Starting an RP-only guild

[douph]

Fellow Homins,
I have been looking for an RP guild for some time now. I am constantly rebuffing recruitment attempts from other guilds (apparently not having a guild means I am some poor waif) because they do not offer what I want in a guild. I would have founded an RP-only guild months ago, except that I have precious little time (48 hours is a short work week for me). So, what shall I do? How can I be a part of something that does not exist?

The best solution, at the moment, is a compromise. I propose to establish a proto-guild that is RP-only.

Q: What the hell are you talking about?

A: A proto-guild: an entity that is a precursor to a guild; more primitive and much less structured. No, this sort of organization is not a feature of Ryzom gameplay, but it is a first and crucial step towards the ultimate goal: a true RP Guild.

My plan is disgustingly simple.
(Or maybe just disgusting)

1) Attract the attentions of other RP players

2) Add interested RP-ers to a master list which constitutes the membership of this association

3) Discuss with this membership the characteristics and organization that the ensuing RP-only guild will embody

4) FORM the RP-only guild!
And there was much rejoicing! Yay!

Q: Why such a long process, its just a guild?

A: I could just form a guild of one person when I reach a high enough level, but its dull being a guild of one. Also I want to commune with other RP-ers and their 'toons' in all Atys lands first to make sure we do it properly right from the start. Furthermore, I'm not at a high enough level with any of my toons to form a guild yet, or reach any of the other lands for recruitment purposes.

Q: Will you be the leader of this RP Guild?

A: Not necessarily. Thats another big reason for a pre-guild association. I do not particularly aspire to be the leader, and I am certain that my real-world obligations would make a leadership role very difficult for me. I want to recruit others into the proto-guild and arrive at a concensus for structure and leadership with them before the actual guild is formed. What I have seen is that there is substantial interest in an RP guild, but that few people have the time/resources to found or lead such a group. The most important thing here and now is to *assemble* this group of RP-ers first, and then work out what stucture there should be. If an egalitarian association is best, we'll do that. One thing at a time.

Q: The entire concept of this guild is to be determined at a future date?

A: I know what I would want in an RP guild. I would have it Kami/Karavan neutral and accept all races with a purpose of fomenting racial harmony, without which ultimate victory over the Kitin hordes will be extremely difficult. My point is that it is more important to adopt a guild purpose that will be acceptable to the majority of the other RP-ers who show interest in an RP guild. (To be fair, there are Guilds that have the exact same stated purpose as what I have mentioned, and I don't want to belittle those fine groups in any way).

Q: What should interested Ryzomers do to join this proto-guild thing?

A: Just message me somehow. Reply to this thread. A private message to douph. In-game mail to 'Kalehar'. An E-mail to KarlMonster@ameritech.net (E-mailers use a subject of "Ryzom" or my spam filter will eat your E-mail). Don't feel obligated to post your E-mail address in thread replies. If you are interested, I'll communicate with you outside the forum for your contact info.

Role Playing Only!
Passing interest in Role Playing may not be sufficient. Players should be ready to be in character from login to logoff (but we'll work out some supplementary way to communicate extra-Ryzom info).

[madnak]

I might be interested. I'm pretty much on hiatus now though.

[kostika]

The concept is good, but I've found with my guild that its pretty much impossible to force peopleto be IC all the time when logged in. People will go in and out of character, but on the majority, most stuff in guild chat is IC.

You say you haven't found any RP guilds. I know there are others but off the top of my head there is my own guild, and also Evolution who are both very much into RP. I don't know of any guild that is all RP all the time.

Still good luck. I hope it works for you.

[douph]

You say you haven't found any RP guilds.

Isn't Evolution a Kami-oriented guild? I believe that there may also be sometimes-RP guilds that are Karavan-oriented. Given that there are few enough RP players, I wanted to maximize the potential membership by being religion-neutral. That leaves the way open for historically Kami or Karavan oriented races to work together for the greater good.

If I am mistaken about Evolution, then that is my fault. I found it difficult to establish which guilds did RP or not (most do not, or are religion specific). I occasionally see interest in RP in the forums but had not yet seen that interest affiliated with one guild.

(No Kami were harmed in the creation of this post..... yet)

[madnak]

In order for a guild to have an in-game position, it really needs to have some kind of faction alignment. "Neutral" and "hominist" qualify as their own alignments. It's unfortunate, but there it is. Cara Via might be an RP guild, they were thinking of it but I'm not sure how it panned out. The Silver Watch used to be a Karavan RP guild too, but it is now hominist and empty. Samsara and Evolution are both Kami I believe.

[kostika]

Evolution is a tryker based Karavan guild. Samsara is a fyros based Kami guild.

I don't know about other guilds, but both of these are high RP guilds. Not 24/7, but pretty close.

[calel]

IIRC there' s a whole bunch more; Aedan Artisans, Stormdancers, ....

On the French server they added an RP alignement to their list of guilds; High-RP, Semi-Rp, casual. Might perhaps be a good idea to add this too (once you define what each alignement could stand for) as you' d really have to talk to the persons in question first before you can have a clue as a newcommer looking for an RP-guild, and possibly miss out on some.



On a sidenote: I don' t really think Evolution is 'that' Karavan biased. *cough*

[kostika]

On a sidenote: I don' t really think Evolution is 'that' Karavan biased. *cough*

Point. They're not hard line Karavan. More somewhere between Hominist and Karavan. The best person to talk to about Evolution though would be Sxarlet.

[norvic]

Would'nt want to usurp an answer from the Boss but Kos is pretty much correct we have people like me following and supporting the Kara side of the story, not ultra hardcore but i wont touch a mission if it involves kami fame etc and we also have one or two pure hominists so guild alignment i Guess would be Kara side of Nuetral in general.

[douph]

Allow me to provide some more backstory, namely the dilemma that I am trying to address with this scheme of mine. I had sought an RP guild on my own because again, I have scant little time for administrative efforts. When I did look around, I did not find quite what I was looking for.

The list of guilds which is now here contains a column with the heading "in character". I understand clearly what is meant by Kami or Karavan when they appear in that column, but the entries that specify "neutral" are wholly non-intuitive. There was a comment in the formative days of that list that "neutral" does not specify whether the guild role plays a neutral role between the factions of demigods, or whether the guild is neutral towards the entire concept of roleplaying. 3 are listed as Karavan RP, one as Kami, and Evolution does not even appear on the list. Thus I was able to draw little useful information from that source.

So I tried another tactic. I searched the entire "Guilds" area of the English community for "role playing RP" to see if I could find the RP guilds that way. What I found instead was at least 5 threads with players looking for RP guilds, and lamenting lack of RP guilds and lack of interest.

Perhaps Evolution has filled that gap, but there are clearly some (new?) people interested in RP, although they are likely frustrated from not finding the guild they want easily enough.

So, "hominist", you say?
Sounds like the Shao-Lin order.