia as scouts and archers. Often by hiding until the anger goes away.

Representatives
Community Representative - The community representative is charged with engaging with the local population. Part diplomat, part salesman, the community representative often has the thankless job of being sent to deal with all manner of interesting characters to protect the Tavern's good name. The community rep is a strong supporter that no-one 'should shoot the messenger', even though more often than not it's him that is being shot at.

Associate Representative - The representative of those in the guild who have elected not to choose a trade, the associate rep is the voice of the common man. Perhaps one of the best positions in the guild, the position carries with it all of the perks with little if any actual responsibility. As such, the associate rep commonly ends up handling the mundane jobs at large events while loitering around the bar making a nuisance of himself.

About Us
The Bear Tavern is the original player-run tavern community within Shroud of the Avatar. Founded in April 2013, the community has grown from an idea to a steadily expanding group of both guests and staff.

The Bear Tavern is a project which focuses heavily on the social aspect of Shroud of the Avatar. The intent is to create an open, active community which provides everyone the opportunity to socialize with fellow players. SOTA promises to provide an amazing social online environment, and so we were interested to see how far we can encourage it. Not only that, our intent is to create almost neutral ground, to help provide some fairly unusual player experiences.

During initial discussions on how such a community could be put together, the obvious choice was to create an inn or tavern where the player-base could pitch up whenever they wanted. Taverns tend to be a prominent location in many stories within a fantasy setting, so it seemed a good choice for a in-game meeting place for players from a variety of backgrounds.

Since our founding in April 2013, we’ve formed a small-yet-happy band with all the resources you’d expect of a pre-alpha group. We’re well on the way to being one of the few on the map with a suitable Tavern building, with a slowly building Tavern community base. While everyone prepares for release (and beyond in those early days), we would love to provide a home for everyone to chat, gossip and scheme over how they plan to become obscenely rich. Again, we plan to offer this irrespective of background, guild affiliation or play-style, acting as a bit of a melting pot for the SOTA community at large.

We ultimately exist to provide an eventual service. The vast majority of those who are likely to visit the Tavern in the future (if we get it right) are going to be in the form of customers, who are going to expect all the usual things that come with any tavern, well, anywhere (namely entertainment and beer). We intend to provide both in spades, by again interacting with crafters and bard-y types who would like to get involved. On top of this, we’d like to help provide a prominent place for whatever community we find ourselves in, offering a wide range of events from fairs, to markets, to event spaces (can you get married in a pub?)

This all requires planning and organization, so The Bear Tavern does operate a "guild” core which will take care of the running of the Tavern. This is mainly in the form of barkeepers, cooks, entertainers and a few ‘heavies’ to keep the place relatively civil. Chances are that running this sort of establishment is going to take a never-ending supply of resources, so we’ll be keeping an eye on what crafts and trades we’d be looking to employ. As a rule, everyone gets a say in how the tavern is run, and so we maintain a ‘tavern council’ to ensure that things tick over as they should. We’re a small bunch, and while we’re not here to take over the world, we’re here to have fun and keep the place interesting.

We maintain a ‘militia’ sign-up list which allows anyone, either guilded or customer, to be on call in the event of potential tavern threat. For the most part this will take the form of something crossed between a volunteer army, a badly organized riot and a pub crawl; and is likely to feature as part of our regular dungeon crawl events. There’s no restriction on who can join, as long as members of the militia aren’t risk-adverse (i.e. not expecting to come back in one piece). Pay will be primarily issued in beer.

Things are still very much early days for SOTA, however we plan to be in as good a shape as possible for when the gates are open. We’re looking to attract future customers, tavern friends and guild recruits of all shapes in order to get the community going. So if anyone out there would like to drop by and take a moment to say a friendly hello, your guaranteed to receive a warm welcome.

Activities
- PvE / PvP

- Building a strong and tight community

- Crafting

- And of course drinking beer

Contact Us
If you are interested in joining us or have any questions at all, please contact us through our contact page at:

http://thebeartavern.org/