Now If you’ve ever been 13 years old, there’s a chance that you bought Garry’s Mod at some point. As we all know, Garry’s Mod is a game with many other games scattered inside of it. Ranging from surviving, role playing, prop hunting and so on. The Role-playing scene is by far the biggest in the game, and contains an abundance of communities within them. For the past few week’s I’ve immersed myself in the world of Star Wars Role-playing. Taking place during the Clone wars I became a part of a community known as Multiverse gaming. This article will take you into the life of what it is like, and i’ll try to understand what keeps people doing these things for years.
Training
A lot of room on this chair.
The first thing that happens when you join an RP server is training. A more experienced player from the server comes and takes you through all of the rules in a personal experience. As well as the rules you learn basic military formations and the rankings of the clone army. It all feels very immersive and I felt like a kid going through all these formations with a higher-up. After the training was complete I was given permission to join the clone troopers, a support regiment on the ship. The first thing I did was head over to the barracks to meet all the other troops, and well it didn’t take long for us all to know each other. I started to pick up on these people and their personalities, only a good 2 out of the 9 people there used a mic to speak to each other.
The one’s that used a mic, cared about their position on this server and were in for the long haul. They already had weeks of play time and had plenty of other experience from other servers. I was sure to monitor these people to see how far they progressed and how quickly. The main guy I noticed around the place was someone called Pawniac, he liked to be online and had a real knowledge for the military. I’d spent an hour or so just sat in a room talking to him to find out what he knew, boy he had a lot of information about hierarchy and formations.
Events
The Server likes to hop around to a different map to simulate the travel.
Ultimately I didn’t spend a lot of time as a CT and went off to see what else I could become. After visiting around a few places I eventually became a Jedi. However I didn’t get long to learn about the role, as I was very quickly thrust into an event. An Event is a server wide battle that the admins have put together behind the scenes. At this point in time, an officer had been taken hostage in a research lab containing aliens. When we got there all the regiments were assigned to certain places, the Jedi however all get assigned to tag along with different groups. I was to stay on the surface with Grand Master Yoda, the head honcho.
It didn’t take me very long to use a lightsaber and start fighting shit. Using force powers, we were able to fly around the place within seconds of seeing a hostile. While all this was going on 50 other guys were yelling down the comms, weather it was requesting orders or updating the fleet. These events are always fun to watch, and they are sure to immerse you for at least a good hour or so. Depending on which regiment you’ve found yourself in, you’ll be able to conduct a range of tasks including breaching or assaulting.
Life in Space
Now that’s a big room.
Unfortunately due to everyone being a little bit silly, the hostage died! We all headed back to the ship for a debriefing and as a Jedi I got to stand right at the front. This is where you see how hardcore these role-playing servers are. The fleet addresses everyone as a whole, handing out promotions and discussing the chain of command. It’s as if I was an alien peering into this world through a set of goggles. I couldn’t help but sit back and be both impressed and lost for words. It’s not every day you get to tell your family that you’re an officer on a virtual ship. I like to imagine what it took for these people to get here. After speaking to some people personally it took months just to be promoted one rank.
Going around the ship it’s easy to learn that each regiment is like a smaller community which hates everyone else. They all have discords and spreadsheets keeping track of every detail. It’s like In secondary school where you have all of the different social groups. You have an overall understanding of the nerd group, but within those nerds there’s like 8 different squads who chat shit about each other. Being a Jedi seems to have an overall middle ground as you’re there to worry about the Jedi and no one else. When you’re in a regiment it’s easy to get annoyed at the Green Company across the hall.
What I Think
A serious council meeting where our performance is addressed.
It’s easy to see the appeal in a fully fledged Star Wars universe with role-playing. To virtually climb the chain of command without cheats and pure determination is something to be admired. While it is also easy to judge the people devoting their week days to Star Wars you have to admit they’re happy where they are. I personally couldn’t be as active as I think the others on there expect people to be. However it seems with the school holidays well underway, there will be an increase in population.
If this is something you are just casually interested in then I’d recommend trying to be a Clone Trooper. You’ll get to know a tight community and begin to see what makes these servers so interesting. If you stick with it you might make long term friends and learn a few memes you’ve only heard about before. The place I went to was Multiverse Gaming and they have a few servers to try out. I hope you’ve gained an insight into this crazy world of role-playing.