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Know Your Lore: Current Horde politics -- the Blood Elves
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Before I begin, I'd like to thank all of the people that commented on the last post I made that covered orc politics. Apparently orcs are a hot topic of conversation, and while I didn't respond to everyone, I did read through everything said. I do have a couple of points to address, however. First, yes, I am aware that orcs are not all brute-minded savages. There's a lot more to orcs than simple savagery; however, that savagery is something that is a basic part of what makes an orc ... orcish. It's an innate part of being an orc. Thrall seems to lack that savagery for the most part and almost seems to want to cull it from orc society in favor of a more gentle and diplomatic disposition. Garrosh, on the other hand, embraces that savagery to an alarming degree. That's where the conflict between the two of them rests. One has what the other does not. Both are extreme cases in either direction. Second, evoking the name Garrosh Hellscream sets people off. I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but I'd have to say it's a telling statement to the storytelling department that Garrosh, regardless of how much or how little he's been developed, is provoking this kind of reaction from players. Given that most writers like to evoke some sort of emotion in their readers, I can only imagine they are secretly pleased with the outrage. Right, moving on! The blood elves, or sin'dorei as they've taken to calling themselves, have been a largely quiet presence in Wrath of the Lich King. Given this, they may seem like an odd choice to cover. Why bother talking about a race that hasn't done much to speak of since the days of Burning Crusade? Well... that's sort of the point. While the orcs, trolls, and tauren were natural additions, and the forsaken a little different but accepted at large, the blood elves were a very odd choice for an ally to many Horde players, and through the course of Burning Crusade, there was very little light shed on what made these creatures a valuable ally to the Horde because a large amount of blood elf history stemmed from events that happened prior to World of Warcraft.
Know Your Lore: The Draenei
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. I love the draenei. Ever since their incorporation into World of Warcraft I've been fond of our indigo skinned (well, colors range from a light whitish-blue to an almost black), tentacle bearded, cloven hooved dimension exile friends. Yes, I'm aware that Chris Metzen had to take some heat for having contradicted his own backstory (and isn't it fascinating how the guy who wrote the original story can still be lambasted for having 'gotten it wrong'? Truly, fandom is wondrous strange.) but to my eyes, having a chance to play one of the draenei is worth all the handwaving. Their history as it has been incorporated into the game is one that I find equal parts tragic, epic and inspiring. Not many races in the universe can be said to have survived the personal attentions of Kil'jaeden the Deceiver for tens of thousands of years. Even now, after the near total genocide of the orcish Horde, the draenei endure. They have a slight problem with steering Naaru dimensional ships, though. They've crashed two, by my current count, one becoming the mountain Oshu'gun (ironically one of the orcs most sacred sites before they fell to darkness and corruption is a crashed Naaru vessel) and the most recent being the Exodar section of the Naaru fortress seized by Kael'Thas Sunstrider and renamed Tempest Keep. So who are the draenei? Well, for that we need to go back more than 25,000 years. Luckily, this talking dog and small child happen to have a wayback machine and no means to prevent me from stealing it from them. Hopefully Nozdormu doesn't find out.
Blizzard introduces new official story forum
A lot of us lore nerds have been wanting it for a long time, and now we have it: An official place to discuss the lore of the Warcraft universe. Of course, it's technically called the Story Forum, and one of the blue stickies on the forum suggests that this forum is meant to focus on "the publishing division" of Blizzard's creative development (i.e., the novels and manga). Then again, the forum's main welcome sticky states that the forum is for discussing the stories of Warcraft "as told in-game and through the novels, manga, comics, and short stories that Blizzard publishes." So in theory the exact nature of the forum could be considered a bit iffy. Still, I'm going to go ahead and go by the welcome message and declare it a lore forum. No longer will we have to go searching through pages and pages of flames, rants, and class balance whines to find the lore-based flames, rants, and Garrosh vs. Varian debate threads. Nethaera also revealed that the publishing division plans to look at the Forum discussions to get an idea of what people like and don't like about Warcraft's stories, so if you've been writing an epic rant about Med'an or Rhonin, you may finally have the outlet you've always wanted. You can find the forum here. If you need extra ammunition before jumping into the discussion yourself, be sure to check out our lore guide, as well as past entries of our Know Your Lore column. After the jump, you can check out the forum welcome message, as well as some additional words from Nethaera on Blizzard's Creative Development Team and lore resources.
All the World's a Stage: Roleplaying the wolf
Friday night was a special evening for me, as I finally got around to watching New Moon. I admit that the movie really wasn't my cup of tea, and I mostly watched it out of a sort of morbid curiousity. I felt a clear, unnatural compulsion to see what Dakota Fanning's performance was like, and I will report that she was definitely a shining point for the movie. The Volturi portions of the movie were fairly cool, but the rest of the movie really didn't work out for me. I don't know, just not my thing. Ironically, one of the biggest issues I had with New Moon was the performance of the werewolves. I'm sure there's a few dozen people who will tell me that they're not technically werewolves or whatever. But as a relatively uninitiated viewer, Jacob and his pack were indistinguishable from your general furry, toothy werewolf. But they just didn't act that way. Nothing about the pack really struck me as wolfish, and the lack of that canine behavior totally kept me from buying these guys as lupines. So, of course, I couldn't help but think about our own upcoming Worgen in Azeroth. There's already a few different avenues built into the lore for roleplaying "beasts." The longest standing option, of course, is roleplaying a druid who spends a lot of time as a cat or bear. But, even aside from that, you can assume some hunters probably spend more time with their pet wolf than other humanoids. And you always have the odd baby lost in the woods who ends up raised by the local pack. (It's amazing how many character one comes across who's raised by wolves.) So, ultimately, if we're going to roleplay canine-like characters, here's some tips on how to make it a little convincing. I think we can do better than Twilight. I'm not claiming to be a wolf expert here, I'm just talking about the literary and connotative ideas of playing a wolf-inspired character.
Know Your Lore: Current Horde politics - the Orcs
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Now that we're done with the dragonflights coverage, it's time to move on to other, more... explosive topics of conversation. Yes, that was a thinly veiled attempt at a Cataclysm reference. With the events of Cataclysm, both the Alliance and the Horde are due for some shake-ups, but it's the Horde that stands in a particularly shaky position, politically speaking. Cataclysm promises to shake up not just the physical world, but the political world of the Horde as we currently know it -- so I'll be taking a look at each of the Horde races, what they've been up to in the World of Warcraft, and why Cataclysm may do much more than simply set the Alliance and the Horde at odds. Today's topic, the orcs -- the green-skinned Draenor natives that have established a foothold and a home on Azeroth, for better or for worse, and founded the current Horde as we know it today. While rumors are just that, rumors for now, they're well founded in current events and lore regarding the orcs and quite frankly, the rumors do not surprise me in the least. To begin, let's go back to the beginning of the current Horde and talk a little bit about their leader, their savior, the orc behind all the current stress the Horde is experiencing -- Thrall.
Know Your Lore: The Infinite Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. They're not called that because they're fat. Because they're not fat. Sure, they seem to be blistering out of their skin but that's glandular. Too many chronotons. (If you thought we were going to go an entire KYL about dragons who want to alter the fabric of time and space and not once mention Futurama, well, you were wrong, Mister I'm my own grandpa. Now let's steal the dish and go home.) The Infinite Dragonflight are a conundrum. In many ways, they're the opposite number of the Bronze Dragonflight, with an agenda wholly opposed to that of the stewards of time. Where the Bronze seem to shepherd time along its normal flow and prevent strange incursions, the Infinites are all about strange incursions. Strange incursions that seem to be aiming at nothing more and nothing less than the total destruction of the established history of Azeroth proper and the creation of a wholly new order.
Know Your Lore: Lore 101, Part 2
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. In the last Lore 101 segment, I went over resources -- the novels, manga, comics, source guides, games and everything else that make up the story behind World of Warcraft. It's a lot of material to follow, and the sheer volume of it can be daunting, but there's no better way to sort out the story and what happened to who, when and where, than by following the original sources. While this is all well and good, today's post covers why everything in part one may or may not be... well, invalid. That's right, the novel you just picked up and read through may very well not count in the long run. The comics may not actually apply. A later novel may wipe out the timeline of existing events in one fell swoop, and the information you thought you had a solid grasp on might be invalidated in an instant. And that's perfectly okay. Let's take a look at what makes a story like Warcraft tick.
All the World's a Stage: Intimate relationships between characters
A goal of much roleplay is to realistically recreate the relationships between characters, even if those characters are under some extraordinary circumstances. These relationships can run the gamut of human emotion: arguments, trust, and especially love. Even though your character may be an elf, dwarf, or troll, you can still take the character through a myriad of "human" experiences. However, it inevitablly seems that most roleplay characters pair up. It's part of many storylines. The growth of romance is a fun story, and often allows roleplayers to put many of their characters' most deeply held secrets on display. Of course, as with many healthy relationships, the romance can eventually grow into sex. Roleplaying sexual relationships has lead to a lot of less-than-savory stereotypes about roleplayers. The Goldshire "cyber inn" jokes and Cybermoon tropes seem like the staple of every roleplay realm's official forums. And there's certainly been examples of erotic roleplay being taken beyond normal bounds. Let's take a look behind the jump and talk about some ways you can deal with initmate relationships between characters, without necessarily turning it into a running joke.
Know Your Lore: The Plagued Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We've covered almost all of the dragonflights here on Know Your Lore; check out the articles on the Red, Black, Green, Blue, Bronze, Netherwing and Twilight flights for more information on each respective flight. The dragonflights of Azeroth are all intricately tied together as you can see from the articles -- what one flight does tends to directly affect or somehow involve the others. Today we're going to look at the one exception to that general rule: the Plagued Dragonflight. What? Plagued? There's a plagued dragonflight? Why yes, there is -- small in numbers, mostly died out, but it exists and can count as a flight of its own. Where can we find these dragons, and where did they originate? To answer that question, we have to go back to the opening days of the Third War and visit with a charming group of individuals called the Cult of the Damned. Once upon a time, there was an entity known as the Lich King, formed out of the spirit of a former orc leader as a servant for the Burning Legion. At this point, the Lich King still lacked a body, imprisoned within the Frozen Throne, so he commanded his forces telepathically. After gaining a foothold in Northrend, the Lich King used these powers to search telepathically for individuals around the world who would make suitable minions to help spread the plague across Azeroth.
Know Your Lore: The Bronze Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. There are quite a lot of dragonflights all told. So far we've covered the red, black, blue, green, twilight and nether dragonflights. This time, we'll be talking about the Bronze Dragonflight, who are the shepherds and guardians of time itself. Whether it's monitoring anomalies in Andorhal, sending players back to prevent Thrall from running into packs of elites as if he expected motherly hugs and affection rather than fire and pain, or having you plant an hourglass in their dragonshrine and team up with yourself from the future, these guys are all about time. Nozdormu, their leader and father figure, is the Aspect of Time given his powers by Norgannon the Titan and also given certain knowledge of exactly when and where he's going to die to keep him humble. That sounds like a great plan, huh? And it is indeed their time to be profiled. So suck it up, Anarchronos, we're going in. (I actually still have my Signet Ring of the Bronze Dragonflight and Band of the Eternal Defender in the bank. If nothing else, the Bronze Dragonflight used to be a reliable source for your ring needs.)
Know Your Lore: The Twilight Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. For those that have been following along over the past couple of weeks, I've been following a certain order of progression with the dragon flights. Originally, there were the proto-drakes. The largest of these was Galakrond, from whom the Aspects of the dragon flights were created. Next, the Black dragonflight and its leader, Deathwing -- created from Galakrond himself, fought to achieve supremacy over Azeroth. From Deathwing's eggs, the Netherwing were born, or rather, evolved due to exposure to the energies of the Twisting Nether. Today we follow that order with the latest addition to the dragons of Azeroth -- the Twilight dragonflight. The Twilight dragons don't really have a lot of 'history' to speak of, as they've only been recently developed, but there's enough to go into as far as their origins go. The Black dragonflight, intent on breeding a superior race of dragons that would overtake and control Azeroth, has spent several years trying to create this dominant race, with little success.
Know Your Lore: The Green Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Each flight of dragons is vouchsafed with an aspect of creation itself to supervise. The five Dragon Aspects were granted their powers and dominion over Azeroth's life, magic, earth, time and more by the Titans who created them from the massive proto-dragon Galakrond in long vanished times past. In the past few KYL's we've covered Alexstrasza's Red Dragonflight, Deathwing's Black Dragonflight and its offshoot the Netherwing, and deceased Malygos' Blue Dragonflight. This time we look at what might be the strangest dragons of them all. The servants of Ysera, the dragons of the Emerald Dream, the Green Dragonflight. In order to truly understand the green dragons, one would have to be able to understand the dream they all dream, but who can do that? How can one tell the dreamers from the dream? Easy. The dreamers are great honking green dragons that will kill you. It's relatively simple. If you doubt their power or their resolve, go to the Temple of Atal'Hakkar and ask the Atali, trapped in a complex smashed into the water by the fury and might of Ysera herself. Even when they themselves fall victim to corruption, the green dragons are fearsome opponents. While Alexstrasza and her brood concern themselves with life and living things, Ysera is effectively the shepherd of what Dylan Thomas called 'the force that through the green fuse drives the flower' - effectively, that which makes life itself possible. This is also what often gets them in trouble with old gods, blasphemous troll deities of bloodlust, and the loathsome Scourge and its malefic master. (I have been waiting to use 'malefic' in a sentence for so long now.)
All the World's a Stage: Name your sin
Last week, we talked about ways to add flaws to your roleplay character. These flaws have the benefit of providing realistic depth and humanity to characters which might otherwise feel too "perfect" for believability. (Well, as believable as a magic-wielding orc would be.) The idea is that the depth and development creates a more full, well-rounded personality. Believability isn't the only benefit. Perhaps even more importantly, the depth provides you additional rules and guidance for deciding how your character might act in a given situation. DeathPaladin brought up the interesting Deadly Sin system from White Wolf's World of Darkness tabletop roleplaying game. Now, the World of Darkness games obviously have a lot of mechanical systems involved with the sins (and Virtues as well, actually), but that's part of their whole gothic-fantastic nature. (The games used to be called gothic-punk, but White Wolf later ditched that description.) These games are probably best known for their vampires, but White Wolf's systems span all kinds of different monsters. This Sin idea is replicated across many of them. While there's many different examples of methods for fleshing out your character, I actually really like the Deadly Sin game. Applying an archetypical behavior and flaw to your character gives you a "roleplay button" to spam whenever you feel like you're torn on your character's proper reactions. Let's take a look behind the jump and see how we could use the Seven Deadly Sins in the context of our World of Warcraft. (For the record, the Seven Sins we're going with are Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.)
Know Your Lore: The Netherwing
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. In Azeroth's history, there's a distinct path that dragon evolution follows. First, there are the proto-drakes of Northrend. From these drakes came the other drakes of lower Azeroth, and the five flights that were developed to watch over the world; red, blue, green, bronze and black. The more the game is played out and the longer the story runs, the more we learn about the dragons -- why they're around, what their purpose is on Azeroth. Today, we're going to focus on one of the new flights of dragons, one that didn't see its creation on Azeroth, and instead finds its origins on the planet of Draenor: The Netherwing. The genesis of the Netherwing is an odd story, some of which was explained in the article covering the Black Dragonflight last week. Deathwing the Destroyer, the by-now insane leader of the black flight had made a deal with Teron Gorefiend shortly after the orcs were defeated in the Second War. Gorefiend had been ordered by Ner'zhul to go to Azeroth and retrieve several artifacts of power that Ner'zhul needed to open dimensional gateways to other worlds. By doing this, Ner'zhul hoped to escape Draenor, and the influence of the Burning Legion, for good -- and take his people to another land in which they could begin to rebuild after the staggering losses from the wars, and the orcs corruption. The gist of Deathwing's deal was this -- Deathwing and his black drakes would help Gorefiend find the artifacts he was looking for. In exchange, Deathwing wanted access to the Dark Portal so that he, some of his drakes, and some cargo he had could be transported to Draenor. They would continue assisting the orcs on the other side of the portal as long as the orcs left the drakes, and the cargo, alone. While Gorefiend wasn't sure he trusted Deathwing's motives entirely, the addition of drakes to their fighting forces would make things much, much easier -- and so he agreed.
Know Your Lore: The Blue Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. The past few KYL's have been focusing on dragonflights, and this one's no different. This week, we cover the Blue Dragonflight, Azeroth's masters of magic. Before we do, though, we should go back and link my Red Dragonflight post and Anne's Black Dragonflight one, because a lot of the same ground is about to be covered. In some ways, the blue dragons are the ones players may be most familiar with. From Azuregos wandering about Azshara to Sapphiron in Naxxramas and Sindragosa in Icecrown Citadel, with appearances by Kalecgos in the Sunwell, Arygos in Ahn'Qiraj, and of course two 5 man instances and a raid in Coldarra, players have plenty of opportunity to run into a member of the Blue Dragonflight. The Blue Dragonflight has been involved in many of the important events of Azeroth's history despite suffering unimaginably from those events. From the War of the Ancients and the Sundering to the Third War and to the present with the Nexus War, blue dragons have attempted to hold to their ancient charge to shepherd the world's magics no matter what it costs them. And it has cost them very, very dearly. For thousands of years, the blue dragons were almost extinct, nearly wiped out by Deathwing and the Dragon Soul. Their leader and father, Malygos the Aspect of Magic, was driven mad by the loss of so many of his children and the betrayal of his best friend and most trusted confidant, Neltharion.
All the World's a Stage: Realistic touches to an unrealistic person
The great challenge of World of Warcraft roleplay is that, at its very nature, you're playing a fantastic character. The most mundane character concept is still capable of dropping immense damage and going toe-to-toe (alongside some friends) with some of the Lich King's most powerful minions. Then, on the opposite side, you could be playing an extra-dimensional alien beholden to the fundamental powers of Light, walking around the planet while attempting to revitalize the very meaning of Good and Right. All player characters in WoW are fantasy beings, who have seen and done things about which mere mortals can only dream. So why is this a challenge? Because this fantastic situation can make it very difficult to make your character believable. A successful character is not only interesting and fun, but also someone with whom the audience and players can empathize. If your character is so far outside mortal ken, they will no longer be accessible and believable, but instead wander unhappily into the Twilight-like realm of the "Mary Sue." Let's take a look behind the jump and explore how to make your character a little more realistic.
Know Your Lore: The Black Dragonflight
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. The history of Azeroth, as well as its origins, is often confusing and lacking in solid information. However, there are a few facts that are well known – once upon a time somewhere in the universe, there were great creatures known as the Titans. The Titans were an odd race of beings that were obsessed with creating order out of chaos. They traveled from world to world, setting things up so that life would progress in an orderly, structured fashion. Sort of like those people you can hire to organize your kitchens and closets. Enter Azeroth. The Titans came to Azeroth and muddled with it, creating order out of the races that existed on it and tidying everything up, but there was a larger problem that took some intensive cleaning. Ancient creatures known as the Old Gods decided they'd really like to take over the nice chunk of rock -- and where the Titans were concerned with creating order and structure, the Old Gods wanted just the opposite. The Old Gods wanted chaos and destruction where the Titans wanted order and structure, and there was a great war between the two. In the end the Titans prevailed, but they discovered something that was more than a little disturbing – they couldn't simply kill the Old Gods. The Old Gods had integrated themselves too deeply into Azeroth, and destroying the Old Gods meant destroying Azeroth itself. This presented a problem, but the Titans had a solution that they decided would work – they imprisoned the Old Gods deep beneath the earth, leaving them there to rot. After all of this, the Titans decided to put in some safeguards to make sure the planet would remain running smoothly, orderly, and without any grabby tentacled interference from below.
Know Your Lore: The Red Dragonflight
Before all dragons, there was Galakrond. From him came all the dragon aspects, and his size was greater than that of the five aspects combined. Dragonkind is descended from this massive beast. This includes the red dragons. Each dragonflight dates back to the departure of the Titans from Azeroth, following the completion of their work to reorder it to their liking. The Titans are, if you strip all the cosmic power and grandeur away, meddlers. They go from world to world and change those worlds to their liking, whether or not the current inhabitants want them to, and Azeroth is no exception. When the Titans arrived, they found the world a seething battleground for raging elementals who fought for the amusement of ancient unfathomable entities called today by the sobriquet 'The Old Gods'. Entities like C'thun and Yogg-Saron are an example of the true lords of Azeroth. The quoted text at the bottom of this page gives you an idea of how the Titans wrested control of Azeroth away from them and sealed them in prisons beneath the planet's surface. With the elementals banished to other planes and the Old Gods trapped, the Titans then rearranged Azeroth to their liking. However, since the Titans re-ordering of the world is imposed, they require shepherds to maintain it. While the Titanic Watchers of Ulduar were set to maintain Yogg-Saron's prison, they were not entrusted with the maintenance of the world itself, possibly because they were not of it. From Galakrond's offspring, known today as proto-dragons, the Titans shaped flights of dragons to the vital (to them, at least) task of preserving their hard-fought order. Black, Blue, Green, and Bronze were each given dominion over a key aspect of the Titan's new world. And to Alexstrasza, the Red Dragonqueen, was given control over Life itself. This was the birth of the Red Dragonflight, perhaps the most beneficent grounp of enormous fire breathing reptiles one could hope to encounter. They are dragons, however, so don't take them for granted.
Know Your Lore: Lore 101, part 1
One of the most frequent questions I'm asked as someone that's entirely too interested in Warcraft story and lore, is where to go to get story information. How, exactly, do you find all of these story elements when they are literally scattered across several different games, comics, manga and novels? How do you know what should be taken as official lore, and what to throw away as mere speculation? Where, exactly, does someone just starting out with World of Warcraft find story information when they've got no idea where that story actually starts? It's a difficult question to answer, and you'll see why later in the article. The Warcraft storyline is made up of several different parts, spanning several different games, and the time line is continually changing and developing as these games are released. Here's a brief list of places you can go to get started:
All the World's a Stage: Forming a roleplay troupe
One of the more common subjects in World of Warcraft writing is "How to form a raid group." Alternatives include, "How to find a raid group," "Does your raid group steal the covers at night?" and "Raid Leaders and the Ghouls that Love Them." Heck, there's so much hullabaloo about how to find a compatible guild that I'm waiting for Match.com: the WoW edition. But you don't see a lot getting written about getting together with roleplay troupes. I think part of the reason for that is that most folks consider roleplay to be either spontaneous events or the province of individual expression. They don't tend to consider roleplay as something that's organized as a group or guided by a general plan. However, as many folks with pen-and-paper tabletop games will tell you, roleplay often works best when you have a theme and a group of people who all buy into that theme. You don't necessarily need to get a brand new guild together in order to form a troupe. It could be something as simple as a small group of five people who want to play out a particular story. Also, a pre-scheduled "bar night" in your faction's capital can be considered part of a troupe, especially if you set up certain ground rules about how things "work" in that tavern. We've talked before about how to find your own roleplay, but that's not entirely the same thing as starting a new group. Let's jump behind the cut and talk about how to form a roleplay troupe.
