How to make a new community?

[ErdTod]

So I started playing this world with bunch of IRL friends, like around 11 of them. Most of them quit in the first two days of them playing, then some more in span of two weeks. A week ago another friend stopped playing, and I see how the last of them is gradually logging in less and less.

Now since it's not as fun playing alone, we've invited hermits that happened to settle near to us to join us forming a village: but it ended up being one guy with two characters, and two more people who agreed to join us but want to play separately (basically we just share the claim, and chat).

Now I'd like to have some more people to play with, however we're out of friendly neighbour hermits. Inviting other people in i.e. here on forums gets you 98% chance to get some infiltration kind of weirdo, who'll make a minehole somewhere random basement so you don't notice how a rading party comes without passing your visitor gates.

Is there any sane, non-paranoic way to invite people to play together, without them having all the tools to screw everything you've built?

[Milarepa]

No and this is the reason no one recruits, just take a look on dwarves & thieves forum or discord. Some steam newfriends and overly-enthusiastic hermits tried recruiting, but to no avail. Good luck joining any bigger village or a faction nowadays. People are extremely borderline-schizophrenia paranoid.

[yym331]

It seems almost impossible, doesn't it? The only idea I can come up with is bringing in people I know from other games. Back in the 2D days, when there were about 80 Japanese players, I joined a VIP village that was recruited via an anonymous forum, but it ended up collapsing due to internal conflicts.

Now, I mainly play with my partner (sometimes friends join, but it's mostly just the two of us), but I would like to play with a larger group again. However, dealing with strange residents would definitely add stress.

[DDDsDD999]

Build a village and give people their own palisaded plots with p-claims. Don't give untrusted people village perms beyond tresspassing/rummaging/theft/vandalism. Put anything else you want secured into a palisaded p-claim. Work stations can be used but not destroyed by people with only tresspass/rummage perms. If you want, you can restrict access to the mining area to miners only, farming area to farmers, etc.

It should be a given, but every gate should be a visitor gate.

[Sevenless]

Build a village and give people their own palisaded plots with p-claims. Don't give untrusted people village perms beyond tresspassing/rummaging/theft/vandalism. Put anything else you want secured into a palisaded p-claim. Work stations can be used but not destroyed by people with only tresspass/rummage perms. If you want, you can restrict access to the mining area to miners only, farming area to farmers, etc.

It should be a given, but every gate should be a visitor gate.

If the option of "befriend local larger villages for a possible merge next world" is too slow, the uncomfortable step of needing to strangerproof your village is the way to go.

Gonna disagree though, you can't give vandalism to randoms because it gives them the ability to drop a minehole. So randoms can only get vandal in their Pclaim, which should be fully walled off *outside* of where they have vandal. Otherwise there's the chance they drop a wreckingball you don't notice to break out of their Pclaim. You really should notice, but if we're keeping it to "no trust needed".

It changes village design so much I also feel you need to build it this way from the ground up.

[azrid]

Gonna disagree though, you can't give vandalism to randoms because it gives them the ability to drop a minehole.

you can put inacessible hitboxes under the village so people with vandal cant put mineholes

To OP I also recommend looking into other gaming communities outside of haven forum and discord.
Another layer of security that works for other games is having interviews over discord. If you are good at assessing people you'll weed out a lot of parasites.
Not to be ageist but very often the griefers are younger people.

[Nightdawg]

You can't fucking trust anybody in this game, even your closest friend of 3+ years can turn into a scumbag over night for no fucking reason.

Don't even trust your own shadow.

Anyway you're better off trying to join a larger village (not Whatever Gay, fuck that village). Instead of saying you recruit, say you have X amount of friends that would like to join a larger village, and let them message you.

[SexyBigBoobaDakkan]

If you're really determined then try to make a central market for your continent, the whole 11 yards. Charter stone, roads that fondle every edge of the continent for easy access, have events, promote it, go nuts. Markets have their own set of obstacles to overcome so it could actually be a fun challenge if that's what you're after.

[Sevenless]

Gonna disagree though, you can't give vandalism to randoms because it gives them the ability to drop a minehole.

you can put inacessible hitboxes under the village so people with vandal cant put mineholes

As someone who's done that... I really don't recommend it. Not to mention you'd now need to palisade and claim the entire area under your aboveground village otherwise someone could just bash whatever's blocking.

[maze]

there is a lot you can do; but it takes time.

It's taken nearly 8 worlds for CoS to be what it is now; most other community fall apart over night because they take so many risk.
The other one's are built on solid rules and small groups working together.

There is not many groups that have 10+ people sitting in discord together~ I can tell you that for sure.