roleplaying-drama
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Storyboard: Community sites and what they can do
No MMO, to date, has a system to facilitate roleplayers interacting with one another outside of actual roleplaying. There are hubs you can haunt, there are things you can do, and there are addons in the games that support them, but at the end of the day, all you can do is throw your hat into the ring and hope against hope that no one is going to look at you strangely. Odds are good that you don't really want that experience outside of a high school dance and quite possibly not even then. So you need a way to know that you're getting in good with the roleplayers. In short, you need a community. I've been thinking of late about what community sites should be doing and what they actually can do. It's a point of contention because fostering a solid community relies strongly on having a central point of congregation, but trying to build a single community for an entire game's roleplayers is exceptionally difficult.
Storyboard: Ten tips to avoid drama burnout, part one
Roleplaying doesn't create drama. Sure, we all hear stories about roleplaying drama, but it'd be more fair to say that MMOs create drama. There are epic arguments that erupt over who gets a piece of armor that will be obsolete in a few months, it's not really reserved to having players sitting around and talking. The difference, of course, is that the lower the stakes, the higher the drama and the more petty politics can get. It's the sort of thing where petty politics can get so bad people step away forever, because the fun of roleplaying is just not worth the irritation. Needless to say, you don't want that. If you enjoy roleplaying, you want to keep it as unspoiled as possible for as long as possible. So for this week's column, I'm going to cover the first half of ten tips that I find help ensure that you don't wind up getting knee-deep in drama that ruins the roleplaying. It won't always prevent drama from occurring, but it can help make sure it's nothing more than a mild misunderstanding.
