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Veteran player with a New Player Question... RP Guilds


Kass

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This is going to come off as a troll, so I don't blame anyone if they see my signature and assume I'm trolling...

 

I just moved to Star Forge from Satele Shan server, and I've been looking for a Guild. I see that there are A LOT of RP Guilds, and I started to cringe a bit with all the rules and restrictions...

 

Maybe its not something for me, but I wanted to understand it better, and thought I'd post here to ask so someone can explain it in a way a dumb guy like me can comprehend - because if I've spent 10 years developing my character and perfecting it, have a Darth title, and have been master of my own fate all this time, I have a hard time mentally accepting being someone else's apprentice?

 

Or do I have this concept wrong?

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Talking about RP and what RPers do and so on is likely to unnecessarily stir the pot; no reason for non-RP folks like me to get into that. Good thing is that RPers can do their thing, non-RPers can do their thing, and nobody is forced to do anything or prevented from doing anything.

 

There are non-RP guilds on Star Forge and RP-optional ones as well. You could pick one easily. xordevoreaux - a frequent forum contributor - leads SF guilds for example (if I'm not mistaken.)

 

You can search for and read about guilds at the SWTOR Community's Guild Finder site.

Edited by mike_carton
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Talking about RP and what RPers do and so on is likely to unnecessarily stir the pot; no reason for non-RP folks like me to get into that. Good thing is that RPers can do their thing, non-RPers can do their thing, and nobody is forced to do anything or prevented from doing anything.

 

There are non-RP guilds on Star Forge and RP-optional ones as well. You could pick one easily. xordevoreaux - a frequent forum contributor - leads SF guilds for example (if I'm not mistaken.)

 

You can search for and read about guilds at the SWTOR Community's Guild Finder site.

 

I appreciate the reply, but this is a very 'guard rails' response... how does a non-RP get to know what SWTOR RPing is, if no one will talk about it?

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Well, honestly it's not that hard to understand if you just try to view it from someone else's perspective and not based simply on what you like. Imagine that you want to mold a story yourself, you imagine your character being on some cool adventure. This can happen in any universe, not just in Star Wars, but in other "worlds", sci-fi and fantasy especially. We like to see stories in these universes, and of course movies, TV Series, video games, books etc. provide us with an opportunity to experience this. Video games have an edge for certain people because you can be the one who actually decides certain events and not just be "along for the ride" as with other mediums. But of course even this has limitations, you can only play the game that has been offered to you by the developers, and no matter how many dozens of options you have to choose from to mold your story, there are still a limited number, no matter how high that may be. And what if the thing you want to experience is not among them? People like imagining certain events or interactions in their head, but with RP you can achieve this in-game with other people. You can imagine that assault on another Republic world, you can imagine being a master to an actual decent apprentice not *********** Jaesa or Ashara or Kira or Nadia. You can imagine actually spending time with your master, not just roaming the galaxy for them, you can imagine being Imperial Agent that has a mission to infiltrate a clan of Mandalorians somehow. The possibilities are endless. This is why Dungeons and Dragons is still so bloody popular 50 years after it first launched, even though the days of pen and paper can be considered obsolete with the amazing technology we have nowadays. That is why people love doing RP, they want to experience another story not just the one offered to them by the developers, maybe one designed by them or that matches certain things they wish to experience. If they could magically imagine a game like that to play, they would, but they can't. And of course you can sit around, write a book or just play with your imagination, or you can actually try and make it real in-game.
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Well, honestly it's not that hard to understand if you just try to view it from someone else's perspective and not based simply on what you like. Imagine that you want to mold a story yourself, you imagine your character being on some cool adventure. This can happen in any universe, not just in Star Wars, but in other "worlds", sci-fi and fantasy especially. We like to see stories in these universes, and of course movies, TV Series, video games, books etc. provide us with an opportunity to experience this. Video games have an edge for certain people because you can be the one who actually decides certain events and not just be "along for the ride" as with other mediums. But of course even this has limitations, you can only play the game that has been offered to you by the developers, and no matter how many dozens of options you have to choose from to mold your story, there are still a limited number, no matter how high that may be. And what if the thing you want to experience is not among them? People like imagining certain events or interactions in their head, but with RP you can achieve this in-game with other people. You can imagine that assault on another Republic world, you can imagine being a master to an actual decent apprentice not *********** Jaesa or Ashara or Kira or Nadia. You can imagine actually spending time with your master, not just roaming the galaxy for them, you can imagine being Imperial Agent that has a mission to infiltrate a clan of Mandalorians somehow. The possibilities are endless. This is why Dungeons and Dragons is still so bloody popular 50 years after it first launched, even though the days of pen and paper can be considered obsolete with the amazing technology we have nowadays. That is why people love doing RP, they want to experience another story not just the one offered to them by the developers, maybe one designed by them or that matches certain things they wish to experience. If they could magically imagine a game like that to play, they would, but they can't. And of course you can sit around, write a book or just play with your imagination, or you can actually try and make it real in-game.

 

So for a player thats played the game for a long time, haven't they been RPing (even our avid "No-RP" players) with the Story itself from the game through the story dialogue menue options/choices that they've made?

 

It seems you'd have to maybe make a character from scratch and try to come into an RP guild at the ground level? I can't wrap my mind around taking my 10 year old Main Character that's this total ******, and trying to delete from my memory all the RP Game Story choices I've made, to then 'fit in' with people who have an established system and probably some RP Seniority.

 

Am I headed in the right direction with this thinking?

Edited by Kass
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So for a player thats played the game for a long time, haven't they been RPing (even our avid "No-RP" players) with the Story itself from the game through the story dialogue menue options/choices that they've made?

 

It seems you'd have to maybe make a character from scratch and try to come into an RP guild at the ground level? I can't wrap my mind around taking my 10 year old Main Character that's this total ******, and trying to delete from my memory all the RP Game Story choices I've made, to then 'fit in' with people who have an established system and probably some RP Seniority.

 

Am I headed in the right direction with this thinking?

 

Yes, you are thinking about it in a right way, but you are not completely there. You don't have to take your main character and start RPing with that one specifically. You can have your main character, be a Dark Council member with that one, or the Grand Champion of the Great Hunt etc., and you can make a side character that you use to imagine a different story and "implant" that character into an RP guild. With this RP character, maybe you don't even care about the story Bioware made, because you are doing something totally different with other people and organizing it, you just level up to get different abilities or maybe titles like "Lord" or "Knight of the Republic". Unless people come into SWTOR from the get-go ready to do a heavy RP playthrough, I doubt there are players who are just getting into RP and decide to do it with their main, several years old, character. They do indeed make a new one. Maybe they have too many Sith Warriors and Sith Inquisitors and explored almost every avenue of story with these classes, and would like to try and experience something new.

 

And you are 100% correct about the fact that everyone, even the non-RPers, have been doing RP with the class stories and expansion stories themselves. Of course there are some players that don't even pay attention to the story, they skip cutscenes and all that, but most people actually think about the dialogue options and what they want their characters to say and do. Furthermore, maybe there are some players that do even more RP within the class story. What do I mean by this? Maybe after finally defeating Revan on Yavin IV, they imagine that they actually have a longer conversation with Satele Shan, not just that 2 minute epilogue. Or maybe they imagine holding a debriefing with their crew back on their ship. You can say that they are expanding the story given by Bioware to make it feel more complex or genuine, and not necessarily building something completely different with a RP guild.

 

Example of an "RP event" I just saw a short while ago. I just made a new SIth Inquisitor and was doing the class story on Korriban and I went to the second floor of the Sith Academy to learn new abilities from the trainer. When I walked in, there must have been like 20 people doing an RP event. There were two guys in front who had awesome looking gear on them, one was a Darth, the other just a Lord, and about 18 other players who just had that Korriban beginning gear on them, and they were all acolytes. And the Darth was holding a speech about the Dark Side and the Force and all that. Really nice moment. Of course I quickly went to the trainer and got my abilities and left as to not disturb them too much.

 

At the end of the day, when people say "RP is not for everyone", it's not meant as "You suck, you can't do RP" or something insulting like that(even though some douches say it like that). "RP is not for everyone" in my opinion means that some people don't want to imagine another story or "waste" time spending hours with other players and not actually playing the game, but just sit around talking and imagining things. Some people take as much enjoyment in that as they do in actually playing the game and don't mind it, others don't.

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Yes, you are thinking about it in a right way, but you are not completely there. You don't have to take your main character and start RPing with that one specifically. You can have your main character, be a Dark Council member with that one, or the Grand Champion of the Great Hunt etc., and you can make a side character that you use to imagine a different story and "implant" that character into an RP guild. With this RP character, maybe you don't even care about the story Bioware made, because you are doing something totally different with other people and organizing it, you just level up to get different abilities or maybe titles like "Lord" or "Knight of the Republic". Unless people come into SWTOR from the get-go ready to do a heavy RP playthrough, I doubt there are players who are just getting into RP and decide to do it with their main, several years old, character. They do indeed make a new one. Maybe they have too many Sith Warriors and Sith Inquisitors and explored almost every avenue of story with these classes, and would like to try and experience something new.

 

And you are 100% correct about the fact that everyone, even the non-RPers, have been doing RP with the class stories and expansion stories themselves. Of course there are some players that don't even pay attention to the story, they skip cutscenes and all that, but most people actually think about the dialogue options and what they want their characters to say and do. Furthermore, maybe there are some players that do even more RP within the class story. What do I mean by this? Maybe after finally defeating Revan on Yavin IV, they imagine that they actually have a longer conversation with Satele Shan, not just that 2 minute epilogue. Or maybe they imagine holding a debriefing with their crew back on their ship. You can say that they are expanding the story given by Bioware to make it feel more complex or genuine, and not necessarily building something completely different with a RP guild.

 

Example of an "RP event" I just saw a short while ago. I just made a new SIth Inquisitor and was doing the class story on Korriban and I went to the second floor of the Sith Academy to learn new abilities from the trainer. When I walked in, there must have been like 20 people doing an RP event. There were two guys in front who had awesome looking gear on them, one was a Darth, the other just a Lord, and about 18 other players who just had that Korriban beginning gear on them, and they were all acolytes. And the Darth was holding a speech about the Dark Side and the Force and all that. Really nice moment. Of course I quickly went to the trainer and got my abilities and left as to not disturb them too much.

 

At the end of the day, when people say "RP is not for everyone", it's not meant as "You suck, you can't do RP" or something insulting like that(even though some douches say it like that). "RP is not for everyone" in my opinion means that some people don't want to imagine another story or "waste" time spending hours with other players and not actually playing the game, but just sit around talking and imagining things. Some people take as much enjoyment in that as they do in actually playing the game and don't mind it, others don't.

 

I appreciate your thoughtful post reply.

 

Seems I'm just overthinking, and while you can't just expect to bring your Darth-Emperor-of-Everyone-Galaxy-Breaker-Muwahahaha-I'm-all-Powerful character into an established group and expect to be accepted or get along with anyone, that there is a trade off if your an experienced or veteran player that joins a Guild that has an RP contingent and supports that game play, or want to be bold and join a full blown RP Guild.

 

As an old guy that played PnP RPGs and remembers using IBM Clone Personal Computers as a kid, it seemed mysterious to me how actual RP worked in a game like SWTOR; but as with any scenario it seems like you're just gonna have to suck it up and make a brand new character if you want to play with a new group.

 

With all that said, and again thank you for all your feedback, I have an additional question...

 

What does it mean when I see guilds listings on SWTOR Fan Community Guild Database that say: No-ERP; InstaBan? What's that?

Edited by Kass
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Unfortunately, unlike SWG, you have to pay for most emotes, there is no Storyteller system, and no Chronicle Master so the ability to role play falls entirely on the rules and imaginations of the participants. Griefing occurred in SWG too, but there are limited options in SWTOR to compartmentalize RP, namely, strongholds. I don’t do it but I still felt for the RP community when they lost their servers. Nothing really prevented griefers from making toons there anyway but it was still a hassle to maintain characters on multiple severs back then which was somewhat of a deterrent. I realize this is a bit of a rant and a little off topic, but I have to give credit to the players who have maintained RP guilds for nearly ten years in the face of no systematic support and even outright roadblocks. The various rules have likely evolved not just to allow for interactions between role players, but also to limit griefing and enforce an environment that isn’t supported in any way with in game tools. I wish you all the best. Edited by phalczen
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Every RP guild has its own RP. When you join, you start at the bottom of their ladder and you learn their RP from the beginning. If you could join as a Darth, then everyone would be a Darth. Dozens of Darths and no subordinates.

 

You can always make your own RP guild. :)

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I appreciate your thoughtful post reply.

 

Seems I'm just overthinking, and while you can't just expect to bring your Darth-Emperor-of-Everyone-Galaxy-Breaker-Muwahahaha-I'm-all-Powerful character into an established group and expect to be accepted or get along with anyone, that there is a trade off if your an experienced or veteran player that joins a Guild that has an RP contingent and supports that game play, or want to be bold and join a full blown RP Guild.

 

As an old guy that played PnP RPGs and remembers using IBM Clone Personal Computers as a kid, it seemed mysterious to me how actual RP worked in a game like SWTOR; but as with any scenario it seems like you're just gonna have to suck it up and make a brand new character if you want to play with a new group.

 

With all that said, and again thank you for all your feedback, I have an additional question...

 

What does it mean when I see guilds listings on SWTOR Fan Community Guild Database that say: No-ERP; InstaBan? What's that?

 

I also dabbled in PnP RPGs and I understand how it can feel weird at times hehe. Since the pandemic started, I'm actually playing DnD using DnDBeyond and Foundry VTT so we don't have to gather in places and do it online. It feels a bit weird at times, but I've gotten used to it and I must say I enjoy it. Here are some screenshots just to see how it looks:

 

https://ibb.co/D9w2bM4

https://ibb.co/s1068j7

https://ibb.co/JCTHWqf

 

As for the non-ERP, that comes from non-Erotic Roleplay. Basically people who want to "ERP" also want the guild to make available romances between characters. So basically maybe you want your character to develop a relationship with another person in that guild. I'm guessing some might even want some sex-chatting involved. I have never done anything like that. I once was in a relationship in DnD with an NPC and my Dungeon Master had to kind of RP that but there was nothing steamy about it. xD

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If previous 'non-RPers' take a honest interest in joining an RP guild, should they expect some push back for not being in the RP circle - like a sort of clique elitism?

 

Or by and large are RP guilds pretty welcoming?

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If previous 'non-RPers' take a honest interest in joining an RP guild, should they expect some push back for not being in the RP circle - like a sort of clique elitism?

 

Or by and large are RP guilds pretty welcoming?

 

Honestly, I guess it depends on luck. Overall the SWTOR community in all its aspects is better then a lot of other MMOs, however you will find your "douches" around here as well. However, I do think that people doing RP in most video games are pretty cool blokes. Worst case scenario, I think that if there are RP guilds recruiting, maybe you won't be accepted in some scenarios because some won't want to take the time to teach you or show you the ropes or stuff like that. I guess it's like those guilds who are in the phase of just recruiting people for Veteran Operations and are not in the mood to run Story mode with people to show them and teach them or help them gear up.

 

However there are guilds who want to start or who already have an RP community and have no qualms with inexperienced people and welcome both old and new to this area. Most time I think they will even say in their advertisement that it's a medium-RP guild(meaning you don't have to be a hardcore RPer) or that "new RPers are welcome".

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Honestly, I guess it depends on luck. Overall the SWTOR community in all its aspects is better then a lot of other MMOs, however you will find your "douches" around here as well. However, I do think that people doing RP in most video games are pretty cool blokes. Worst case scenario, I think that if there are RP guilds recruiting, maybe you won't be accepted in some scenarios because some won't want to take the time to teach you or show you the ropes or stuff like that. I guess it's like those guilds who are in the phase of just recruiting people for Veteran Operations and are not in the mood to run Story mode with people to show them and teach them or help them gear up.

 

However there are guilds who want to start or who already have an RP community and have no qualms with inexperienced people and welcome both old and new to this area. Most time I think they will even say in their advertisement that it's a medium-RP guild(meaning you don't have to be a hardcore RPer) or that "new RPers are welcome".

 

Kerebas... I appreciate you sharing all this with me. It's good to know what other game play/entertainment options exist in SWTOR.

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