Guards guilds, Special Agent Guilds and really all type of guilds that function by assuming some kind of authority sure have a tendency to get in hot water and for good reason. I’m sure some will disagree with me and say that every court guild, agent guild and guard guild ever has been BadRP, but on a personal level I tend to be quite happy when they bring a sense of life to their genre. To me, a part of SW RP is the fact that there are guards patrolling the streets from time to time, ever eager to throw themselves in to random RP of varying levels of quality or forethought.
This brings to me what I’m pondering at this moment. How would an Si:7 Guild need to operate for you think that damn, those guys are contributing and adding depth to RP without being OOC jerks, lollers, lorebenders, snowflakes or whatever other term comes to mind.
Please, do post constructive things and not just things you hate! If you wish to share something you’ve hated about such guilds in the past, then do include how you think it could’ve been done differently.
In all seriousness, you’d be shouldering an impossible task as you’d necessarily take on considerable authority that few outside your circle will agee with. Representing an official lore organization is always a minefield and depending on your assumed responsibilities, it may well chafe with other people’s activities. This is to say nothing of the OOC paranoia of metagaming when you’re around a guild of spies.
The best approach in my mind is to be a group of field agents with an npc handler on top, going out to do assignments against various targets, friend and foe.
I would create a list of realistic, community friendly rules the community of SI:7 players have to abide by. To protect them first ooc and the group you create second.
I would not make it a guild, better a community because people see guild tags and anticipate accordingly or negatively because of tags.
be neither seen or heard. Observe, collect information and transfer information. A true spy unit is hands off and never noticed.
if you’re groups activities or name is mentioned IC outsude your inner circle, you have failed.
don’t use lame assassin tropes or disguises, hoods, leather armor… too obvious.
That is how a true SI:7 unit would work. Becsuse thats how real spys work. Unseen, unnoticeable, but ooc? As players be Responsible.
I partially agree with these and I see the purpose they would have in practice. But, in theory, wouldn’t this just be to defend oneself against meta-gaming by buying in to the whole OOC paranoia mindset that AD is infamous for? Technically, one should be able to have spy, infiltrator, traitor, whatever in one’s TRP and still be treated as if one didn’t. To some degree that’s a manner of mutual trust. After all, if I did spy on someone, it’d feel quite fair to at least be open about it OOC. Spying on a Guild and being transparent about it OOC but trusting them not to meta seems more sustainable to me than withholding information OOC to defend oneself against IC blowback. I suppose that comes down to one’s priorities, but if one is looking to focus on the experience of those one is spying on, rather than oneself, then surely OOC transparency must be the way to go? Even if that includes a guild tag, a TRP title, or even both, or wouldn’t you say?
This is something I’ve been pondering. How do Nobles do it? Nobles who “answer to the King” especially. It seems like a fine line between acting on common sense, and lore bending headcanon usage. Any ideas how/When/if it even can be done right?
Please, do elaborate! Some things that immediately come to my mind would be not to plainly stealth spy without warning. Meaning either don’t use stealth, or at the very least pop out of stealth for a moment to drop an emote that “someone is listening”, if one’s character really is in such a subtle position that stealth can to some degree be justified.
That would be the case in an ideal world, but Argent Dawn is anything but. People will instinctively self-censor themselves when they catch someone spying on them, or when in the presence of someone with a TRP signaling GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY to everyone.
It’s a common pitfall trap of SI:7 RPers in the past where they make it blatantly obvious that they’re with Stormwind Intelligence, making it all the more difficult to take their alleged competency seriously when they fail the first step of spycraft which is to not tell everyone around you that you’re a spy. That’s why you should leave the T7 at home.
As for how I would run such a guild, I’d make a front. A bakery guild, or some other guild tag that gives a plausible but mundane reason for your character to be in said location minding their own business but otherwise listening and taking notes of what’s going on. The moment you start announcing you’re SI:7 the moment you walk in, something has already gone wrong.
You covered it in a nutshell! But I’d suggest friendly whispering and open commmunication. And the acceptance that if someone says “get lost”.
Get lost.
It hurts, but spy RP is the most in danger of being tainted by the metagaming and abuse tags, so much so that you have to be almost paranoid about respect for those you interact with.
One of main problems I´ve seen with spy RPers in general is just sheer lack of reason for spying. Hub RP has certain reputation and it´s in many cases justified. Your SI:7 spy is really wasting their time by spying on random people in Stormwind whose main problem is relationship drama between Stacy, Becky and Joe.
If you want to run a guild, you simply have to do events, especially if your guild theme is “Spies who focus on enemies of Stormwind”. You won´t really find enemies of Stormwind in Stormwind and chances are that those really dangerous and evil individual roaming the streets will insult you OOCly for spying on them because they´re just so amazing they´ll epicly own you with one powerful emote.
And I can guarantee you this will be the case with dracthyr too. Yes, Turalyon doesn´t trust them. Yes, SI:7 is keeping an eye on them. No, dracthyr RPers in Stormwind won´t understand this and will call you names. Which is why you should focus inwards first, think of what stories you might want to tell and then find like-minded people who will try to tell them with you. And if you want to do spying on other people in Stormwind, I suggest having it as a sort of side activity for your guild that is done while you don´t have organized events.
There is a whole mountain of issues with just “spying” on other people to begin with.
if you use stealth and spy on people, they get mad, they weren’t aware you were there, they couldn’t have seen you and now they think you are meta-gaming and a jerk
or you didn’t use stealth and now they know you are there, and they won’t tell you anything interesting because staying in character and outing yourself before your big evil reveal really funks with your own fun.
the best way to pull it off would probably be
have a lot of dm’ed spy themed events.
join server events and present yourself as scouts and similar in the war efforts.
Me and a couple of friends tried to do some SI:7 RP, but sadly couldn’t continue due to IRL commitments. Whilst we were in SW - we had a rule in which we all agreed that all of us had to have 2 TRPs: one when we are on public, and one, which we had on “missions” (events, fights with other guilds, etc).
It worked quite nicely, we enjoyed that and we haven’t got weird whispers of “wait, aren’t you a spy?” while doing some social RP with others. So I think it all matters as to how you present that, as was already spoken by the others. Doing obnoxious stuff of “heh, I am something of a spy myself”, leaving not bread crumbs, but entire loafs of bread - won’t get you far in your RP, imo.
That said, we did have whispers of people, who wanted to join and “infiltrate other guilds”, which we immediately regarded as a massive red flag. It is RP, do lore-wise stuff, not OOC-infused agendas that would create drama, not character progression.
It would entirely depend on what theme do you want to go for. Realism or WoW ? Because the two are very, very different.
Irl intelligence agencies have intelligence officers that recruit sources, the actual spies, in various places. You’d want an agent to handle his own little network of informants for a region, an organization, or anything that might be considered a threat to the crown and Stormwind’s security overall. You wouldn’t be dealing with low criminals, that’s a guard job, you’d be trying to have a source in some neighboring cult on the rise or pay a goblin to tell you what’s been happening in Horde lands. You’d also have to collect that intel for someone. The ultimate goal of intelligence is to provide information for decision makers. So perhaps cooperating with guards guilds, court guilds, other military guilds that could put said intel to use. All in all, it would be a lot less fancy than what you see in James Bond movies and by extension in WoW.
SI:7’s depictions in WoW is more akin to special forces. From seeing SI:7 agents in uniforms (which people so often complain about despite blizz making it the lore) to them undertaking special operations that are more focused on taking out certain targets or rescuing prisoners rather than intel collection. For this route you could go more or less as a special forces unit in SI:7, more akin to the SOD inside the CIA and focus on guild events.
Or you could try to combine the two, have branches within the guild focused on different things. The handlers and their networks of spies in various RP hubs to keep you appraise of any developments. The special forces to be deployed when needed. Ultimately it’s less about the guild and more about how its members RP the whole theme. It’s kinda hard to pull out intelligence RP without having some prior knowledge of psychology, sociology, politics, history and the things an intelligence officer has to study irl in order to recruit sources and navigate through different circles.
It is and I personally hate it, but there’s a reason for why this mindset exists as metagaming happened quite often and quite easily. The more you are involved within the community at large, the more you take up that risk. Sometimes it even happens unconsciously. As someone else pointed out, people’s behaviour or rather that of their chars will be influenced by your TRP even if they’re not entirely aware of it.
The front idea would be good. I’d personally go for integrating an SI:7 branch into a larger guild from which its agents can operate undercover and to which they can also report back and provide intel for, be it military, court or something entirely different like a Stormwind Diplomatic Corps or Explorers League of which SI:7 would be just a small part.
I think for something so broad and potentially tricky as the SI:7, I would consider making it a community and have a Discord for the practical + IC stuff. That way you’d get intel and topics of interest from across a wide array of RP on Argent Dawn, with which to further construct and pursue agendas for the good of the Alliance as a whole.
Well, the SI:7 you see wearing the armour are usually field agents who are scouts and saboteurs for the Alliance army as well as the official face of the SI:7, often doing desk jobs back home or responding to situations that require technical expertise or agility around Stormwind that the average plate armour guard wouldn’t have.
Then there’s the actual spies all over Stormwind such as Elling Trias and Jorgen. They blend into everyday society, they’re your local shopkeeper, a fisherman, an artist or even a bar hand. They should be undiscernable from your average citizen but they should be able to give an SI:7 agent tools, information, or maybe offer the upstairs of their shop to quickly drag a criminal into.
This kind of spying relies on people in Stormwind not just metagaming you by working out your spies are spies or magically doctoring everything they say to be completely inconspicuous as soon as one of your plain clothes agents walk by, and that’s going to be difficult. Your best bet for that to work is to make an in game community that’s adjunct to your guild so all of the uniformed SI:7 agents and people on the desks have the guild tag and the actual plain clothes agents can just pose as the average RPer but be in the community. You can even enlist the help of people not even specifically designing their characters around working for the SI:7 and having them be informants, gives your agents people to meet in the HQ and people to visit around town on a slow day.
Just don’t have them infiltrate a criminal guild or cult without asking the GM first, a courtesy call to know what guilds will and won’t accept as soon as you encounter a guild you may end up investigating is a great thing as you’ll understand their boundaries from day one. It’s an interesting thing to do but it can be very annoying to have your entire guild taken apart thanks to masterful spy work- always make sure you know what other GMs are happy to happen and plan accordingly. The biggest golden rule of spy/law RP is that you should make sure not to meta game and to make sure you’re not ruining someone elses RP by catching them/the scale of punishment they receive. Try to avoid your characters having tiny radios with unlimited signal as well. Those radios should be quite large and should lose signal inside buildings etc/have technical troubles to balance out the instant communication with HQ. It can be fun being the agent with the radio and having that crippling moment when you’re hiding and suddenly your radio goes off and gives you away!
Then, for those slow periods, set up NPC gangs and enemies your guild can interact with and have covert ops missions/deployments outside of Stormwind. The whole point of the cowl wearing is that it allows even the plain clothes spies to don a mask and be deployed without blowing their cover. The SI:7’s work doesn’t stop in Stormwind, so you have infinite possibilities for missions when there’s nothing in Stormwind.
Hey, I’ve actually just sold the concept to myself, I like the sound of it all now. Shame I have absolutely zero time to pull it off. I wish you the best of luck!
Imagine trying to blend into a crowd while wearing a bright white cloak, a belt full of daggers and with a hawk flying in circles above you. Who’d be dumb enough to try that?
Done right, recognise that everyone answers to the king (or regent, now) and that your noble position is little more than a glorified merchant family with some local influence. Just as you cannot say the npc lore character king gave you license to step on everyone, you cannot claim Minder Twenty sent you to spy on Obvious Assassin #47.
When I started Derk 8 or so years ago I’ll admit I was the average Old Town badass who cursed a lot and picked a fight every other person, but over time I’ve come to adapt and take a more subtle and secretive approach. Only a select very few know Derrick works for SI:7 and he’s more humble about it, keeps it a secret and does what he can to not be noticed. Imo that’s what makes the most sense, while this is of course a fantasy game I think it makes sense to look at real life intelligence agencies and spec ops forces - no one (or at least very few) on the outside knows what they do or who they are. They don’t talk with strangers about that they work for these units and if they for some reason bring it up they certainly don’t talk about what they do as part of their job (exceptions exist of course) and to me that approach makes the most sense. It’s also makes it the most fun to me, while it can be a little almost lonesome at times it makes it that much more special.
As far as armour, equipment and outward appearance goes I personally prefer to not use the “official” stuff we see SI:7 NPCs use to take my approach a further step and really try to appear as just another rogue/human/soldier/whatever since that’s how I like to play it.
Idk hope that helps, wasn’t quite sure what to write down.
I wish you the best of luck!