roleplay
Latest
Storyboard: Making a challenging character
You don't build muscle by lifting weights that don't challenge you. Once a given set of weights doesn't challenge you any longer, you need to move on to something heavier or you're going to stop getting stronger. It's a pretty simple principle: Challenging yourself makes you stronger all around. So long as you play the same roleplaying character, you're not going to improve as a roleplayer. For some people, this is fine. Roleplaying is something you do, you're happy playing one sort of character, and that's what you do. But for others the point is being able to shift into different characters, to come up with something new and exciting and then wind up with more interesting stories to experience. You want to get better, to make even your more familiar characters feel different. That's why you give yourself challenges. And when done right, challenging characters can force you to grow in new ways and make for a better roleplaying experience for everyone.
Storyboard: That was a poor decision
Having a new kitten in the house is sort of like watching a slideshow of poor choices. My kitten knows, for example, that the older cat of the house doesn't want to wrestle all the time because she's made this clear in the past. And he knows that right now she's not happy to see him, as evidenced by the fact that she moved somewhere else when he entered the room. Despite all of that information, he still runs right up to her and pounces on her, then acts completely shocked when she smacks him to the ground and hisses with anger -- as if this outcome was not only unexpected but somehow cruel. I've talked before about the importance of making bad decisions with a character, but it's hard to gain the necessary immersion in a character's mind to make decisions that are meant to be believable while still missing the forest for the trees. So instead of offering positive advice, I want to give advice on how to make dumb and short-sighted choices that will later explode in your character's face due to poor reasoning. Think of them as reverse life-hacks.
Flameseeker Chronicles: A Guild Wars 2 anniversary wish list
Guild Wars 2 is doing very well. Even setting aside ArenaNet's announcement last week that the game is officially the fastest-selling MMO ever, GW2 has enough players who are dedicated to it and spending money on it to justify a content patch every two weeks, and the development team is showing no signs of slowing down. It's a success story in an unforgiving industry where successes are few and far between; while many other studios are restructuring and redefining their games -- or even shutting games down altogether -- GW2 is holding steady a year after launch. Happy birthday, GW2! I love this game. If I didn't, I'd be nuts to devote time to writing a weekly column about it, let alone play it almost every day. Even though I had nothing to do with its creation, I'm proud of it in a way, and I'm happy for the people who made it because they deserve success. Based on what's been talked about, I feel pretty good about what's coming up in the second half of the year. There are a few lingering nitpicks I have, though, that run the risk of becoming so entrenched that they hang out on the back of the priority list for years -- and they're at the top of my wish list for things I'd like to see before GW2's two-year anniversary rolls around.
Storyboard: Getting to know you (hopefully)
In real life, I'm not what you'd call a social butterfly. More of a social weevil, or a social stick insect, or a social whatever arthropod it is that hides and avoids talking to people. The point is that I'm not really grand at parties. This cannot be who I am in roleplaying terms, and not just because it's not roleplaying in the strictest sense but because a roleplaying character who never roleplays isn't. Some of my characters are incredibly gregarious, some are more insular, but all of them need to find some way to interact with others or the entire system falls apart. Some of you reading this have never had a problem walking up and introducing yourself to someone you've never met before, which is great. You might even be able to stop reading now. For the rest of us, the question remains: How do you strike up conversations with new people for roleplaying?
The Daily Grind: How do you define roleplaying?
Like many of you, I've gone through so many stages of roleplaying; I started out as most people do, playing an idealized version of myself in Ultima Online. In EverQuest, I found myself funneling my roleplay into fan fiction and formal events because there was so little time between dungeon camps and raiding to actually step into a role. Star Wars Galaxies was my turning point; I finally became truly immersed and willing to play full-time as characters totally different from me, and that's partly because the game encouraged non-combat roles and activities. I never had to fight the game to be a real person in that world. And yet in the years since SWG's heyday, MMOs have pushed me away from formal roleplaying once again with mechanics and frustrations and contradictory goals. At best, my roleplaying now takes the form of respect for other roleplayers, in not breaking character where it might be annoying, and in selecting gear and names and planning backstory more than in participating in whatever epic plot my server's RPers are weaving. It still feels like roleplaying in my head. But is it? Without stepping too far into Storyboard territory, we're wondering today how you define roleplaying. Would you consider each stage of a roleplayer's evolution equally valid, or does it only "count" when you're actively participating? How do you express your RP in modern MMOs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR Czerka dailies, the F2P experiment, and sitting in chairs
Commenters and followers of my work have asked about multiple things over the last couple of weeks. When are you going to finish the free-to-play experiment? Are you going to do a monetary breakdown of the new Star Wars: The Old Republic daily zone? What do you think about the sitting-in-chairs news revealed at the cantina tour? The unfortunate bit about all of those questions is that the answers are far too short to make up their own article and far too long to answer on Twitter. So I've decided to answer all of these questions in one hodgepodge of an article that I'm calling nuna nuggets.
Storyboard: Brother from the same mother
An awful lot of characters seem to be only-children. In some countries this is pretty normal, but it's certainly not normal where I'm living. Pretty much all of my friends and contemporaries have at least one sibling. So it seems a bit odd that your roleplaying characters don't have any fellow family members to talk to. The realistic reason, of course, is that most of us don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about those siblings. And in some cases it's entirely reasonable to say that your character might not know her several half-siblings. But in the interests of verisimilitude, it's worth thinking about this, even if you never want siblings to become a major focus of roleplaying. You can come at this topic from two angles. You can talk about how to handle siblings, or you can talk about the impact of siblings. For this column, I'm going to focus on the former. What are the options for including your character's siblings?
Flameseeker Chronicles: Crashing Guild Wars 2's anniversary bash
ArenaNet's latest release for Guild Wars 2, the Queen's Jubilee, takes place in the human capital city of Divinity's Reach. Not everyone is as giddy about this as I am. Humans are boring. Do we really need another festival-based event? Where's the real lore? However, Divinity's Reach is a hotspot for plot-based drama and intrigue, and setting an event there does more than just encourage players to return to the city for the sake of livening it up: it also sets the stage for ArenaNet to (hopefully) revisit some of the plot elements introduced at the launch of the game. The update will have gone live by the time this article is published, but chances are we won't know every bit of the story right away, so I'm going to take this opportunity to recap some of the pieces on the chess board which could make this event important to more than just humanity. This will necessarily include massive spoilers for the plot of GW2.
Storyboard: Prophetic
Not every game is well suited to prophecies. Star Trek Online doesn't lend itself to vague pronouncements regarding the future, for example. Other games, such as The Secret World, seem to sustain themselves almost entirely upon prophetic vagueness, whether that's regarding mystical secrets or your bank statement for the month. And in a world filled with prophecy, it's tempting to have characters start joining in on the fun and prognosticate the future themselves. It works in books, movies, and games, after all. Of course, the thing is that a book, movie, or game is written before the fact. You can easily write a prophecy that lines up perfectly with something far down the road because you know what happens far down the road. Roleplaying, on the other hand, is not happening with a script, which means that your guesses about the future feel less like prophecy and more like someone randomly stabbing in the dark and hoping to hit something. (So more like actual prognostication.) So how do you make prophecies that don't fall apart when life happens? Here are some tips, naturally.
Tamriel Infinium: The Elder Scrolls Online's rationale for roleplay
After reading the roleplay-oriented AMA that released Monday on the official Elder Scrolls Online website, I resigned myself to the fact that I'm never again going to get to play an MMO with chat bubbles. I will miss you, my lovely communicative vesicle. I shall remember fondly the times you allowed me to easily distinguish between those who spoke right next to me and those who sat halfway across a tavern. Apparently, you are now a dated device that no longer holds importance to designers looking to make a game that revolves around player-to-player communication... I know that chat bubbles are not the only important device in the roleplayer arsenal of storytelling tools, but that doesn't mean that I don't find the irony humorous. And I am extraordinarily happy that developers took the time to answer some very important roleplay-related questions. As someone who happens to be very interested in the ability to roleplay effectively, I'd like to take a few moments to discuss the answers the developers gave. And surprisingly the discussion we had last week about the ESO community-building tools fits in quite well with the theme on the whole.
Storyboard: Are we still having fun?
Roleplaying events, like any other sort of roleplaying, require a bit of give and take. The person organizing the event puts in a lot of work coming up with a plan and being ready to adapt to changing circumstances, sometimes to great effect and sometimes to... less great effect. But it's not all down to the organizer. If you're actively participating in the event, you have a certain level of obligation, just like you have an obligation to actively participate in a tabletop game. Nobody likes the guy who isn't paying attention and groans with exhausted relief when you finally get to the part that he was waiting for. Organizers are supposed to make sure that the road to the fireworks factory is neat, but what can you do as a participant to make sure that your interest stays up, even during the parts that drag before you get to the fireworks factory? As you've probably, guessed, I have several suggestions.
Storyboard: Happening before it's even happened, part 2
Two weeks ago I wrote a column on the ups and downs of planning RP developments before they take place. I ended on the note that it's very important to decide exactly how much to plan ahead, but then I ended the column before actually offering any guidance on how to determine how much to plan ahead. Instead, I promised to talk about that... in two weeks. In television, this is what is known as a cliffhanger. It gets you back in time to watch the next episode, you see. Like so many other elements of roleplaying, there are no hard and fast rules about when something is or isn't a good idea, but there are certainly guidelines. So let's look at some questions to ask yourself before you plot out your roleplaying ahead of time, simple inquiries that should let you know whether this is worth planning ahead for or not.
Storyboard: Grieving in character
Grief is not the same as being sad. Being sad is something I've discussed before, and it's a temporary emotional state. Grief is a filter, something that colors your whole perception and pushes you into a holding pattern of regret and sorrow. Real grief colors even things you do that make you happy so that even as you're smiling and laughing there's a pall over what you do. It's the way you feel when you lose a parent. Or a lover. Or a nation. Or almost anything profoundly important that you can lose, that you weren't ready to lose, that you don't know how to exist without. The point is that it's a very important human emotion, one that is going to come up in roleplaying. But it's also a problematic one because you have to convey what is in large part an internal sensation externally. So how do you get the sense of grief across without just making your character into a constant font of moping?
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR mid-term report card
It's history lesson time. In 1996, Dr. Richard Bartle, who earned his PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex, wrote a paper analyzing the different types of gamers who play massively multiplayer games. At the time, these games mostly consisted of MUDs (a genre Bartle helped create), but there were certainly enough data from Bartle's study that could be ported over to MMORPGs, which is exactly what Erwin Andreasen and Brandon Downey did in 1999 and 2000 when they created the Bartle Test. Since then, the Bartle Test, which breaks up online gamers into four general categories (achiever, explorer, killer, and socializer), has been used as a standard in discovering which online games players would enjoy most. Why bring this up? Well, we are about six months into the second year of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The first year was fraught with high expectations and slow delivery. Many failed attempts at greatness made the first year of SWTOR a bit of a downer. However, in this second year, in light of the ever-changing market of MMORPGs, the Star Wars MMO took steps to put itself on a better path. Using the Bartle Test as my litmus test, I will break down and grade this year's performance so far.
Storyboard: Happening before it's even happened
I've been doing something I almost never do as I prepare for the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV: I've been planning ahead. Let me rephrase. There's always some planning that goes on beforehand, usually between Ms. Lady and me. But that planning is generally a bit more abstract, a vague set of character goals. I'm not only going in with vague ideas of what will happen now; I'm going in with an answer to one of my main character's central problems as soon as the relaunch starts. It is the exact opposite of vague in every way, shape, and form. There's something to be said for knowing what path you're taking before you go in, but there are also some pretty major drawbacks. Today, I want to look at the idea of planning roleplaying events and interactions before the game has gone live, preparing for things that will happen before they actually can happen. It's a road fraught with perils, drawbacks, and disadvantages... and a few advantages despite all of that.
RP Inside the Kirin Tor: 'There are specialists for everything, I suppose'
Dalaran remains one of the shining jewels of Azeroth. Many players make their homes in this glittering city in the sky. Horde and Alliance players alike have traditionally enjoyed the hospitality of the historically neutral Kirin Tor, who were content to cloister themselves to focus on matters of magic and learning. But Jaina Proudmoore's politics have pulled the Kirin Tor into alignment with the Alliance. The peaceful face of Dalaran is no more. The Kirin Tor have ejected the Sunreavers from its ranks and the city itself, throwing them into the Violet Hold or killing them outright (though some managed to escaped to Silvermoon). Roleplaying behind this volatile facade is one of WoW's most unique concept guilds, Moon Guard's Magus Senate of Dalaran. Comprised almost entirely of mages and other magic users, the guild turns magic to reflect upon arcane politics and the fireworks of world battle.
Tamriel Infinium: Immersing yourself in The Elder Scrolls Online
Throughout my time as a gamer, I have seen game designers struggle with immersion because not everyone views immersion the same way and every designer wants his game to pull you in. The more you play one designer's game, the more likely you will buy his or her next game. In the case of MMOs, the greater the immersion, the greater chance you will spend more money on subscriptions or in the cash shop. Some gamers find first-person views with in-your-face action immersing; some, like me, find rich lore and a solid storyline immersing. The Elder Scrolls Online faces perhaps the hardest task. Not only does this game strive to immerse the already existing divisions between the RPG crowd, but it also has to contend with the different platforms on which it's releasing. Our commenters on this site are heavily divided on the console-vs.-PC subject. To top it off, some have already been turned off by Bethesda's shying away from calling the game an MMO. Today, I face head-on some of game's immersion pitfalls and tackle the divisive comments from last week's Tamriel Infinium.
Storyboard: Both sides of roleplaying
I don't mind disagreeing with someone, but I really like to know why because the why usually leads to more interesting conclusions. You won't be surprised to know that I spend a good portion of my time thinking about how the divide in roleplaying has happened. It's definitely there, and it often gets painted as a divide between newer and older players. There are people who point to Star Wars Galaxies as one of the greatest games for RP of all time, and there are those who look at it and just don't see what the big deal was. It's too much to come down purely to difference in taste. The idea has been rolling around in my head for a while, but a few discussions on the topic finally pushed me into the conclusion that what we're looking at is a split between ramblers and orienteers. We're treating two distinct hobbies as the same thing because they've got a lot of overlap, but despite what we think, that overlap is narrower than it seems at a glance.
Massively reminisces on Star Wars Galaxies' 10th anniversary
Has it really been 10 years? Yep, Star Wars Galaxies did indeed launch on June 26th, 2003. And yep, this is indeed an anniversary post for an MMORPG that closed down in December of 2011. Why the reminiscing about a game that we can't -- ahem -- play any longer? Simply put, SWG deserves it. If you're reading this article, you already know why it deserves it, so we'll skip the sandbox proselytizing and get right to the part where Massively's Starsider veterans raise a glass and share a few of their favorite launch-era memories.
Hyperspace Beacon: Why I roleplay in Star Wars: The Old Republic
"There is a diabolical twist to Star Wars fandom, you see, that defies comprehension and yet is the life-blood of all Star Wars fans. It is this: Star Wars fans hate Star Wars." That singular truth was originally penned in a JIVEmagazine essay titled The Complete and Terrifying Reality of Star Wars fandom. Unfortunately, the essay no longer exists on the internet. Don't click on the link; I just wanted to credit the original author. That link is quite dead. The essay goes on to explain that the true Star Wars fan does not actually like the core aspects of the franchise. From the stiff and forced script of the prequels to the whiny mouth of Luke Skywalker, a "true" Star Wars fan hates all of it. Even the cuddly Ewoks and comical Jar Jar Binks don't escape our nerdy wrath. I can't even pretend that I have all the answers, but I believe the same compulsion that drives Star Wars fans back to each and every movie and convention despite the primary principles that he or she finds wrong with the franchise is the same compulsion that drives a Star Wars: The Old Republic player back to the game. Just read some of my past Hyperspace Beacons; you don't have to step back far to find an article where I extensively berate the development decisions. Yet here I am still playing nearly every day since day one.
