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Breakfast Topic: Pick a title, any title
While doing my nightly pass through my RSS reader (even we bloggers read dozens of blogs per night, blogging is our lifeblood), I came across a fun little post from Aspect of the Hare. If you could give your character any title you wanted, what would it be?They don't mean picking from what's available via achievements or quests, but what would you make up to give yourself? I asked this question to the WoW Insider HQ before writing this up to see what the gang would want, and Michael Sacco was the first to chime in. His joke answer was 'Ancient Chinese Wizard' as a nod to Zhang Bao, a character made infamous by the Dynasty Warriors series. Being a Shaman, he's pretty good at the whole Thunderstorm spiel. His more serious answer was Stormcaller. That's a pretty good one, I think!
All the World's a Stage: 2008, year of the living roleplayer
So there I was, celebrating the New Year, when I realized just how long All the World's a Stage has been around. It's grown from an idea in the back of my head, to a pet project, into a full-fledged resource for roleplayers -- and it's still growing! Even after 68 weeks-worth of content, there's still so much to write about! It goes to show, if there's a topic you love, you should really write about it, because doing so makes you love it even more.Now, looking back on this year of writing, it strikes me that some things have changed, while other things have stayed the same. Some articles seem just important and relevant to today's concerns as they were when they were written, and many feel like they could use a bit of updating. Just about a year ago, for instance, All the World's a Stage took a look at "The past, present, and future of roleplaying," which addressed the popular conception at that time that "RP is dead." We don't hear that so much anymore, do we? It seems many of the roleplayers have gradually been shifting around since then, grouping up into small communities on their old servers, or else transferring to a very few realms with a good reputation for roleplaying. Recently, I just transferred over to a new server and was thrilled to see how many roleplayers were hanging around the streets of Dalaran. RP isn't dead at all -- it's just got itself together now instead of being scattered all over everywhere. Congealed, as it were.
All the World's a Stage: Descriptions done right
All the World's a Stage is a source for roleplaying ideas, commentary, and discussions. It is published every Sunday evening. Except for this week, when it is more like the early afternoon.Your usual AtWaS columnist, David Bowers, has found himself a tad busy this weekend. Due to this, I'll be nosing in on his territory for a day. Don't worry ladies and gentlemen, I'll take good care of you. Just yesterday we discussed a little about RP descriptions. That is, the physical descriptions you can give your character via addons such as FlagRSP2 or MyRoleplay. David seemed to think this was a pretty good topic, so we're going to go a little more in depth into the right and wrong way of writing these.Right and wrong in this case is naturally up to the individual, but in general there are some pretty solid guidelines you should keep in mind. The first and most obvious is that you should always proofread your writing. In general, roleplayers gravitate towards people with at least some grasp of the English language. A sloppily written description is the first thing someone will see, and it's going to set off alarms in the heads of other people.
RP descriptions and you
We've discussed RP descriptions in the past, both their usefulness as well as their potential hilarity. Our David Bowers has given an overview of two of the big description mods, so you have all you need to get started.Personally, I like to keep my descriptions short and sweet. Lengthy ones certainly have their place, I just prefer being brief. A short physical overview- height, build, hair, that sort of thing. Then I plug in a few baubles or unique pieces of clothing people may notice. A tabard, medals, jewelry, something that could spark a conversation. Things that someone might walk up and ask, "Where did you get that?"On my main, my human priestess, most of those things are pins on the collar of her robes that signify organizations she's involved with or support. For example: Her guild, the Argent Dawn, and the Aldor. All in all, her description is about a paragraph long to paint a picture of her and give some conversation inspiration.Now, here's my request for all of you. Show me your descriptions! Copy-paste them straight from FlagRSP or make one from scratch, it's up to you. Long or short, tame or ridiculous, I'm interested in them all. We might even learn a thing or two from those posted. A little style goes a long way.
Loving to hate RP descriptions
One of the things I sort of miss from my City of Heroes days is the ability to add a description to my character for everyone to see, and having the ability to read their origin stories, too. RP mods such as FlagRSP(now out-of-date) and ImmersionRP work to fill this void, but it isn't quite the same.Though most players have horrible, awful descriptions detailing nothing but their vampire fangs and heaving bosoms(even the men), they still supply entertainment when I have nothing better to do but stand around Stormwind using guild chat as glorified IRC. The addons that allow you to do this are nice, but they just aren't used by many people, even within the RP community. That's understandable, they don't really 'do' a lot. I don't see something like this ever being implemented in WoW's lifetime, but it would be nice to see, simply for the entertainment factor.Am I alone in this? Is it so wrong to want to read these things when I have nothing better to do, no matter how horrible most of them are? Does that Night Elf over there really have eight black feathered wings? Does she really?
All the World's a Stage: Wearing the right mask
One of the most common difficulties many roleplayers face is that of finding other people to roleplay with. To help overcome this challenge, All the World's a Stage presents a guide to finding roleplayers in three parts: "finding the right realm" for roleplaying, "joining the right circle" of roleplaying friends, and "wearing the right mask" to attract other roleplayers to you. Your face is the first thing people notice about you when you go out into the world. Quite rightly, most of us put a lot of effort into making our faces look clean, healthy, and happy much of the time. Some people even go so far as to think of their faces as masks which they can use to alternately hide or reveal their true feelings to the world as each situation requires.When you roleplay, your character is the mask you wear in a world where your real face doesn't matter at all - it defines who you are within this fantasy world and it determines how others will react to you as one of its denizens. Likewise, it deserves its proper amount of attention, like the care you give your outward appearance for your real life interactions. The method of caring for it is different of course, but the spirit and intention is the same.Roleplayers have certain conventions you can use to quickly identify yourself as one interested in interacting with them. But more important than these is your attitude: just as the way you stand, smile, or keep yourself clean are all more important than the actual look of your face in real life; so, in roleplaying, a humble manner, a friendly approach, and a confident integrity are all essentials, whereas things like race, class, funny quirks and accents are all merely supporting elements.
Blizzard needs to steal character customization Ideas from other MMORPGs
The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough. The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing." Now to be honest, I'm still a bigger fan of WoW, but that's a subject for a different article. One thing I will say for EQ2 is that I was very impressed with the wider range of options to customize your character and show off your character's accomplishments. There's a few ideas related to character customization from EQ2 and other games that I'd really like Blizzard to continue emulating in future patches and in the WoTLK expansion that I believe would deepen the game experience for me and my friends, and for many other players as well.
Addon Spotlight: FlagRSP2 and MyRolePlay
FlagRSP and its descendents have long been the de facto standard addons that most roleplayes use to "flag" themselves, letting other roleplayers know at a glance not only that they're interested in roleplaying, but also sharing character descriptions and basic information about what sort of roleplaying they prefer. The original FlagRSP is defunct, but the torch has been passed to two worthy (and superior) successors: FlagRSP2 and MyRolePlay. Both use the same methods to communicate with other roleplayers, so you need only choose one and you'll be able to share information with players who use the other (be careful not to use both at the same time, however). Both addons help a lot with the problem of roleplayers being hard to find.FlagRSP2 and MyRolePlay both give you a space to write things like your character's first or last names, a character title (such as "Priestess of the Dark" or "Wacky Troublemaker"), as well as some description about what your character looks like; and of course they both enable you to see the information other people have written about their characters too. Both have "roleplaying flags," which can tell other people whether you are a "casual" or "fulltime" roleplayer, as well as whether you are in or out of character at any given moment.FlagRSP2 has a cleaner, more intuitive interface, in my opinion, and it has nice little popup windows for character information which can appear whenever you mouseover or target someone. MyRolePlay only has a popup button which you must click on to see other characters' information, but it also has two separate spaces for physical descriptions and story backgrounds, which FlagRSP2 users sometimes mix up together. MyRolePlay also uses less computer resources on my system, and keeps things running a bit smoother. I often switch between the two since I can't really decide which is best.
