Hear, hear! Mentors must become more than thankless scribes. That means making the position more than an afterthought. It needs to be a structured position. As you say, mentors need tools. Possibilities include:
- automatic welcome message from mentor(s)
- color for mentor messages
- workable charts allowing mentors to track progress
- a way to see if student is active
- automatic reports on gaining liege and army placement
Mentor goodies are nice and all -- but not about teaching players to be better players. A structure system in-game and this forum would go a long way toward retaining players and improving game play.
I like all of these options. For the Charts, I suggest implementing a structure where mentors can create daily quiz of a few questions for new players, like this:
Day 1:
1. Who is your ruler? (realm member dropdown list)
2. Are commoners equal to nobles? (Choose from "no", "never", and "inconceivable!")
If they miss number one, present some links for them to view on the messaging and realm information to find this information out.
Day 2:
1. Who is your liege?
2. Who is your marshal?
3. If your liege and your marshal issue contradicting orders, which should you follow?
And of course, if they don't have one of the above, then perhaps this could be set for a later date.
I suppose the question is, should this all be done by the individual mentors, or something filled out by mentors, or something that's the same for every player and baked in to the game?