How to Warlord - a comprehensive (and subjective) guide to clan leadership

[Suncake]

Hi.

If you opened this thread then you're either going to create your own clan or already created one, otherwise you're just a curious person. Anyway, I write this because I want to pass my clan leadership experience and philosophy to help others. I've been a clan leader for 4 years, and I don't plan on dropping that. Under spoilers you'll find less general advice and more info about my own clan. You can ignore my advice, follow it fully or just use a few hints, it's up to you. Let's start.

1. Warlord requirements

• Dedication. As long as you lead a non-solo clan, you are responsible for it. You can't just say "Damn, I'm tired from this game, time to take a few months off" because you have a community to manage, and it will most likely die out if there's no one to replace you.
• Experience. Knowing your way around the game will earn you authority, and you'll be able to help others thus strenghtening the bonds within the clan.
• Resources. Building the clan dojo requires a lot of those, and if you hoarded lots of stuff you'll have a good start.

You can start a succesfull clan on pure devotion, but without it no amount of resources will help you.

2. Identity

Decide what kind of clan you want to create:

• Solo clan. Best for asocial people who don't want additional responsibility. You don't really need this guide if you're creating such clan.
• Friends clan. Those tend to be tiny and wither away with time because people lose their interest and abandon the game, but there's no fresh recruits since, well, it's only for friends. Only works out as a solo clan.
• Just clan. A group of players, with or without common goals or interests. Read along.

You can have a clan with no common interest in foundation, but it may be shallow. I've seen countless numbers of bland clans with edgy names like Dark Stalkers, and hopefully it's not something you want to create, try to stand out and be memorable.
Don't choose a narrow theme for your clan, or you'll suffer a huge lack of members willing to join you. A few general ideas on what to base your clan around:

• Roleplay
• Anime
• Communication
• Memes
• Age
• Competitiveness
• Casualness
• Geography
• Political views

Also decide on the clan size. Keep in mind that the clan tiers go as 10 / 30 / 100 / 300 / 1000 members, and research and building costs also grow as x1 / x3 / x10 / x30 / x100/. A smaller clan is much easier to manage, while bigger clans will have more players active simultaneously.

Your clan will surely need an emblem. You could try to create one yourself or ask someone else. Or even find one in the internet, but make sure you're allowed to use it. Best looking emblems have transparent background and are a little darkened, otherwise they'll be way too bright in-game because of the lighting.

Besides that, you would want to have a group at Warframe forums here - https://forums.warframe.com/clubs/
Own Discord server is highly recommended, even if not for the voice chat. Your members will be in touch outside of the game, and you will be able to keep track of their activity, group up for other games and post clan-wide notifications.
I also created a clan group in Steam and a clan site on Wordpress, but it's really unnecessary. Discord beats it all.

Spoiler

Initially I created a solo clan purely for research. I built and researched everything, and after 1,5 years I started recruiting because I wanted to share my stuff with others, I wanted to try myself as a clan leader and it was just too lonely.
My own clan doesn't really have a theme, it's just a chill casual clan.
As for clan tier, we spent a lot of time on Storm, upgraded to Mountain, went back to Storm and now we're Mountsin again for a pretty long time.
Almost all emblems I used for my clan were created by me. You can see how my piece of cake evolved here.

4. Rules

Your clan is a community, a group of people, and it must have rules. The first rule would be following Warframe community rules, because if you plan on spreading nazi propaganda within your clan you can easily get banned, and your clan will be cleansed and put on the watchlist. After that one rule, you're free to make it as strict or loose as you like. Besides general behaviour rules, you would need rules like these:

• Join requirements. Could be none, could be specific minimal mastery rank, hours played, some forms filled etc. Competitive clans usually demand more, casual clans barely ask for anything.
• Inactivity kick policy. You shouldn't keep the members that went inactive in clan for long periods of time. 
• Promotion policy. Clans have a range of ranks, you can set permissions for each rank and make up the requirements for promotions.

Spoiler

Nazi propaganda thing actually happened, but not with my clan, we don't break ToS.
My clan is pretty easy rule-wise, we allow things some other clans would deem unacceptable, but within reasonable limits. We only ask our recruits to speak English and try to socialize. As for kick policy, we allow 30 days of inactivity.
For promotions, you would ideally want to measure activity and dedication to the clan matters, but it's pretty hard to do. In my clan, I use two general criteria: time since joining the clan and clan points. Clan points are earned through involvement, like joining our discord, forum group, participating in evend, donating resources etc. Top ranks additionaly require visible activity in chats and help with clan matters like recruiting.

5. Development

There are two major things to develop within the clan: dojo&research and members. 

Dojo is best built, decorated and fully researched at the ghost tier because of the costs, which are manageable even for a single person. If you recruit 9 more members that would help you, it will be a piece of cake, and those members would probably be good officer candidates. A built, researched and decorated dojo is also a good recruit magnet.

After that, you should recruit new members into your clan until you reach the member cap. Only then you should upgrade the clan tier, if you want, of course. Try to recruit with extra vigor right after upgrading, you'd want to minimize the time when your clan is filled to 30%, while the research costs are increased already.

Sources of new recruits:

• In-game Recruiting chat tab
• Warframe forums
• Warframe wiki
• Steam
• Warframe discord

And more. Anything you can find, really.

Spoiler

We rebuilt and redecorated our dojo after clan tier upgrade and it was really hungry for resources, especially for polymers and plastids.
My main sources of new members are forums and discord, but in-game recruiting was really good for quick expansion.

6. Maintaining

When your clan has reached its peak, you don't have to think about expanding anymore. All your focus is on keeping the clan alive and well now. A few hints about that:

• Always dispose of inactive members, no matter how much they've done for the clan. Having Discord helps with this - you can warn your members that they've crossed the offline threshold and will be kicked soon, and even if they get kicked they can easily ask for a reinvite. 
• After you kick inactive members, fill the empty slots with new recruits. Some of them will also abandon the game, but some can become active and valuable members.
• You have to be in control of everything, otherwise something bad can happen. Imagine what would happen if you had a conflict with a member that owns your clan discord.
• Keep up with the bleeding edge tech and research all new stuff immediately.
• Run contests and events to keep your members interested.
• Join an alliance. Alliance is basically a clan extension. They usually barely require anything, but in return you will have another chat tab with allied clans.
• The bigger your clan is, the more management it requires. Either make sure you can spend enough time on that, or delegate some of your responsibility to reliable people.

Spoiler

We barely run any contests or events. Sadly, I almost lost interest in Warframe and being held hostage staying here mostly because of my clan, which has transcended into a cozy discord community. Still, I log in almost daily and keep managing it.

I guess that's all. I tried to check it for typos, but I'm sure I missed a lot of those. Damn, writing a guide is tiresome.

I hope this will be helpful for everyone who's starting their own clan, maybe even for someone who's been a warlord for a while.

Post your questions and suggestions, and share your clan leadership experience too.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Suncake