Why criminal role-play doesn't last, or have a place on AD

Argent Dawn
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I can’t say whether it’s the same in Orgrimmar or elsewhere, but I’m reasonably confident that these problems can be found in most places, for better or worse.

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It clicked for me the other day: player characters cannot be threatened or bullied.

You’ve caught onto something, I agree. Albeit I’d make the distinction that most player characters can’t be threatened with violence. Humiliation, reputation destruction and other forms of indirect attacks that are not dependent on emotes are methods that are readily available for any up and coming crook.

So, while it’s hard to play a dumb mook who can actually extort money with a club, quick-witted bastards that can humiliate a super powered character with insults before conning the very same hero to jail is a concept WoW RP actually does support.

A lot of the long-term consequence related RP on the other hand, is somewhat dependent on where inside the AD RP community you’re in. In the last year especially, a pocket of conflict-RPers that genuinely do respect consequences has formed among Orgrimmar’s more disreputable characters. Meta-checks, stealth RP and other nuisances are now fairly readily communicated OOCly between players, resulting in an environment where impactful and organic RP actually works out.

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What I tend to see most often with criminal RPers is that, although Warcraft is the high-fantasy, high-magic setting we all know it to be, they’re one of the groups/types of RPers who will either downplay that or downplay their own character. While they’re often described as rough’n’tough bruisers, it’s clear they’re not designed in a way to match up to heroic characters.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. There’s absolutely no reason as to why characters involved in criminality can’t have reached a similar level of skill as their lawful counterparts, but use it instead for their own benefit; avarice is a powerful motivator, after all. There are many antagonistic players, who portray powerful characters, but I don’t often see them doing so as criminals - usually they’re evil warlocks, death knights or otherwise, pursuing evil as an ideal or a means to an end.

All I can think of now is Eight Fingers from Overlord, and now I just feel like a big weeaboo. :nerd_face: :jp:

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Did they really emote killing him by drowning ? I think that part you may have made up :lying_face:

Other than that, role playing that the Horde doesn’t have such a sophisticated separation of powers as we do in the real world is perfectly fine in my opinion

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Watch your tongue now, boy. Or you will be made to count fish too.

:gun: :eyes:

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I’m the baddest of them all, I once cut in line at the Local Orgrimmar Soup kitchen.

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I get what you are saying OP, -but- the problem is that it is a two way street, and what you seem to be asking for in your post is for it only to be one way, saying that the victims should be prepared to be victims, and that criminal RP’ers should be entitled to inflict harm on their characters.

That’s an awful idea. It is effectively godemoting… The Criminal RPer in that situation is basically defining and ultimately -deciding- the outcome of an RP situation.

Now if all Criminal RP’ers could be trusted to behave sensibly, then that would be fine and dandy to an extent, but lets be honest, the vast majority of them simply cannot be trusted to behave sensibly, I’m talking your Stormwind types who start shootouts in taverns, who mug people in broad daylight in front of guards, your rooftop snipers and so on.

That’s where your problem lies, essentially. The many have tainted Criminal RP for the few who are sensible about it. This has the knock on effect that you remarked upon, where many people simply won’t engage with Criminal RP and RP’ers -because- of that, not unjustified perception.

I like that the Oath of Silver have been mentioned, as they are what I would class as ‘doing it right’. OOC I know they are a criminal organisation, but IC Brigante just thinks they are a 'concerned citizens social club, like the Rotarians or something, I mean goodness, they get invited to Conclave even! They play it cute, I mean in our experiences a couple of times as ‘thankful citizens’ they have organised parties in the tavern for the Sun Hawks, where we are wined dined and allowed to show off our ego’s (Which never goes out of fashion with us!). End result? They have a fairly prominent military guild, not in their pocket, but very well disposed towards them. Fast forwards 2 years of friendly interaction, and the Oath have a problem with a rival IC group of criminals, so they invite their good buddies the Sun Hawks over just for a social, and drop the subject into conversation, that some ‘law-abiding’ merchants and civilians are being menaced by criminals that have blown into town (The other Guild). They even know ( through said friendly interaction) what kind of things push our buttons in terms of getting us angry, so they say that these ‘bad guys’ are doing those things as well… Now obviously the Sun Hawks are military, not law enforcement, So Brigante says regretfully he can’t arrest them, but he can keep an eye out, and naturally if we see these folks acting dodgy, can bring a little military muscle to the table…
That’s criminal gangs done right, because crime should be invisible, because what do they call a visible criminal? ‘Prisoner 24601’ for the next however many years they are in the Stockades…

In a Visible contestation between criminals and law enforcement, law enforcement will win, that is pretty much an immutable thing in our real world as well as most fantasy worlds. Of course you get your muggers and suchlike, but those are generally amateur criminals, thugs of opportunity, and that opportunity is not found in broad daylight in crowded streets, in front of city guards. Now Riots are different, but unfortunately too many people buy into the manga or Hollywood version of assassins and criminals being unbeatable fighters, as if behaving illegally makes you an expert in Gun-fu and Ninjamatics by default.

The simple truth of the matter, is that the reason that clever crime is invisible, is because generally your Law Enforcement and Military are going to be vastly better equipped, trained, and able to dish out violence far more than your Criminal type.

Every now and then Someone will whisper Brigante and ask if it is OK if he gets pickpocketed, I generally come back with “Sure, I mean it depends how good your emote is, I mean he is a Farstrider, they’re generally pretty alert people” If its stylishly done, I let them get away with it, likewise if he’s spent all night in the tavern, I might just go “You know what, he’s a bit drunk, so yes you can, you get X”.

A lot of it comes down to the point you rightly identify, Criminals prey on those who are vulnerable, they don’t just walk up to someone who is obviously military, pull out a cosh and try to mug them, that’s not going to end well for you. Likewise, that weedy looking person might just be a powerful mage. You have to do your homework, you have to find a way of making the situation play to your advantage, and balance the odds that you may get a nasty surprise. I remember a newspaper article a few years back about three scrotes who tried to mug an old man, turns out he was an ex-Royal Marine who had served his entire life since childhood, end result, the three of them got prison sentences. -After- they had come out of hospital.

No one is invincible, well, apart from that one horse, but he’s dead now…

For crime to work, we have to acknowledge that real life consequences do not apply, I mean who wants to play their character as having been arrested and sitting around in gaol for the next three years?

So really the impetus isn’t on ‘everyone else’ to be the victims, the onus is on the Criminal RP’ers to actually play it like Criminals, and not fall into the “Everyone’s a f*cking Ninja” trap. Likewise, Guards shouldn’t be all-powerful. In a direct stand up fight, sure, your Guards are likely to win, but that’s why, by definition, Criminals don’t fight fair.

Sure, Criminals can reach the same power levels as the ‘Mighty Warriors’ and ‘potent Mages’, heck, they might even -be- one themselves, but remember that they are the aberration in society, all of society will be turned against them, and the law, and possibly the Military as well, if they are too open about it.

I mean such was actually part of Old English Law, any citizen witnessing a crime had to raise a ‘Hue and Cry’, Pointing at the Criminal and shouting loudly as an alarm, any citizen hearing one also had to point and raise the alarm, until eventually the baying of the crowd, all pointing at the one believed to be the criminal, made it easy for the proto-law enforcement to apprehend the criminal. It was actually an Offence (I think) -not- to raise your voice and take part in a Hue and Cry.

It didn’t stamp crime out, of course it didn’t, but it meant that only clever criminals thrived, and that is what we need in RP…

Clever Crime.

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As others have said no doubt better than I can: It takes two to tango.

Cops and Robbers RP only works if both sides can make compromises and work to create a spectacle rather than carry out their fantasies.

Unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often these days.

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Of course it doesn’t work, We’re all narcissists to a degree.

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I sort attempt atm to run a semi criminal guild. Mostly just people left outside soceity looking for a home, we do any job some less legal then others but try not to get hunted down and stay under the redar.
But sadly Criminal rp is trickey one and i recall rping guard on Defias we had a good deal with a criminal rp guild and others. It work well to it was move to AD and then it just disappered. But ye cops and robbers take two sides to agree on what to do, to make it fun on both ends to rp.

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There’s some great discussion here, really. I’m glad to see everyone really meshing over this. It’s wonderful to see everyone knows the issues at hand and has already identified them.

I can’t respond to everything, of course, but a few far-reaching comments I will make about the thread on the whole.

Yes, I know; this’ very much an Alliance issue.

Yes, I know there is role-play outside of Stormwind, as well as criminal role-play. But as a large portion of Alliance-RP, (I’d guess over 80%) takes place in Stormwind, I used it as the basis of my experience. That said, the title of this thread is inappropriate, I admit. What it should have been called is, ‘What is the current state of criminal RP, and how can we improve it?’ – Luckily, it seems everyone got the jist of what I was hoping to discuss.

Two things that really stood out to me was that, A: Horde doesn’t have as much as an issue here, I’m still reading through replies, but damn; Thalindor, yours was so well-informed, each time I read it a new chunk leaps out at me. Thank you for taking the time to write your responses. And B: That Lakeshire could be a great place to experiment with some community-based criminality, and could serve as either an example for others, or a long-lasting experience. Based on that, it could be used to inform future role-play in Stormwind.

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I very much agree with this. It reminds me of a spontaneous story arc from my old server years ago.

Here on AD my guild is one of many roleplaying the holy knights theme, but back there we were super well known and basically everyone knew our tabard. So a group of brigands, Defias affiliated if I remember correctly, pilfered a shipment meant for us, snatched some tabards (remaking their guild tabard to look like ours) and began posing as us, deliberately souring our relationship with several other guilds, then tried to blackmail us with it. The whole plot sprung up spontaneously and ran for several weeks. It was absolutely brilliant, and happened just because both sides accepted the consequences and made assumptions (such as brigands being able to identify and then rob a shipment of tabards - and the assumption that they shipped from Stormwind to our hangout at Menethil) that weren’t far-fetched or overpowered by itself, but turned out to have way bigger results down the road. No violence was ever used and they managed to catch us in a way that was much more effective than combat (which they quite likely would have lost, and they knew it). My Gaeb eschews trickery and deception, and his refusal to be sneaky and pay the bandits back in kind (an option that was available to us several times during the arc) became a genuine weakness during that plot.

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33

In the case of Stormwind, having the shadiest establishment in the city less than a minute away from the literal guardhouse… probably doesn’t help.

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The main problem with criminal roleplay I see on the Alliance side is that there’s a lack of proper criminals… but there’s also a lack of proper guard/law enforcement guilds.

A common trend with criminals in the infamous capital of Stormwind seems to be that neither side really takes anything seriously from the other side, as if it’s supposed to be a comedy. I for one definitely can’t look at a void elf running through the streets with a single human guard using Heroic Leap across one of the Canals in the middle of the city to get closer to the runner.

I get that warriors are high fantasy, but I’ve always been of the belief that your average WoW human troops in fact do not jump across about four meters of water in plate armor. This joke attitude can also be generally seen all over the city. Granted, I do have an admission of being one of those edgy Old Town ‘criminals’ in the past (don’t punch me).

The problem is that it appears almost as if criminal roleplayers don’t want to be taken seriously in-character or out-of-character. And these criminals don’t really do anything either except just hanging out near shady pubs. They don’t even attempt to mug, stab or pickpocket anyone, they just do nothing except exchanging cringe-worthy half-drunk dialogues about calling each other names in out-of-place adult language.

If we were to solve this problem, we’d need some people who can take themselves seriously and who are actually going to focus on the action instead of banter with some proper RP quality standards. Well, that plus some proper guards who don’t Heroic Leap across Canals.

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Calls u on my buzzbox

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The socialisation of Horde rp better suits the “criminal” flavour not only due to the actual setting being amenable to lawlessness, but the races themselves also fit morally grey areas of rp better.

Specifically for AD though Horde is also socialised better for criminal rp due to the atomised nature of Horde rp (itself is a bit of an oxymoron due to its atomisation) with very little overlap (and subsequently overlapping conflict) that could be a source of contention.
It’s very easy to see at least four or five different levels of headcannon running side by side in places like Silvermoon City (to a lesser extent in Orgrimmar as well) where players exist in carefully constructed boundaries with bubbles of characters essentially only bouncing off those within their clique.

This type of roleplay allows for controversial concepts to arise on Horde without causing much of a stir, not that this is a bad thing for those wanting to engage in it. This is how we have guilds on Horde that when copied onto the Alliance (or an approximation of such) they simply do not have the longevity due to how roleplay on the Alliance functions.

Relaying back to the nature of Criminal RP, this works much better on Horde because there is a culture on the Horde of permissiveness that allows for concepts that on Alliance would require a higher degree of co-ordination and co-operation (which many players simply -cannot- abide to). Horde has a far lower requirement to this which allows things like Criminal RP to flourish.

TL;DR: Horde has a lower bar to meet than Alliance to allow guilds that cause controversy to function long term. Certain RP concepts actually -require- a “bubble” to function in the way the players want them to.

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It doesn’t work for a very simple reason. The key theme of a criminal narrative is competition and so it takes a big brain to delicately balance that with the act of roleplay, which requires cooperation to work. In fiction, this isn’t a problem for obvious reasons, the writer “controls” both sides whereas in roleplay, you obviously have the opposite scenario where one side, the “baddies” is represented by players and the other, let’s call them “the rest”, are represented by a diffrent group of players.

Clique incidents aside, this is the problem others touched on already. People compete, but more on a player than a character level. A lot of the times either side simply doesn’t want to acknowledge their defeat and resort to all manner of mental gymnastics to evacuate themselves from the bad situation they got themselves into. One of the factors is:

Which is quite the opposite on Argent Dawn from my experience (at least on Alliance side) so we see players pumping up their characters to ridiculous levels so that their joe who guards the door to the shady lady can become the literal immovable object and only allow those to enter who received an rp permit from the guild he’s in.

Guilds which focus their roleplay solely in Stormwind are in a constant life support mode because they need to interact with other people to push their roleplay forward. What I just said about the ridiculous bandit characters means that the opposing side (the law) has to reach for equally ludicrous tools so that they can stay afloat and compete to keep their roleplay going, which is why we have guards wielding kalashnikovs, as one of the extreme examples. And the buzzboxes? A consequence of criminal rpers magically poofing out of thin air when one of their buddies got cornered, except they didin’t bother to use any fancy gnomish tech, at least not then.

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This is true, but in a way that feels very inconsistent. On the one hand, they play the gritty bruiser man, who’s intended to be ‘realistic’, but they also either have no concept of power scaling or they choose to ignore it entirely. The way they portray their character doesn’t match what’s intended, because they can be so determined to be that tough guy criminal they refuse to ever lose - even when faced with someone like a paladin or knight.

There’s definitely a big disconnect there. Typical ruffian pulls Houdini to evade any consequences for their character.

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The cause of the problem isn’t the average Joe RP’er, or any of the players/ characters that interact with the criminals, it’s the criminal roleplayers and the nature of criminal roleplay itself. Criminal RP’ers are just as guilty of meta RP, power emotes, refusing responsibility/ consequences, and retreating into safe spaces/ bubbles, because ultimately the kind of criminal RP, and criminal RP’er that you’re talking about - organised crime RP - is all about power; its acquisition, and its preservation.

The roleplayers you are talking about want their character to be able to threaten, intimidate, bully, extort, rob, punish, assault, injure, maim and murder with impunity, because their entire character concept depends on it. They want to RP the Tommy Shelbys, the Tony Montanas, the Michael Corleones of the Stormwind underworld - or, if you prefer IRL equivalents, the Krays, the Capones, the Escobars. They want their characters to be the kingpins - to be feared, to be respected, to be powerful, and above all else, to be triumphant. As you say, that power can only exist in a dynamic where it can be exerted on the less powerful - unless your average Stormwind bar-owning kingpin can victimise or oppress or coerce other characters freely, at will, the concept collapses in on itself. And that, in itself, is the the source of all the issues. If they become the victims, if the situation is reversed, if they are defeated, or apprehended, then the concept crumbles. You can’t have a criminal mastermind who is regularly trounced outside the Shady Lady for picking a fight with a schmuck who turns out to be a mage/ warlock/ paladin.

The problem with your premise is the idea average Joe RP’er is the party at fault. They aren’t - at least not entirely. The problem is that the kingpins in organised crime RP want to be the main characters of the server story. They could quite easily, and happily, realise their character concept in bubbled guild RP campaigns, through events and NPCs - but they are just as invested in exerting power over other players/ characters as a form of gameplay/ roleplay as they are in writing that specific character concept, and furthermore, they are only interested in exercising that power through force, violence, and control (which is not, generally speaking, how Mafia dons work in real life, being much more low-key and behind-the-scenes). What attracts people to organised crime RP is precisely the possibility of building a “legitimate” reputation through character interactions, and being able to enforce their will on other characters. It strays from creative writing and story-telling and drifts into the realms of wish-fulfilment and power fantasy.

… Except, of course, the impossibility of enforcing one’s will on players and characters inevitably thwarts this impulse, leading to all sorts of OOC shenanigans such as consequence dodging and G-chat emote fight alarms in order to preserve the kingpin’s, and his/ her cronies’, illusory status as untouchable crimelord masterminds.

If your kingpin crimelord mastermind was just an average Joe schmuck criminal, would it matter anywhere near as much if they got trounced repeatedly? No - in fact, it would add to the character, the story, and their development. It would create interesting material to RP off, as the stress, anxiety, and desperation of their failed gambits escalated to crisis point. Thus - criminal RP, and criminal RP’ers, aren’t the problem, or even your average Joe RP’er, but organised crime RP itself, which only really has a place in events and bubbles.

Outside of events and bubbles, meta RP, power-emoting, consequence dodging, and all sorts of bad habits start to develop as your garden variety gritty kingpin slumlord tries to maintain some flimsy justification for their character’s rep and status, or translate their headcanon into IC reality. They’ll spy, OOC, on other characters because, of course, as such a powerful member of the underworld, they will absolutely have a network of spies and informants - even though no player-character equivalent exists for this web of agents, and it is, ultimately, represented only by a stealthing afk’er or a rooftop camper. They’ll summon henchmen and cronies through G-chat to turn the tides in a losing emote battle. They’ll innocently forget to inform investigating guards of all the evidence that they absolutely, definitely would be able to see and find at the crime scene of a bloody battle - and this leads me to my final rambly point, which is, in crime RP, as I’ve seen it, there is a form of meta/ power-emote which I don’t think is described or defined by any other term, which is writing, implicitly, for other player’s characters.

Choosing to with-hold information they would have access to is an example of this - writing in a supporting cast of NPCs to uphold a character’s status, and then trying to force them on other characters, is another issue of which I can think of no name.

Anyway - that’s my rant over, it’s disjointed and incoherent and I’m sure full of holes, but challenge me on it and if I find the time I’ll try to clarify/ articulate myself better.

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Every ying needs a yang and without people to stop criminals, crime has no punchline.

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