Storylines

The Purpose of this Document

1. To provide an infrastructure and a recommended convention for story-based roleplaying.
2. To maintain a friendly IC atmosphere.
3. To protect the fun of all Orphans.
4. To keep drama IC and not OOC.

Glossary

Storyline:

Improvised Storyline:

Hybrid Storyline:

Storyline “Hook”:

Story Team:

Storyline Event:

Stage:

Boundaries:

Stresses:

Atmosphere Zone:

Story Zone:

Opt-Out:

Story Master:

Storyline Roleplaying Explained

INTRODUCTION

THE STORYLINE

Example Storylines:

• A man is found unconscious and robbed, being found in Alderman’s Tavern. Evidence indicates that one of the Orphans is responsible.
• A shady creature has been seen prowling the Guild Hall, and recently kidnapped one of the Orphans.
• A necromantic cult has appeared in Northern Kryta, using sacrifices to Grenth in order to call down a plague over the White Mantle, but also encompasses civilian populations.
• A long-standing villain appears and asks for forgiveness from the Orphans for past transgressions.

Regardless of the type or storyline itself, there are some guidelines to keep in mind when running one:

OOC Communication:

The critical element of any storyline is to be in close communication with your participants. Unless you know a given participant particularly well or they trust you enough with being kept in the dark, make sure that each given participant is informed on the storyline’s progression and what they can expect to come. Communication in this manner may be necessary as well to help progress a storyline further or introduce a new complication. Coordination is the key!

Channel Convention:

Team channels and any channel in an instanced area is a perfect place to operate a storyline. However, when in public places such as the Guild Hall, storylines should be moved to Team Channels if it puts stresses or is expected to put stresses on other's boundaries. Generally, you can follow the guidelines listed below.

Channel Breakdown:

Atmosphere – Guild Chat, Alliance Chat, All, Trade
Storyline – Team Chat, All (Instanced Areas Only), Trade (Instanced Areas Only)
NOTE: Whispers can be classified as either Atmosphere or Storyline, as this is a private channel. Exceptions are made for Guild Quests and the Cliffhanger Series. Team chat can also be considered OOC for an entire party that consents to have it used that way.

The Orphan Standard:

The Orphan cape is a symbol of the guild’s integrity and shouldn’t be worn on a villain or antagonist in any storyline. Since the Orphans are a guild that is based IC’ly, it follows that opposing forces to the guild are not actually guild members, although their names may appear on the roster. Since Channel Conventions prohibit the use of the Alliance or Guild Channels for Storyline elements, villains and antagonists should not use these channels IC either since they are considered a Storyline element.

Storyline Boundaries / Stresses:

Since the Orphan community is a diverse group of people ranging from all manner of ages, the scope of any storyline shouldn’t exceed the tolerance of its participants- OOC Communication may be necessary to find out what that tolerance limit is. There are some concepts, however, that should be avoided regardless, such as murder, rape, and anything potentially worse than these. When in doubt, inquire of an officer if content is acceptable. A quick solution to this is to employ a rating system similar to the ESRB (Everyone, Teen, Mature, and Adult).

Powergaming / Power-Roleplaying:

Powergaming and Power-Roleplaying are terms that can be used interchangeably at times, and are covered in Saeth’s Roleplaying Guide. To elaborate more on these, it is considered very rude to emote for other people or force them to accept actions (there is a difference between, *Hits you,* and *Tries to hit you*- one gives the recipient the option of a dodge, while the other forces an event on the recipient. Similarly, *Hits you and makes you fall over,* not only has the above problem, but also emotes an action for the recipient as well). This is effectively what is known as Power-Roleplaying.

Time Convention:

Kukai Time, found at the Good Alderman Tavern, is the official and standard time for the Orphans of Kukai. Storylines may find this useful for coordinating their efforts.

The Good Alderman Tavern:

The Orphan HUB, of Tavern, is located off of Yak’s Bend in a hidden valley off to the side. The tavern could be considered both atmosphere and storyline oriented at both times. Storylines may find this useful for coordinating storyline elements when timezones create difficulty in syncing participants together.

The Guild Hall as an Instanced Area:

Normally, the guild hall is an atmosphere oriented zone, but storylines should feel free to use the instanced version of the guild hall, which can be accessed from the Guild Halls agents found in Kaineng Center, Lion’s Arch, and Kamadan.

The Game Master:

The game master, or dungeon master, oversees a storyline’s progress and coordination, and often enough is the one who kick starts and helps progress the storyline. Being a game master can be a very involving process because it requires a lot of communication with others and managing the storyline frequently.

MAKING THE GAME WORLD WORK FOR YOU

Unfortunately, in the world of Guild Wars, players are forced into a rail-road storyline which allows for almost no choice in the progression of the storyline, even if the choices that are made contradict the character’s personality. Worse yet, quests and missions are often enough repeated many times over for dozens of characters. Even more interesting is the concept of having a “telephone line” for inter-guild communication that hasn’t ever been quite explained. Indeed, many players never ask about these unexplained occurrences and learn to tolerate the ambiguity behind them.

RUNNING A SUCCESSFUL STORYLINE

It should also be noted that the world of Guild Wars is a static world- the players are very limited in how much they can change or do to the actual game world. Players aren’t free to construct towns or cities beyond simple guilds, and certainly cannot add their own lore to the Guild Wars universe, no less even a personal house for their character to live in.
It follows as a result that any Game Master running an involving storyline be very familiar with Guild Wars lore, which can be easily accessed from GuildWiki. By learning the Guild Wars lore, Game Masters can adapt storylines to make them believable for the setting they’re going to be placed in, and to also make sure that the conclusions of any storyline can co-exist with existing lore.
For example, a storyline that culminates with the destruction of Tyria runs contradictory to current lore; Tyria still exists and it always will. A storyline conclusion such as this one is unenforceable and makes for a rather sloppy ending.
Conversely, however, if a storyline results in several pockets of Stone Summit winning battles against Deldrimor, it’s much more relevant and compliant with lore- there is nothing that can disprove that it happened.
Generally, world-altering events violate lore and smaller, lesser toned events are more compliant and thus, believable. A storyline that culminates with an event that runs contradictory to lore will loose its immersion factor, while a storyline that culminates in an event that doesn’t, or even reinforces, current lore will gain a great deal more credibility and immersion to its name. Additionally, lore that is created during storylines would do well to be documented by the Game Master and archived at an accessible place for the community’s future reference. This ensures that two storylines don’t run contradictory to each other and result in lore-conflicts.

EXPLAINING THE AMBIGUITY

In a storyline-driven world, realism is a key element of many storylines and events. Since the world of Guild Wars has a great deal of ambiguity as far as realism is concerned, here are some ideas to cope with possible issues resulting from ambiguity.

Guild / Alliance Chat:

Since these chat channels don’t involve direct face-to-face interaction, they could be treated as a telepathic channel between group members, possibly linked to the guild’s cape (in effect, the cape would be a magical item enabling the use of a guild-only telepathic channel) or any other object. The guild member may also simply be telepathic; there is no limit to possible alternatives.

Repeatable Quests:

Many players assist other people in completing quests that they’ve already done. This can be addressed in a variety of manners- supply convoys can get lost again, warbands can attack many times over, and the agents of Verata might revive Galrath from the dead only to be put down by the players over and over. The trick here is to be imaginative and open in explaining why these quests are repeatable.

Rail-Road Missions:

Many guilds simply choose to treat missions as entirely OOC, and others like our own decide to treat the missions as IC for RP purposes only, ignoring the storyline. The technique used to explain quests doesn’t work so well with rail-road missions since the events that missions involve tend to be far more world-affecting.

Instant-Travel:

At the basic level, travel in Guild Wars is instantaneous in order to save the rigors of time on players. It may not be necessary to explain why it takes place IC, since the travel process is implied to be abbreviated, but those who feel it necessary to explain the ambiguity here may claim that the instant-travel phenomenon is in fact a teleport ability.

PHYSICAL CONFLICT

In a tabletop world where mechanics are very real and exposed, such as Dungeons & Dragons, it’s very simple to resolve physical conflict between two human players- the rule of the dice are absolute. In the world of Guild Wars, however, we don’t have the novelty option of using dice since there isn’t any sort of defined methodology for using them. Therefore, any sort of actual physical conflict has to be resolved between players either OOC, trust, or actual skirmish matches. Unfortunately, each of these methods has some problems that present themselves. However, would-be villains should take care- you should always have a backup plan ready in case something goes wrong.

OOC Conflict Resolution:

Sometimes the smoothest method of resolution and sometimes the worst, OOC Conflict Resolution depends on the attitudes of both of the human players. If both can easily come to an agreement that one of them will win the fight, and then they both emote their way towards that particular outcome, then this method works wonderfully. Sometimes, however, the players will not be able to come to an agreement and the conflict will not be resolved.

Trust Resolution:

Both players inherently trust each other that one of them will allow themselves to lose in some manner or fashion. Unfortunately, the end of the conflict is arbitrary; a battle that has no clear outcome could go on forever if no one cedes the battle to his opponent willingly.

Skirmish Match:

By far the most realistic and full-proof method of conflict resolution, the pair of characters in conflict with each other commit themselves to a duel to decide the victor, possibly with witnesses in attendance. The Guild Hall allows for this wonderful method, but while this method is more realistic, it doesn’t allow for much RP and villains who utilize it must be experienced PvP’ers in order to survive the confrontation- otherwise, a storyline may meet its end prematurely with the abrupt termination of the principle antagonist. This method of resolution also allows for a large degree of unpredictability, which some players may enjoy.

Officer Participation:

If a verbal or physical conflict is IC only, an officer will only intervene if he or she would like to be part of the story. Officers should not be expected to help resolve IC conflicts.

CHANNEL CONVENTIONS

These are a reinteration of some general guidelines and definitions for some of the syntax used by the majority of the roleplaying community. Some of these have particular use during storylines, so even veterans should give the list a quick look-over.

Text Emotes and Actions:

Text between two asterisks. Example: *leaned over backwards*

OOC Communication:

Text between parentheses. Example: ((Brb, my supper is on fire))

Thoughts:

Text between two inward pointing arrows. Example: <I hate Prea's soup>

NPC dialogue:

Text between square brackets. This can be used by a story master when an NPC is required. Example: [Mehnlo: It wasn't me! Blame Togo!]

World Actions:

Text between two asterisks. This would also be used by a story master to describe actions or consequences that drive the story forward. Example: **Opening the door reveals a skeleton in the closet**

CONCLUSION

Certainly, running a storyline as a Game Master is no easy task- it requires a lot of homework to get started and a great deal of work to keep participants interested. Not only does it require a precise working knowledge of the Guild Wars lore, but it also presents a wide variety of choices to make in the process of running the storyline. However, in light of all the work that is involved, running a storyline can bring a whole new level of life to an otherwise stagnant world, as well as give an outstanding outlet for creativity