Just wanted to hop back on and touch on some things Molt said.
Internal affairs aside, Molt hits the nail on the head with part of the reason these shells ended up dying out when they did. When I dissolved the EG, the game had yet to hit Patch 1.18, so not only was RP content growing stagnant, but so was actual game content. While I can only speak for myself here, I'll admit that my interest in the game at that point began to wane. It wasn't until jobs were added that the excitement of the pursuit of content returned and also my interest in RP (albeit, I admit not as much as it had been in previous times).
Neutral-good aligned shells are all fine and well, but keep in mind that in doing so you must maintain a fine balance so you don't end up teetering towards the lawful side more than the chaotic side. As a military group outside of the Grand Companies, you'd likely be unsanctioned, so you can't really have your more lawful members policing around other characters within the world since they really hold no warrant to do so.
Since I was more involved with the Eorzean Guard than I was with AETHER, I'll speak more about the military aspect since I have first hand experience with it in a linkshell setting. A dedicated forum is your best friend here. You need to have a place where all lines of communication can be reached outside of the game itself. Our forums were pretty in depth, from applications and character journals, to in-character reports and documents. 90% of the forums were in-character. ICly, Mtoto would have officers write up weekly reports and submit them to her. From a player standpoint, I fully understand the time and commitment that takes. But surprisingly, many of the people who were asked to do so ICly, did so because they wanted to OOCly. I think the trick here is to make engaging content and create lore (while staying grounded of course!) that applies to your shell as a whole. Often I would create missions, jobs, assignments that dealt with things we didn't have in game. Hell, I went so far as to create entire groups of bandits and camps filled with Amal'jaa skirmishers and such just so the LS had actual stuff to RP about. A lot of the things we did surprisingly ended up becoming in-game content later. We'd do a lot of delivery missions, taking supplies from Ul'dah to camp blah blah blah and then taking things we gathered there to the hamlets, all the while RPing and 'fighting' mobs who would attack us on the way. Some other things we would do is just create full on dungeons out of existing dungeons in game. Back in 1.0 when Tamtara Deepcraft was just an empty shell filled with mobs, we would do expeditions into the place and RP our findings and such. I think things began to take a turn once actual dungeons were introduced such as the Darkhold. One of the key points about the LS was that we focused not only on RP, but actually playing the game as well. So to that end, we would do our best to use actual game content and have it work with RP in a way. Of course, this does have it's problems. For example - when RPing an expedition down into the Darkhold, we're on a 30 minute timer. There is no way that a group can effectively run the dungeon and beat it while RPing at the same time. So to counter this, most of us would end up doing the dungeon again after we beat it the proper way just to RP inside. In terms of military like content, there are a lot of different things that you can do. You just have to be creative and engaged with it. That brings me to my next point...
Being engaged with a LS of military or scholarly nature means that both the leader and the officers need to be active and engaged and producing content as well as overseeing the plot lines of any story arcs you might be running the shell through. Things can quickly get muddled, but so long as good communication is there, you shouldn't have much issue. Again, this is where the forums take part. Officers and members need to be just as active on the forums as they are in game. Without it, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you'd begin to quickly lose sight as to what your LS is doing/is.
Molt has a point with giving the members something, but to be honest, I'm more in favor of that happening ICly. Anytime we received new members, we would hold new recruit ceremonies (when we had enough people) for new members. Failing that, I'd go out of my way to help and train that character and player by providing them with gear and weapons free of charge. It pays off to have a crafting class :3 Also, as a community, we were actively aiding not just new members, but each other. Self sufficiency as a linkshell is one traits that comes with a LS of this nature when you treat it as a community rather than a guild.
There is a lot to be said, and since I'm better at talking about it rather than typing, I'll just leave it here for the time being.
In any case, if your interested, you can find our old forums here. Hopefully it can give you some ideas
Internal affairs aside, Molt hits the nail on the head with part of the reason these shells ended up dying out when they did. When I dissolved the EG, the game had yet to hit Patch 1.18, so not only was RP content growing stagnant, but so was actual game content. While I can only speak for myself here, I'll admit that my interest in the game at that point began to wane. It wasn't until jobs were added that the excitement of the pursuit of content returned and also my interest in RP (albeit, I admit not as much as it had been in previous times).
Neutral-good aligned shells are all fine and well, but keep in mind that in doing so you must maintain a fine balance so you don't end up teetering towards the lawful side more than the chaotic side. As a military group outside of the Grand Companies, you'd likely be unsanctioned, so you can't really have your more lawful members policing around other characters within the world since they really hold no warrant to do so.
Since I was more involved with the Eorzean Guard than I was with AETHER, I'll speak more about the military aspect since I have first hand experience with it in a linkshell setting. A dedicated forum is your best friend here. You need to have a place where all lines of communication can be reached outside of the game itself. Our forums were pretty in depth, from applications and character journals, to in-character reports and documents. 90% of the forums were in-character. ICly, Mtoto would have officers write up weekly reports and submit them to her. From a player standpoint, I fully understand the time and commitment that takes. But surprisingly, many of the people who were asked to do so ICly, did so because they wanted to OOCly. I think the trick here is to make engaging content and create lore (while staying grounded of course!) that applies to your shell as a whole. Often I would create missions, jobs, assignments that dealt with things we didn't have in game. Hell, I went so far as to create entire groups of bandits and camps filled with Amal'jaa skirmishers and such just so the LS had actual stuff to RP about. A lot of the things we did surprisingly ended up becoming in-game content later. We'd do a lot of delivery missions, taking supplies from Ul'dah to camp blah blah blah and then taking things we gathered there to the hamlets, all the while RPing and 'fighting' mobs who would attack us on the way. Some other things we would do is just create full on dungeons out of existing dungeons in game. Back in 1.0 when Tamtara Deepcraft was just an empty shell filled with mobs, we would do expeditions into the place and RP our findings and such. I think things began to take a turn once actual dungeons were introduced such as the Darkhold. One of the key points about the LS was that we focused not only on RP, but actually playing the game as well. So to that end, we would do our best to use actual game content and have it work with RP in a way. Of course, this does have it's problems. For example - when RPing an expedition down into the Darkhold, we're on a 30 minute timer. There is no way that a group can effectively run the dungeon and beat it while RPing at the same time. So to counter this, most of us would end up doing the dungeon again after we beat it the proper way just to RP inside. In terms of military like content, there are a lot of different things that you can do. You just have to be creative and engaged with it. That brings me to my next point...
Being engaged with a LS of military or scholarly nature means that both the leader and the officers need to be active and engaged and producing content as well as overseeing the plot lines of any story arcs you might be running the shell through. Things can quickly get muddled, but so long as good communication is there, you shouldn't have much issue. Again, this is where the forums take part. Officers and members need to be just as active on the forums as they are in game. Without it, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you'd begin to quickly lose sight as to what your LS is doing/is.
Molt has a point with giving the members something, but to be honest, I'm more in favor of that happening ICly. Anytime we received new members, we would hold new recruit ceremonies (when we had enough people) for new members. Failing that, I'd go out of my way to help and train that character and player by providing them with gear and weapons free of charge. It pays off to have a crafting class :3 Also, as a community, we were actively aiding not just new members, but each other. Self sufficiency as a linkshell is one traits that comes with a LS of this nature when you treat it as a community rather than a guild.
There is a lot to be said, and since I'm better at talking about it rather than typing, I'll just leave it here for the time being.
In any case, if your interested, you can find our old forums here. Hopefully it can give you some ideas
![[Image: tumblr_mi0y507q1p1s5o9uno1_500.gif]](https://24.media.tumblr.com/d1a6eb2e938912f11f429b824c03a0ec/tumblr_mi0y507q1p1s5o9uno1_500.gif)
Take some bacon and I put it in a pancake.
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