Roleplaying and Guild Policy

From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki

Roleplaying and Guild Policy

by Pazuzu of OES

Getting members to stay in character is a problem faced by all role-playing guilds at one point or another. There are a couple ways to solve the problem, each of which has its own set of pros and cons.

The first thing a guild has to determine is how much OOC behavior they will tolerate. Many guilds start out saying they will only tolerate 100% full-time role-playing, then after they get started they let it get out of control and then end up basically tolerating whatever the members do. This is not the ideal situation and if you don't have a clear plan for enforcing 100% role-playing, you may need to tone it down a little, such as saying "you must role-play at all times where non-members can see you."

100% role-playing, if you can get it enforced, is an ideal situation. The total immersion in the game world it creates is truly astounding. I spent quite a bit of time in the various Catskills role-playing groups, and all of them require full-time role-playing with NO exception and I can tell you first-hand it is amazing. You really feel a part of a fantasy world, and others around feel the same. It creates a sense of immersion that can't be matched.

As I mentioned above, there are a couple of ways people have devised to enforce role-playing in a group. Each has various pros and cons, and none will work for every situation or group. It takes an intelligent and dedicated group of leaders to make a role-playing group work.

One of the simplest ways to enforce role-playing is to simply state "all violations of the role-playing policy will result in expulsion from the group." If you make this statement, you will have to actually enforce it or people will assume it's just a recommendation. So you're going to be throwing quite a number of people out of the guild at first.

Perhaps a better way to enforce it is to help eliminate some of the reasons and excuses people give for going out-of-character. A large percentage of role-players who go OOC at times cite as a reason, "well I was playing this game long before I joined and I have a lot of friends who don't role-play, so when I see them I have to be OOC." A simple way to eliminate that is to require the creation of a brand-new character to join the group. ALL of the Catskills groups operate this way. This way, the character has no OOC friends and the player then has little excuse to go OOC.

This also helps to control "name mismatching." Often times, you'll see a pretty good role-playing group, yet they have members named "SCRIBE" or something else that just doesn't seem to fit. Requiring new characters eliminates this because you simply don't accept improperly named characters.

Also note that this policy of requiring new characters has to be backed up by a policy of kicking out people who do still go OOC too much, but in my experience it greatly cuts down on the number of people you have to expel.

A new character policy is much easier for people to swallow if it's used in a "race" group such as Orcs, Dark Elves, etc, because most people are not going to have a built-up character that's fits the group. In a group like OES, it would be very hard to get people to accept because of the diversity of the group, but I've found that even in OES the people who have created a special character just to join the Order are in general much more in character than those who didn't.

Once you've got your policy decided on, you have to then monitor the members and enforce the policy. This raises another set of issues, all of which have to be dealt with.

The first issue you'll probably run across is arguing about what is out-of-character or not. Some incident will occur where one person says another person said or did something OOC but the person accused argues that it was indeed in character, and the people in charge have to make a decision.

In a "race" group, it's simple. Most of them have a "language" of sorts that all members speak - usually it's not very complex, just changing a handful of words or maybe butchering every word you speak in some fashion - and when someone speaks without using that "language," they are OOC, pure and simple.

In a mixed group, such as OES, where many people are portraying humans, it's a lot harder. Certainly d00disms, such as "u sux!" "sup" "wtf?" are always OOC. Speaking of pure game mechanics ("My magery is 90! What's yours?") or out-of-game things ("Get on ICQ!") are always OOC. But what about "Fuck you! I'm going to kill you!"? It's a grey area, really. For a character like mine, who is from present-day Earth, that would be totally in character. For someone born in Britannia, it's not. This is a tough issue, and one that's not always black and white. You have to know the background of the character involved to decide whether they acted OOC or not.

Another issue people will raise is that sometimes you need to refer to game mechanics or out-of-game things. They have a valid point, but there are IC ways to refer to these things.

As far as game mechanics, it's easy to discuss those while remaining in character. Instead of "My magery is 90," it's "I have been named a Master Mage.". Instead of "my str is 100!" it's "I am as strong as humans can be!" or "I am extremely strong!"

When it comes to mentioning out-of-game things, there are still ways to handle it in character. ICQ is a common real-world thing that's mentioned in game, and it is of course OOC. However, you can refer to it as "pigeons" and then it sounds totally in character. Other groups refer to it as a "spirit number" or "soul send," and probably numerous other names, but the idea is to avoid calling it ICQ.

If you are creative, you should be able to see how to create in character words for OOC or out-of-game things. And using those terms goes a long way toward world immersion.