Groups, ranks and access

Groups are your sim’s factions, crews and households. Each one has a ladder of ranks, its own HUD theme and fight rules, and can pay its members. This guide covers setting groups up, running ranks and promotions, handing membership to faction leaders, and giving your staff the right powers on the website.

Create a group

Go to Staff › Groups › Groups and press Add group.
Give it a Name and a Titler color. If you switch on titler-groupColors on Server › Settings, members’ names show in this colour over their heads.
Pick a HUD theme. Members’ HUDs wear it. Default uses your hud-defaultTheme setting.
Pick a Game system. Fights led by a member of this group use it. The default uses combat-defaultGameSystem.
Press Create. The group’s page opens.

Groups can’t be deleted. Turn Active off to retire one, and switch on Show retired on the list to see it again.

Changing groups, ranks and stipends needs assign_groups. Staff with admin can look but not change.

Starting items

Starting items are what a new character in this group starts with. Press Add starting item and pick the Item and Amount. They’re given when a player creates a character on the website’s creation form and picks this group, the form you get with web-charSheet set to 1.

Ranks

A group’s ranks are in the Ranks card on its page. Staff › Groups › Group roles shows the same card after you pick a group.

The list runs from junior at the top to senior at the bottom. Use the arrows to reorder it.
Type a name in New rank and press Add rank. Save any other changes first.
The switch beside a rank turns it off. It’s hidden when you assign ranks, and anyone holding it keeps it.
Uniform & badge holds the values in-world gear reads. Set them once with Group uniform & badge, then on a rank only where it differs.
Press Save ranks to keep your changes.

group-roleMode on Server › Settings decides how many ranks a character can hold in one group:

Value	What happens
`single`	One rank per group. Add member refuses someone already in the group, so use Change role.
`multi`	A character can hold several ranks in the same group.

Either way, a character can belong to several groups.

Assigning members

On Staff › Groups › Group members, pick a group. Add member takes a Character and Role, and Change role gives a member a different rank. Move sends someone to another group with a Role there; switch on Also keep them in to keep them here too. After Remove, their time in the rank stays in their job history.

Promotions

Pick how members climb the ladder in Promotions on the Ranks card:

Off: staff set every rank.
Players choose: influence unlocks ranks, and each player takes one when they like, up or down.
Automatic: players move up as they earn influence, unless they hold their rank. They can still step down.

Influence is the character’s experience. Give each rank an Influence amount. Leave it blank for a rank only staff give; the box reads Set by staff, and whoever holds that rank gets no offers.

A ladder can split into paths. Type a Path name on each side’s ranks. Ranks with no path are Shared and appear on every path. A player picks a side by taking a rank on it, and after that only staff can move them across, by giving them a rank on the other path in Group members.

Automatic promotions run every 10 minutes by default. Players see their ladder on the HUD’s Promotion page, and Promotion Available on Home when they can move.

Stipends

Recurring stipends pay members regularly.

On the group’s page, press Add recurring stipend.
Under Pays, pick An item or Coins, then the item or coin and the Amount.
Under To, pick Every member or Only one rank.
Set Every (days).
If your bank is on and the group has an account, pick it under Paid from. Each payment leaves that account and goes into the member’s own account, or to them as cash if they have none.
Leave it On and press Save.

Payments are checked hourly. A member is paid once a full period has passed since their last payment, or since they joined, if they played that character within the period. NPCs, disabled characters and locked accounts are skipped, and a missed period is never paid later. Players on the sim get a HUD line. History shows each member as Due, Waiting or Not played, with the latest payouts. Pay now pays everyone who played and hasn’t been paid this period.

Tip: If a group’s bank account can’t cover a payment, the run stops there and a warning goes to the bank Discord group. Keep group accounts topped up.

Faction leaders

A faction leader runs one group’s members without any staff role. Go to Staff › Access › Faction leaders, pick the account and the Faction, and press Add. This needs inworld_permissions, which Admins have.

Leaders get the Faction Leaders menu, for the groups they lead:

Group members: the same page as above.
Container permissions: who may View, Deposit and Withdraw for containers whose Required group they lead, as rows for Everyone, the group’s members and single characters. Ticks save straight away.
Vendor sales, Container activity and Container contents: what the group’s vendors sold, what moved in and out of its containers, and what’s inside.
Faction tax: if you switch on faction-tax, a faction holding a territory takes a share of NPC vendor purchases and auctions there into its bank account. The leader sets Rate (%), up to faction-tax-cap. You give territories on Game Design › Economy › Economy.

Staff with assign_groups see every group on these pages.

Staff access on the website

Staff powers come from web roles. A role is a set of permissions, and an account can hold several. Super Admins and Admins open Staff › Access.

The roles

A new sim starts with these. The Roles tab shows what each allows on yours.

Role	For	Main permissions
Super Admin	Owners	`superadmin`: everything, including roles, the menu, and password and two-factor resets
Admin	Running the sim	Bans, accounts and characters, groups, awards, logs, Discord, premade operations
Storyteller	Running scenes	The HUD NPC menu, sounds, lights, alarms, events, popups, spawning items
Processor	Reviewing applications	`sheet_processor`, `profile_details`, `profile_edit`, `assign_groups`
Game Master	Building the game	Items, abilities, effects, levels, quests, vendors, crafting, environments
Moderator	Enforcing rules	The ban menu, popups and messages, `profile_edit`, `profile_safety_edit`, `assign_groups`
Demo	Look-only visitors	Sees every page, changes nothing

Give someone a role

Go to Staff › Access › Permissions and find them with Look someone up.
Pick a role under Give a role and press Give.
Read What they can do. It lists every permission they end up with and where each one comes from.

Each role has a Power and a Power needed to grant. You can give or take a role only when your strongest role’s power is above what it needs. By default, Admins can give Storyteller, Processor, Game Master and Moderator, and only Super Admins can give Admin, Super Admin or Demo.

Super Admins also add, edit and delete roles on the Roles tab, and tick What it allows. A role can’t be deleted while anyone holds it.

Under Extra permissions on the Permissions tab, a Super Admin adds single permissions to one account on top of their roles. Extras only add; to take a permission away, change their roles.

Staff › Access › Menu (Super Admin only) holds the website’s menu. An entry with gates opens for anyone who has one of them, and one with none opens for anyone who can open its parent. A gate is a web permission or an in-world one, such as faction leader. Gates only change the menu; each page still checks permissions before it saves.

Look-only accounts

The Demo role sees every page and changes nothing but its own look and password. Secrets show as hidden, and the HUD refuses the account, so give it to a separate account, never a playing one.

Anyone can turn it on from the account menu at the top right: Settings, then Two-factor sign-in. It takes an authenticator app, security keys or both, gives 10 backup codes, and can trust a browser for 30 days. It guards signing in with a password; the HUD’s Web Login link doesn’t ask for it.

If someone loses their phone or key and their backup codes, a Super Admin opens Staff › Players › Player tools, the Password & two-factor tab, and presses Switch off two-factor. Make sure it’s really them first.

Good practice

Keep Super Admin to the owners, and have at least two. Only a Super Admin can reset passwords and two-factor, and a Super Admin account can’t be locked.
Ask every staff member to turn on two-factor sign-in.
Give the smallest role that covers the job, and use extras for one-off needs.
Check the defaults. Moderators and Processors start with assign_groups, which changes groups, ranks and stipends, and profile_edit, which renames characters and sets their class and HP. Moderators lack profile_details, so they can’t browse Staff › Players until you add it.
Give panic_economy and panic_server only to people you’d trust with the whole sim.
When someone leaves the team, take their roles away the same day.