Let's talk about cliques within guilds/groups

Argent Dawn
61

Come, let me tell you my tale.

Long ago, I came into the company of a raucous host who travelled far and wide, crossing deserts and plains and facing down enemies as one. Kinship grew and we knew peace in our corner of Azeroth.

One day, I found the group in a worried huddle. Our leader, it seems, had his heart broken by another who since left in the night and was in a fit. Emerging from a great big sulk, he boldly declared our group was at an end as he had no desire to lead anymore.

This caught us all off guard. We had made many stories together and surely such a thing shouldn’t end because of one person? Our leader left us to our pondering and we quickly settled on continuing our travels as a group without him.

This, however, would not come to pass as our leader once more emerged to declare our group was nothing without him, that the group was for him and his four friends to make his legend and the would tear it all down rather than let us meaningless peasants carry on the legacy. He vanished once more.

When I later returned, our treasure hoard from all our journeys was gone. Contributed to as a group, our leader had declared it his personal property and taken it all. It was over.

Thus it was so, and he made a public show of a grand farewell in the public square, his friends thanking him effusively for all the good times and not a word of objection was raised.

Tldr: guild leader threw a fit, ended our guild, called us NPCs in his and his friends’ hero’s journey and robbed the guild vault before kicking us all.

I’ve seen some of the worst of this crap and avoid it whenever possible. Don’t let this happen to you.

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62

I have a similar tale of two friends trying to co-lead a guild. Suffice to say that one of the two lacked the dedication for the role, and basically ditched his friend and the guild on rather short notice.

To this day, I suspect he secretly hoped his absence would ruin the guild. Which makes me all the happier to think back on it, knowing that the guild would endure another two years before finally disbanding due to different reasons entirely.

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63

Had that one happen to me twice, once in Cata and then again in Mists. Except for the robbing the bank vault part because there was nothing in there to take. Last laugh was not on the leaders and their buddies though. The Cata guild just reformed the next day without them, the Mists guild just joined a very similar guild en masse. Nothing makes a person look more stupid than a mistaken belief in their own importance.

One that stuck with me though was when the clique was mechanically enforced. The guild had a D&D roll system with perks awarded at milestones based how long you’d been in the guild. Here’s the kicker though, additional perks were also awarded to officers. There was a lot of officers in that guild. More perks were also awarded at the GM’s discretion. No prizes for guessing who got those. I stayed in that guild far longer than I should have before it sunk in what was going on.

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64

Thus creating an insurmountable barrier for newer members and immediately granting an in-group of old guards more power and ability to play a role in events. How was this ever considered a good idea?

Further entrenching how little lower ranks matter…

Oohboy.

Suckups and/or lovers!

65

The bizarre thing is, I’m feeling compelled to be devils advocate here, in that I was in a guild with a system not entirely dissimilar but it still seemed to work?

Context; joining a Sith Guild in SWTOR. Had a roll and stat system that was relatively simple to grasp, but also did have some depth to it. As characters gained more experience etc (from Initiate to Apprentice, etc) they’d steadily better stats and the like.
In the context of the setting and the Sith, it made sense; having an Apprenctice being able to beat, say, a Sith Lord wouldn’t have made any sense.

And yet still the RP was fun, all ranks got a share of the Focus Pie and it, somehow, worked. They also weren’t just “You have to start at the bottom” either; my character already had a background before I found the Guild, so after an OOC chat I was allowed to bring him in already at Lord stats (as that was what he was). Training sessions with the apprentices were, mechanically, one-sided but still allowed for character interaction, development, and aspirations. My guy going up against the Guild 2IC (IC as well as OOC) ended up in a stalemate; his character was skilled in all areas, but mine was incredibly focussed on Saber combat and so drove a wedge in there.

I’m under no illusion that that was a quite rare case of people being chill OOC while having a system that worked like that, and that mose cases are just as others have described.
I just wish it worked more often, cos that Guild was super fun. And I’ll never forgive the Eternal Empire expacs and wierd timeskip for torpedoing it :pensive:

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66

Can’t believe there’s people in the comments taking the biological imperative route of “cliques are natural, they’re always going to exist.” It’s as if they’ve been teleported in from the year 2010; or some weird Red Pill podcast.

2 Likes
67

I too have a story of this.

I joined a guild as a simple joe blogs. Couldn’t wield a sword, was previously a dock worker so had strength and was “recruited” into a paladin order to begin the journey as a squire.

All looked well. Had some enjoyable RP for a month, and because i joined as a regular guy found that a lot of people like to RP with me. Its a bit different afterall. This popularity is what caused the problem for the guild leadership.

Given my low ranking and experience with the docks i was tasked with menial warehouse and stock room tasks. Which I RPd the hell out of and found that by pressure on the upper ups i was thrust into a Quater Master (QM) position. Naturally this made some of the other officers jealous as this outsider was starting to be someone that other players preferred to RP with.

What killed the guild and my involvement in it was when I created a QM system that worked in game and enabled some self generating RP and even gave members the ability to self create events like supply runs/hunting trips etc. All of a sudden the GM wasnt the centre of attention. I was pulled into a discord call and accused of purposefully destroying the guild and taking it over and turning it into something that was nothing like whatbthey had intended. When I questioned their logic, claiming I’ve taken pressure off the leadership for generating daily RP for its members, I was told to shut up and informed I would be remvoved from the guild and that the QM model I created was intellectual property of the guild. Considering most of it was on my personal google sheet I laughed when they insisted I hand it over and swiftly left.

To my joy, it makes me sad thinking about it now, the guild disbanded shortly after my departure as a lot of the members disagreed with how it was all handled.

Unfortunately, this was the verge of some IRL things that came up, so I left WoW RP. To return now 6-7ish years later.

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68

Sorry that happened. But, hey, you did nothing wrong. Especially judging the rest of the Guild went “Nah, fam” too.
They effed around and found out. Needed to check the ego at the door.

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69

I know right.

I’m a firm believer that in RP, less is more.

Ironically, my character that im currently developing tonreturn to RP is a little sterotypical and an archmage, but its a tool to help establish some quality RP interactions and potential communities in the future. Method to the madness.

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70

that’s the truth though.

it’s not like you can hold people at gunpoint and force people to interact with everyone

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71

I think its all down to guild/community culture.

When I generated my QM framework it allowed people to not rely on forcing themselves to RP when they dont want to. It was something that anyone could initiate and even do solo if they so wished.

72

Sorry for the brief derail, but depending on when it was we might have shared a guild at some point as I was in atleast 2-3 that used this kinda system specifically. (Unless it was fairly common in sith rp, which it might have been honestly!)

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73

House Nyâsh/The Nyâsh Directive, by any chance? Would be amusing/small world if so :smiley:

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74

It’s a familiar name, so maybe! Or just seen it around! The two ones I can distinctively remember was Dusk Consortium where I ended up co-gming after rising through the ranks and the Azure Academya few years later.

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75

DC is ringing a faint bell at the back of my mind :smiley:
And yeah, Nyâsh were decent. Darth Iradox was the GM (red Sith fella) and his extended (IC) family.
My Cathar Sith Lord was very fun to play, and while SWTOR was far from a perfect game (so much stronghold stuff locked behind the Loot Crates, and no speech bubbles?!) I do still miss it.

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76

Used to be led by one guy(I forget his character name) until a trio of Sith Lords(including me) overthrew him IC and took control.

It was very fun at the time. But the server merging later followed by Eternal Empire killed so much roleplay, especially casual/non guild related.

Sith rp also suffered heavily from alot of issues. Funnily enough and on topic to this, cliques, especially erp related ones was a massive issue among many guilds.

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77

I absolutely can and will.

At least in the context of Roleplaying in a Roleplay Guild.

To me, it just seems a convenient way of pinning being a butt or at the very least, lazy, on ‘human nature’.

Even more so when you are inviting people into your guild. - I’d argue its one of the biggest jobs as a DM/GM is to break up ‘cliques’ and get everyone on the proverbial dance floor.

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78

I am curious. While obviously we all had our fair share of awful experiences, how do you people think communities can transcend cliques and be more inclusive?

What do you suggest they do to avoid these problematic behaviors, while maintaining an healthy guild?

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79

On a server like this with vastly different ideals on a player-to-player basis and no overarching authority, yeah there’s always gonna be divides and those divides are going to probably lead to us vs them mentalities.

It’s not exactly a big brain take on my part to claim that when historically and currently that is very much a thing.

80

Then they just leave and find other cliques to be part of.

Granted, if one does join a guild, it’s not like it is wrong to assume they should probably be rping with everyone.

Some just click together better than others. And people tend to prefer those circles.