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Post by Rider on Jul 10, 2009 12:43:36 GMT -5
Welcome, one and all, to the new and improved guild board, now with 25% more Awesome!  These are the Guilds, a place where a lot of forum lore is born, heroic battles are fought, epic tales of romance are told, and overall cool stuff happens. In general, this is where you can chat with people who have similar interests and personae as you. The differences between Guilds and Clubs: Guilds are based on persona play. One's forum persona's attributes, profession, etc. determine which guilds they can and cannot join. Guilds are about roleplay, political intrigue, joking, fighting, and generally causing a ruckus. Clubs are based on interest. One cannot be denied entrance to a club, under normal circumstances (e.g. as long as you don't act like a complete nincompoop and hurt everyone's feelings). Basically, guilds work on what people are and clubs on what they do. The general forum rules still apply. "Do unto others as you would like Hunty's swordfish to do unto you," and etc. Remember that the guild rivalries are friendly rivalries. "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye, and then it's like, cool, an excuse to wear an eyepatch, yarr." The Guild Rules:- Don't take the guilds too seriously. They have become a fairly elaborate MMORPGish thing over the years, but they're still fantasy, and that means that all grudges, revenges, you-killed-my-grandpa-es etc are not to be taken seriously or held against anyone.
- Regard other guilds with courtesy. There are some age-old rivalries between all guilds, but there's also some age-old honor in all guilds. It's a-okay to post in other guilds' threads unless specified otherwise, but randomly spamming them won't be tolerated. Acting like a brat will only make you and your guild look bad, and in the worst-case scenario draw the attention of the fiery eye on top of Mount Mod Squad on you.
- The guild leaders are responsible for the organization and maintenance of their guilds. Keep your members happy and they will remain active. But at the same time, if you're a regular member, it doesn't mean that you get to sit down and wait for the leaders to constantly come up with fun stuff for you to do. The guilds are and have always been a group effort, and initiative is very much encouraged.
- You must be active in your first guild before joining a second. The definition of "active" may vary depending on who your guild leader is, but try to keep up with all guilds you are in. This rule applies even if you have different characters in different guilds. In general, you should only join a second (or third or fourth) guild after you've already established yourself in your current guild and positive that you'll be able to handle more. Struggling with too many responsibilities is no fun, and neither is waiting after someone who's trying to deal with too many responsibilities.
- You may create a different persona to join a different guild. Or multiple personae within one guild, if you can maintain them all. But the above still applies: if you can't keep up with all of them, you may want to think about retiring some of them. The more characters you have, the less time and attention you'll have to thoroughly develop them.
How to join a guild:Different guilds have different expectations and house rules, so you might want to read their main threads in the Center of Civilization sub-board to decide whether or not you want to join the guild you're interested in. Then simply post on their thread and ask to be added to the roster. Remember that your own activity and initiative are crucial: your guild won't survive if it relies on one or two members and a lot of dead weight who are only there in name. Every person counts, so make yourself count. How to make a guild:At the moment, there aren't enough active members to comfortably occupy the six guilds we currently have (with a seventh one pending), so until further notice, proposals to create new guilds will not be accepted. On the plus side, the guilds we do have pretty much span every major element of fantasy known to man. Check out Sarn's list of Important Places below for more information. Activities:A lot of the major, really canon-establishing action in the guilds is created in roleplays. They may easily look intimidating at first, but it's really only dependent on individual will and practice. The skill levels vary drastically and nobody's going to eat you if you're unsure and inexperienced at first (at least not without facing the aforesaid fiery modly eye) and it's perfectly acceptable to join in the middle of the roleplay so don't be afraid to plunge in. If roleplaying isn't really your thing, there will always be other events. It might sometimes look like there's nothing going on besides roleplays, but that's only because the non-roleplaying people don't start anything. If you want something to happen besides roleplays, initiative is once again the key. Happy guilding! |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2010 17:23:35 GMT -5
Guild Headquarters and LeadershipThis is where you sign up for a guild. It pays to read the first few posts in a thread before you join so you know how each guild would like you to sign up. The current leader is the person who directs the activities of their guild and keeps things running. The IC leader is the person who leads the guild within the context of roleplays. For example, Shade directs the Knights outside of RPs, but within them, the Knights are ruled by King Kabe, an NPC. Places You Should VisitGeneral Guild Persona where you must post about your character(s). The World Map is an ongoing project to map out the various places in the guildverse. Take a look and get to know the lay of the land. If you create a location or major geographical feature, make sure you post it so it can be added to the map. Guild NPCs are characters created by guild members for everyone to use during RPs.
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Post by Strife on Apr 21, 2010 6:43:46 GMT -5
Roleplaying Rules(Please note that this is a work in progress, so it's bound to change a bit.) The Big Three:These are the three most important rules of guild roleplaying. If you don't have the time to read this entire post, at least read about The Big Three. Know them, love them, cherish them, feed them milk and cookies and snuggle them dearly. - 1. Thou must join a guild to participate.
Before you can start a roleplay or join and existing roleplay, you must first be registered as the member of at least one guild. This doesn't mean that you can't create guildless characters, but your main, active character must be affiliated with a guild, at the very least.
Part of the charm of guild roleplays is the conflict that takes place between different factions, and if everyone was guildless and followed their own agenda, we might as well take things over to the Roleplay section of the forums. They call it Guild Wars for a reason, eh? ^_~
- 2. Do not destroy guild bases without the permission of the defending guild.
Every guild has their own base of operations - for example, the Knights have a castle, the Pirates have their ship, the Mages have a manor, and so on. Because the events of each roleplay carry on to future roleplays, any guild base that gets destroyed will remain destroyed. So in other words, don't do it.
There are, of course, certain situations where a guild will want to have its base destroyed, and if that's the case, then make sure you coordinate with the guild in question. Other than that, though, treat guild bases in the same way that you would treat someone else's character.
- 3. No godmoding without permission.
Basically, godmoding is three things:
- You immediately do something to another person's character without giving them a chance to react. "Bob sliced off Alice's head" is godmoding, because there's nothing Alice can possibly type to avoid getting killed. "Bob swung his sword at Alice's throat" is more acceptable, because Alice can now choose whether or not she dodges the attack.
- You shake off any attack that is directed at you, either by dodging it completely or by making yourself immune to harm. "Bob teleported away from Alice's tornado" is godmoding. "Alice's laser beam bounced off Bob's armor" is also godmoding.
- You conveniently ignore someone who attacked you and pretend that they didn't even post. Let's say Alice tries to hit you with an arrow while you're talking to another character. If you continue the conversation as though Alice never did anything, that's godmoding.
In certain situations, roleplayers may allow godmoding if it helps to progress the story, but unless someone outright says "feel free to godmode me," don't do it. If you don't know whether or not your post is a godmode, you can always ask the person you're interacting with through PM, or in the OOC thread. Different people have different ideas about what godmoding is, so coordinating your efforts outside the roleplay will pay off in a big way.
General GuidelinesThese rules aren't "rules" per se, but you should actively keep them in mind when participating in the guildverse. They'll make things a lot easier and more fun. ^_^ - 1. Keep your post length reasonable.
When typing a post, make sure that you only type enough to get your message across. Reading a massive wall of text about your character's thoughts can really turn some people off and cause them to skip your post entirely, which may lead to confusion later on if you actually did something important in your post. Everyone loves character development and reading about other people's thoughts on certain things, but try not to overdo it.
On the other hand, one-liners are quite frowned upon. If you respond to someone's long and well-thought-out post with only a sentence or two, it can cause a bit of irritation (and not of the skin variety, but hey, you never know). A little description of your thoughts and actions can mean the difference between having a character that's fun to interact with and a character that's basically an overpowered NPC.
In most cases, a good post length to aim for is anywhere from 2-4 paragraphs, depending on the situation.
- 2. Create a profile for your characters and update it when necessary.
With so many characters in the guildverse, it's really hard for some people to imagine what new characters are like. For this reason, it always helps to have a profile in case someone wants to learn more about your character.
If you haven't made a profile for your character yet, swing over to the General Guild Persona Thread and write up a quick summary of your persona. What do they look like? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What kind of personality do they have? What are their special abilities, if they have any?
If you've already made a profile for your character somewhere else, it really, really helps if you add a link to it in the General Persona Thread. It basically gives us a one-stop place where we can look up every character that's ever existed.
Also, make sure you update your profile if you character ends up changing during a roleplay. Afterall, it can be a little confusing if people think that your rogue zombie swordsman is still a human knight.
- 3. Try to use as few characters as possible.
Many new roleplayers jump into the guilds with loads and loads of characters, and they usually find out right away that it makes things harder. Why?
For one thing, when a roleplay begins, it usually moves forward a lot faster than you'd expect. Having to make a post for each of your 5 different characters can quickly prove to be too much in this situation. Not only that, but the more characters you have, the less defined each character is, which makes it harder for other people to imagine what your characters are like. It can be very tempting to create more characters, especially when it helps you move your part of the story forward, but more often than not, it's more work than it's worth.
If you've never been in a Guild roleplay before, it is strongly recommended that you only use one character. Once you get a feel for how everything works and how frequently you post, then you can start thinking about adding more characters if you believe that you can handle it.
- 4. Don't overplan.
With so many people roleplaying at one time, the plot is always guarenteed to go in new directions. If you've planned for months about how your mage is going to discover how the strange little trinket everyone's been chasing after is really an ancient artifact of ultimate power, don't be surprised if the trinket ends up being a dragon egg instead.
A little bit of planning definitely helps, but don't plan too far ahead, because you never know when someone else will jump in and steer the plot in an entirely different direction. Part of the fun of Guild roleplaying is the large number of people that are involved, and with so many roleplayers, there's bound to be new twists around every corner. Don't be upset if things don't go your way - just follow the new direction of the story and adjust your plans accordingly.
- 5. Keep your weapons at the same power level as everyone else's.
Ever since the Spacefleet guild was introduced, there have been concerns about their overpowered technology. If you look closely, however, you'll notice that they blend in quite nicely with the other guilds, and their laser weapons and bombs aren't any stronger than a knight's sword, a mage's fireball, or a ninja's shuriken.
We don't want people from a certain guild to be at a disadvantage simply because of their technology level. For example, the Pirates guild is one of the most popular guilds because a lot of people love roleplaying as pirates, but realistically speaking, they have the weakest weapons. If the guilds were realistic, they'd never get a chance to be involved with anything because of their low power level. However, since we've made a habit of balancing everyone's weapons, the Pirates are not only on an even playing field, but they're also a very active political force in the guildverse.
To sum it up, don't complain too much if you notice somebody taking the same amount of damage from a plasma rifle as they do from a simple stab to the knee. This is a fantasy world, not much different from the ones you used to watch on Saturday mornings as a kid. ^_~
- 6. Make sure you're caught up with the roleplay before writing your post.
Given the size of Guild roleplays, it can be very tempting to skim past a lot of the posts and just get to writing your own. However, there's always a chance that you might have missed something important this way, so it's generally not a good idea to skip posts.
Sometimes, members may create Summary threads so that people who take a break from the roleplay can quickly catch up. Summaries are not always guarenteed to pop up, though. If you still can't bring yourself to go back and read everything that happened, you can always ask people in the OOC thread for a quick summary.
- 7. Don't just follow people. Take initiative!
A common issue that we've run into with Guild roleplays is that only a handful of people actually drive the plot forward, while everyone else just follows the leader. While this is okay for some characters, it can really cause major slowdown if too many people are just "following the leader." And what do you think happens if the leader decides to leave the roleplay without warning? Yep, you guessed it: STALEMATE.
Don't be afraid to step forward and branch off from the main group every once in a while. Not only will it help you develop your characters, but it will also give us more to work with in case the main plot starts to dissolve, or in case one of the major roleplayers suddenly disappears.
Taking initiative really, really helps a lot and makes the roleplay a lot more entertaining - not just to be in, but to read as well!
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