Officers' Quarters: A demanding role
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes
Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
As hard as it is to lead a regular guild, I can only imagine it's twice as hard leading a roleplaying guild. This week's e-mail comes from the GL of a roleplaying guild who's feeling a bit overwhelmed with the duties of the job.
I've been leading a medium-small RP guild on a European RP-PvE server for some months now. Since this is an RP guild, I can't just tell them to go do Kara on certain times of the week, I constantly need to get them going.
The problem is, I'm pretty much the only bureaucrat so far. Nobody's very keen on managing things, also because they lack management skills for the most part. As a result, poor me has to come up with ideas for events, write documents, schedule meetings, occasionally boost everyone, and still roleplay with these guys (or make them roleplay with each other).
While I do enjoy hearing about developments while I'm not around, sometimes I feel it's just too much of a burden. In that case what do I do? I love seeing my little hatchlings roleplay, and I love the concept, I won't let it go, still, it's a burden. What do I do? A bottom-up approach? Get a few more officers? More members?
--Anonymous of Moonglade RP (EU)
Roleplaying -- I know next to nothing about it! So when I got this e-mail, I figured I'd look into it a bit. I started with WoW Insider's own excellent roleplaying column, All the World's a Stage. I learned some interesting things there, such as this: Going to a dungeon because you need loot or reputation is boring -- you should come up with a good story about why you need to kill the various inhabitants, and even bring some props to make it more authentic. It seems like a good deal of effort to me, but I imagine it does make those grinds more fun.
Next I rolled a character on a high-population RP server just to see if anything about it was different. Upon entering the game, I saw that there was an event in the general channel of Guild Event Manager. I had to laugh when I saw what it was: "hot lesbian action" in Stormwind City, and nine people were already signed up. Isn't that pretty much what people who haven't done the roleplaying thing imagine RP'ers do all day in a nutshell?
I wandered over to a major city, but the chat channel there was identical to that of my own PvE server. I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of, "Pardon me, gentle citizens of the Alliance, but would anyone care to make an offer on this Truestrike Ring?" instead of the efficient -- but hardly character-driven -- "WTS Truestrike Ring." I guess to really experience the roleplaying factor, you have to delve a little deeper. Maybe someday I'll give it a shot. In the meantime, I have a distressed GL to advise . . .
Anonymous, I give you credit for handling everything yourself as long as you have. Clearly you're dedicated to the cause. But no one can run a guild by themselves, roleplaying or otherwise. Sooner or later, you're going to burn out, and the less help you have, the sooner it will be.
If your officers aren't helping with all the tasks you mentioned, what exactly are they doing? Roleplaying is no excuse to slack. If anything, you need a lot more assistance than the typical GL, especially if you come up with compelling stories behind scheduled dungeon runs and raids. Remember that you bought the game to relax and enjoy yourself. If you can't do that at least some of the time, what good is it to you?
The way I see it, you can go several ways here. First, (and this may be blasphemy -- I don't know enough to say!) you can break character for a few moments in a private meeting with your officers and just be frank with them that you need more help. Even if they have no management skills, as you say, there's still plenty they can do, like come up with some creative endeavors for the guild.
You can also go the roleplaying route to solve this problem. You could roleplay a reason to promote some new officers. Or, to motivate your existing officers, you could play your character as if he or she is suffering from an illness and needs help with the burdens of command. As a roleplayer, I'm sure you can come up with better reasons than I can.
The bottom line is this: If you don't do anything about this situation, you're letting your officers and your guild take advantage of your generous nature. However you go about it, you must find someone who can take over at least some of your duties. If you can't do this for yourself, do it for the guild -- because when you burn out or have to take a break from the game for any other reason, the guild will have no one who can take over the responsibilities. Without at least one competent leader, the guild will have no direction, no stories to act out. And I bet it's no fun to roleplay boredom day after day!
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters!
