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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.
Breakfast Topic: Where the roleplayers at?
After writing last week about getting started with roleplaying, it became clear that a number of people want to try roleplaying, but are having trouble finding the actual roleplayers, even on RP servers. Some players have even said that "RP is dead!" Those who still don't think RP is dead often complain that it's certainly not as alive as it used to be. You might even say that RP is undead in some places, which is a wholly unspeakable extreme.So today I'd like to ask you, where does the rumor mill tell you to find the best place to roleplay? Does your server rock the house with roleplayers everywhere you look? Have you heard your friend's girlfriend talk about how one time she overheard of her cousin's roommate's elder step-sister's 7-11 store clerk say where the RP really gets immersive? Or do you think it's not a matter of servers at all? Do you have to just team up with the best RP guilds around? If so, how do you find these guilds? Server forums?I have in mind that I'll go check out some RP servers to research this topic for myself as well. I'm pretty sure my home server (Scarlet Crusade) isn't the best. There, it seems a lot of the old roleplayers went off to do other things, or got involved in other activities and got too busy to roleplay. In any case, with your help and some additional research, perhaps we can come up with practical suggestions for how to track them roleplayers down and actually play the roles!
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.
