Player teams are the heart of online gaming communities. Their role in RV is a crucial one. Below you will find an explanation of the current plans for the facts and features of player teams in Roma Victor. We will refer to teams of RV players as 'guilds' in order to help explain the guild system itself. The specifics may well change over the course of development and you could have your own say in how things are developed simply by contributing to the Guilds Forum.

Every guild must at some point be formed (registered with RedBedlam) by a single player character. The following process explains roughly how a guild is formed by a character and therefore helps to explain how guilds function within the game.

Guild Classes

There are three classes of guild available: Mercantile, Military and Religious.

Firstly you choose which class your guild will belong to. Combined with this, your character class at the point of guild creation determines what type your guild will be as outlined by the table below:

	Mercantile	Military	Religious
Roman non-Citizen characters	House	Auxiliary	Cult
Free/Barbarian class characters	Tribe	Warband	Cult
Citzen class characters*	Patrician House	Legion	Imperial Cult

Guild Attributes

Every guild has a home and this will be decided by your character's location when you create the guild. Then, either pick the name from the drop-down list of suggested names (based on your home) or make up your own. The only exception to this rule is for Legions, which will be assigned a Roman numeral before the unique name of their choosing i.e. "XII Felix".

As an example, if you set up a Barbarian Military guild in Southeast Caledonia (Scotland), one of the name suggestions would be 'Pict'. That guild would then be known as the 'Pict Warband' and no other guild could then be known as the 'Pict Warband' - it would be unique. Note that there could be a 'Pict Warband', a 'Pict Tribe' and a 'Pict Cult' in simultaneous existence - although they have the same guild name, they fill different class slots. Also note that there can be multiple guilds from the same home so long as the name/class slot combination is unique.

Then, you must choose your guild's specialisation.

For Mercantile guilds, this will be a selection of any non-combat root skill (e.g. smithing). A modest (and invisible) bonus will then apply to all the members of that guild for that root skill and all of its sub-skills.
For Military guilds, this will be a selection from any combat root skill (e.g. Sword). Similarly a modest (and invisible) bonus will then apply to all the members of that guild for that particular root combat skill and its sub-skills.
For Religious guilds, this will be the selection of a deity. This might affect the abilities of the guild's members to call upon their chosen deity.

Although each type of guild has its own preset (and relatively historically authentic) rank system containing fixed ranks to maintain the varying levels of trust and authority within the guild, there are also special positions. Special positions are provided purely for the sake of guild management and no game system effects apply - it's just a title.

Lastly you may enter some Notes about the guild. This could be your rules, your charter or anything you like.

Of all of these choices, Special positions and Notes are the only details you can change about your guild after it has been created.

As well as the various advantages for players in guilds covered above there are more, some of which are outlined below:

NPC Management Bonus

There are additional functions provided for guilds to hire, manage and deploy NPC's (Non-Player Characters). These NPC's can be assigned to guard player characters or buildings.

Communication Bonus

As well as the standard methods of communication (see the FAQ, Q36) guild-members can instantly communicate messages to all guild-mates that are online and anywhere in the same geographical region.

Whenever a character in a guild is killed, any other close-by characters within that guild will automatically and instantly notify all online guild-members that the character has died. This applies both to player characters and NPC's hired by the guild. For this reason it is always advantageous to have guild-members travel in groups of at least two.

Whenever a character on a guild's Wanted List is killed by one of that guild's members, all of the guild's online members are automatically and instantly notified.

Although not historically authentic, these are essential features of a community-focussed game world and can be used to offset the restrictions imposed by players' real life commitments - such as sleep.

Wanted List

Any player character that kills a member of your guild (including NPC's hired by your guild) will be placed upon your guild's Wanted List. NPC's hired by your guild will be extremely aggressive towards characters on its Wanted List. Also characters on your guild's Wanted List will be highlighted as such when inspected by player members of your guild. Characters remain on your Wanted List until killed by one of your guild or manually removed by someone belonging to one of the top two ranks within that guild.

Note that players can be placed on their own guild's Wanted List and if they are killed by a member of their own guild, their killer does not then become wanted.

The Battle Management Bonus (Legions only)

In order to reflect the organisational advantage of the Roman military machine relative to their contemporary opponents, Roman Military guilds ("Legions") have a unique advantage - apart from their often superior equipment.

Before you understand this advantage, it would help to fully understand the RV Battle system and how Generals, Commanders, Soldiers and Skirmishers work.

Basically any character within a Legion belonging to at least the top three ranks will be able to assign battle types quickly, from a single perspective and even remotely (before any of the characters can be visually targeted). They can create an 'army', become its 'General' and select characters from members of their guild and set them up as Commanders and Soldiers - all from one simple form. 'Armies' only exist for a limited amount of time before the arrangement expires.

Imperial Responsibility (Legions only)

This crucial balancing factor to the power of Legions is a direct link with RedBedlam. Legions are subject to the orders of the Emperor, which is a player character controlled and directed by RedBedlam.

Under normal circumstances any Legion's hired NPC's, rented accommodation and other maintenance fees are heavily subsidised by the Emperor.

In most cases, it is unlikely that the Emperor will issue orders to any Legion, however the Emperor may, within the context of the game, from time to time offer missions (epic quests), which Legions may apply for. A Legion's leadership may also apply for actions of their own undertaking and indeed before any large-scale actions, such an application may be necessary to reduce the chances of an Imperial penalty.

This route of game-world storyline management will be a co-operative partnership between RedBedlam and the players of Roma Victor.

All it actually means is that RedBedlam reserves the right to apply in-game restrictions and penalties to player-run Roman Military guilds in the spirit of creative co-operation. Note that Imperial Responsibility does not apply to any other type of player guild, however all guilds should be wary of the power of the Legions.

Alliances and Imperial Unity

The leadership of Non-Roman guilds can form alliances with other guilds. According to the terms of the alliance, which can be changed, features like those following may come into effect: Wanted Lists can be shared; Hired NPC's become more friendly towards members of allied guilds; members belonging to the top two ranks of any allied guild can instantly communicate anywhere in the same geographical area etc.

All Roman guilds are considered allied and therefore these features are permanently available. There will always be at least one permanent Roman guild - currently it is the "House of Commodus", which will have some presence throughout all the Roman-controlled areas of Roma Victor.

If you're on the Roman Wanted List every character in a Roman guild throughout RV will effectively be granted a license to kill yours on sight. Note that someone can only be taken off the Roman Wanted List by being killed by a character in a Roman guild.