What Does It Take to Lead an RP Guild?

Wyrmrest Accord
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Hey there! Ordinary, garden-variety roleplayer here – been RPing in WoW since Legion. I’m looking to start a race-themed RP guild of my own!

Thing is, I’ve never lead a roleplay group before, let alone a guild here in World of Warcraft. I was hoping somebody here on the forums with experience might be able to provide some insight on the process and day-to-day!

In your opinion, what does it take to lead a roleplay guild effectively? Do/did you enjoy doing it? What were/are the hardest and easiest parts of leading one? What do you, as a roleplayer, look for in a guild master? Any general advice or warnings?

Thanks in advance!

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Hi Torsh,

The process is a long one - you need time to lead the guild (probably the most underestimated!), a theme that makes your guild YOURS and why it stands out, and social skills to build a network and sell your guild to people that you want to join. Then it’s all about keeping it going through good times and bad. Until you get a trusted core of officers that can manage if you take some time off, you’ll be pulling the weight of everything for the first good bit!

To lead it effectively, you need to be a leader, not just a manager / boss. Figure out what your players want to interact with in your story (don’t just hand them the reins). Are they combat heavy? Are there some making a more humanitarian effort? You can’t just favor one side, you have to encourage all segments of your guild to grow - and where there’s a weed… you’re the whacker.

Problems will spring up. Either from how things are roleplayed to being told without screenshots or evidence that one of your players was in orgrimmar calling everyone a terrible slur. Most people have elephant to capture chat logs, but even if it’s a founding member, you need to have a fair and heavy hand when it comes to justice. Otherwise people will see your guild isn’t one worth joining. Get used to handing out your discord handle, people will need to speak with you often.

I look for a Guild Master that takes time with the newest members of the guild as well as the veterans. If you are told by one person that the echelon of leadership and officers feels segmented and closed off, there’s a dozen unspoken minds in agreement. If people openly complain your leadership is lackluster in some areas, be open to criticism. Maybe people want to do more than just RP and you don’t. That’s a great opportunity for you to raise a player up into the ranks of the Guild’s raid leader / PvP Warmonger.

Possibly the single greatest piece of advice I have is: Communicate with your members and would-be members.
If you’re taking some time off, have a plan for who’s leading while you’re gone. Don’t ever go zero contact. Check in with your guild via discord and be open to solving problems while remote. Even if you need to log in for five minutes to kick a member that’s been problematic since “the boss is on vacation”, do it. Never idle.
Openly post your event schedule. It doesn’t have to be where, but if it’s every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 8pm Server Time, let people know that from the get-go. The forum here, of course, is a great place to put that in the first post about your guild as you’re selling it.

Possibly the single greatest warning I have is: If you think you have the time to lead a guild, you don’t. Not without help. A guild is a full-time investment in the early stages and is why mine failed.

Good luck.

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The qualifications for leading a good guild, RP or otherwise, are largely the same as being a leader in just about anything else. with added requirements of raid, RP, what have you which will differ slightly. But the major keys to success are: determination (You WILL face every detriment and stumbling block under the sun at some point and will deal with the worst of what people have to offer) the ability to power through even the most horrendous of setbacks, communication (being able to convey not only orders effectively but also to take feedback), and wisdom to decide on what feedback to act upon. Also there is discipline (without which one will act with abandon), moral fiber (doing what is right knowing it may not be to your benefit or even viewed favorably), the skills of time management and organization, etc.

A good leader of anything 1. Does what is right, remember: what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular, 2. puts others who are under them first, and 3. Understands that those first two combined may at days be overwhelming, and thus acts with moral backbone to fulfill them even against all opposition.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Lurker here, so take it was a grain of salt.

First and foremost, the fact that you are asking the question already sets you up for success because most people will just create without even thinking about it.

I won’t hammer on what Thokk or Herne already mentioned, but I’ll just give my experiences from being a Guild Master way back in MoP and the leadership roles I’ve had that help with some tips and tricks.

People
Remember, behind the computer is a person (okay, there are some bots, w/e). These people will have diverse and unique wants, needs, and time and are in different stages of life. WoW GMing is even more difficult than corporate people management/leadership because you can be talking to a retired grandparent or a teenager still in high school.

With that in mind, always lead with compassion and respect for these people. Just because things don’t go 100% or they aren’t entirely on-board with your saying or your vision, they still bring an immense amount of value and perspective to the table you may not have. It’s also okay if they’re not the right fit for your vision; the number one thing is treating them respectfully and cutting ties mutually, not with a burning bridge. And when is it a case like Thokk mentioned? Be prepared to set clear boundaries of what is acceptable and isn’t, at all levels (1x1, the guild, the server).

Delegation
The only way I was successful in leading the guild back then was by delegating to other great, fantastic people who all shared the idea of creating a mutually fun environment that was as inclusive as possible. In all truth, I was hardly ‘leading’ the guild but more so coordinating it. You have to be comfortable with these people you interact with, possibly daily, if not more frequently.

It’s difficult, especially if this is your first time meeting these people. But start gradually working with them. Don’t tell them you need something done as if this is a corporate job, but ask if they’d be willing to help. A good ‘officer’ is worth their weight in gold.

Project Management
I alluded to it already, but the older I’ve gotten and the more entwined I’ve become with the corporate world, the more I’ve realized the guild’s success was based on project management. By that, I mean doing more mundane things like coordinating everyone’s schedules or soliciting other guilds’ OOC to see what they’re doing and if you can collaborate.

You’ll want to constantly assess how things are going. Is this RP event chain working well? What’s not? How can it be improved? Who needs to help change it? You need to work as the maestro of the orchestra in all capabilities. You don’t need to play every instrument, but you need a big picture of how it works.

All that said, it’s a super fun experience, and I often look back on it fondly. Hope this helps you make an informed decision.

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Hi! Race themed guilds are my speciality. I have experience helping run a large Tauren guild and running a small, very niche, Tauren themed guild. I have forgotten more about how to run a guild into the ground than most people will ever know.

On a more serious note, Thokk , Herne, and Krivithaza all offer fantastic advice. I just want to add a few notes from my own experiences.

TIME
This cannot be overstated. Running a guild of any size takes a lot of time. Even if you have officers who can be trusted to help out. Understand that you might spend more time planning and overseeing than you do actually getting to RP your character. As the GM you are the face of the guild. People will look to you to provide RP interactions and storylines for their characters. And your behavior will effect how other people view and interact with the guild. So you need to think things out and not be a jerk.

THEME
How and how heavily you theme your guild will control the size of your guild. It will also affect the amount of time you personally will need to devote and number and type of people you will need to be officers to help you.

For example, the larger guild I helped GM was a Tauren only Tribal Guild. Tauren with a basic knowledge of Tauren lore and a bit of backstory was the only real requirements. So, the guild had a large pool to draw membership from.

The guild I started was tiny, which was by design. My guild was Tauren themed, but open to any race. The catch was it was very heavily themed in a Tauren religion way. Basically, it was a cult, and characters had to be willing to drink the kool aid. Surprisingly, there were people who were willing… usually on an alt. And I understood that. It was rather restrictive. I wanted a smaller guild. For some reason, I thought it would be easier and as time consuming. I was an idiot. Being a cult leader, especially one who doesn’t want to appear to be cult leader, takes a lot of time. Having only a few members who were regularly online was an issue. I don’t think I was good GM and I didn’t provide the experience that I wanted to or that they deserved.

OFFICERS
You CANNOT do this alone. You will need officers because you can’t be online 24/7. You will be burnt to a crisp trying to run a one man show. They will help you with story lines, events, member management, community interaction… the list goes on. They need to be people you can trust.

GUILD OPERATIONS
Okay, this is some general stuff I think you need to keep in mind.

Story Line: When you are first getting starting, it’s not quite as big a deal. When you get started I would suggest having an idea for a guild story line and/or something that you can work toward as you grow a little. People’s characters of course will have their own stories and motivations. But your guild story because the framework they are choosing to anchor their character in. Understand that there will be varying degrees of involvement from characters. Respect what level time and involvement people are able and willing to give you.

While you are getting started, try to attend server events as a group. There are great weekly events out there - I’m looking at you Wolfmane Tribe. Also, check out Soup Night that Southfury Watch does. Use those to team build within and also make contacts and friends. Also those are good places if you have new Rpers to get their feet wet.

I think most of the stuff that you need to do within the guild on a weekly or so basis is going depend on your theme and how you structure the guild. It is also going to depend on if you are going to be a pure RP guild, or if you are going to dabble in other things as well.

TLDR
My gods, this is long. Anywho, GM is harder and more involved than most people realize. It eats up time like a mofo. Get good people around you to help. Network and make friends in the community. Be flexible. Be generous with time to your guildies Welcome, encourage and mentor RP newbies.

There is a lot I would like to tell you, but I am very long winded. I’m not in game right now, but I would be happy to answer any questions you might want to post. I seriously know a lot about screwing up and unexpected consequences. I’d like to help anyone avoid stepping in the same stupid I did.

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Whoever knows the biggest, most-complicated word is in charge. The challenger must absquatulate.

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For the doubters, that is why Enekie ran away with that Horde pageant title.

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Enekie, stop swearing on the forums.

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Wow, these are some really thorough and thoughtful responses. Thank you all so much for coming to help me (and maybe some other, lurking guild hopefuls) out!

It’s apparent from your responses that GMing takes a lot of hard work and dedication, which I expected! So, one of my main takeaways here is that I’d definitely need to be ready to spend more time guild mastering than writing. My only question now is “how much more”? How often would you say that you guys got to enjoy the “fruits of your labor” so to speak? Did you get to RP your characters with your guildies enough for all the hard work to be worth it?

One of the main reasons why I wanted to start my own guild was because I was struggling to find an existing one with the kind of focus(es) and tone(s) I was hoping for, and the old, time-tested advice was “if you want it, make it yourself”. I admit that I might want to hold off on starting one if I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the actual RPing very often. :sweat_smile:

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You will get to RP, don’t worry. Sometimes you might not get to as much as you would want to though. It’s an ebb and flow sort of thing. It depends on a several variables: theme, officers, guild size, guild composition and your personality.

A lot of things will depend on your theme and how deep you go, as well as your officers. Also another important thing is how fast you intend to grow your guild and the size you want. I’ve seen people get frustrated and quit because they thought they had a great idea and thought people would flock to them. They did have a great idea, but it it appealed to a certain type of player and character. So it grew, but slower than they expected/wanted. Frustrating, of course, but there is an upside to it. Slower growth lets you build a close knit core who feel really vested to the guild. That is a great think to have, it gets you through the slow times at the end of expansions.

I’d say put in some time before you launch the guild or really start recruiting for it. Have your guild backstory done and an idea/outline of where you’d like to take the guild story wise. Don’t carve it in stone - things can change and you want some flexibility. But it’s better to put in the work early so you don’t have to panic when you get enough people to actually start working on a guild story line.

Get a couple of officers as soon as you can. If you have a specific leadership format in mind, don’t worry about getting every spot filled right at the beginning. But a couple of key people will help you sooooooo much. Having people to bounce ideas off of and also to ego check you are important.

I realized after I started my own guild that I was quite possibly insane. I didn’t realize how much I would hyper focus things that no one else cared about. I also came to realize that I could be an egomanical, control freak when it came to my “vision” of what I wanted. I don’t think I was ever mean to anyone, I hope not. I’m sorry if I was. Point of this is - don’t be me. I’m a large reason I didn’t get as much RP as I wanted. Learn from me.

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Stubbornness, determination. Passion, my god, be passionate. If I had nothing to do for the entire afternoon, I’d probably write all the things I’ve learned in the ten years I’ve been steering this ship.

But if there’s any advice I can give above everything else, it’s do it because you love it. If you don’t love it, don’t do it. If you’re close to loving it but somethings holding you back, drop that thing. Make sure you’re doing what you love. Then, rid yourself of the belief that it has to be for people, or attract people. It may take time- it may take a lot of time, years, even, to build the kind of audience you want. But over time, as you get better at it, you’ll have your people. It’s like building a house or growing a garden. It takes sweat before you get to sit along the fruits of your labour and relax.

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LEGIT

I don’t care about super awesome amazing genius your idea for a story is.

If you don’t have the time to invest, please hand the leadership role over to someone who does.

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Leading roleplay communities requires a lot of time, organization, cooperation, commitment, accountability, introspection and patience. I liken it to sitting at a Dungeons & Dragons table; where there are any number of unique playing styles, and DMing styles - and they don’t necessarily all mesh well together, despite the people behind them typically having phenomenal personalities. As a guild leader of an RP community on WoW, you’re generally learning how to balance everyone’s play style, and DMing styles, as well as doing all the administrative prep, brainstorming, planning, and executing - all while understanding that you’re not going to be able to please everyone and you need to be okay with that and know how to handle it in a manner that doesn’t disrespect others. Being dedicated to the concept you or your team have built is paramount, and building expectations for yourselves (leadership rules and guidelines) is imperative to success.

TLDR; 1) Build everything around the concept you’re committed to, and don’t waver in that because you will lose your drive to lead it if you change your concept for others; and 2) consider your own life experiences with leadership, and decide what kind of leader you want to be, then build fair rules for yourself based on those things so you know how to keep yourself accountable.

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Back when I had the time to lead an RP guild (in SWTOR), there was honestly so much RP going around that I had to take breaks at times! If you’ve done your job right, and built a good community, that’ll happen. You’ll foster a vibrant community with lots of folks who all just want to write with each other.

I don’t have too much to offer, but I do want to give my encouragements. I miss being able to be part of the RP scene very dearly, and I wish I could help out and lead something like that again. It’s really great, and really rewarding.

Feel free to share those ideas about theme and tone and whatnot, too. You never know how many likeminded folks you might stumble upon. :slight_smile:

If you ever need someone to chat or bounce ideas around, I’d be happy to chat. I don’t have a consistent enough schedule to promise much else, but I can be a friendly voice! Best of luck!

Bonus tidbit/advice:

The single hardest thing for me was finding officers who I could trust and had a similar vision/tone/style. You need folks who you trust to recruit, vet, and manage players. It can be scary. However, that’s super important, because you need to take breaks and live your life, too.

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Great responses above!

I will humbly add my two cents.

Guild culture and atmosphere
If you are consistent with the vision you have for the behavior of your guild members, and you model the behavior you expect from others and then act when someone steps out of line, it will go a long way. Not to mention how much grief it will save you if you consider this when you are recruiting and limit membership to those you firmly believe will respect your vision and act accordingly.

I have experienced periods of drama and arguments, and also long periods that have been totally drama-free. Trust me, the former is exhausting, the latter, inspiring and motivating.

Event and role-play consistency
Folks are joining because they want role-play. Be realistic when you tell them how often your guild role-plays, whether its every night or once a week. They should know what they are getting into, or look elsewhere (they will eventually leave anyway if the schedule doesn’t meet their needs).

My guild has enjoyed much success with a regular RP night (Sundays, for us, as it was the most popular night when the guild was surveyed) and the occasional weekday RP when guild members signalled they were available. Which leads to my next point…

Asking for guild feedback
Discord is a great tool for keeping your guild engaged and talking. It can also be used effectively to poll your members. An example of how I use this is asking guild members to click the icons to indicate what night they’d be available for mid-week RP, then add an icon (a reaction) for each day. Blue circle is Monday, Purple circle is Tuesday, etc. Members click the icons and within 24 hours, you get a nice visual for what was the most popular choice.

Discord and regular engagement
As stated above, the guild leader is so important. You were the first person your members chatted with, and they saw something in you they wanted to be closer to. They enjoy hearing from you, chatting with you, and role-playing with you. Discord allows for guild members to form a relationship outside the game and engage in a conversation throughout the week. Dedicated channels for different topics, RP and writing channels to let your members express themselves, are all good.

And while life gets busy, DO try and check in every day, or as often as you can. Any prolonged timed where the guild leader is silent will lead to drastic drop in member motivation and disengagement and you will lose any momentum you had going.

Shared leadership/officers
This is one I am still struggling with. I have had officers before but I’ve been unfortunate in that I have regularly experienced promoting someone to an officer role after months of them being an active and engaged presence, only to have them instantly taken away by lack of interest in the game itself or real life getting in the way. I have generally carried the weight of the guild on my own shoulders for 9 years.

Officers to help run things in-game and off, and especially to be able to plan, schedule and lead events in the guild master’s absence, is and would be a HUGE bonus. But remember: this is meant to help the master balance real life and the game, not allow them to take weeks off on end. The guild leader MUST stay engaged and support their officers.

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This is all such great advice. I’m going to add mine as well:

Being the glead - if you’re the guild leader, you’re always the guild leader. That means to your guild, you are now that title 24/7. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but the point here is that it is very seldom a job you can clock in and out of. If you’re on your main, you’re the glead. If you’re on an alt, glead. Offline? Still glead. Someone else running the event? Glead. Everything you say is said as the glead. Everything. You’re no longer Jenny from the block. You’re the one in charge and all jokes and comments are taken as such by the rest of your guild and anyone else you deal with.

Being the guild leader comes with everyone knowing you and saying hi when you log in. Everyone is excited and wants to chat you up. Don’t let this go to your head, and notice that the reaction to logging in as a guild leader is completely different than logging in as someone who just joined. Your job (one of them) is to make it much more similar, so remember to talk to your newbies and your quiet people. Make them feel seen. Wave to them when they log in. Click some kind of emoji on their Discord posts. If it’s been too quiet for too long, post something. You want to build a friendly/family atmosphere for your guild so everyone wants to be there. Post articles you know will interest the guild. If you see something fun being dropped on Twitch or Amazon Gaming, let them know. Remind them of dates that the expac is dropping. Stuff like that.

Finding ways to say yes - a lot of leaders think that being the leader means controlling things. While it does, it also means handing freedom of choice to your players. For instance, if everyone wants to RP on Tuesday to follow up something you all RPd on Monday, don’t tell them they have to wait until the next day you scheduled to follow up because it’s the day you scheduled. If everyone’s free on Tuesday, tell them yes.

Basically, if there’s no reason to smack down control over minor choices, don’t do it. A good leader lets their people make decisions without feeling the need to do it for them. Nothing stifles someone’s enthusiasm more than being told no, especially if the only reason is “because I already said so.”

Find ways to agree with your guildies, even if it’s something where you have to meet them half way. Suppose you’re running a worgen guild and someone wants to add their dwarf. Ok…if they don’t add their dwarf, they’ll be unhappy. If you do add their dwarf, your “theme” goes out the window. But if you tell the guildie you can add their dwarf and they can RP on open RP nights on whichever they choose, but the main plot RP night is worgen-only, you found a way to say yes. Now you look like a reasonable adult, not like a control obsessed manager of a fast food front line.

Don’t get too big - as your guild grows, so grows your headaches. You’ll need X number of officers to X number of guildies, so keep that in mind and watch your guildies to see which ones would be a good fit (this is not necessarily your partner, best friend or the person who sucks up to you). Watch for good decision making, even tempered interactions, and activity level when promoting someone. Keep your officer chat clean - don’t crap-talk guildies or anyone else. There’s always someone who’ll screenshot a joke and will post it at the worst possible time.

Focus on everyone but your characters - in an RP, don’t make the plot about you. Or your alts. And good luck finding guildies who’ll do more than stand there if you’re trying to give out an RP plot ICly. You’ll have a handful who’ll ask the right questions, and then you have the ones who…well, you’ll wonder if they afk’d. Make them engage by either giving them jobs, getting details about their characters and throwing that into the plot, or working directly with them to give them something akin to character growth.

Don’t be upset when your guildies join, play for 2 days and are never seen again. It happens. Don’t be upset when your guildies join, play for 2 months and then go play the new game that just hit Steam. It happens. Don’t be too upset when your guildies decide to go play FFXIV or some other RP game (sigh). It happens. Keep recruiting so your online numbers are decent for activities. If you get a biiiiig influx of new players, slow your recruiting so everyone can get a chance to mesh well together.

Expect that larger RP events are going to need more than one RP leader. If you have 20 people show up at your event, you might want to split the group into 2 groups of 10 and have someone run an encounter for 10 guildies while you or another guildie runs the encounter for the other 10 - especially if there are dice rolls. You want those rolls to snap quickly so no one’s standing around waiting on their turn for more than 10 minutes.

Don’t make RP dice rules too complicated and don’t force every event to be a dice event. If I’m looking at a 10 page spreadsheet of base powers per specialized class plus too many choices to choose special powers, plus levels within that class, plus methods to change the powers, etc., I’m going to decide that as an adult, if I wanted to play D&D, I’d log into Roll20 and look there.

A lot of your guildies will be less enthused if you make them do work (with a multi-page roll system pdf that looks much worse than it really is, I found that one out). Give them simple dice roll rules, tell them you have rules for some special occasions (like stealth events or flying or whatever) and then let them work with a pared down dice system until a special occasion comes up.

And finally, when you have a problem guildie, it’s on you to make the hard decision. At that point, you need to realize that you have to either talk to the guildie causing the drama or gkick. I will say that for years, I tried the talk method. I didn’t want to hurt peoples’ feelings. I wanted to keep a good reputation of not being a meanie (heh). I didn’t like how it made me feel to have to discipline someone. I thought I could reason with them. In 99% of cases, talking did nothing but give them more time to be offensive. If it’s something truly bad, don’t hesitate. Just kick them and all their toons. The rest of the guild will thank you.

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Personally, it was a 60-40 split, with 60% being the administrative (All the GLead stuff) and 40% being the fruits of your labor.

It depends on how much you’re willing or able to delegate out to other folks and what partnerships you may have with other guilds.

When I was doing a bit on the GM side back in MoP (I think the guild was Huojin Dynasty, I can’t remember tbh, it was some offset from stuff, I’ll get into that) we were able to bridge the OOC with IC. We used an OOC event where a former Guild Leader straight-up dipped, but we all wanted to continue and incorporate it as an IC activity. I was fortunate where other people would also want to do the IC schism, but the OOC communication as well. Even in a merger with I think Jadepaw Dynasty way back when, we took an OOC merger and made it into an IC activity.

The core is about how creative you’d like to make it. Don’t think of it all as exchanging OOC emails/discord messages, but think of how you can translate these into IC activities.

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Oh, I don’t care for this advice at all. The fact that you’re criticizing my rules about rolling dice to see how you should feel makes me…

rolls a d20

consults a chart

…full of ennui.

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So the 5th War is started by a dispute between Alliance and Horde over dice rolling?

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I’ve never been in charge of a guild because I am allergic to responsibility, so I can’t offer much in the way of detailed how-to advice.

But having joined a wide variety of guilds with different characters, I can say one thing that you very specifically shouldn’t do, and Kirsy already touched on this: which is to make your character into the guild’s true protagonist. That has become an instant red flag for me over the years that a guild is inevitably bound to fall apart, because the GM is writing all of their storylines so that everyone is just awkwardly standing around as an NPC in their personal character arc.

If you are going to lead an RP guild, then you have to be willing to actively step out of the spotlight and provide a clear opportunity for other characters in your guild to take the stage after you’ve set them up for a cool moment — because it’s scary to “compete” for attention with the guild master who has the fanciest title and the power to kick you out of the guild if you upset them. You basically just win by default unless you choose to let someone else win.

No matter how friendly and casual you are in guild chat, you should try to be aware of that power imbalance when it comes to roleplaying with your guild members; that it is part of your responsibility to make sure they are having fun instead of assuming that it’s mutual. If someone seems like they are having a difficult time inserting their character into conversations or contributing to events, ask them about their character and try to figure out how to create more opportunities for them to feel special.

Maybe come up with a system where you can organize your guild into smaller sub-groups so it is easier for bonds to form, or have some kind of “apprenticeship” where officers with a lot of patience and flexibility are assigned to pay special attention to newer members who might be a little shy or feel awkward when they join because all of the other characters already have some history and familiarity with each other.

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