… Player Associations and their effects on roleplaying

The topic is Player Associations (PAs, also known as guilds in other games) and their effects on roleplaying. First, I'd like to talk about the reasons people found a PA, then why people join them, then about the effects of PAs on the game, and lastly about the effects on roleplaying.


Why do people found a PA?

I think there are mainly two reasons people found a PA for, and usually both are present when a PA gets founded:
1. They have a goal that they think they can only or best achieve through a PA. It could be a roleplaying concept, like a business corporation, a crew for a ship, a band or a crime gang, or a game goal like building a PvP Squad/platoon/company, or a mix between. Important is that the founders think they might need a PA for this – that’s not neccessiarly true.
2. They want to start or lead a group of players. This is often the main impetus behind a PA’s birth – someone wants to run the show as he or she thinks it should be run. In short, it’s a grab for power – people want to lead, and have others follow. As many as possible.

Apart from those few individuals who honestly care more about the others than their own egos, and apart from those who even fool themselves, and not only their fellow players into beleiving they are all about the “community” (those who honestly believe that what is fun for them is fun for all others, if only they’d do it), most are motivated by a desire for power – visible power in game. The more people show one’s tag, the more one is seen as some powerful, wise and influential player, or so the theory goes.
Of course, anything built up with the desire for power in mind is bound to run into a number of problems – especially, if the old “bigger is better” and “quantity before quality” mottos are followed too, which is very often the case, especially if people say thy are not. But more about that later.


Why do people join a PA?

At first view, there's a mix of ic and ooc reasons.
IC, the character may want to join a group, like a military unit, a squadron, a crime gang, a band. OOCly, most want to be part of a group of players that support each other and make playing the game easier as well as are fun to hang out. Or, from another point of view, they want to belong to a club/circle of friends. Guildchat and Teamspeak serve as a big draw here.
However, it is important to note that there are no compelling IC reasons to join a PA and show the tag. Since roleplayers do not see tags, you can be part of a group without being mechanically a member of a PA. Even guildchat (in the case that it is even IC) can be replaced by private chat channels, and TS doesn’t care what tag you wear at all.
So, in my conclusion, if someone joins a PA, it is for OOC reasons.


What are the effects of PAs?

The effects of PAs are mostly felt oocly as well.

First, PA members tend to develop OOC friendships. They stick together, ic and ooc, do quests together, help each other out with advice and credits, and generally chat about anything in guildchat. This has several important effects.

First, people involved in a PA generally stay around longer in game. The more friends you have in game, the more reasons you have to log on, and it is easier to keep track of PA members than non-PA members. And, by the very nature of PAs, one usually grows closer to the members of ones PA, generating friendships.

While they do not drop non-PA member friends, PA members generally tend to check with their PA first when they need something – be it a crafter’s services, or help. Depending on at which point a player joins a PA, a player’s “network” in game can be heavily skewed toward PA members – new players who join a PA soon after starting often, in the case of larger PAs, discover a network that covers all their needs.
While this is a positive effect, it also has a negative effect – the more self-sufficient a PA is, the more prone to isolationism it is as well, since there is no need to seek out others but for recruiting. Things tend to be done “in house” mostly. As a side-effect, a well-oiled PA support system can breed dependent players – they get everything done for them.
And, in larger PAs, there is a – although not that big – possibility that new members who want to craft feel discouraged from “competing” with established crafters in their PA. More common though seems cooperation, the younger crafter becoming a partner of an established one, and able to use resources.
The support system of a PA also often allows members to get things for free, be they resources or rare loot. This has an effect on the economy, though not a big one.

The closeness inside a PA also makes it easy for ooc conflicts to spread and escalate. Due to friendship, loyality and dependency inside a PA, a conflict between two individuals can often escalate into a conflict between two entire PAs, once they close ranks – you rarely hear “I am staying out of this” from your PA leader or fellow PA member if you ask for help.

At the same time, a PA can breed nepotism and favouritism. Problem players who take care to play nice with their PA members and friends can count on support no matter what they do, thanks to friendship, loyality and in some cases dependencies developed inside a PA. It is hard to take a stand against someone who helped you as a new player, spent hours last week helping you get this last quest done, and has been joking with you for hours in guildchat or team speak. So, often a problem player will get away with a lot, thanks to his PA working for him.

A PA is also the perfect breeding ground for preconceptions and worse – and no one is immune to this. People in a group tend to reinforce their own beliefs to keep the group cohesive, and bashing outsiders is a common approach. Guildchat, due to its privacy, is prone for that sort of stuff. It can start as a simple joke, and develop in a policy by coincidence or accident, just a few people bringing up the same stuff regularily until everyone totes the party line, or shuts up for fear of starting “internal trouble”. New PA members, who trust their new friends, often can get preconceptions in that sort of environment who poison their or other’s playing experience later on.

But even if a PA handles all those pitfalls, and not just by having good PR, there’s still one very important consequence:

A PA, especially a large PA, takes a lot of work and time to run. Any PA leader can confirm that. Not only are there internal politics and strife to deal with, but also external politics and conflicts to handle – OOCly. And any time spent on trouble shooting oocly is less time spent IC, roleplaying, or questing. And while generally, running a PA has its rewards, and justifies the time spent running it, the stress can take its toll, and PA leaders and officers can burn out if things get too stressful for too long.
So, while a PA can offer an active player a lot of possibilities to build something up, be it as leader or officer, the political baggage that a PA also often brings with it can counter this, or even end up in a net loss of productive activity – especially if there are problem cases in the PA; or if the leader is more concerned with personal power and influence than enjoyment of the game.


What are the effects on roleplaying?

The effects are manifold. Roleplaying depends on a big part on trust between players. If a PA is too isolated, there won’t be much trust towards other PAs or players. And, due to the inevitable subcultures and unwritten rules within a PA, “cultural” differences can develop – if your PA has a strict “NO DB IN RP” policy, you are prone to consider someone who DBs a non-rper.
People also – and rightly – judge others by whom they associate with. A single bad player can tarnish a whole PA’s reputation, making it hard to roleplay with them. On the other hand, it can help you identify players or roleplay styles you want to avoid, before you discover it the hard way, and usually people trust members of a PA they have had good experiences with in the past more easily than unknowns.

With regards to roleplay plots and events, PAs offer possibilities due to their resources single players may not have. Their members generally oocly trust each other to a strong degree and are familiar with each other, which makes running some plots much easier. But there is a danger some PAs have already encountered – you can grow too big for conflict RP. If your crime PA is made up of 50 active members, and the other gangs are struggling with half a dozen members each, you will find it hard to get anyone to enter a gang war plot with you.

However, due to the ooc nature of PAs, it is often much harder to stay in character in a PA. Due to the perceived need to grow in numbers, most PAs do lack an IC focus – “We have a place for every class and character” is often heard – and what started as a crime PA with a strong anti-imperial bias made up of hardened ex-soldiers ends up a big bunch of mostly ooc friends including the TIE pilot alt of an officer, the dark jedi main of a good ooc friend of the leader, and a couple of afk dancers in the cantina who liked the 50K bonus for moving to the PA town.

Which brings us to another point: A PA often, at least once it reaches a certain size, feels the need to have its own town. It usually ends up a ghost town, after a flurry of activity for a few weeks, but hurts general roleplaying by adding geographical isolationism to ooc isolationism – anyone who spends hours in the PA town so people who visit can find someone to talk to is one less participant in the spontaneous rp plot at the next starport.

And lastly, metagaming runs rampant when it comes to PAs. The – obviously true – view that one can’t see PA tags IC leads often to the – as obviously mistaken – belief that this means one cannot know, suspect or guess that said character is in that group the PA represents, no matter what he does, or one is metagaming. This often poisons RP from the start.


Conclusions:

I would say that most negative effects PAs have on roleplay can be avoided with a bit of work. A PA that promotes staying in character (in guildchat too), and policies its members oocly to curb problem behaviour and takes care to keep in contact with other PAs and individuals is a boon to the general RP scene like not much else.

However, for some concepts, a PA is not the ideal way to achieve it. If you flip out each time someone considers you a PA member IC, since “no one can know this”, better don’t make a PA, but create an IC group. That way, your roleplay will not be poisoned by your suspicions of the other side metagaming.

Also, for PA leaders, sometimes less is more. If you stick to a focussed group as members in your PA you may have less trouble over all, and more roleplay. Your ship’s crew, as an example, may get more interaction if they do not have every crafter as an alt in the PA, but have to contact those ic.

However, most PAs one will encounter are plagued with all the problems mentioned above – power-grabbing leaders, cliquish internal tendencies, and about as much tolerance and open mindedness for others like the average religious fanatic.

In short, some high schoolers will feel right at home.