Guild Wars 2

I have a certain rp player that is the leader of a guild I’m in.

He has never really played gw 1 and only played gw 2 for so many months.

As much as I try to explain the lore and such to him he has this feeling that in RP, you can only play a human as humans have all their magic and professions given to them by the bloodstones and such which were made by the Forgotten and used further by the 6 gods making our schools of magic etc and the whole Abbadon fiasco of gw 1.

He thinks that playing a magical profession has no point as everything is so pro human and pro six gods even now in gw2.

I know this isn’t the case and I can’t really explain it to him as he is so against the fact everything was human only in gw 1 in essence.

Is the lore just that bad in gw 1 and 2? Or is there a way to make him feel good about playing a non-human?

Also mechanics and lore with professions? Anyway to explain it better as i know for a fact Professions are a lore thing not just a mechanics thing.

I would love Konig to be here to help.

Sooo , you want Konig ? Time for summoning ! : " The pale tree is a dragon champion and the sylvaris are his minion !" " we already killed jomarg at Frostgorge ". " hey guys , i hâve a new theory…. The dragon and the gods are related ! 6 dragons and six god , lyssa = kraka , grenth = Jormag , … ". Will be enough to lure him.

I stopped getting into lore theory fights with him long ago (gw1). I could use his help with a member that feels discouraged about RP now cause of lore conflicts.

*draws glyph in thread in the form of an ancient rune with a lobster tail in the middle

Konig should be here soon…very soon…….sylvari actually can be corrupted by other dragons, hehehe

The guy now just want to have his humans be atheist which really makes things worse for my case… I don’t want to put his name here as that will be shaming, flaming and baiting.

He might not spend any gems anymore either or even play less. he has 10 characters most non-humans and wants to rp with them all.

This all started cause my guardian said she was a guardian and such.

I did think the pet names for magisters in the priory based on their feats that was based of FMA anime was pretty neat even though I never read or watched that series.

If you want Konig’s response, why don’t you just PM him on forums or in-game ?

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

As much as I try to explain the lore and such to him he has this feeling that in RP, you can only play a human as humans have all their magic and professions given to them by the bloodstones and such which were made by the Forgotten and used further by the 6 gods making our schools of magic etc and the whole Abbadon fiasco of gw 1.

Technically the blood stones don’t so much give magic as take magic, the blood stones are actually preventing magic from being used to it’s fullest. The human gods didn’t give anyone anything, they took it away. Also it wasn’t really the human gods that gave magic it was Abaddon.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

The guy now just want to have his humans be atheist which really makes things worse for my case… I don’t want to put his name here as that will be shaming, flaming and baiting.

Humans can be atheists in GW2. There are many ways to achieve this, firstly simply not believing in the Gods, they left more than a thousand years ago. No living human has ever seen one of the Gods so that could be grounds for a character to believe the Gods are only fantasies, tales created to explain things. Alternatively he can take the Charr route, and believe that although there are powerful entities in existence, that they are not gods. This isn’t that hard to believe either since the human gods have seen casualties, depowerings etc.

The humans don’t all have that much faith. There’s a human Pact soldier at the Temple of Lyssa who wonders aloud whether the Risen Priest of Lyssa was right when she said that Lyssa was dead. Faith can be shaky sometimes; it depends on the individual.

I think the Lore is fairly balanced, I must say. The Asura and the Charr both have very valid cultural and rational reasons for their (very different) viewpoints.

If I were you, OP, I’d use the Charr as your starting point, explaining their history with the Titans and the Destroyers and how this has moulded their psyche in GW2-time. They’re a great example for showing a fleshed-out but non-Human POV.

CureForLiving.5360:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

As much as I try to explain the lore and such to him he has this feeling that in RP, you can only play a human as humans have all their magic and professions given to them by the bloodstones and such which were made by the Forgotten and used further by the 6 gods making our schools of magic etc and the whole Abbadon fiasco of gw 1.

Technically the blood stones don’t so much give magic as take magic, the blood stones are actually preventing magic from being used to it’s fullest. The human gods didn’t give anyone anything, they took it away. Also it wasn’t really the human gods that gave magic it was Abaddon.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

The guy now just want to have his humans be atheist which really makes things worse for my case… I don’t want to put his name here as that will be shaming, flaming and baiting.

Humans can be atheists in GW2. There are many ways to achieve this, firstly simply not believing in the Gods, they left more than a thousand years ago. No living human has ever seen one of the Gods so that could be grounds for a character to believe the Gods are only fantasies, tales created to explain things. Alternatively he can take the Charr route, and believe that although there are powerful entities in existence, that they are not gods. This isn’t that hard to believe either since the human gods have seen casualties, depowerings etc.

Ah right the blood stones took it all away and limited it… yeah that’s what I meant and Abbadon giving magic to everyone (not just humans) in its current form before the bloodstones were used is what is upsetting my fellow RPer. As he or she attributes magic a gods and human only thing and every other race is second fiddle.

Appraently he/she never played Asura.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I have a certain rp player that is the leader of a guild I’m in.

He has never really played gw 1 and only played gw 2 for so many months.

As much as I try to explain the lore and such to him he has this feeling that in RP, you can only play a human as humans have all their magic and professions given to them by the bloodstones and such which were made by the Forgotten and used further by the 6 gods making our schools of magic etc and the whole Abbadon fiasco of gw 1.

He thinks that playing a magical profession has no point as everything is so pro human and pro six gods even now in gw2.

I know this isn’t the case and I can’t really explain it to him as he is so against the fact everything was human only in gw 1 in essence.

Is the lore just that bad in gw 1 and 2? Or is there a way to make him feel good about playing a non-human?

Also mechanics and lore with professions? Anyway to explain it better as i know for a fact Professions are a lore thing not just a mechanics thing.

I would love Konig to be here to help.

My recommendation: When in doubt, quote from the official wiki.

This is how I see the human lore conflict…

1) GW1 was a human-only game. If I were in your shoes, I would suggest that the guild should schedule time to play the game as a group to study the past lore.

2) The lore from both GW1 & GW2 is valid. Alot of the changes in GW2 are due to characters making assumptions about things. As a writer, the rule I tend to go by is “if a character says it, it may or may not be true”. Remember that characters tend to share their knowledge & experience from their point of view. It seems to me that the humans in this game are living in the dark ages. The evidence? Divinity’s Reach. When humans obsess over religion, it tends to blind them to reality. Religion is part of the reason that the human race is dying in this game.

So much knowledge was lost during the last 250 years mostly due to social and political reasons (similar to the Dark Ages here on Earth). The more highly educated leaders use war & money to control people. Notice that the Centaur War never gets solved. The war keeps going and going while Queen Jennah lounges around on her fancy golden recliner. If there were no war, more & more average people would be questioning her rule (like the French did during Marie Antoinette’s time). Until Tyria goes through their version of the Age of Enlightenment, the human’s knowledge will continue to be incorrect and / or limited much of the time.

3) *When looking for what really happened in Tyria’s history, GW1 lore trumps GW2 lore. Why? The earlier events are what really happened! When RL historians and archaeologists study an ancient document like the Bible they always refer to the earlier source. Until science becomes more important in their society, GW2 humans will continue to have limited access to what really happened in their own past. Those limitations will cause history to repeat itself over and over again.

Now onto the bloodstones…

The bloodstones were not created by the Forgotten. They were created by the Six Gods themselves. See http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bloodstone

The role of the Forgotten in GW1 were to conduct the Ascension ritual, which gave the heroes the ability to fight the final boss in the game. I personally believe that the Forgotten aren’t acknowledged in GW2 human history because they look too much like the infamous krait. (BTW, There is a Charr character in the Durmand Priory hallway that acknowledges that history has been tampered with)

As for magic, you can refer your guild leader to the long explanation in GW2’s wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic

Regarding your Guild Leader…

It sounds as if the guild leader is making up his own version of the lore. It also seems as if it doesn’t work with your character’s storyline. There is a good chance you might have to let the situation go and join another guild.

Yes that is exactly what he or she is doing, he just now is saying that in his guild’s version or “Grand Tale”, magic always exists, not changed or altered, or limited by any being, (cept maybe dragons) and is unlimited and been around forever with no known basis for why its exists or how it came to be.

So no bloodstones or six gods’ meddling or anything. So everyone can be equal and all races can have equal merit?

And I quote, “Maybe all magic is only posibl;e because of a flying pickle :P in this Tyria, the origins of magic are unknown, and any study of it remains theoretical as magic can change.”

WTF?

Although you could work yourself into the guild’s narrative, it just sounds like the GL doesn’t quite wants to RP Guild Wars, but just wants to use the looks.

Do remember that the humans probably widely know their own legends of the bloodstones, but outside of the Durmand Priory (and likely some individuals of the other orders/The Pact) their Seer connection is not known.

As for the mechanical connections, although I’m likely to start a forum war now, you could point out that the Engineer profession likely was born out of the Charr’s industrial revolution, and other races have simply adopted it (the Humans least of all it seems, judging by NPC’s). We’re not given lore on how the skills themselves are cast or created (by that I mean we don’t know what processes go into a Guardian casting Ring of Warding) however it would be silly to assume only one race worked on them, and lead to the current skill sets our characters use.

Saying all that, it sounds like the only way to properly accommodate the viewpoint is to properly break the lore. I’d personally move guilds and be done with it. Good luck with your endevours to teach your guild leader either way

Just one final note; the lore is not always GW1 > GW2. Some of the lore, for example about the Gods bringing humans to Arah earlier then thought, would technically predate the lore we found in the first game; Arah is older. It’s a good general rule though

Yeah I’m going to stay with him for a while longer for one more little loose end on my own character’s stories as we can agree on some stuff.

I for one try to stick to the lore for the most part and not go too far from it with anything I make up.

I don’t go ahead and say that I’m some space alien (yet humans are in a sense), or the 7th god, or a vampire straight from twilight (I seen some people do that and its more annoying than naive sylvari that can’t even be toilet trained… like they didn’t meet anyone in the grove after being born) or anything remotely supported by lore. If he or she pulls that stuff, I’m really gone from the guild.

I seen people do acceptable things with tonics… but its more for laughs than serious RP.

Kodan, Quaggans, random furniture (and talking!), wintersday toys, the friendly toxic krait we all know and love on this very forums even!

Currently he or she wants to do a story arc where it had to do with inquest and my asura, which was a loose end for my personal plot as he has gone missing for a while now. Yet he wants to have a bigger plot with a previously unknown and evil spirit of the wild.

Fleshweaver spirit and an army of cultists and fleshweavers? I don’t know about that one, but I’ll roll with it as long as my asura comes out of it ok.

If he says nobody else can use magic. Simply tell him to play GW1.

EVERYBODY used magic.

Problem is its too costly for him and its humans only…

It basically sounds like this player wants to use their own “custom campaign rules” for RP. Nothing wrong with that, although I wouldn’t be able to RP with them if their custom rules basically went against the established canon lore. (The same way I couldn’t RP with someone who said they were a Sylvari Firstborn or who insisted that their Human was really a 500 year old Ascalonian Vampire.)

Zaxares.5419:

It basically sounds like this player wants to use their own “custom campaign rules” for RP. Nothing wrong with that, although I wouldn’t be able to RP with them if their custom rules basically went against the established canon lore. (The same way I couldn’t RP with someone who said they were a Sylvari Firstborn or who insisted that their Human was really a 500 year old Ascalonian Vampire.)

Is that why they sparkle in the daytime or is that something else?

I mostly insist my ranger is descended directly from the old Ascalonian refugee from ages past who had the same name. And as some of the other usual characters of mine from GW1 crossed the family tree somewhere, they’re all kind of . . . well . . . somewhere.

Probably Elona.

well good news and bad news… The good news is, the guy kicked me today as he or she blew up in one of his childish fits and he thought I’m always picking the large 1500 + multi-guild alliance Apocalyptic Armageddon [AARM] over him. The bad news is I have a continuity and RP vacuum now in my own story so now anything I did had planned with him (not sure it would end well anyways) is gone.

I still have to refer to him or her and their characters in my narrative and RP now even though it seems wrong (like every other group and guild that progressed me along my RP story. That I left for various petty immature crap).

Also I blocked him or her. It really started to grate on my nerves with the self-centered crap.

Zaxares.5419:

It basically sounds like this player wants to use their own “custom campaign rules” for RP. Nothing wrong with that, although I wouldn’t be able to RP with them if their custom rules basically went against the established canon lore. (The same way I couldn’t RP with someone who said they were a Sylvari Firstborn or who insisted that their Human was really a 500 year old Ascalonian Vampire.)

Well, there is the few unnamed Sylvari Firstborns… but I can agree with that.

:P. Reminds me of early GW2 days when somebody was talking about a demon-possessed character. I simply went “Yeah, that doesn’t happen in GW…”

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

well good news and bad news… The good news is, the guy kicked me today as he or she blew up in one of his childish fits and he thought I’m always picking the large 1500 + multi-guild alliance Apocalyptic Armageddon [AARM] over him. The bad news is I have a continuity and RP vacuum now in my own story so now anything I did had planned with him (not sure it would end well anyways) is gone.

I still have to refer to him or her and their characters in my narrative and RP now even though it seems wrong (like every other group and guild that progressed me along my RP story. That I left for various petty immature crap).

Also I blocked him or her. It really started to grate on my nerves with the self-centered crap.

Retcon it. You never really were in that guild and don’t know anything about it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

well good news and bad news… The good news is, the guy kicked me today as he or she blew up in one of his childish fits and he thought I’m always picking the large 1500 + multi-guild alliance Apocalyptic Armageddon [AARM] over him. The bad news is I have a continuity and RP vacuum now in my own story so now anything I did had planned with him (not sure it would end well anyways) is gone.

I still have to refer to him or her and their characters in my narrative and RP now even though it seems wrong (like every other group and guild that progressed me along my RP story. That I left for various petty immature crap).

Also I blocked him or her. It really started to grate on my nerves with the self-centered crap.

Retcon it. You never really were in that guild and don’t know anything about it.

Oh no… I’m so sorry to hear that.

That guild leader was playing Malevolent Dictator anyways. He wasn’t worth it.

I agree with Tobias. Just retcon the story. That’s what I do when people I’ve RPed with just abandon the storyline.

Kalavier.1097:

Zaxares.5419:

It basically sounds like this player wants to use their own “custom campaign rules” for RP. Nothing wrong with that, although I wouldn’t be able to RP with them if their custom rules basically went against the established canon lore. (The same way I couldn’t RP with someone who said they were a Sylvari Firstborn or who insisted that their Human was really a 500 year old Ascalonian Vampire.)

Well, there is the few unnamed Sylvari Firstborns… but I can agree with that.

:P. Reminds me of early GW2 days when somebody was talking about a demon-possessed character. I simply went “Yeah, that doesn’t happen in GW…”

There is such a thing as dragon possession tho. Just refer to Scarlet Briar’s situation. Her diary talked about her being possessed.

kta.6502:

Kalavier.1097:

Zaxares.5419:

It basically sounds like this player wants to use their own “custom campaign rules” for RP. Nothing wrong with that, although I wouldn’t be able to RP with them if their custom rules basically went against the established canon lore. (The same way I couldn’t RP with someone who said they were a Sylvari Firstborn or who insisted that their Human was really a 500 year old Ascalonian Vampire.)

Well, there is the few unnamed Sylvari Firstborns… but I can agree with that.

:P. Reminds me of early GW2 days when somebody was talking about a demon-possessed character. I simply went “Yeah, that doesn’t happen in GW…”

There is such a thing as dragon possession tho. Just refer to Scarlet Briar’s situation. Her diary talked about her being possessed.

This was WAY before that though. Back then the best was corruption messing with your brain (Like the human in PS), but the guy IIRc was talking DEMON possession :P

well I had a character idea that he invented a sword that can open and basicly be a shocking stab type sword like arcing electric shock attack charged by kinetic energy. Charr engineer. and stuff.

kta.6502:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

well good news and bad news… The good news is, the guy kicked me today as he or she blew up in one of his childish fits and he thought I’m always picking the large 1500 + multi-guild alliance Apocalyptic Armageddon [AARM] over him. The bad news is I have a continuity and RP vacuum now in my own story so now anything I did had planned with him (not sure it would end well anyways) is gone.

I still have to refer to him or her and their characters in my narrative and RP now even though it seems wrong (like every other group and guild that progressed me along my RP story. That I left for various petty immature crap).

Also I blocked him or her. It really started to grate on my nerves with the self-centered crap.

Retcon it. You never really were in that guild and don’t know anything about it.

Oh no… I’m so sorry to hear that.

That guild leader was playing Malevolent Dictator anyways. He wasn’t worth it.

I agree with Tobias. Just retcon the story. That’s what I do when people I’ve RPed with just abandon the storyline.

Yeah or I can just say my own characters tracked down my guard’s evil auntie without the guy’s help and killed her. Its not like my engi, who is also a light bringer, can’t track down her own sister-in-law and torture and interrogate her herself then bring in my ele (who is the good sister) to exact her own justice on her and then my ele burns the captured evil lady into nothing but a burned shadow.

I guess I’ll take what I done myself and retcon anything the guild leader did.

As I’m not willing to redo a whole week’s worth of RP.

Basically half my character’s family of nobility and also of two Canthan clans (marriage is a kitten), became traitors to the crown and joined White Mantle/Bandits, so its been roughly two years of GW 2 with a tragic story of loss and redemption for the Jennah loyal Ishida vs the corruption filled Izushi.

It had many twists and turns and many guilds (that never really worked out) that would barely support such a RP story/plot based heavily on GW 1 lore and some GW 2 lore.

Its also hard as I have all my living Ishida clan as alts and the Izushi clan as imaginary NPCs, as who wants to play Canthans only for a small while only to be killed/captured/jailed?

Kalavier.1097:

Well, there is the few unnamed Sylvari Firstborns… but I can agree with that.

:P. Reminds me of early GW2 days when somebody was talking about a demon-possessed character. I simply went “Yeah, that doesn’t happen in GW…”

If I recall correctly, there’s only one unnamed Sylvari Firstborn (out of 13 that exist), but making your character that mystery Firstborn just smacks of arrogance to me. And what happens if ANet should one day name that Firstborn and use them in a Living Story? Then your character would effectively be ruined.

It’s much safer to make them a Secondborn, where no express limit on their number was announced.

@Yumiko: Sorry to hear that it all came to a head, but it’s probably for the best. :/

And now you have learnt the painful truth – a wild konig rarely appears.

Seems that RP is a poor choice of bait for Konigs.

I found the mysterious, elusive Konig! Perhaps the OP should of mentioned Scarlet. He seems to have a thing for red sylvari…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/lore/lore/Scarlets-master-speculation/first#post3805653

Huh. I was just about to weigh in myself:

For any future reference where it is relevant, the overall narrative of magic can be summarised thus:

Magic has always been a part of the world of Tyria, although its strength waxes and wanes. The dragons are a part of this cycle, since they feed on magic. When magic grows beyond a certain point, the dragons wake and consume it. Once magic drops below a certain level, they go back into hibernation, allowing magic to build up again.

During the last awakening of the dragons, the Seers came up with a plan to hasten the sleeping of the dragons – they made a stone that would soak up all of the magic in the world that hadn’t already been claimed by the dragons. This put the dragons to sleep, and left the world in a fairly low-magic state until the gods arrived. However, some magic was still present before the ‘gift of magic’ was granted – Ritualists in Cantha had their spirit-wrangling, for instance, and the asura underground also had some magic, although exactly what it was is unclear (just that they recorded the results on magic of the gods’ activities, without knowing the cause at the time).

The ‘gift of magic’ referred to in GW1 (which never actually spelled out how this gift was granted) came from the gods finding the artifact, and deciding to return magic to the world. They – mostly Abaddon – tampered with the artifact, so that instead of soaking up and containing magic, it now started releasing magic back into the world. However, and this is important given the context of the topic, the gods had no control over who could use this power after it was released. They could give humans an advantage by teaching them when other races had to figure it out for themselves, but once that proverbial genie was out of the bottle, they had no power to stop anyone from using it (short of their own direct use of countermagic).

When this proved too dangerous, they decided to limit magic by splitting the Bloodstones. Exactly why this act resulted in the splitting of magic into schools isn’t entirely spelled out (I generally take the interpretation that a given spellcaster can only attune to so many sources of magic at once, and thus instead of being able to draw from all magic inside the original proto-bloodstone artifact, they have to choose one or two bloodstones to attune to). However, this act is what lead to the creation of the four main spellcaster professions (monk (now guardian), elementalist, necromancer, mesmer) – where hybrid professions such as the ranger come into it has never been spelled out, although I do have a few theories.

Recent information has indicated that the Bloodstones are no longer as important as they once were. Why that is the case is not something that has been explicitly explained, but now that we have ley lines and a number of other sources of magic in the wider world, by suspicion is that much of the magic once contained is now once again free in the wider world, sufficient to at least compete with the power in the Bloodstones. So while formerly a spellcaster might have to choose two Bloodstones to draw from, now they can choose to draw from a Bloodstone (to achieve maximum power in their specialisation) and from the magic in their local environment (which is a source of less powerful but undifferentiated magic). Professions such as the Dervish imply that such environmental magic likely existed in GW1 as well, but wasn’t as powerful.

At the bottom line, though:

There is no reason to say that other races can’t use magic, and in fact, many important events in the lore have hinged on the fact that they can. Humans did have an advantage because some of them were tutored by the gods, which was not the case for races such as the charr (until the titans intervened) and may even still have a greater potential for it than other races (look at how many important human NPCs are based primarily on magic use, while asura NPCs tend to rely more on technomagic then their own magical power) – however, the gods’ actions with the bloodstones resulted in magic being granted to all races, not just humans.

Yeah, this is a good explanation for future reference at least. If I was able articulate this as well as you just did, I’d still have 1 week of rp not wasted.

As I said before, I’ll retcon whatever he did for me and just say my characters handled the last part of the RP story arc on their own.

Thanks for the refresher on the lore as well guys. Playing GW 1 for 7 years, you will eventually get stuff wrong based on how memory works. Here’s to the next LS and new stuff to RP with!

How has Konig not been summoned? I read the instructions word…for….word……….kitten

According to Priory research, there is currently a barrier that is limiting the effectiveness of rituals to summon Konig to our realm. The magisters involved have been darkly muttering arcane phrases such as ‘infrequent internet access’.

More seriously, I’d have weighed in earlier myself, but I’d looked at the title and thought it was about someone asking for assistance in making an RP character. Finally poked my nose in when I was wondering how the thread was so consistently at the top of the forum.

Come to think of it, note to self: This should be a priority for the project.

I’m no Konig but I do try where I can to be as useful. Being a tabletop player of about half a dozen different games helps keep the general laws of roleplaying in mind:

1. Remember the character’s background/story is there to enhance the fun, not to kill it.

2. Be prepared for things to blow up in your face at any time, and also to take the lumps when you need to for the sake of the story.

3. Never have a character who doesn’t have big glaring flaws to hang plotlines off of.

4. No roleplay is in a vacuum – if it happens that way, it is writing.

5. Less a rule, more of a commitment. Thou shalt learn of Tandem the Spoony.

That’s some sort of bard, right? :P

draxynnic.3719:

That’s some sort of bard, right? :P

Indeed, and he is a spoony one.

I didn’t respond to this thread because I was specifically called out and made the butt of jokes – though in good jest and humorous they were indeed. Plus, but the time that I got a chance to read this thread, I felt that the original issue was more or less answered and seeing how I’m far from a proper mediator of disputes, I saw no reason in posting.

On an aside, I hold no issue with answering PMs or even in-game random whispers, I have and will do such, though I see no issue with opening a thread to ask a question, but if you do the latter there’s really no point in calling me out to answer your question.

Zaxares.5419:

Seems that RP is a poor choice of bait for Konigs.

Ye be wrong. I post on 2RP’s lore question forum a lot, actually.

However, when it comes to mediating, convincing, or suggesting one on ways of roleplaying, I’m out of my environment. I don’t roleplay frequently enough to help there, which seems to be what half of the thread was for.

Well thanks for posting anyways Konig, you are and always a ray of hope for those confused on lore in GW 1 and GW 2.

Why care about this guy in the first place?
He sounds pointlessly stubborn, honestly.
If he wants to have weird views about the whole thing, let him.