Will of the Collective 3 Begins!

by Charlie Plaine, Chairman

19th August 2010

In 2008, The Continuing Committee ventured into new territory with the advent of the Will of the Collective process - a chance for the entire community to work together to create a new card that would appear in the game. This was done as part of The Continuing Committee's new mission to innovate and involve the community as much as possible in all aspects of the game.

When it was all said and done, the community used bottom-up design to create All-Consuming Evil, a dilemma that would end up being one of the most used dilemmas in the 2010 Championship Circuit.

One year later, Will of the Collective returned and the community chose one of several designer suggested ideas to create the Virtual Reality Headset, creating a new strategy for Terok Nor. It may not have taken off quite yet, but with the imminent arrival of Peak Performance, we think it's likely to be one of the most played cards in 2011 and beyond.

Finally, after over a year's wait, we are proud to announce the return of Will of the Collective! But this year, it's going to be different. Fans of both First Edition and Second Edition will get to participate equally, as we're making a card for both editions!

This year's process, hosted by our European Organized Play Coordinator, Mr. Thomas Schneider (thsch), is going to involve top-down design. That means that the community will start by choosing the story for the card, and then proceeding to design a card that matches that story.

In order to make things easier on everyone (since top-down design can be very difficult), and in order to mix things up, we're asking you as part of Step 1 to nominate your favorite character or your favorite ship for the community to create! You can enter your suggestion in the poll below this article!

At this early stage in the process, we're just asking for you to nominate the overall personnel (or ship), and not the specific story for that personnel (or ship.) So you should enter "Benjamin Sisko" and not "Sisko in command of the Sao Paulo" or "Enterprise-A" and not "Sybok's commandeered Enterprise."

Enter your suggestions now! You have until Friday, August 27th, 2010, at 8 AM EDT (GMT-6) to make your suggestions. After the deadline, we'll post some additional information for you about what types of personnel and ships make good top-down design choices, and we'll invite you to vote on which personnel (or ship) we'll make!

If you have questions, feel free to post on the official Will of the Collective forum!