Storyboard: Making the most of the event
It's Tuesday night, and your guild has been hosting a roleplaying event that started back at 7 p.m. You've been here for two hours, and you can't shake the feeling that you're essentially watching every high school party ever unfold in front of you in-character. A slow and (to your opinion) half-hearted conversation is the only thing happening, and everyone else's character is just standing around waiting to have something involving happen. And in the back of your mind, you assume that everyone else must enjoy this sort of thing and that there's something wrong with you because you don't.
True story? Yes. Far too often, I've seen this happen -- and in my younger days of roleplaying, I would let it happen. And since I want to start talking more about events, it strikes me that one of the first things to talk about is how to improve your enjoyment of events from an attendee's standpoint. You didn't organize what's going on, and you didn't have a theme in mind, but you're here now and you are either going to spend the rest of the evening standing and not having fun... or you're going to enjoy yourself.
All you need to do is start making some noise.
With very few exceptions, most event organizers in MMOs aren't terribly concerned with making sure everyone gets something to do. (Partly because in extreme cases, that turns a roleplaying gathering into an Eigen plot, but that's neither here nor there. Curse me for linking TVTropes in the comments.) The problem is that when the event is being hosted by someone, there's a consensus that the polite thing to do is to let the event organizer decide what's happening and then not intrude on it.
But as someone who has organized events and watched others do the same, I can declare that you don't want to decide what's happening past the initial framework. You're throwing people together to give them a chance at character development and dynamic occurences. It's not just to window-dress your ego, at least not if the event you're hosting is any good. Being polite is worse than useless if you're actually taking away from the overall atmosphere because you don't want to speak.
As a whole, we roleplayers seem to be really good at reacting to things in-character. We don't seem to be quite so good at acting in character, at just doing something. That's poison to an event at which the whole goal is to enjoy yourself and throw a lot of people in the mix to play off one another.
To be fair, you do run the risk of looking like your character is trying to steal the spotlight. If everyone starts clamoring for attention, it's just as bad as if no one does. So you have to be flexible (there's that word again) and be willing to react instead of act, but if no one else is acting, you have to be ready to start bringing up thoughts, views, opinions, responses, anything that makes sense in context. You have to give other people something to react to.
Heck, it can even be pretty contextual. If you whip out a crafting table in the middle of an event, that's a statement of your character's priorities right there. "I don't care about your gathering; I care about getting work done." And that can provide great fuel for an argument, a discussion, or even just some discussion about the work you're so eager to get done. In short, it prompts action, and it draws people in at the same time.
So how do you do this without being a spotlight-stealing jerk? The first trick is to just get a sense for the flow of the conversation. People can take a little while to type sometimes, that's true, but usually it's not going to take someone more than two minutes to type a reply. If it's been two minutes and the room (campsite, airship, sandworm gut) has gone totally quiet, odds are everyone is waiting for someone else to pick up the ball -- or everyone else is bored and is tabbing away to see whether anything happens.
The second trick is to be provocative. Do something that seems unusual for the situation or just draws attention. If everyone is just idly standing around in a circle, head off into a corner. If everyone's isolated, walk up to someone and strike up a conversation. Small talk is usually easy; if all else fails, you can always just introduce yourself and ask whether the other character is having fun. Obviously it's easier to do that if your character is outgoing, but the point is that you have options to get something started.
Of course, sometimes you'll do something to provoke a reaction and no one will do anything. The best thing you can do as a player is be attentive, and when someone wanders off or mutters under his breath or starts shifting anxiously, you're there to ask what's going on. My character in Final Fantasy XIV is perfect for this, as Rhio has a nigh-terminal case of curiosity and will take almost any opportunity to indulge, so I can have her wander over and question someone who clearly does not want to be disturbed. Yes, there are in-character repercussions, but it makes the event that much more interesting for both participants and spectators.
Last but not least: Stop worrying about stealing the spotlight. Seriously, unless you're jumping in while the event organizer is speaking, there isn't a spotlight to be stolen in the first place. Boredom is the enemy here, and you have to fight it off by being a bit less of a wallflower.
Remember what I said in the first column about roleplaying rewards. It's all about making the time feel well spent. And if you're already in the thick of it, you have nothing to lose by speaking up except an evening of boredom.
Comments are welcome as always, either in the comments section below or via mail to eliot@massively.com. Thanks to everyone who dropped a comment or a mail about the anniversary column; it was very much appreciated. Next week, let's talk a bit more about the tricky issue of motivation, something that's frequently handed to the character whether or not it's wanted.
Every Friday, Eliot Lefebvre fills a column up with excellent advice on investing money, writing award-winning novels, and being elected to public office. Then he removes all of that, and you're left with Storyboard, which focuses on roleplaying in MMOs. It won't help you get elected, but it will help you pretend you did.
