Just coming in out of nowhere, talking about mentoring on the discord.
I say, take mentoring out of a character class and give it to the PLAYER. You give this role to players who are active, enjoy the game and have time and opportunity to post.
Give mentors the "task" of engaging new players and checking up on them at regular intervals, say, as close as possible to day 1, week1, month 1, etc. The responsibilities could rotate or be shared among the mentors. Give them their own mechanic to see which players are due for their catch up, so mentors can drop in, check the list, write a mail, ect. They can make that engagement general, "how are you liking things, are you getting enough things to do?" or very specific, "how did you go with that task I gave you last time? now I want you to x"... Players could opt out of the mentoring system like office refusal, "I don't want to be bothered by mentors"
Additionally, the council - and the ruler - who are responsible for fun - should be able to see certain metrics,
When is the last time we had a roleplay? a tournament? held a festival, had a string of roleplays that lasted x number of days? Visibility drives these things.
make it visible for every player so they can share the responsibility of driving interaction - or opting out of it if they don't want that responsibility (which is fine - not everyone has time and opportunity).
