The reason of dark guilds end.

Now this might be obvious to some of you, but to those who wan't to create a dark guild that is banned from Stromwind there is a few things you should know.
Also if you are interested in chosing the dark path here are two tutorials you might want to take a look at before you do anything.
General Pointers for "Evil" Roleplaying
Survival Guide for Cultists

One.
The reason because so many dark guilds has fallen trough the flow of time is because the lack of socializing in the guild. If you want to create a sucsesful dark guild you have to create a base and have a lot of random Roleplay and socializing, if no one is active and they only come active when there is an event you are doomed to fail. Make sure to stay active and speak to your members.

Two.
Goals and tons of them, Why do you gather up a large group of bad people and fight against the good? Do you wan't to destroy Stormwind? Take it over? Maybe spread a plague or enslave the living. Make goals for the guild that will take a long time to do.
Another good idea would be what to do after you have done the goal, what would you do when you have enslaved the whole humanity? Or what if you managed to destroy all humans on the planet? Would you kill yourself then?
Don't chose impossible goals!

Three.
This is one of the most important one, listen to reason and take help from others! There are many people out there who expect much from you and are willing to help, but they won't help you unless you listen to them!

Four.
Be tactical, before you start an event you have to remember that you are evil and need a reason for going there, always have the tactical advantage and I promise you that you can win almost any fight in the world of Roleplay.
And if you lose some fights then don't cry over it, remember you are evil and that many people think that evil will never succeed thus making them a little unfair sometimes. Being afraid and cautious helps, think before acting unlike those mindless heroes out there.

Five.
If you loss in one event and rage over it, your gonna have a bad time.
I don't care what happens in an event, if something goes bad for your side and you loose you shouldn't rage over it, no one should. This just means you didn't plan good enough and that you still have improvements to do on your tactical side, make more evil BFF's join your cult and start planning better.

Six.
Remember that part about socializing? Good because were not done there yet. When someone join your cult they often want to learn more about dark spells and dark things to say, keep the socializing high both OOC and IC. A good way to do this is by creating a 'school' of magic and fighting styles, don't leave people outside then and remember that these men and women walking with you there and then are most likely the only once who will follow you in the Roleplaying community.

Seven.
This is one of the most important things you will read in here, HAVE FUN! What is the point of roleplaying a dark cult if you don't have fun while doing it? I don't know what makes you happy but when I em on Emily it is usually torturing people and making them scream, maybe tricking them into some sort of trap or make an argument between two people until they start fighting.

Bonus lessons from other people.

Zaraj wrote:For a dark guild to actually become alive beyond people logging in on their alts in said guild to do the evil deed of the month, you'd have to have characters within it that is not all about the conflict and can have RP within the guild on their own. This is an oxymoron, because conflict is essentially what a dark guild is all about and is the reason it has members and why its members log in. I.e it'll always be dependent on other guilds for RP and this will inevitably cause the guild to collapse.

The solution I say would be to not create a dark guild at all. Rather, create a guild that is not about conflict, but can still have disagreements/fights within themselves or other guilds. An example would perhaps be a Highborne guild that is not on the friendliest of terms with the rest of Kaldorei society, but is still not out there to actively harm it in a way a dark guild would. Another option is to have good guys make very powerful alts for short, temporary plots that essentially replaces the dark guild.

Nice read. To add to the mix:
General Pointers for "Evil" Roleplaying
Survival Guide for Cultists

#1
It's also quite handy for evil dudes to realize that they are the evil ones, and that the good guys are supposed to win. An evil guild should be a fun, interesting, difficult, and perhaps puzzling challenge for the good guys to overcome, but in the end, they will win.

#2
Make sure you've got magic, and lots of it. Good guys always underestimate magic. Make sure you've got escape routes planned out.

On the other side, if you get outsmarted (you get silenced, your runes get stolen, your staff of +3 evil gets destroyed) be generous enough to give the good guys the win.

#3
Die.

Nothing is as frustrating as to have to arrest a cultist and having to go through a long-ass trial while he's obviously a baby-eating maniac. Just let yourself be killed.

Now that is a part that really annoy me, every one think that the good guys should win all the time which I think is something silly created by the light guilds so they can have more fun then the Dark guilds.

Don't listen to the elf behind the curtains folks, enjoy the Roleplay and smile to yourself every time you win an event, you will win if you take the right steps and don't trip along the way.

You don't have to win to have fun. In fact, you'll probably have less fun if you get so caught up in winning or losing, which I believe is the point erwt was making.

There's a huge difference between being supposed to win and, being supposed to roflstomp the evil. In my experience(I've been GM in a cultist guild, and have been involved with another toon in like 2-3 cults) the two get almost always mistaken. The Lighties/good guys should get that if one cult is around you can't simply pretend you can just find it, take all the people and end the thing.
Hell, last expansion was centered around the actions of a cult, and took something like 25 players/heroes to put an end to it. Secondly, you should be aware, as good guys, that probably the cultists will have a massive edge and probably appear unbeatable at first glance, and that's how it should be. Of course they'll have their weaknesses, but for sure they won't tell you those, and you can't go around whining OOC because 'they're OP'. Of course they'll be able to summon massive demons, of course they'll be able to put the ground on fire or to use the darkest of magic to annihilate their enemies. But here's the trick: a hero is judged by the strength of his opponents. The harder the task, the more your hero will be -the- hero.

Good post, Dec.

There, think I finally have added the last thing I needed on the Guide'ish thing
.

I don't think this sort've thing requires a "guide". As far as I'm concerned, the best way to make a guild like this work well is to go into it with realistic expectations and form a decent friendship with the guilds that are going to oppose you.

This sort've thing (in my personal experience) only falls flat on its arse when there is zero communication between both sides. Aslong as it's fun for both sides, and continues to make any level of IC sense, there really shouldn't be any problems at all.

Drustai wrote:Which I believe is the point erwt was making.

Good guys win in the end. It's a thing.

erwtenpeller wrote:

Drustai wrote:Which I believe is the point erwt was making.

Good guys win in the end. It's a thing.

You mean because good guys have to win everytime but the bad guys only have to win once?

No, bad guys should win when it doesnt matter or they are building, the good guys win in the final.

The guys with the odds in their favour win, unfortunately all the bad guys seem to be craving for attention or be operating from Stormwind which means they have to be either proper subtle(Dont crave attention. Dont start dropping corpses all over SW) or get shit on by the thousands of protectors of the kingdom.

It's good that things end.

Yes!

Ledgic/Taoven wrote:I don't think this sort've thing requires a "guide". As far as I'm concerned, the best way to make a guild like this work well is to go into it with realistic expectations and form a decent friendship with the guilds that are going to oppose you.

This sort've thing (in my personal experience) only falls flat on its arse when there is zero communication between both sides. Aslong as it's fun for both sides, and continues to make any level of IC sense, there really shouldn't be any problems at all.

This. Also why does it matter about winning or losing? Its the roleplay that matters, the fun that is in it. But yes, if you play a cult that wants to take over lets say stormwind.. You -cant- win, it simply works that way. Sure, it would be awesome if the bad side won every now and then! But it wont happen. Well, at least not in the major cities, especially Stormwind.

And finally; Let your character die in the end. Its not a must, but its the most likely one.

Longknife/Decurius wrote:There's a huge difference between being supposed to win and, being supposed to roflstomp the evil. In my experience(I've been GM in a cultist guild, and have been involved with another toon in like 2-3 cults) the two get almost always mistaken. The Lighties/good guys should get that if one cult is around you can't simply pretend you can just find it, take all the people and end the thing.
Hell, last expansion was centered around the actions of a cult, and took something like 25 players/heroes to put an end to it. Secondly, you should be aware, as good guys, that probably the cultists will have a massive edge and probably appear unbeatable at first glance, and that's how it should be. Of course they'll have their weaknesses, but for sure they won't tell you those, and you can't go around whining OOC because 'they're OP'. Of course they'll be able to summon massive demons, of course they'll be able to put the ground on fire or to use the darkest of magic to annihilate their enemies. But here's the trick: a hero is judged by the strength of his opponents. The harder the task, the more your hero will be -the- hero.

This. A Thousand times this. In my opinion, it seems to be that the Lighties automatically assume the cultists to have brain like a mush, and let themselves be led into traps. They ain't stupid! Not to mention the 'heroes' who gets pissy and whiny ooC because they don't get to crush the cultists on first confrontation. I also have very bad experience that mid confrontation the ooc communication has been fine, only to learn later they were bitching about me all through it all in their guild chat.

A good, evil guild will be evasive. They have brains, they know how to get around and to avoid trouble. They are supposed to be a dark, looming cloud of fear which lay like a carpet of people, something that creates RP -because- of the presence of evil. Am I the only one who get a thrill about having a dark evil lurking around?

You know, I really don't think the folks saying that the Good Guys ought to win in the end are saying that they should do it in the wink of an eye in a way that isn't fun for the people playing the villains.

Players on both ends of the spectrums probably have poor experiences with their opposite's and channel them in this thread. As somebody who's primarily played on the Light side, I've had my fair share of unbeatable villains who cheaply hocus-pocus their way out of any situation, however unlikely; but I am sure those same villains have encountered plenty of self-entitled heroes who expect to be given a free win no matter how poorly they play it.

The awnser is, of course, as it always is: harmony and balance. Giving and taking. Both sides need to be willing to take losses from time to time. Heroes need to sometimes be lenient in letting evil slp away so they might haunt us yet another day: yet villains need to ensure that their dark designs aren't unfaulty and are actually beatable and, above all else, need to realise that, in the grand scheme of things, they won't be able to win an ultimate victory, since the gameworld is the gameworld and there's only so much we players can influence it with our role-play.

Edit:

I guess what I am saying is that everybody secretly agrees with eachother what makes for fun and exciting role-play, but because we are seperated by function, we can't see that we agree with one another. Compare it to two people looking at an African Trickster-God wearing a hat that's black on one hand and white on another*. If the people are standing on opposite ends of the hat, one looking at the white and one looking at the black side, they'd undoubtedly start an argument: "This is a white hat" - "No, it's a black hat!", but if they were to take a few steps back and see the hat from the side, they'd invariably agree with eachother that it's a black-and-white hat.

The hat is the role-play we all agree is good; the villains are looking at the black side of it and the heroes at the white side.

*Example courtesy of Melnerag.

To get to the title of the thread.

Now I am simplifying a lot to be able to talk about this at all. I see Dark characters occupying a spectrum between of RPing a Darkie for the fun of being a darkie and RPing a darkie for the fun of fighting good guys.

Some Dark Guilds/Characters started off with a sole purpose of providing conflict. Other started as for their own sake. In the end I think the guilds which either started RPing darkies for the sake of RPing a darkie or evolved to that persuation last longer and feel more natural.

I think this was why Shagrath's Dark Sphere was so popular, it had a lot of internal RP and functioned as a hub for Dark Characters. It did not depend on constatly trying to fuck up good guys.

Dont roll evil yo

Being "evil" is a task that creates and make role play for the "good". Without it things would be more mundane. While we can argue that the should and shouldn't win, Bismack makes a great argument. If the end goal is to destroy Stormwind, then it would be illogical to win as the badside. Because such events would be a large part of lore. Being evil should be more subtle. Like trying to change things or make a difference without having to damage the role play within a set area.

With being evil comes the "you're OP" part. Yes.... being evil does make you seem OP. Because the spells of which you can do are dark and more deadly than those of which are legal. In the case of Warlocks we have lessser and now greater demons. However such OP spells there's always a great downside. Such as the light. The light is the focus on how to counter dark magics. Which is were the downside comes into play. Plus the fact dark magics are corrupt the user. Which often leads to things which most people don't like playing out. Such as transformations. Though there's ways around this as well, which of course are harmful to such a toon.

It all it depends on the plans of the evil if the good should win. Winning or loseing shouldn't matter on both sides. It's about having fun. And in the case of being evil you should expect to die. Yet this also comes to the good should they try to fight the evil. As it's not really fair it being one sided. If the plans of the evil are to take over Stormwind for example then they should indeed lose. But if it's trying to capture or harm the day to day running then I think the plans of the evil should take the most play. If the good are cunning enough to counter the plot then it should all depend on the role play. As long as it's not making a huge change within the scene itself.

Interesting thread. I got nothing to add, but interesting.

Coppersocket wrote:Interesting thread. I got nothing to add, but interesting.

Same.

Now to one of the things people seems to have missunderstood and that is "Capturing" Stormwind, most people seems to think that I meant taking it over with force, dragging an army of undeads and destroying buildings while I'm at it.

Thats not what I ment.

I were thinking on taking it over through diplomatic ways, maybe assassinating the current council for example. *Looks on drustai with a smug* Take it over through trade and "Payment."

Things like that.

You have a really odd view of "diplomatic" if you think assassination is diplomacy.