These Are the People in Your Roleplaying Guild

Roleplaying

Another great list has hit the streets about the people in your guild and this time it’s roleplaying-themed? That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: the famous Tarquin¹ of our very own Feathermoon US roleplaying server created a list that he aptly named These are the people in your RP guild. Originally posted on the realm forum, I’ve taken an opportunity to snag a copy of this list and post it here on this site for when the forum eventually eats the thread as its want to do.

Please note, this is not my creation at all. Full credit goes to Tarquin, who is much more witty than I.

Inspired by this hilarious post, written months ago, and never posted until now. Thanks to Skulley, Pill, Fells, Shael & Threnn for their suggestions, as well as everyone else who I babbled to about this!

Disclaimer: All the archetypes in this post are amalgamations of multiple people and experiences. None are deliberate caricatures of a single person. Apologies to anyone offended by these stereotypes, but if you think I’m subtly singling you out, you’re wrong.

The GM: He’s one of the best writers on the server, and will probably be a novelist one day. He’s also generous, funny, and reasonable, but also quick to call bullshit on people who deserve it, and incidentally great at WoW. His dedication to helping people in his guild enjoy their experience is unsurpassed, whether by setting up scheduled RP events, running guildies through instances, or just chatting in /guild. At least, this is what everyone else tells you. You’re not really sure, because he only logs in once a week to “check up on things.” The rest of the time, he’s lying on his couch playing Jenga with empty bottles of Jack Daniels and wishing it was physically possible to choke people through the Internet.

Big Brother: it’s amazing how patient this guy is with everyone’s problems, no matter how badly timed they are. His no-nonsense yet genial approach to dealing with people has saved many an emotionally unstable young roleplayer from the stew of absurdity they’ve found themself in, and when he finds time to actually roleplay, it’s fun as hell. You feel like he really understands you. The truth is that something in his life, whether it’s his job, family, or crippling cocaine addiction, is causing him untold amounts of stress. It’s not that he identifies with your stupid, petty little drama. It’s that stupid, petty little drama is easy to solve compared with everything he deals with on a daily basis. He’ll take his victories where he can find them. Also, he’s watching you.

Big Sister: she’s smart. She’s funny. She understands and is here to help. She talks to other guilds about drama and keeps you out of trouble. Once in a while, she even gets to enjoy WoW instead of being your %&#ing sounding board for all your %&#ing emotional baggage that every %&#ing person on the planet has to deal with, and somehow manage to do without %&#ing @$#%^ing at other people all the time, and god damn it this is the GM’s job that useless %&#ing drunken son of a $#%#$ oh I’m sorry I swear that doesn’t happen very often. For the love of God, don’t make her angry. She doesn’t like you when she’s angry.

Queen Bee: she seems to be logged in an awful lot, especially for a young, fairly attractive woman who is supposed to be in a committed relationship. Her character is simultaneously tough and vulnerable, wanting to prove herself on her own terms but still struggling with her own pent-up sexuality, and swings between dominant and submissive personalities on a daily basis. In between absurdly high-drama storylines with her character at the center, and accusations of other people stealing her ideas from these storylines, she is always looking to run an instance over and over for that one drop, and when she finally gets it she’s just “too sick of that place to go back.” She’s witty, and goofy, and happy to listen, and happier to talk, and will reduce everything you hold dear to ruin and ash. Don’t even let her get a foot in the door.

Drones: these unfortunate young people might fit into any of the categories below. It doesn’t matter. When the Queen Bee comes along, their individuality is stripped from them as easily as their meager self-respect and small ambitions. She fills a hole in their lives - mother, sister, girlfriend, heterosexual platonic friend who you secretly lust after, whatever you got. They become unthinking facets of the Hive Mind, defending their Queen against any accusation, no matter how obvious it is to everyone else that she is manipulative and evil and batshit %&#ing insane. The only way to save them is to cleanse the nest with purifying flame. Those that survive will thank you for it later.

The Writer: he is, in fact, an excellent writer, full of unique and creative approaches to storytelling. He wants to use WoW as a medium to test out plot and character ideas, and be inspired by other like-minded people with fresh and interesting characters of their own. His character’s dialogue is sprinkled with subtle references to George RR Martin, Michael Moorcock, Steven Erikson, and so on. He is eager to get that awesome RP plot going so he can find out what sorts of literary geniuses are lurking on this server. He is going to be very, very disappointed.

The Philosopher: like the Writer, she is very good with words; however, her focus is on character, not plot. She wants to explore the inner workings of the human psyche, the depths of emotion, and maybe even play around with how these characters in a fantasy setting would approach day-to-day problems differently than we do. She looks for motivation and perception in roleplay, and is always having her character confront some difficult moral conundrum that would give Kant an aneurysm. She will be even more disappointed than the Writer.

The Badass: his character is a hideous amalgamation of James Dean, Conan the Barbarian, and Roland Deschain. He has defeated at least one lore character in single combat, and whatever high-DPS epic weapon his avatar is wielding is currently very important in his cliched story, at least until he moves up a tier. When he talks in guild OOC, it’s to let you know how drunk he is or how his character would solve that problem with Indiscriminate Justice. If he survives the Queen Bee, he will be a changed man and possibly reroll a female gnome.

The Cleavers: it is highly likely this married couple met over the Internet, if not through WoW itself. They are the sweetest pair of people you could possibly meet. If they RP a couple as well, their characters will be awkward and shy around each other, but it’s more than likely they feel no need to carry their marriage into a video game. These two are also completely unconscious of all the drama happening around them, the lucky bastards. When they eventually spawn offspring, it will be cute for approximately as long as it takes for the little monster to start making noises on Vent, at which point you will want to strangle it and them. Also, expect every conversation you have to involve something that comes out of one end or the other of a baby.

The Swingers: the other married couple. Both of them have several characters, all of whom are in committed relationships with different people and at least half of whom roleplay it out from, shall we say, start to finish. They are both comfortable with this, you see, because their real-life sex life is so good. You know this because they’ve told you. They’ve also told everyone individually and secretly that they’re not actually happy with their marriage, but shhhhh, it’s a secret to everyone. They keep joking with the Cleavers about a foursome. At least, you think they’re joking. You hope they’re joking. If the female half of the Swingers becomes a Queen Bee, you are thoroughly %&#ed. Get out now.

The Professor: he really, really likes WoW. Well, the Warcraft property in general. He knows the lore back to front, has an itemized list of Blizzard’s retcons, and probably attended Blizzcon just to ask Chris Metzen whether the Eredar corrupted Sargeras or vice versa. He’s more than happy to share his knowledge with you, even if you don’t want him to, and will quickly call you out when your character’s story contradicts lore. Like, by a three-week timeline overlap. If he and the Badass ever attend the same RL guild meet, there will be violence and it will be god damn hilarious.

Cloudstrife: let’s be honest, you were kind of an idiot when you were his age. Hell, probably dumber than he was. And you had equally horrible taste in anime and Dragonlance books. You might have even had the same private taste for stylized cartoon drawings of incredibly busty women getting touched inappropriately by, um, lots of different things actually. So you cut him some slack, like everyone else, and figure that eventually he’ll be a pretty cool guy. But Jesus Christ, does his elf really have to have a robot arm? With a laser cannon? That’s just going too far.

The Raider: she spends most of her login time clearing content that the rest of the guild will be lucky to ever see. However, she rolled on an RP server for a reason, so she has an alt in your guild with a backstory and a personality and everything. She’s fun to be around, but you may notice that whenever drama comes down, she is off working on breaking into the 2100 bracket or farming enchanting mats for her T6 chest. It’s better that way. Also, she is quietly gritting her teeth whenever the rest of the guild discusses game mechanics. Don’t ask her what she thinks of your rogue’s Hemo Dagger build.

Captain Apostrophe: everyone is fairly certain this guy is a kickass RPer, and seems nice even if he never really talks in OOC. He probably plays a dwarf, or a troll, or maybe a human or Forsaken from an unusual part of the world. You like him despite the fact that you have no earthly idea what the hell his character just said. If his accent is even vaguely phonetic, he probably sounds like the horrible bastard child of Yosemite Sam and Robert Carlyle in Trainspotting.

Verily: while nobody in your guild is really on the Raider’s level, they’re at least playing WoW. They have a 70 or two (or six), they’ve done some Kara and maybe some 25-man stuff, they run instances IC. Not Verily. For her, the RP is the game. She probably has a whole host of alts, none of whom are anywhere close to cap, and has a detailed backstory and personality and manner of speaking for each one. The rest of the guild can’t understand how she finds so much random pickup RP, and will frequently ask her her secret. Bonus points for asking how to find RP while you’re doing the daily heroic. Everyone makes fun of her (especially the Badass), and everyone envies her (especially the Badass.)

The Thespian: rarely a week goes by that this guy doesn’t have something new and exciting happen to his character, and he is eager to get you in on it. In fact, he’d like something new and exciting and probably terrible to happen to your character! His extensive playtime means that while the guild is catching up on the aftermath of the brutal duel to the death that left him maimed for life but victorious (bonus points if it was something that left a visible but not unattractive scar), he’s contending with his mysteriously reappeared twin brother. The problem is, if you ask him to calm down, A) he gets sulky B) guild chat is really quiet. The GM will spend a substantial portion of his weekly login trying to help the Thespian direct his energy towards something useful, like powering a bank of supercomputers.

Loldemort: he’s a warlock, or a rogue, or possibly a DARK PALADIN MOO HOO HA HA. Whatever he is, he is evil. So evil you cannot comprehend his magnificence. He steals souls, and is possessed by a demon, and tortures his guildmates at whim, and probably does disgusting things to baby seals. He can’t understand why guild chat gets so quiet when he starts RPing, and he never will. The best you can hope for is that he evolves into a Badass and moves on from there. The worst you can expect is that he is also Cloudstrife.

Samantha: not actually a cute bisexual college girl, no matter how “realistic” her female nelf is. She’s a man. Sorry. If it’s any comfort, cybering him doesn’t make you gay.

Ted: also plays a female elf, but unlike Samantha, seems to take great pains to establish the fact that he is a dude. A harmless, friendly, diffident dude. Nothing to be afraid of. Laughs at other people’s jokes, takes part in their plotlines, and helps out whenever he can. Everyone likes him and feels a little sorry for him, so they ignore his habit of levelling alts in Elwynn and then “losing interest” after they’ve been questing in Goldshire for a while. If he mysteriously disappears, start watching To Catch A Predator. If there’s someone in your guild who Big Brother just does not like for some indefinable reason, keep a close eye on him.

Garth: is probably RL friends with the GM, or Big Sister’s younger brother, or one of the Raider’s guildies, or something like that. A very nice guy, who’s the first in line to fill a needed role in an instance group or craft something free of charge or help you with an elite quest. Also probably quite good at WoW. He’s so helpful and likeable that everyone disregards the fact that he hasn’t roleplayed a day in his life.

The Departed: back in the day, there was an RP storyline so amazing, so epic, so creative, that your characters still talk about it months or years later, in breathless emoted whispers and hushed tones of dread. And to put the final seal on that storyline, one of your guildies actually permakilled her character. The player is still around, kind of. She posts on your forums. She logs on an alt every so often to chat. She cares about what the guild is doing. But when her character died in agonizing pain in the malefic grasp of the Scarlet Crusade, when her guildmates arrived just a moment too late to save her, she was done. She’ll talk about coming back one day, tease the guild with hints of another amazing storyline, but she and you both know deep down inside that it’s never going to happen. It’s much easier to rest on your laurels than try and make lightning strike twice. Besides, who’d want to do this all the time? Look at what happened to the GM.

The Omega: There’s a lot of things this guy could have done. Maybe he sent Big Sister an explicit mistell that was meant to go to Samantha. Maybe the first time he ever got on Vent, his mom was yelling at him in the background to take out the trash or have his computer privileges revoked for a week. Maybe he spent a year roleplaying a Night Elf who was born in Darnassus ten thousand years ago before the Professor noticed. Or maybe he’s just an emo kid who’s easy to pick one. Whatever the reason, this guy just can’t catch a break. Everyone dumps on him, both IC and OOC, and no matter how much of a badass his character is written as, no matter how much content he clears, nobody will ever take him seriously. And the funny thing is? He takes it. Because he’s just a good-natured dude who’s used to being picked on and he knows that it’s really just a warped way of showing affection. It is affection, right? You do actually like this guy. Come on, don’t be a @%#&.

The Closet GM: They’re out there. Some of them play on RP servers. Any time you get a GM who roleplays out the ticket with you, just think that this person is probably in someone’s guild. And it’s always the last one you expect, too - the quiet, bumbling noob who seems to talk about WoW an awful lot but not sign on to play that often. Be careful who you mock. You might log in to a character list full of naked level one gnomes.

The Princess: okay, sure, that kidnapping plot was a little hackneyed, and you’re pretty sure she doesn’t actually know anything about a blood elf’s lifespan. And let’s be honest, she’s not as good a priest as she thinks she is. But you still really like her. Lacking the malice, self-confidence or sheer psychosis necessary to ascend to the throne of Queen Bee, she will settle for using her powers (read: throaty voice and C-cups) for mild irritation instead of evil. And you will put up with it, because she’s really not that bad, and hey it’s only a seven-hour drive to her apartment! You’d only miss one day of work, right?

The Switch-Hitter: this may be unfamiliar to those of you playing on PVP servers, but somewhere along the line, this fellow decided to see how the other half lives. And after questing with some of those people he’s emoted at in Shattrath, or done that fun cross-faction forum plot with, he decided he liked it. He really liked it. Now he logs back into your guild every few weeks with the intention of getting his character caught up to speed, but it takes him about five minutes to start going on in guild OOC about how much better the RP is over there, and how much easier it is for him to find a group. The GM takes a drink every time his paladin accidentally slips into a troll accent.

The Remora: she’s always there. And she’s never happy. No matter what the rest of the guild is doing, the Remora wants in on it, and it won’t live up to her expectations. If you’re sitting in a tavern RPing, she’ll show up, then sit in a corner and sulk. If you go do the daily heroic, she’ll tag along, do 300 DPS, and then passive-aggressively agree to pass the Primal Nether to the person who started the run while wishing she had enough gold for her epic flyer. If you’re doing a long-form story, she’ll sign up her character for a part in it, then never seem to get around to writing her two pages and complain when the plot stalls. And you can be certain that she will never, ever, correctly diagnose the one thing all these un-fun encounters have in common.

After reading through the list for perhaps the third or fourth time², I’m still not certain if I fall into any single category. I definitely have a bit of the Big Sister in me and the language does come out every once in a while.³ And, seriously, last thing that anyone wants to do is upset me, especially deliberately; I’m definitely not too nice when irked. There’s also part of The Raider in me, since I am a very active raider. Fortunately, within the last month I’ve cut my raiding time down to three measely days from the six I was raiding before.

And, of course, I wouldn’t be able to tell any of you if I was in fact a Closet GM. But as I noted before, you really don’t want to upset me.

So, fellow roleplayers, which archetype are you? I hope that I’m not the only one who can’t decide on a single type!

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