RP standards

Argent Dawn
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I typed this entire thing out at 4 a.m. and fell asleep at my keyboard before it was finished, decided to finish it anyway. It represents some thoughts I have had for a few months now and if you can’t be bothered to read it all there is a tl;dr at the bottom lol

This is a subject that I have been mulling over for several months now - and now is just the first time I think I am vocalizing my own thoughts on the subject matter, in a cacophony of thoughts thrown together in a single late night. There are very few places that I would get to throw this rant together, so why not on the forum, where anyone can read and anyone can scrutinize to their absolute heart’s content? Of course, all of this presented is merely my own opinion.

So I have been RPing in various communities since I was- what, ten, eleven years old? One such thing that was driven into my brain from a young age is the importance of RP - from things that made obvious sense such as being literate to more personal RP standards concerning the viability of one’s character in an RP setting and the supposed canonicity of said character - how out of place would they look in whichever setting that they took part in?

Now this was fine to my silly little kid brain, just because this is how I basically learned RP and is what I grew up doing. But as I’ve grown older and the people who stayed along with me as I jumped from community to community have grown older, I find that the RP I did with them - and other communities as I grew older - has grown stricter, but I’ve never really had words to say anything about it? It was more of a subconscious thing - that which I had noticed growing in the back of my mind but was never so disconnected that I felt that I had to say anything about it (despite various embarrassing dramas that happened in the group of people that I frequently RPed with over the course of eight years.)

but weirdly - coming to Argent Dawn in the wake of a pretty devastating and unexpected injury, during a slow year in college - I think I finally managed to put words to it.

I think it’s no secret that Argent Dawn is known for its quality control amidst several of its most prominent RP circles, It is nothing new and it is not something I think is ever going to change any time soon. And my first experience with my first character (not this one, who is used more prominently for my forum browsing than anything else really) really illustrated that to me in a pretty harsh demeanor - and funnily enough the conclusion that I drew from that first character was not this, rather it was the thought that I just didn’t like this kind of RP, no biggie. Try again elsewhere.

But in my current RP circle of friends, amongst trying again for the style of RP that I thought I didn’t enjoy, combined with nearly a decade of RP experience from when I was literally a young child to now as a new adult, I think the conclusion that I have since reached is I didn’t not like that style of RP - it’s that I am disenfranchised with overly strict RP standards and communities.

And even despite any of the obvious answers one might think of, I think the biggest reason why, and what I would consider to be one of the worst things someone can do as an RPer, is it just being boring. RP for me is purely for a fun giggle. I only started in WoW because I was homebound with a serious injury and wanted something to do in the meantime. And for that to be boring at the expense of being as lore-accurate as humanly possible just kills any interest in me - especially considering how much Blizzard disrespects, changes, modifies, and retcons their own fluff.

The best RP I’ve had is with characters who are off the wall, bizarre, and who don’t mind bending the lore. I think I would nine times out of ten prefer RPing with someone who bends the lore in order to be more interesting than someone who is exquisite in their lore adherence at the cost of being boring or generic. And that’s not to say that they can’t be interesting - I have done plenty of RP with individuals who are impressive with their dedication to lore and still been amazingly interesting and memorable - but typically the more adventurous, dangerous concepts tend to impress me more.

Idk. These are just my thoughts. Feel free to share your own viewpoint or critique any of my own, I’d love to hear any other’s thoughts.

TL; DR - I think that strict RP standards don’t help to create a more fun environment for RP, instead only leads to consistently uninteresting RP that makes it feel more like a job than a hobby.

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My anecdotal experience has been the opposite, with how the now defunct Uldum RP community, with its extremely liberal approach to canon lore became a center of degeneracy, offensive stereotypes, uninspired and tired concepts and storylines, while on the flip side something as mundane as a Dark Iron military unit, with its members doing their best to adhere to canon lore, the race’s aesthetics and themes, generated some of the better campaigns, stories and camp RP that I’ve taken part in since 2005.

To me it boils down to who is at the helm of these communities and how creative they can be and not whether they are strict or lenient when it comes to adhering to the game’s lore. You can have uninspired, boring garbage as well as memorable stories and adventures on both extremes (or down the middle if that’s what you fancy).

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I´m entirely in the opposite club. I´ve seen RP of the “boring” people (which often means not being excessively quirky) and I´ve seen the RP that´s centered around being a cool awesome story/character that doesn´t even slightly care about aligning itself with the setting of Warcraft, and I would always take the first kind instead of the second.

The problem is twofold. First, despite all its problems with worldbuilding in recent years, Azeroth is still conductive for the RP that centers itself around the older continents and their themes. And this setting is far, far superior than anything the “original lorebreaking” RPers have managed to create (I was wondering whether to mention Uldum community, fortunately Fouleye did that for me)

Secondly, in timeless words of Syndrome: “And when everyone´s super, no one will be.”
When everyone is quirky, original and super special, it becomes normal, mundane and bland. If you put together a group of characters that all have this dark hidden secret behind their quirky personality and have some amazing secret superpower unique to them, you end up with a group of people who are effectively the same.

On top of that, there´s the same problem as with the worldbuilding part: The people who create these “amazing, original and fun” characters tend to think themselves far greater writers than they actually are. I´ve seen special guardians of ancients artifacts with amnesia, Nightmare druids that kept their secret hidden until they attacked someone with their Nightmare powers one month into being in a guild, characters that were cursed with evil powers and were just really epic and awesome and gritty, and all of them were far, far more boring (and headache-inducing for officers in their guilds) than your average priest, soldier or a mage whose arc centered on dealing with their childhood trauma or a crippling injury from their early life.

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I think that it really depends on what is meant by strict; but, reading the rest of your post, I think something far better to say as a conclusion is that you simply enjoy writing with characters that are more ‘out there’ so to say than you do with characters that are more down to earth.

You are perfectly entitled to like what you like. It would be sincerely hard to make anything in Warcraft that completely breaks the setting, as if you search for a corner in Warcraft’s lore for a wacky niche, you will find it.

It’s not as if most of these ‘strict’ roleplayers act as if such corners of the lore aren’t canon or don’t exist, but everyone has their preference, and it would, ironically, be far more strict and demanding on DMs only wanting to write a roleplay story on their free time to be forced to take anyone in, no matter how dissonant to the group’s entire concept might be.

I think that at the end of the day, you are free to like what you like. Just don’t treat it like it’s some universal fact that everyone needs to open their eyes to instead of a matter of personal taste, which you are entirely entitled to have; but so does everyone else.

I do agree that some people take that ‘this wouldn’t make sense here!’ feeling a few too many notches up a lot of the times, but again, it’s just a matter of preference in a medium where people are writing just for fun where not interacting with people whose writing you don’t enjoy is a two-way street.

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Oh, yeah ofc - I wasn’t going to reply to many of these replies so as to not muddy the thread with several convos ongoing at once but let me clarify - everything in my original post is purely my own opinion, and I don’t want to tell anyone how they should and shouldn’t rp - was only ranting my own perspective on it based on my first (unfortunately negative) experience with rp.

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When I’ve felt restricted or surmised that a guild’s standards have been rigid and strict, its more been a problem with lesser abilities in the direction of scenes/events and planning/communicating of campaigns.

100 times out of a 100, one-on-one interactions between characters have been wildly more interesting, memorable and evocative when both characters have been written to be immersive in the same world of Azeroth.

Restrictions give birth to innovation, they force us to look inward on our characters as people of flesh and blood, contradictions and emotions – they also give the necessary gravitas to characters that do stand out by the nature of their characters, which faithfully and convincingly deliver stories larger than life despite the adherence to the setting of the community/guild/world. That’s why I RP on WoW but I’m turned off by DnD, I’m not as attracted by the wacky, improvised and creative situations or the cool, imaginative things I do in combat; I’m here to write characters.

That’s what I think, anyhow. I roleplay much, much less nowadays due to the decline in WoW’s popularity and changes in my own life but I have also found myself growing pickier. It’s lead me to more quality, even if it’s left me disconnected from the server-wide community. t. an elitist zando-mage, sniffing his own farts

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what is blud waffling about

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I think that strict RP standards don’t help to create a more fun environment for RP, instead only leads to consistently uninteresting RP that makes it feel more like a job than a hobby.

I’m of the opinion that adhering more than less to the setting is there to help everyone share the same playground. You share the general principles of the world, how it works, instead of everyone making up their own rules. If there was no canon to lean on, I think there’d be far more clashes on whose rules to follow about anything.

It doesn’t make a character more interesting by default whether they’re strictly based on canon or wildly headcanon. In my opinion it comes down to a player’s ability to breathe life into the character, how they tell stories and evoke emotion through the roleplay. You mentioned that for you, roleplay is purely for a fun giggle - and that’s completely fine! Other people just look for something else, or something more, than just a fun giggle.

As the player base has matured, I think a lot of us also - consciously or subconsciously - reflect our growing life experiences on the roleplay. We might become more detail oriented in our creative thinking and writing as we become increasingly involved with the responsibilities of adulthood. I’d argue that many find a world with known, shared principles more relatable than a world without them. That doesn’t mean people are looking to reduplicate their, perhaps not so exciting, real life in-game. Instead it means that we don’t have to explain everything from scratch to everyone as if we were writing a book about an all-new universe.

I’ve enjoyed roleplay that leans heavily on canon, and I’ve enjoyed roleplay that leans more on headcanon such as coming up with a place that doesn’t exist on the game map, toying with the idea that the world is much bigger than represented in-game. When it comes to greater bits of headcanon, it’s usually kept among people with a good amount of trust such as a friend group who is onboard with the idea, rather than leashed upon everyone to avoid conflicts. This relates back to what I wrote in the beginning of the post about sharing the same playground.

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I prefer to take a pragmatic approach. At the end of the day roleplay is a collaborative effort. It simply can’t be done without at least two people involved. So by its very nature there has to be rules and compromises involved.

I generally prefer to stick quite closely to the established canon because ultimately there’s simply certain things that draw me to the setting in the first place. I don’t really care about anything other than elves and humans. So when I indulge anything related to elves and humans then I prefer it to be ‘done right’.

I won’t force others to adhere to my desires but at the same time I’ll just politely excuse myself if I don’t believe our interests and approach to roleplay are in alignment.

I do think it’s worth pointing out that a healthy balance has to be struck. Some people go a little too far in attempting to either impose standards or ridicule those who prefer to embrace them.

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Define what you mean by ‘strict’. Do you mean ‘strict’ as in people who follow the lore? Because that is what this post is coming off as.

There is a limit to how far you can bend things before they completely break the immersion. Some things are small and can be over looked, some things are just jarring and honestly, too much leaning into the hooheehaa standards of roleplay.

It is also a disregard to the story that is already exisiting in the world. Common one that I have encountered recently is the over-friendliness towards gnolls and villainization of anyone who doesn’t treat them nice.
Gnolls, being a war-race who only sees others as food, skin people for tents, make jerky out of sentient people, actively causes a massive war in human lands that nearly toppled Stormwind, and in general only seek conflict so they can gather more meat.
And yet, a character of mine who despises gnolls is hounded by several people who want to welcome ‘Yippy Yappy hugging gnolls’ into towns.

And you see this:
https://i.imgur.com/l22yp22.png

Of course, this is but one example of people taking the lore and ignoring it, in favour of…
What I assume is happy-fun-hug-and-smiles-no-lore-here roleplay.

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Acrona summed up my feelings pretty succinctly with this. It makes interaction with new people easier when you can rely on their interpretation of the world being the same as yours. That’s not to say that headcanon is inherently bad - I enjoy it very much, and often like to discuss ideas with friends that could fit within the confines of the setting to flesh out the worldbuiling by adding to it. But when people come up with ideas that directly go against what we know to be true, it creates a bit of a clash and pause in the momentum of RP as you gotta figure out where to bend and where to draw the line.

Ultimately for me, the biggest… crime might be too strong of a word, but faux pas perhaps? When it comes to RP is when you try to force themes together that fundamentally don’t work. An example of this is if you’re writing a story that’s more down to earth, and you try to insert a very powerful Demon Hunter, a Dracthyr, Draenei Sci-Fi technology or other more exotic (for lack of better term) concepts into a fundamentally “low” fantasy RP scene.

While all these things exist in the setting and all have their places within, the mixing of themes rarely works to the satisfaction of anyone involved. That’s why it’s important to know the time and place into which to insert any specific character.

If you look at the state of a place in the lore – take for example Duskwood with its narrative of being a run down and neglected, cursed backwater at the edge of the kingdom that’s struggling to get by – does it make sense for the town of Darkshire to be inhabited by every exotic concept under the sun except struggling humans? The zone’s story actively stops making sense when the Night Watch of Darkshire is actually manned by Demon Hunters, and that causes a narrative dissonance between adhering to the lore of the region and the RP being offered.

At the same time expecting to find the same blend of “lower” and more down to earth fantasy in places like Suramar or Exodar would be equally strange, because those regions in turn cater to the more higher end of fantastical themes the setting has to offer.

There’s a time and place for everything, and the different RP scenes the realm has to offer would all be better for it if one stops to consider does this theme of RP make sense there, and starting an RP community in the place where it does.

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A little lore bend here and there isn’t much of an issue, it just becomes… difficult to engage with characters that outright break it in half. Stuff like Me’dan is soft-retconned for a reason, even Blizzard despite their own writing issues has a limit.

As others say, the lore is good to follow as it is a baseline. Everybody (mostly) knows the basics of the setting, so there’s little issue interacting between an Orc Warrior and a Tauren Druid. But when a character in the interaction is a half-vulpera/half-blood elf shadow demon hunter mage chronomancer high lord of placetheymadeup… how are the other two supposed to treat them seriously?

They can’t. Because that impossible half-breed and melting pot of what seems like eight different character concepts (Seriously people, please just make a unique character per concept don’t cram every vague idea you have onto one TRP it makes you look ridiculous and indecisive) cannot exist in the setting, there’s no common ground for them to engage with.

And frankly the more absurd the TRP the more likely, in my 10+ years of experience, the player behind that TRP is not going to react well to people pointing out their character is simply implausible. Often leading to the cycle of:

“Your character concept is very abnormal”
“Don’t like it, then don’t RP with me”
“Ok”
“…why won’t anyone RP with me?! Toxic community!”

I can count on one hand the number of times someone had the response of “Oh my bad, I’m new to this. I’ll rework it to something more simple and approachable and slowly build from there” or a variation of that.

These days it tends to be Vulpera, who despite having very much only existed in one zone (or three) until very recently, seem to have spawned a half dozen variants (“Forest” Vulpera, “Arctic” Vulpera, ???) and among them have all manner of classes and titles that are just impossible. Lotta grandmaster monks (that have also mastered using “Sha power”), archmages, etcetera, somehow in the span of three years.

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We do not speak of those, it brings me pain whenever I witness one of these ‘variants’…

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Sometimes it can already happen when say, a death knight accompanies a mercenary guild. I was the death knight in the group, and they were beset upon by many enemies. So I asked them if it was okay if my DK summoned his frostwyrm to deal with the foes because after all, they were trying to preserve a certain theme. So they said “Okay, just dont do it too often.”

And so I usually make up a reason why the frostwyrm does not always interfere to save the day, even though he usually remains near his master, so that I do not end up clashing with the theme a guild is trying to set or end up hogging all the glory due to it. As others said, time and place for everything.

And I think that the reason that most people, atleast here on the forums, usually try to adhere to the lore as well they can is for multiple reasons. One is that, as others pointed out, rp is a collaborative hobby. The World of Warcraft is our sandbox to play in, but we have to share it with the others who also use the sandbox. Hence why it is nice if everyone agrees on the same rules. Though thankfully, the sandbox is usually big enough aswell to seperate when themes clash.
Another reason why most here prefer to adhere to the lore over outright breaking it in the name of fun is because, the lore is what I assume made us all fall in love with the universe. If you outright break it or one-on-one insert stuff from other universes, can it still be called Warcraft then? Even if I do not always mind a tiny bit of headcanon if it serves to fill in blanks that Blizzard left.

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I think this is something else I probably should have made clearer in my og post as well- at no point am I arguing that lore should be entirely disregarded. It is my belief that lore should exist as a baseline - not the be all, end all. This is meant to be ‘Warcraft RP’ after all.

If someone were to show up as a Dracthyr, claiming to have been around during the fourth war, then that is cause for concern because it contradicts the baseline and raises too many questions as to how they even showed up.

However, as a brief character concept just for the sake of my point, a Void Elf Monk - utilizing sha-based monk techniques in combat as their own Chi, their life force is corrupted - while it bends the lore, in my eyes it connects enough dots in the lore and makes for an interesting concept, which from there could garner some very unique, diverse and most importantly, fun rp. Whether around the uniqueness of how combat RP might work to the simple concept of a monk corrupted by void.

Or even for the more social-based rp (Which I am more drawn to these days sheerly due to my busy schedule not allowing me to stay up for hours running combat encounters anymore), how the void and sha affects them would make for some excellent social rp.

This is just an example of course - but I think such a concept, that is admittedly off the wall and not really in the norm for Warcraft, (I don’t even think there are any examples of Velf monks existing outside of player characters, and even then they are wholly restricted to the standard chi stuff of monks), has the potential to be more fun and interesting than a human paladin from the Silver Hand/Argent Dawn/wherever. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that concept, rather it’s something I don’t personally jive with due to how ubiquitous they are.) People who are able to take the stuff that the game gives them and make something unique and interesting out of it and then rp it well are more fun to me than people who are rigid to the archetypes for whatever race/class combo they’re rping.

Edit: And again, let me double clarify - This is all my own opinion, RP is subjective - don’t mistake me for telling you ‘this is how things have to be and you should like it’ lol. I personally have had quite enough of that with some of my own RP experiences.

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Oh, I wouldn’t consider that a bending of the lore at all. It would certainly be a concept that requires a lot of thought to execute, but ultimately doable. The conflict between seeking inner peace and the chaos churning in their minds would be a character arc I’d love to see fulfilled in a way that does it justice!

As Dreadscorch pointed out, it’s surprisingly difficult to get the lore behind a concept wholly wrong. I can bet you that I can find some justification in all the WoW novels I own to give some credence to most concepts. The crux of it, to me, lies in the way (and intent) in which the concept is executed.

Though when something is actively breaking the lore, there’s a lot of things behind it in the background that have gone wrong in the first place, I feel.

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of course, I agree - and whether you find the concept lore bending or not is up to your own interpretations and opinions on the lore, just goes to show that RP is indeed subjective! I personally find the concept to be lore bending but that doesn’t make it a bad thing for me - my rant was taking issue with people who are so rigid to lore that they’d find such a concept wholly outlandish with no room for compromise (which indeed do exist unfortunately.)

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Only way I’d find that concept ‘breaking’ or ‘bad’ is if the person doesn’t do anything with the conflict between their nature and their teachings. Completely ignoring the down sides and acting like everything’s fine - at which point they’d be better off RPing a high elf monk.

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Regardless of that concept, that was the point I was trying to make - I wrote the original post at like 4am when I was thinkin about stuff so I think the point got lost in flowery writing and then subsequently falling asleep at my keyboard lol.

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This to me is the most common wrongdoing with most character concepts, high or low. It’s not whatever fantastic/bizarre power you’ve given your character that makes them interesting, it’s how they deal with them and generally act as a character in a setting that makes them interesting, which might even give someone wiggle room for more lorebending traits by lampshading them against the shared setting.

But then yeah there’s also just plain wrong things, like being a Fallout 4 synth or “dun morogh arctic worgen” that seem to be almost always made in bad faith.

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