Faction leaders, tell us your experience

I can't seem to find decent discussions on this,

Talk about whatever you want, but here are a few questions, answer none, one or all, your choice. All faction sizes are more than welcome, from 5k to 20+mil respect:

1- Why did you start/ buy the faction?

2- how did you go about recruiting? how strict were you with kicking unsuitable members?

3- how much has your faction grown? over what period of time?

4 - how many hours per day did you spend on it? what did you love? what did you hate?

5- How much have you invested into the faction? How much of it was from faction activities (rw, OCs, territories)?

6- how much have you profited personally? if no profit, what have you done with the money from faction activities, and was it worth it?

7- if you are an ex-leader, why did you leave?

just a few points. feel free to go off on a tangent, I'd love to hear about leaders' experiences. the more the better!

edit - would also love to hear stories of cache farms! so many great leaders out here but I want to also hear about the "bad" ones. no matter what type you were, lay it out

so many great responses so far, I read every single one and it's been eye opening, more please!

As a former leader , a faction is only as good as it members.  If your small new and trying to get vet members it's well worth paying a active vet to join and help bring things together. They will attract  other higher stats members .   You will see some farming themselves out to low plat factions for a reason there's good $ at that rank with out needing a lot of boosters yet . 

As a former leader I'll touch on a few things. 

First, I don't think anyone should start a faction nowadays. At least definitely anything with under 1 million respect. It's hard and a ton of work. If you do not have any friends that can help chip in for the funds to just buy an available faction with at least a million respect, then you should get more involved with some existing factions. Make some friends. Pool your money, and then get started. 

Recruiting is best done though it's own members. If you want fun people in your faction, you have to have a fun environment. If members are having fun, they'll invite their friends to join them. That doesn't mean that its easy to recruit. Even the best factions have difficulty finding new members. Those Hall of Fame faction have it easy. Big respect = High desire to join. So you have to overcome that desire for the best perks with the environment that you present.

As far as your money question... 

If anything, as a leader, expect to pay all gains forward to enhance the experience with a fun, active environment for your faction members to enjoy. If you're becoming a leader to get rich, then you're choosing the wrong reason to lead. You should however pursue anything money related that's safe for your members to also pursue. No losses, all gains. 

The best leaders are servant leaders, you are not there to get rich, you are there to enhance your member's gameplay. If you want your member to grow, you need to grow as well. But that growth should never be at the expense of the members you are leading. Give them an example to follow and they will follow. 

As for why I no longer lead directly. Well, the game is far more enjoyable in my opinion when all the dogs bark at someone else. Good leaders are heavily abused, criticized, and severely underappreciated even though they are doing their absolute best to hold things together. Everyone elses problems can quickly become your own problems. It's hard work. Sometimes it's easier to just take a step back and let someone else handle it all.

It's not that I'm against leading ever again. Just right now, I'm enjoying just playing the game. 

Here's my experience.

Joined the faction as a noob as it was the only faction that accepted me, was a noob trap faction tbh. We did our first war, myself and my now co-leader basically dragged us to a win against a much higher BS Faction. Our faction leader then quit the game leaving their entire fortune (16m) in the vault for us and making us leader and co-leader 

Recruiting is a lot of fun. Main thing is to have a clear idea of what type of player you are recruiting for and stick to it, it's easy to take on anybody in the early stages, but you need to stick to your guns on what you want. In terms of saying goodbye, at the start it was harder, but now it's relatively straightforward, we've built a culture where someone who doesn't fit really does stick out and itsno surprise when they go.

When we first warred we were 20k respect and Bronze 0, 15 months later we are 316k respect and Plat 3. We've warred 27 times in that period, winning 20 and losing 7. Our first war we had just unlocked a 25 chain, we're now able to comfortably complete a 1k.  2.5k is out of reach until/unless we increase member count.

I've spent way too many hours leading the faction, but it's all worth it, especially in the early days it took more time to put things in place, now the faction runs smoothly, got a great leadership team and we're clear on our place in the game and what we want to be. Recruitment is easier, but still face the "you don't have enough respect" discussion, but that's part of it.  Don't hate anything about leading the faction but love to see the members grow with us and pass on game milestones - whether that be a battle stat one, a net worth one or something else.

Invested maybe about 50m in to the faction of my own money, that was just to get things going. For the rest the model has been self sufficient, war/oc proceeds have helped us grow. In terms of profiting, every single $ earned stays in the faction and we're using it to expand our armory. We might consider buying a bigger shell using faction funds at some point.  Longer term I'd look to offer something like an annual faction dividend payout for members, bitbthsts would be once the armory is fully stocked and any purchase would be off the table. We'd also look at potentially starting some faction companies to help boost income further.

We're still a small fish in the big Torn Ocean, however we're proud of reaching "our Everest" which was Plat 3 on such a short space of time. It's hard taking a faction from almost nothing but we've got great and loyal members and everyone has a load of fun playing the game. Recruitment is the hardest thing, mostly finding players that we know will be a good culture fit for us.

In no particular order and with some edits to fix misremembered numbers and answer questions I missed the first time around....

I accepted a faction recruitment letter to a small faction, like 10k respect, a few days into opening up the game again and ended up co-lead within a month. My leader and I had some chemistry, got married in Torn and met irl a few months later and are now living together. I left that faction at around 50k respect to go do some major training bc I needed to have bigger stats to protect my faction members.

Took a tour of Glory to Heroes, Luscious Dreams, and Lingering Insanity. Felt the draw of being a faction leader again. Talked to LustDragon69 for some advice and he.... bought a $5.7b shell for me to run for him. 👀

Eventually we as a faction decided we wanted to be independent, and our faction members agreed to follow us to a brand new shell, 5k respect, which was funded by an anonymous benefactor ($15m anon money send). We brought that to 160k respect in 7 months and used the money from its sale to help fund the purchase of a 400k respect shell (formerly Port Avarice). My husband owned the majority share at this time.

Recently a faction member suddenly quit Torn due to personal reasons and sent me and my husband his full money. I talked my husband into taking the money as a buyout of his share. I own the faction in full now. My husband has taken off to go on his own training tour.

This is now my faction outright, to lead as I please.

We war weekly but I don't require full participation from everyone every week, so while we dont have official training weeks, training weeks are just whatever weeks people don't participate in war.

With weekly war I'm sure you can guess that my favorite part of being a leader is warring.

This is a big reason my husband left (for a break) actually, he doesn't want to war weekly because he gets too invested in it. For me, war is a social event.

We ranked up to Gold 1 in both this shell and our last one. But, in our previous shell we ranked up and sold. In this shell we ranked up to Gold 1 twice, then ranked down to Silver 1 to make for more options every war. We are at our equilibrium zone in mid silver: we can rank up or down without too much risk.

If we add too much capacity we get matched with allied cache farms stuffed with too many heavies for us to counter with our skill level alone. But at our current capacity (30 to 60 members) our matchups are more reasonable and we have a good spread of real and termed wars.

I spend several hours a day doing faction activities. Usually a few minutes here and there throughout the day. But sometimes someone needs help or advice which can take more time.

I even wrote up my own war pay script so I can pay for all war activities. As far as I know, it's the only war pay script that pays for med outs and turtling, and all the other stuff I want to pay for. I am still adding to it, such as an option to pay for non war chains 😊

We have been earning respect pretty quickly through weekly warring (400k at time of purchase in January 2026 to 690k now after 6 months). We are almost at the current respect level of the shell we ran for Lusty (330k when we started in it March 2025, 780k now, one year later), which I expect to surpass in the next few months.

Tbh I feel that a lot of our competitiveness as a faction stems directly from my pay sheet. I've established what things I want my members to do, and if they do those things they get compensated, period. My husband says I coddle my faction members, but they listen when I say to fly and turn off revives, so if that's what coddling gets me I must be doing something right.

I have a mix of original members from my first faction with my husband (he went back there at some point to sell the shell and gather up our old members), original members from the shell we ran for Lusty, people we've grown from Greenleaf, and people we've gathered along the way. I keep enough noobs on hand to satisfy my need to teach, but not too many that I get overwhelmed.

We have a few friendly factions but are not allied at this time. We have enough friends with territory that we can give or get a fake wall whenever we need one.

I've looked into a few alliances but I'm not sure I'd be interested in joining one even when we get to 1m respect.

Our most competitive stat is karma, we are currently ranked 102 for karma. Without having an alliance or protector faction, that stat does actually have a quantifiable value for us.

Overall my net worth has become stagnant since I became faction leader. I invest what I earn back into the faction. I want to see my members grow. Without my former faction member giving $11b towards a buyout, I don't think I'd ever have been able to buy out my husband, which left us at risk of the shell being sold, as he was getting burnt out of being leader. As my own leader I can make better decisions about how much I invest into the faction, as I don't feel an obligation to someone else to invest too much into it - too much of myself, too much of my money. Having that freedom is a great gift.

Since the buyout by our former faction member (who will hopefully return one day!) my nw has started growing again. But it's not really my money. When I took full control I followed Dsla's advice to limit vault contents to what I can personally cover with my own money, and made the executive decision to empty ghost balances of inactive ex members and invest it until if/when they log back in and ask for their balance (which has happened before). Our benefactor also gave me 680 xanax which has inflated my nw as I trickle it into the armory for war and training.

Overall, based on my previous nw growth I have lost about $2b to $2.5b so far of my personal nw growth due to owning a faction, but this is offset by having a $12b asset of ghost nw. My armory (crimes, Xanax, gear) is probably worth at least $2b to $3b alone of ghost nw (Torn Tools shows $1.4b but I don't think it accounts for RW weapons). Plus the nw I haven't gained due to funding Xanax with most if not all of my war winnings + faction cut (20%).

All war wrap up newsletters come with a link to the payout spreadsheet, including the actual cache sale prices, faction cut, bonuses, per hit pay, and any bounties reimbursed. Fully transparent war pay is something I learned from LustDragon69, and something I fully intend to maintain going forward. I use my own script and pay sheet, but everything is transparent for my members, just like he taught me. I even use a similar formula to Lusty, with some revisions to account for the lower rewards and different participation goals for lower metal wars.

Lusty also taught me to keep vault giving and balance changing permissions separate, so my OC managers aren't bankers and my bankers can't change or transfer funds between balances, only give money.

OC's mostly pay for themselves. OC 2.0 payouts are just a button click of 80% payout so nothing to track there (except to monitor for mv spikes on less commonly sold items before paying out). I keep a reasonable slush fund free in the vault to pay for any item-only OCs, and use any excess funds to buy OC items and such. I don't keep track of these costs - as long as my nw doesn't grow excessively I figure I am neutral. If I do find myself with too much extra cash I buy a new RW weapon for the faction.

I have been really fucking lucky to have my position as faction leader funded by various benefactors. In order: thank you Sinister_Grim,  LustDragon69, unknown benefactor, and Riven_Grim for financially supporting my journey as a faction leader.

1- Why did you start/ buy the faction?

I joined the faction i ended up co leading after like a week on Torn, I had no intention of joining a faction to begin with but the game sort of forces you into it to progress through the starter missions and to get the good perks it was like 120k R when i joined.

2- how did you go about recruiting? how strict were you with kicking unsuitable members?

We recruited most of our members through a combination of green leafs and mergers weeding out the ones who weren't active enough,  wouldn't war etc over a couple weeks/months.  Our usual rule was do nothing for 3 wars you're out no exceptions we were always a warring faction and we made people aware of that before they joined. 

3- how much has your faction grown? over what period of time?

So I think we sold the original faction around 150k respect and bought a shell at 400k, ran that for about 7 months and upgraded to a 950k faction end of 2024, I think it's at almost 1.2m now I left early 2026 so can't really remember, it's called Division X 

4 - how many hours per day did you spend on it? what did you love? what did you hate?

I was spending between 3 and 12 hours a day on torn/faction stuff between conversations and making plans what I loved the most was probably the banter and friendships I made along the way sitting chaining for hours just taking the piss outta each other.  The sad thing however was that despite working so hard we would either get an influx of players who just tanked wars for us or vet members would get burnt out and just disappear again tanking wars.  It put hours of planning and discussions about tactics directly into the bin wasting my precious time.

5- How much have you invested into the faction? How much of it was from faction activities (rw, OCs, territories)?

I think over the years I invested a few B into prizes for events/training months etc with 0 return, latterly I started taking setting 2.5% of war cut to pay for the events and had been investing my own cash into RW for the faction etc to pay off with wars.

6- how much have you profited personally? if no profit, what have you done with the money from faction activities, and was it worth it?

I personally profited absolutely nothing, the faction leader CajunHawke always reaffirmed that it was his faction and any money I did invest into upgrades etc was paid back.

7- if you are an ex-leader, why did you leave?

A couple reasons I've already mentioned but I think the biggest one was that I had simply outgrown the faction stat wise.  People that I had started the game with were still sub 500m stats while I was over 1b.  I wanted to be in a faction where I was in the top 25-40 not the top 5, where my stats were less of a target on my back during wars and more of a "if you're busy it's okay we can survive without you" sorta thing.

Ultimately I enjoyed the 2 1/2 years i spent in Division X/Serpents Hand/Division X, I met some amazing people and I also got the opportunity to play with some bigger factions, learn from some great players and I doubt i would be the Torn player I am today without the journey I took.

Some great answers! sounds like challenging but rewarding work. Can someone give me some pointers on how to purchase a faction? I don't see any for sale in the forum.

https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=9&t=15907647&b=0&a=0rh=87&&start=16480

This forum thread has people buying/selling factions

Am a little nervous now. I and my friend is about to build a 5k respect faction. Small networth, on my side, recruiting needed and a lot of things involved. Am just thinking where to get all the money, some say they invested billions with no return, some said no profit, am not here for profit either. But it's the spirit of leadership that drives me. I see this thread as a guidance and am gonna make the most out of it. Whether recruitment is difficult or not, I don't care, we will turn in enough members for growth. And am sure, we will reach stability. 

Wow. This is gold. 

bump, more!

we're doing well. 

[image: i.postimg.cc]

Recruiting greenleaves is how any faction starts, it’s how BoD started, and it’s how we ran until very recently when I got tired of recruiting greenleaves and now require level 15+ other than the odd exception 🤣 

if you need a hand at all just drop me a message, always happy to help new factions! 

I don't think leading a faction is a "one size fits all" type of a thing. How could it be when most leaders have different end goals and paths chosen to get there.

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I currently own 3 factions. At times, I dabble into a 4th faction for a side project here and there. My main faction was bought as a shell upgrade at around 750k respect. Now it's 4.3m respect give or take. Purchased my 2.0 faction at around 195k respect. Now it's 3.1m respect give or take. I also built a revive faction. Shell was purchased at around 140k respect. Now it's 2m respect give or take. Note: when I say I built, I am in no way, shape, or form trying to claim sole credit for this. It took many hands, many hours, lots of blood sweat, and tears to pull it off.

It all took time and lots of work from our current members and past members who were with us at one time. I don't have a 'secret' sauce on how to do this. Best I can say is no one person can do it all solo. Many have tried and got burnt out and failed. I'm sure a few have succeeded. I think the later is less likely for most players.

Surround yourself with honest, trustworthy, people who you click with. Build the type of faction you vision. Rest assured other players have the same vision. Once the two come together, that's when the magic starts. Set the standards, member requirements and etc you see fit for your faction and enforce them. Enforce them fairly and evenly among all members. Stick to it.

Recruiting is a pain in the ass for any faction, big or small. The big HoF factions have a huge advantage with the ability to offer players more faction perks, opportunities in rw money making, and etc. End of the day, there are only so many super power house dinos, and they all won't be at one faction or family of factions. However, having a low respect faction with little perks sure doesn't increase your chances of snagging some heavy hitters. So I'd agree with others' sentiments that time spent in a sub par respect faction is a waste of time. Lower factions will have to have a revolving door recruiting green leaves and less active players.

End of the day, look at it like a real life job per say. 2 companies in the same field. One is bigger, pays more, has better benefits, and room for advancement. Other is a smaller company, less pay, smaller benefits, and chances of advancement are slim to none. Which company would you pick?

I'll end with there can be so much satisfaction and enjoyment building something great with a great bunch of guys/gals. Other hand, I can imagine it could opposite direction too. Spend time with an established faction. Learn as much as you can about the game in general and all the faction stuff before being too quick to jump into a leader/owner position. As they say, you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Try running out the gate, and you're bound to trip and land on your ass. Good luck to all new and potential faction leaders.

TDLR: Any time spent in a sub par respect faction, be as leader/owner or even as a member, is a complete waste of time. Learn the game inside and out, make some solid relationships with other players, stack plenty of cash before even thinking about taking the leap. Also a faction with only a leader and no co-leader surely is a shit faction. Avoid those factions. Leader can't trust someone to be a co-leader, you shouldn't trust them as a leader.

I started to answer this as a Q&A post, yet it turned into a wall of text with many off-ramps, and I could easily double the word count with offshoots into alliance and networking.

So here is a more general overview, with 2 of the questions and answers:

Torn is all about the journey, not the destination, and running a faction, for me, is probably the best example of that.

I've probably made every "wrong" decision possible, from reading books too early to starting a faction & company with too soon, but Ive had a blast doing it, so running a faction is a great adventure.

There are loads of reasons not to do it, and only a couple to do it, but if you like being in charge, planning things, being the cheerleader, etc., then you can totally do it at any point - just make sure it stays fun if you go this way.  

From my own experience, I've been a gold fist 3 times, in 2x HoF factions, and a support lead, and I really prefer having some element of control in my game play. DoA and ODB (HoF factions) are both amazing and true learning experiences, but I find I do better in a "smaller fish trout tank." So yeah, the "right" (min/max) choices would've of course been to stay, but a game's for fun, so I moved on for me. Yet it does occasuonaly sting seeing players pass me in X area of the game :D 

I'd also say, if you don't know about the "Agile method" way of working, spend a little time looking it up, it's probably the best way to build a faction. The top tier is well-established, and even though they have the perks and ability to adapt better than most, big machines can take a while to change, while smaller, more "agile" factions can adjust better because their risk is lower. It may not feel like it when you've invested your time and 90% of your net worth, but in the big picture, for most of us, we are simply the lower tier, even if we don't want to see or accept it.

This means knowing your role and place in Torn. The top 100 HoF factions now have X respect. And honestly, maybe only the top 20-30 factions are truly HoF in today's game. I might be remembering the island wars wrong, but I don't recall there being more than 15 "active fights" at any one time. I think it was more like 5 or 6 active fights at a time, with armies behind each main fighter. And of course, hundreds of fake walls :D. So if you can't outgrow the top guys, make sure you can adapt and provide things they can't or choose not too.

Small edit/context point - even if there was 15 active wars, there certianly wasnt 50 active fights, so if your not top 100 HoF, knowing what you bring to the table is key, and point of the msg :) 

Q- Why did you start/buy the faction?

I've done the whole buying a shell, selling it to buy another, and repeating that.

Also did a joint venture.

Id suggest a joint venture, as Torn is largely about connections, and having a one or more players looking out for your factions best interest makes the world of difference. 

Q- How did you go about recruiting? How strict were you with kicking unsuitable members?

To quote something from my real-life job, there's no such thing as a bad employee; it's either bad recruitment, bad training, or bad management. 

This triangle is key. If a faction that doesn't screen and will take anyone who applies, you need to be super good at the other two areas, or you'll spend a lot of time accepting and removing people. Or, you can have a more intense screening process, talking to players and checking stats, which then lessens the need for one or the other. Basically, at a minimum, you need two sides of this triangle, but for a great and growing faction, it's all three.

This means having standards, setting them clearly and early, reinforcing them, and then taking action if they're not met. No one respects someone who says something and then doesn't follow through. So, if you say it, be ready to act as you said.

Hope this helps and love the topic idea of this thread

Best thread I've read in a long while, extremely interesting. Thanks OP and thanks to all the responders so far!

Member of Vulpes Vulpes

But got told I should step up my hitting because I came second in the chain count.

Left and the following occured over the years.

Creator of Little Stompers (Stompers), Leader: Start to ~1.5m Respect

50/50 Owner with Rekker. Locked out after I found scamming of members was happening, moved onto Nub Navy

Originally created as to run our own chains and build a faction where we were in control.

Creator of Nub Navy, Leader: Start to ~1.6m Respect

4 way ownership.

Disagreement/locked out and then the leader who took it sold it back to the members.

Kwartz/Kivou have run it ever since, in good hands, glad it ended up with them.

Creator of Nub Army, Leader: Start to ~1.4m Respect where life took over, bounced back and forth since.

Still the owner, but Pif_smoker is running it for nubs.

Creator of Nub Air Force, Currently 2.1m Respect

Current leader.

Having lost control of the first 2 factions, one thing I learnt was never have a joint ownership.

At somepoint someone will get power hungry and steal it.

Even if you have built it with them for years, money is too much of a motivator for some.

Save yourself the headache, go solo, have a defined owner/dictator.

I see my factions as things that were built by the members, and owned by the members. While I am technically the owner of Nub Army and Nub Air Force. They will be passed to members to run/control.

When a faction is sold or merges, the culture is destroyed, thats what makes a nub faction.

I would rather be broke than see the culture we worked for destroyed.

I could sell it to another member, but then that member could sell it to an outsider and the result is the same. Therefore they should be handed down so that the culture survives.

Nub factions are built differently than most.

Players spend their personal time here, therefore the faction should be a reflection as to what the members want.

Not what you as a leader want.

Barking orders at members will not motivate them, it'll only push them away.

A democracy within a faction is what binds members into an idea, into a goal.

Only with exceptional circumstances should the owner play the dictator card and force something to happen within a faction, and when that happens it should be clearly stated as to why it has happened.

One thing which has changed over the years is that members can no longer see the bank balances.

Even though members cannot see the bank they should still know what is going on, so that leaders cant syphon off funds to themselves.

If the faction earned it, it was a group effort, the members deserve a cut.

Good ole mass recruiting.

Recruiting has always been hard, escpecially in the early days of a faction.

Why would anyone join a faction to chain if there are no perks? Every faction needs a unique selling point to bring in others.

We have always specialised in building new players, thats what we do best.

For my actual recruiting I used the advanced search players between level 3-14, primarily within new player protection who have donator/subscriber.

If they are already paying for the game after a short amount of time, then they are wanting to play, wanting to push harder.

For kicking, we have minimum hit counts, if you dont make the count then you're out.

If you start making exceptions or allowances for people, then no one will take the rules seriously.

We have an #away channel in our discord for people to flag when they may miss a chain, anyone who posts in away isnt kicked, we can plan around people having holidays.

I love the fact that im with the new players.

Bigger established factions are full of high level/high stat players who log on, train and log off.

Thats not fun, warring helps a little but new players... my god do they manage to get into some weird situations but thats the beauty of it.

Seeing players who may have left the game, come back and turn from unguided noobs into coordinated powerhouses is the reason why Nub factions are built.

All about the members and watching how a little knowledge gets them growing.

I love that I may not have spoken to a player for a decade, but i'll get a message from an old member.

Hearing about they have now gone through university, bought a house, got married and now have 2 kids.

How in tough times, an old nub is always around to come assist with the latest generation.

The community is what I love most.

What I hate is when other players who bought their factions, leading it for a month start looking down on you because you're lower respect.

"You're just running a cache farm abusing the new players."

Zero knowledge of what they themselves are even doing with the faction, what the Nub history is, or what we're building up.

But it is satisfying when you absolutely smash them in a war and watch their faction implode when their members cant understand what just happened.

All members from across all the factions can agree that I will never be rich, I pour all my money into the factions, into the members.

I have a true networth of probably 400m, I am likely by far the poorest faction leader in the top 250 factions. I liquidate everything to ensure that the faction is provided for but thats the joy of it.

Having nubs move on, and build their own factions, having their own success and knowing if nubs is ever in trouble then we have people who'll help out.

Running the faction to make money will just slow its progress and likely destroy the culture.

Members can sense if you're in it for the community or for the money.

If you solely want money, then they will treat you like a job, when times get tough they'll move on.

Running the faction as a community to build everyone will make the faction fly along, but you will not make a dime.

When times get tough, everyone comes together to weather the storm.

For any faction funds which we do gain, we spend all the faction profits on going for the chain records.

Concrete milestones we have set and have drawn a line in the sand for other factions to atleast attempt it.

(We carve out a new player only division of it instead of piling just loads of HoF heavies into a new faction)
100% worth it, the team we have built along the way, the factions we bump into and make friends with.

Now that the chain records have been done, we'll use any funds for the next goal that members vote for.

I'll continue to cause chaos with nubs, I enjoy the chaos that it brings.

I could keep going on at length, but I think ive waffled on enough.

I was co-lead but de facto lead of Essex Boyz; we had a leader who became flakier and flakier and eventually only checked in once in a while.  This was a noob trap with maybe 150-200k respect at the time.

1- Why did you start/ buy the faction?

I didn’t.  I was reliable and outspoken and was made co-lead.  Then the leader started checking in 1x/wk or 1x/month.  When he did, he was insecure about his lack of leadership so he would throw his weight around extra hard to make up for it.

2- how did you go about recruiting? how strict were you with kicking unsuitable members?

Mostly messaging new players without factions using the search tool.  We kept track of war participation in a very rudimentary way and kicked non-hitters.  We requires TornStats and Discord and would kick you if you weren’t in those.  And we kicked people who used war Xanax for mugging other silly stuff.

3- how much has your faction grown? over what period of time?

It went from a garbage noob trap to a slightly less garbage noob trap.  The guy who came after me was a better leader and built it toward legitimacy.

4 - how many hours per day did you spend on it? what did you love? what did you hate?

2-3?

I loved the community.   Tiny factions like that often have really great chats and engaged players.  I loved doing stuff like figuring out what armor people had and improving it.

I hated banking.

5- How much have you invested into the faction? How much of it was from faction activities (rw, OCs, territories)?

I didn’t invest much at all, outside of time.  The leader always popped back up when it was time to handle caches, wouldn’t you know?

6- how much have you profited personally? if no profit, what have you done with the money from faction activities, and was it worth it?

Pretty sure my leader had a nice little racket going where we would pretend to get mugged every time he sold caches.

I called him out on it, he denied it, and then he started paying me a management fee for running the faction in his absence.   I think it was like 10-20m per war or something.  I don’t remember.

7- if you are an ex-leader, why did you leave?

The leader kept popping in.  We’d have a whole war strategy set, he’d be absent for the whole discussion, and then he’d come in and start barking orders.  Then he’d get stoned, vanish mid war after making like 20 hits total, and show up again the next day to grab the caches.

I eventually decided I needed to either lead or not lead; half way wasn’t working.

Plus, a buddy had moved on and through watching him I figured out how important good Steadfast is.

Right after I left the leader hit 30 days of inactivity and the guy it went to was better leader than me anyway.

really enjoyed reading all the responses so far. Feel free to talk for pages, I'll be reading all of it, please don't limit yourselves.

bump!