[edit] General Introduction

The Community

CircleGuardians are all role players who enjoy experiencing games together – in a mature, friendly and optimistic way. We cherish not only role playing quality but put great valuation in a mature and optimistic personality. We want our atmosphere to be enjoyable and friendly – Not dull and dark. The CircleGuardians as a society keep united. We form our own official CircleGuardian guilds in every MMORPG we aim to play – This aid us create, experience and share a quality role playing environment wherever we might be. Therefore – Being a member of CircleGuardians – you will always find a friendly environment with skilled role players and helpful gamers.

The Guild

Aetherity is a philosophy, a way how to live life in order to maximise and fullfil your potential as man. The philosophy is also known as the Wheel of Life where one walk four paths, in the order the student wishes; The Path of the Warrior, the Path of the Sage, the Path of the Scholar and the Path of the Traveler. Only when all four paths have been mastered, the student is ready to enter the middle point of the wheel - The Path of the Lord. Only when all these five paths have been mastered then the student gain ascension. The philosophy binds many together that normally would battle amongst clans. The teachings of Aenderis have not only brought peace but also it has increased wisdom, understanding, respect and ability to handle nature and live with it in harmony. All who follow the philosophy are known as Aenderites and are deeply respected for their choice. A master in any of the Aenderite paths are considered to be vastly talented and honorable. They can be the most deadly and fiercest of warriors, the wisest of of scholars, the most spiritual of priests, the most powerful of sorcerers and the most explored and knowledgeable of travelers. Long live Aenderis - For his way lead to ascension.

[edit] Guild Story

Note: This is a clip from the guild story and community philosophy/policy document, which you can find here: [1]

Hyboria…

Always and still today the lands of Hyboria consisted of beliefs, religions and philosophies of how to gain more wisdom, powers, control, strength, loyalty and a more clear state of mind. To survive a harsh land, one needed faith, allies, beliefs and likeminded - sharing your path. Enemies always existed no matter where you roamed. There were many gatherings, cults and smaller grouping among the stronger clans. They all believed in something. Set and Crom were strong manifestations among Cimmerians and Stygians respectively, but there were also those beliefs shared by many in a wider perspective, those gatherings that brought people from various clans together. One of them was the followers of the master Aenderis.

The Master Aenderis…

Thousands of years ago in troubled times, when many a traveler sought answers and strength of mind - The philosopher of Aenderis was there to provide them. He gave a different perspective to how one should live life in order to reach a higher state of mind. Aenderis himself was according to legends neither a good nor an evil man. He was simply a philosopher, offering his vast wisdom to those who wandered the lands. He was described as very wise, passionate, a strong leader and protective of those that followed him. His movement grew large and many cherished his beliefs of how life could be lived. The meaning according to Aenderis was to gain deeper understanding, a clear path of how to live life and fulfill ones hidden potential - It was about Acsension.

The way of Aenderis…

Specific for Aenderis was that his "ways" could aid you with whatever ambition or aim you had in life. Aenderis did not limit you - It embraced your skills and aided you to grow stronger. Would you master the totality of Aenderis' teachings - One would gain deeper understanding, become one with your soul and by that see the truth in all that lies around you. This newly found knowledge would make you immensely strong and very powerful. Those who desired wisdom and knowledge - followed him to be granted a greater understanding and through his teachings reach a level beyond their current potential - with vast powers for them to use and wield. Many also sought Aenderis ways in the search for increasing their talent in practical matters such as combat, crafting, survival, tracking, hunting amongst others. Aenderis way was famed for maximizing your ability and gain full potential in your ways. A master of Aenderis was always respected and honored, in his or her knowledge most relied. Such was the fame and respect for Aenderis as a master and philosopher. Students were also known to be carefully chosen. Aenderis only accepted those he saw great potential into. How he determined this potential – no one knew of. However – it was known to be hard to impress master Aenderis and become his student – Therefore also the students of Aenderis were respected. They were all seen as promising talents following a demanding path.

The Wheel of Life – The Philosophy of Aenderis…

The way of Aenderis was simply known to aid you grow in skills and potential no matter what path you had. It was not a guideline of what to believe in, what god to follow or a restriction to what you should do. It was instead a philosophy of how one should wander across various ways in life in order to grow and fulfill ones potential.

Many sought Aenderis teachings and wanted him as their teacher. Therefore; many a follower of Aenderis came from various locations around the lands. Some were Stygians, followers of Set - wanting to grow in wisdom to enhance their skills of magics even more - Some were Cimmerians - followers of Crom - Wanting to gain more understanding and greater ability of other means. Aenderis did not care for the politics of the worlds - He wanted to teach, he wanted to learn and he wanted to aid others grow. This meant many of his students did not agree on many a thing but in the end – They were all followers of Aenderis philosophy.

After many years Aenderis died – His followers kept loyal and faithful to Aenderis path. The few that had mastered the various paths in Aenderis teachings kept together and continued his tradition. The philosophy became known as “The Wheel Of Life”.

[edit] Role Playing Philosophy

What is Role Playing according to CircleGuardians?

Role Playing is a desire to make your character come alive - To create an existing personality and have the intention to see that flourish. It is impossible to say that some Role Play is better than others - most times - due to that we all have our own styles and we should have such also. There are however some ways one can be 'delicate' in ones RP when making this happen.

Personality

The personality of thy character is important and that is something you should put much thought into when role playing. Primarily - you need to answer a few questions for yourself before you decide upon a personality of the character.

A - Is the personality of this character realistic in a general perspective?

B - Does this characters personality suit the world we are role playing into?

C - Does this character suit the present CircleGuardian guild I am about to enter? Need I adjust something?

D - Am I flexible as a player?

When answering the questions above you surely realise something that is obvious. There is no right or wrong - but we need to be 'delicate'. Realism is a very important aspect when role playing. Realism can be about many different things and is discussed more below. What I would like you to think of carefully is the bullet point: "D". many a times I have met people making characters online and being nice RP:ers but they go into the trap of making their characters so very extreme and they meet a "point of no return" - where the character takes destructive paths and becomes negative in the eyes of others. I would very much want you to try and not do this against yourself and others. Making a character more open minded and able to develop can only benefit you as a player.

Story

Making a movie/writing a book - How can I be part of a quality role playing environment? What is quality role playing anyway? Please think back to when you were reading the books of either Tolkien or George Lucas's world. The courage, the simplicity, the noble deeds, love, anger, distrust, the intrigues, the plots, the adventure, the monsters, the tales & the heroes. All is part of it. Let us say you are to play an MMORPG and want to know how to Role play with quality in the world presented to you. Imagine for a second that you are reading a book or watching a movie about this world - then ask yourself: "What would the heroes be like? How is the world? How would I expect the people in this world to interact? What role among those people would I want to play?" Quality Role Playing is mostly defined by the thought behind the character and the stories he/she represents. The better the detail and the more thought through they are - the better the quality.

How to create realism in your RP:

It was mentioned above that - realism - is very important in role playing. If the character does not feel comprehendable and has stories that are out of reach and basically silly then he/she will not be taken seriously by the role playing community at the given game. Thereby - 'delicacy' is yet again a key word to remember.

The Lore - This is a very important part of the realism of your characters. The world has its rules, beasts and its politics. Knowing the lore is a very important part in order to role play with quality. Making Vampire guilds in the world of "Lord of the rings" is a very good example of NON quality role playing. The members of the guild may very well be very skilled individually in how they perform as characters but that matters not if the major story is all wrong in comparison to the world mechanics and its lore. One does not have to be an expert in the worlds stories and tales before starting a characters - then few would role play in every world. But a key factor to remember is to always keep within what is decent and if you are uncertain about the lore - then wait before you role play tales that challenges the limits of the extreme. Keep within the lines of lore and develop the stories more - as you get to learn the lore better.

Skills - Individual skills in how you perform and make your RP come alive in every world is important. Every game has a guide on its own presented here on this forum - please read those applying to you after you've taken part of this more general role playing philosophy

Logging off - There are many examples one can mention of 'delicacy' but some are more important than others and I believe this to be one of them. Try to imagine the movies and the books again. In any of those - did a character all of a sudden just disappear in the middle of a battlefield to come back only hours after without a logical explanation? Why yes - I am certain they did storywise - but I mean outside the storytelling? When logging of - please restrain from doing that in the middle of a street or in the open in general. Talking to other characters and then suddenly disappearing is just not good. One should find hidden spots where one can log out and in easily. Role playing decently is not only what you perform 'until' you are to log out - It is how you perform all the way and at all times.

Changing clothes - Changing clothes is another example of the above mentioned bullet point. When changing clothes - try to do so when at a more decent spot than in the middle of a street. Just clicking your gear in thy inventory and then asking someone whether they enjoy the attire more than the previous - means IC-wise that you have undressed before the eyes of the other character. Please understand and try to think "realistic" at all times - The thought: "What am I doing and how can I do this even better?" is an important one.

Speaking - Now this is an important thing and also very game specific. It has a lot to do with the lore - imagine how people talked in this kind of world - Try to make that talk come through. Do not use words that are not applicable to the world you are presently playing into - It will mean an unrealistic tone to what one tries to create. Never use shortages - Always write out the words.

[edit] Gaming Philosophy

The CircleGuardians beliefs and policy:

A - First of all it is very important to realise that no matter what game we are playing for the time being we will always believe that iRL is ALWAYS most important. We care for all of our members and want them to have a happy life, thus we will never expect that anyone should choose a computer game such as Lotro, Wow, AoC or whatever before ones iRL.

B - The first bullet point grants us a natural way to perceive members Online Time when it comes to MMORPG. We will never be punishing members because they are not online often. We will understand that iRL will take its time and that's that. However, if you plan to be offline for more than 30 days due to vacation or unknown happenings; then please let the officers of the guild know this. In the end, even if we are very understanding and believe iRL is important, we always have the ambition to have an active guild; Therefore every member that is offline for 40 days or more will be removed from our guilds unless specific reasons are told to us in advance. The Guild Master for the present guild will surely dictate personal rules but this is the general conduct.

C - The Level of Partcipation is something that we take very seriously in our kinship, even though we do not tell you what to do with your online time. You are free to use your online time as you want to, since we all pay for a subscription for this game, we do not believe in controlling others online time. All meetings and role playing in our guilds must build upon every single players interest and desire to be PART of what we are doing here. If we see that one of you are rarely online and when online; never talks in the guild chat, never meet and socialise with the other guild members and never respond to anyone that seek aid or similar; then you are very close to being kicked from the guild. The simple reason for this is because we will see that as you are drifting away from us and not showing interest to truly be a member of our gathering. We want you to show interest in our guilds, be part of it, be active at this forum and to show to others that you want to be part of our little 'community'.

D - Alt Chars are very welcome in our guilds. We do not have any problem with that whatsoever. However, the same policy and principals on online time and absence applies to you. We can recommend that you are in our guild with your main character since this is a fantastic place for top quality Role playing and great gaming among some of the nicest and most friendly people in whatever game we are playing mostly for the time being. You will miss out on that and risk not getting to know the amazing environment we have, would you choose to be a member with an alt char. But that is up to you.

E - We will NOT aid you with Power Levelling your characters when a member in our guilds. As said before; We expect you to have a high level of maturity and thus also be able to take responsibility of your own game play. Sometimes others of us can aid you and sometimes they can't. It is as simple as that. The mature player realise that everyone has a desire to do their own things and achieve new things in the game, therefore one can never expect of higher levelled people to come and aid you as soon as you call for it. As we get to know each other, we will become good friends and have a lot of fun together. That will result in people wanting to aid each other and that is the normal ways of things. As said; Maturity and responsibility for your own online time is needed.

F - Role Playing Activity - As you have all understood by now, the CircleGuardians make guilds that embrace and inherit quality role playing combined with a desire for a great gaming experience. People whom enjoys experiencing the game In Character and whom are friendly iRL and wants to enjoy themselves together with us. Sometimes people wondr how often we are to role play when being part of CircleGuardians guilds. My answer to this is always and never. In the CircleGuardians we will never demand from you that you should stand in Bree Town, holding epic speeches a certain amount of time. We do not believe in controlling peoples gaming time. Everyone here has a payed subscription and shall of course use the time they are online to what they want. (I do however once more point to bullet point: "C" and state its importance. It has to be in everyones interest and are you a member of a CircleGuardian guild, then you should be interested.) We expect all that become members of our guilds to respect this toward anyone. Angry faces, cause someone does not want to casual RP with you at some given time will be looked upon as immature and a very negative and whining attitude. And that we do not want among our guilds. Once again - respect and accept that everyone will use the time they have the way they want. However; Since our guilds only allow members whom adore role playing and has a very high level of role playing skills, we will expect from you to bring your role playing with you wherever you are. We expect you to -never- break the IC-rules of the server and we expect you to be good role players wherever you are. Whether you want to casual RP in some city, quest or make instances, is not something the leaders of CircleGuardian made guilds will ever interfer into. We do however say to all you whom are interested in joining the community of the CircleGuardians; Given the fact that we only allow those that adore role playing, The CircleGuardians will provide you with a fantastic platform for experiencing some quality role playing while you enjoy various MMO's. You can not expect anyone of us to serve you food on a silver plate. It is equally much up to yourself to use this tremendous platform of RP-skill and friendly people that our guilds consist of.

[edit] Additional Info

For the full description of our guild and community, download this document: [2] (same as under Guild Story)

To contact us, seek out either Zhiro or Hathor in Age of Conan - Aquilonia server.

Alternatively, you can send an application here: [3], while the above mentioned method would be prefered.