Here is a post about an 'artistic endeavour' that is about as far removed from Star Trek Online as one can get.
A preface: I have mostly done my RPing in fantasy-style settings, given that I grew up RPing offline with AD&D and online in the RDI on AOL in the mid-90s (an aside: on AOL, I played a character named Denethor who helped to co-found a guild called the Legion of Light, and who served as the administrator of the Rhy'Din War Council for some time. Let me know if you knew me!).
Of course, being interested in fantasy settings, I also RPed in World of Warcraft on Moon Guard. Extensively. My contributions were primarily on the Alliance side, and especially in what is customarily known as 'Light RP'--which is to say religious RP. My two 'main' RP characters, both named Caspius, had some significant and central involvement in that community (again, let me know if you knew me!).
Quite apart from the IC roleplay, I was also involved in OOC support of the RP community from an early date with a person who has become a good friend and colleague over many years--in fact, WoW launched the autumn before my friend entered Seminary and I entered University: now he is an ordained priest and I have my Ph.D.
Over the years, the Light community grew more and more complex, with people demanding ever-more-realistic RP. What began with just a few simple prayers grew eventually to a book; then a set of books; then a series of canons. A vast code of Canon Law was created; huge organisations were built to train people to use the texts we were creating. Rituals were devised, revised, edited, altered, expanded, and edited again. I was responsible for editing our 'sacred texts' nine times over the years, line by line. As I became a medievalist, this usually meant rewriting them wholesale every time I found my previous efforts lacking in some way. We created a liturgical calendar, a cycle of readings, feast days, a complete martyrology, and turned the few scraps of information that Blizzard gave us into a completely realised religion, from its eschatological foundations on to central issues like the ontology of respect, tenacity, and compassion, right down to the most minor matters of canonical jurisprudence.
My friend, who became a liturgist OOC, turned his eye to fleshing out the formal aspects of the presentation of the text and the way in which the actions it described were to be carried out IC. What was once two pages became ten, then twenty, then forty, then a hundred. Players asked us for in-game devotions that they could conduct when alone, and so we created a Codex of Hours. I have seen people sitting in empty chapels, entirely alone IC, but duly carrying out the rituals we invented. Those were, perhaps, the moments when I was most proud of our work.
More than a year ago, we set ourselves the task of creating a final edition of our doctrinal work (i.e. without the canon law project or any of the our basic 'teaching texts'), to be distributed for the first time in a single collected place, in an authoritative text fully re-examined, re-written, updated, proofed, and with a variety of useful appendices. Tonight, we finally finished the task. We are having it printed and bound so that it is something for us to keep in memory of our long collaboration. But, we have also uploaded a PDF for general distribution.
If you play WoW, and especially if you RP a priest, our text might be the sort of thing that interests you. And maybe it will interest you even if you do not play WoW! I provide a link here, nevertheless, to
the relevant News post on our Shivtr page
which itself has a link directly to the 415pp. PDF (approx. 90MB) file.
If you enjoy it, please let me know. One of my very greatest pleasures is hearing from people whom I've never met, who message me only to tell me how useful they have found our work. Ten years is a long time to work on a single thing, and it is splendid to know it is being used, since we do not profit in any other way from the countless hours we have spent.
May it be of benefit!
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Caspius, I've got to give you such an enormous amount of props on this. I always wanted to get into RP on WoW when I was playing but never could find a good group or even a good server. This, is.. holy crap it's a lot.
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I don't play WoW myself, but the detail here is beyond astonishing. Congratulations on completing the final version!
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Sara and I used to run an RP guild on the Horde side, Sentinels server, back in BC. I don't have the time right now but I'm going to definitely look into this. This is iiiimpressive!
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Glad it impresses! I'm thrilled that we've finished our 'ultimate, final' version, but sad because it means that my direct participation in the WoW RP community is at last concluded. Ah well--twelve and a half years: it's been a good run!
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Fantastic work there.
I hope you realize that your participation is at an end only if you want it to be, though.
(Me, I was never in an RP guild during my WoW time, but all of my characters still had stories... even when I only told them to myself.)
I hope you realize that your participation is at an end only if you want it to be, though.
(Me, I was never in an RP guild during my WoW time, but all of my characters still had stories... even when I only told them to myself.)
1 Like