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Another way to get started with roleplaying
In last Sunday's All the World's a Stage column, we talked about one way to get started with roleplaying, using mainly a character description made of two simple words that highlight the essential qualities of your character, without too much concern for background and details just yet. The idea here is that you can start with a basic character idea, and fill in the details later on as you get involved with other roleplayers.Over at WoWBlues, however, Nairuil has a different way of getting started. She has a list of questions for you to answer that are designed to help you think of your character's background, as well as give you some helpful tips for what sorts of backgrounds would be inappropriate for WoW (such as the cliche "vampire" idea), all before you actually get started roleplaying in game.Which approach do you find more useful to you personally, and why?
All the World's a Stage: Getting started with roleplaying
All the World's a Stage is brought to you by David Bowers every Sunday evening, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.For a long time now I've wanted to write an introductory guide on how to get started as a roleplayer. After all, roleplaying is something a lot of people would like to try, but really don't know how to begin. The problem with getting started is that various misconceived assumptions may sometimes block us from trying and dampen our enthusiasm. In the particular case of roleplaying, these mistaken assumptions might be along the lines of: "Roleplaying is lying to people about who you are," and "roleplaying is something weird people do," and "roleplaying is a waste of time for noobs." To the contrary, we have seen in previous articles that roleplaying is actually an exploration of who you are, a way to understand and connect with other people, and, in fact, a variant on things perfectly normal people do all the time anyway. So now -- where to actually begin? Certainly there is no perfect way to begin as a roleplayer, so today I'll outline three basic steps, which you can try and see if they work for you. I would be particularly interested in feedback from people who try out this method as first time roleplayers: if you do try it and have a great time, please come back and tell us about it; or if you try and something doesn't work, come back and tell us what went wrong. It's been a long time since I was a beginning roleplayer, and though I'll do my best to plot a path into this hobby, I only got to be a beginner once! Perhaps other beginning roleplayers will also share their experiences below, and you can see which path suits you best.
All the World's a Stage: Oh the drama! -- When to "/ignore"
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, published on Sunday evenings, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.We've talked before about roleplaying as an art form, whether you think about it as acting or puppeteering, fiction or improv, there's definitely something creative going on here. But like any art form, roleplaying is best when it means something; that's to say, when it expresses something ultimately "true" about human experience, and perhaps even illumines the minds and hearts of the roleplayers in some way.Roleplayers all want to achieve that creativity, of course, but one problem often stands in our way: it's a rare work of art that really works for everyone. That's why the regular old art world is such a complete mess -- one man's fingerpainting is another man's post-modernist masterpiece. People constantly disagree about what subjects make for acceptable art, whether some art pushes extremes too far and becomes obscenity, and whether real art actually requires talent and skill. One person may curl up with their favorite Jane Austen novel and read it for the 10th time, while another may come home from the comic book store with the epic adventures of the Bone cousins. Each story conveys very different things to the reader -- but then the people who want to read these stories are looking for different things to get out them as well. Each form of storytelling speaks its own language for its own special audience.We have the same problem in roleplaying. To illustrate, imagine there's a teenage boy going through public school and not getting along with his peers very well. When he roleplays, he plays an intimidating character who likes to try to get in your face, pick a fight with you and insult you to show how very powerful he is. That power fantasy may be very annoying for you and me, but for him it really means something. That's not to say it's high-quality art by any means, but nonetheless, his feelings are important too, and he has his right to play a character on an RP server the same way we all do. It's just that for us, the "/ignore" command starts to look really tempting every time his sort comes along.
Roleplaying is like puppeteering
Jim Moreno writes quite a bit about roleplaying. For a long time he kept his own blog about the subject, and now he writes a special column about roleplaying for WoW WarCry, which precedes and in many ways inspired WoW Insider's own roleplaying column, All the World's a Stage. Jim's latest article struck me with an excellent point: roleplaying has often been compared to acting -- by myself no less -- when in fact it is closer to the art of puppeteering. He cites Jim Henson and Frank Oz as two of the best roleplayers ever, even though neither of them is known to have actually played roleplaying games. Both of them, however, used alternate physical bodies -- their puppets -- to tell stories and convey their characters to their audience, whereas regular actors would have used their own bodies and faces to portray their characters, no matter how different they are from one another. The example from Jim's article that stands out most in my mind is that of Yoda telling Luke, "There is no try, there is only do," conveying so clearly who this person Yoda is, what he stands for, what he talks, moves and looks like without ever giving a hint that the whole thing is just a "puppet with Frank Oz's hand sticking up his butt."Roleplaying, Jim says, is just the same. Instead of acting with our own bodies, we use the digital avatars that Blizzard has designed for us: we customize our characters with different abilities and appearances, but more than that, we give them actions and words that distinguish them as believable people, just like puppeteers do. A superb roleplayer can do what Frank Oz and Jim Henson did, only on a smaller scale; he can convey a sense of true depth, a human story, using a virtual puppet made of ones and zeros rather than cloth and plastics.This is just another example of how "roleplaying" is just a new form of the same basic creative endeavors that have been around for millennia. Someone who gets "freaked out" by roleplaying might as well get freaked out by Miss Piggy and the Cookie Monster, because roleplaying is basically just an adaptation of the puppeteering concept in a modern technological environment.
All the World's a Stage: And your life is a mine rich in gems
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, now published on Sundays, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.For some, the whole process takes 5 minutes. They log in, click on "create new character," choose a race, a class, painstakingly compare each and every face and hairstyle, type in a name, click "accept," and they're done. Some take their time by paying a visit to the forums of each class, or asking their friends about which race is best -- but who sits down and makes up a story idea, a personality, and actual characteristics for characters these days?Roleplayers do, of course. But how? What if you'd like to try out roleplaying but you just don't know where to begin creating an actual character, rather than just an avatar for yourself in the game? Each roleplayer tends to have his or her own way, but there are are a number of things they have in common. One of the first things to remember about designing your character concept, is to make your character essentially human, relatable, based on real experiences that you know about.Mine your life. Think of what kinds of experiences you are familiar with, and which of them could be used as the foundation for another person's life, a new character with a story to tell, and a personality to engage other people's interest. Today, I'll give you a couple examples of how I tried to do this, and explain some of the pitfalls people often fall into when trying to make up an interesting character.
All the World's a Stage: It's not just about sexy butts
All the World's a Stage is a weekly column by David Bowers, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.Roleplaying the opposite sex happens. It is alluring to some, and repulsive to others -- a lot of people do it, while a lot of other people very openly proclaim (as if they know these things) that anyone who does this weird, manipulative, deceitful, and so on.People also tend to come up with various excuses for why they play a character of the opposite sex, as if they need to justify themselves according to their own gender's traditional expectations. Some men say, "if I'm going to have to stare at a characters butt for hours while I play, I'd rather it be a hot and sexy butt," while some women say, "I get all kinds of unwanted attention if I play a girl, and the only way I can get away from it is to play a boy." All that may be true in some cases, but it's hardly the whole story behind opposite-gender roleplaying.First of all, let me just say it here and now: you have every right to create whatever character you want, particularly in an actual roleplaying environment, and particularly if you intend to be faithful to the character you're creating.
All the World's a Stage: And all the orcs and humans merely players
All the World's a Stage is a new weekly column by David Bowers, investigating the explorative performance art of roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.As you know, WoW is a work of art, and roleplaying is probably the most creative aspect of the WoW experience. There are many reasons why people roleplay, and also many challenges to roleplayers, not the least of which is fitting in with all the other players who may not get why in the world you spend your time this way.To put it most simply, as roleplayers, we view our WoW experience as a creative one. We want to make each other laugh and smile and share stories about our characters. By doing this, we not only have a good time, we get that sense of inspired expression that any artist loves, whether a comics illustrator or a knitting addict. Roleplayers aren't so different from other players -- we want to do quests, dungeons, raids, and fight other players just like everyone else, but we want to do it all in a creative, story-based way.As Shakespeare has so famously put it,All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players:They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,
WoW is a Work of Art, part 3: All the world's a stage
We have discussed ways in which World of Warcraft is not only full of audio-visual art, but presents in itself a gaming experience that can reward players the same way that art forms like music or film can. For some, however, WoW is not only a game, but a stage. For them, the gaming element may sometimes fade into the background, when it becomes only a means to an end; they use WoW as a combination of acting and creative writing, telling stories and making performances all their own. They call it roleplaying. One kind of roleplaying that is getting a great deal of new attention these days is "machinima." For those who don't know, machinima is basically a kind of film in which people use the game's existing 3D models and environments to make their own movies, and then share these movies with everyone on the internet (or very rarely on TV). As we have seen here at WoW Insider and elsewhere, these movies are especially powerful as comedies and music videos, especially for viewers who are already familiar with the game that they're made with. But for most people who roleplay, it is not a scripted performance, but an improvised one; it is not carefully lip-synced, edited recorded and for all to see, but imagined, written out, and remembered only among those who played the parts. Someone not familiar with roleplaying might wonder why people bother with it.
Roleplay go splat
I played on Thorium Brotherhood – a roleplaying server - when I first came to World of Warcraft. I'd enjoyed playing on roleplaying servers in the past in other games and thought I'd continue in that tradition. What I quickly discovered on Thorium Brotherhood was that roleplaying there was barely clinging to life. The chat channels were filled with questions like "What is roleplaying?" and "What is different on this server?" I could never deduce whether they were sincere questions or whether they were simply meant to antagonize the roleplayers. I ran a "light RP" guild for several months before throwing in the towel out of frustration with guild members who wouldn't roleplay. Then I did a one-eighty towards the other extreme and joined a "heavy RP" guild and just about lost my mind. I love roleplayers to death, and to an extent I consider myself to be one, but some of the folks in that guild frightened me. We'd spend more time sitting around a fire telling stories to each other than we'd spend playing the game and if anybody got up out-of-turn during story time to kill a flagged player who passed by, there was a severe tongue-lashing in store. It felt like kindergarten all over again. All I wanted was a "happy medium" but I never found it, so I emptied my bank, vendored everything, and presented a large handful of gold to my best friend on the server and left the realm. Nova Barlow over at Escapist Magazine writes about how World of Warcraft killed her inner actor. Nova speaks fondly of roleplaying characters she has played in the past, but concludes that the place to find roleplaying these days is not in any online game including World of Warcraft. Do you agree?
Get your news RP style at Azeroth World News
If you are into roleplaying and World of Warcraft lore, Azeroth World News may be just the place for you. It's a relatively new fan fiction site where news stories are written in-character.For example, under the Culture heading you can find an article about the history of Duskwood which ends in a request for heroes to help them in their time of need. Another article describes how to get a chicken pet in Westfall, also completely in character. The only OOC content they currently have on the site is something that may make a lot of you not want to support them. Azeroth World News has a classified section where players offer up their characters for sale or trade. I, for one, am very disappointed by this section of the site. They also have full column sized gold ads (among other advertising). Unfortunately, I have tried repeatedly to contact the people who run the site for more information but they have not yet answered any of my queries.If you are ok with the existence of the anti-ToS transactions on Azeroth World News, it is a pretty site with some entertaining reading. I can see using it as a way to get some RP inspiration for zones you are about to quest in. Or you could use it as a way to immerse yourself in Azerothian lore during a quick break at work.
Shifting Perspectives: If you were a druid, what would your life be like?
Druids have some of the best lore in the Warcraft universe. Unlike any other class, this lore is often a binding area of common ground between Alliance and Horde druids, and many druids say that they will help each other regardless of their faction. Certainly this is partly because the Cenarion Circle is the official druid organization in which both tauren and night elves work together peacefully, but also this has to do with the spirit of loving nature -- a sense we bring from our real life experience that nature requires her champions to put aside other differences in order to keep the balance. Many of us who play druids in the game share a genuine concern for the environment of the earth, and the symbols used for druids in the game have a real meaning to us. I'm a roleplayer, so learning background information about druid lore and visualizing what my character's life might have been life is useful to me. But for any player, whether you roleplay or not, it can help you get a more immersive feeling out of your game if you can really imagine yourself in your character's skin,... or fur, as the case may be. So, if you were a druid in Azeroth, what would your life be like? The one certainty would be that a strong connection to nature would have been your primary concern from a very young age, whether as a night elf or as a tauren, but your path to becoming a druid would have been very different depending on which race you were, with great changes coming to you and your people in the very recent past.
Breakfast Topic: What if WoW were more interactively social and lifelike?
Yesterday we talked about all those things we that strike us as unrealistic or odd in World of Warcraft. Your discussion of these different things got me thinking: what if Blizzard decided to make the game more interactively social? After all, players have often said that they want guild and player housing -- why stop there? Why have a house if you couldn't have more interactivity with your friends' characters, such as cooking various meals together, talking, hugging, playing music, or even playing a Warcraft version of chess or something -- all with new animations that looked right? Honestly, the way things look in WoW now, social interaction mostly involves standing there, repeating the same "talk" animation over and over as you chat. Imagine if there were a great deal more variety in what your characters could do together, just like -- and bear with me on this -- certain elements of The Sims. Some of you hate The Sims with a passion, and I respect that. And to be clear, I'm not really talking about making WoW into a "people simulator" like The Sims is. You and I both would play The Sims if we wanted to simulate people -- we play WoW for adventure! No, I'm talking about adding some optional elements to WoW, similar to roleplaying, which would add a sense of life and actual living to the game and don't get the way of your killing things at the same time, so that it doesn't feel like killing computer-generated mobs is all there is.If you do support adding more non-combative, socializing elements to the game, what sort of elements do you think would work? Mini-games such as WoW Chess, perhaps? Additional interactive animations, such as hugging, handshaking or even kissing? Perhaps even the ability to pick up objects and move them to a different location, such as moving chairs about or kicking a ball around? Would you even go to the extreme of including things like toilets, basic hunger and thirst needs, or other elements that we have in real life? Where would you draw the line where the similarity to real life should stop?
Hostage crisis: Orgimmar
On the Ravenholdt (US) realm mayhem is afoot. A member of the Alliance guild Colossus posted on the realm forums that they have taken the Orgimmar Wind Rider Master hostage. "We have your Flight Master for ransom," the ominous message reads, "There is a Mining Pick up for 100 gold on the neutral Auction House. Buy it and Doras will be freed." Although this has been done before, it still is a novel way to bring role play into the world of Azeroth. I am always fascinated with what players can do within the framework of the game.Can no one help poor Doras? Until something is done, all transportation for the Horde has come to a screeching halt. Please, for the love of Thrall, do something! Do we expect retaliation, or will the Horde give in and buy that blasted mining pick? Oh the humanity!
Roleplay IRL style
Eyonix has posted another mention of Blizzard's partnership with Renaissance Entertainment Productions on the forums. It seems that World of Warcraft and the almighty Renaissance Pleasure Faire are tied together now, at least in the spirit of common commerce. I grew up going to the Southern faire as those on this coast call it, and although it's been years since I've been able to attend, I cherish my memories of those times as the start of my geekhood. I can honestly credit my creative writing degree to the 30 second Hamlet. Now these experiences can be yours, and for a pretty hefty discount. Huzzah for the coupons! World of Warcraft players will get 20% off tickets. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if it were only in Southern California, but Renaissance Entertainment Productions hosts several faires around the country including Wisconsin and New York, and WoW players will be able to use the coupons at each of them. These are also the best faires in the country, folks, so if you get the chance you shouldn't pass up a really good time. Imagine, whole 10-man raids on the steak-on-a-stake vendor! Orcs and night elves everywhere! The opportunities for cosplay are endless. It's enough to make me want to break out my bodice and recorder and head on south. Look for the Southern faire between now and May 20th, and check the website for dates on the other faires across the US. [via WoW forums]
To RP or not to RP...
I have always found RP-ing to be something of an alien concept to me. I do have a low-level rogue on an RP-PVP server that I occasionally attempt to play, but I'm never quite sure how to respond to other players who attempt to RP with me. I suppose I just don't approach the task with the right mind-set. However, these hilarious RP posts by Gnomish mage Whiffle amuse me to no end -- and strongly encourage me to give RP another try. While every entry on the site amuses, I have to say my favorite is about Fizzlelicious, Whiffle's Nightsaber-to-be...."Be gone, little Gnome, you know you have yet to gain the full favor of the Night Elves before I can give you the training you need.""Jartsem, ol' buddy, ol' pal, ol' long ears. Come on. I know a few Night Elf Maidens looking for a good time. Know what I mean? How about I arrange things for you."He smiled at me and for a second there I thought I had it."Whiffle, you have come here every week. Since you were in your 10th season. I know of your passion for Moonring.""Fizzlelicious""Until she is yours, she is Moonring. I will keep her for you, but you must earn the right.""Alright, I understand. You sure you don't want the Night Elf Maidens? One of them can turn into a bear, you know ... if you're into that type of thing.""Whiffle!"[Via Gitr's WoW Blog]
