Archive for the 'Roleplaying' Category
November 13th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
When a player starts a new character, the creative process sits somewhere on a spectrum between designing a fleshed-out background and creating a skeleton to ‘discover’ the character over time.
As an example, I preferred the latter for Joron, a character in Star Wars Galaxies. When I originally created him as a throwaway character to explore a new server, I decided I wanted a smuggler from Nar Shaddaa. In order to avoid the standard “my parents are dead” syndrome, I decided he was raised by a single mother who did a spectacularly poor job. Then I figured out why he was on Tatooine, and since I was much newer to RP then, I used the old new player tutorial where you got rescued by the Empire, ran around on their ship, and dumped in Eisley. Everything else developed naturally over time, whether via RP or cooperating with other folks looking for hooks for their own characters.
Conversely, with Kudon in EVE Online, I got very detailed. I started with the focus I wanted: a Minmatar combat pilot. From there, I looked at the background that fit him during the character creation, wrote a story or two that defined how he got his start, and directed his skills towards his concept. The process was far less organic and far more engineered. While I enjoyed the time I spent writing, planning, and fusing, he didn’t stick with me as much as a character that developed “on his own” over time.
Even if a player lets his character develop, usually he has some sort of concept in mind, be it nebulous or detailed. Sometimes that comes from some other famous character or person, or what seems to fit the class / profession that the player wants to use, or from the player himself.
Much like in writing, the overall process likely varies tremendously from player to player (and even from character to character). Sharing our approaches can lead to more interesting, deeper characters and greater immersion.
November 12th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
NB: As I was thinking about the upcoming Walking in Stations in EVE Online and what it can mean for roleplay, this story nearly wrote itself. I don’t believe that we can reflect this directly in the game, but this does represent the flavor I hope to see. Story continues after the break.
Casi felt like an insect high on boosters. All those facets of the eye… they had to be something like this. She’d already tapped into the surveillance camera drones slowly swarming around the joint. Not much security on them, certainly not for somebody who’d been doing this out in the deep. With their feeds all registered with her implant; she closed her eyes and let herself float in twelve places at once, watching the vaguely erotic holo-projections of sinuous shapes on the walls. Hovering wait-carts bobbed slightly in the air currents as the desperate looked for their last chance at companionship for the night, whether human or chemical.
Continue reading ‘Casiella: Running the Threads’
September 16th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Getting in the head of a character represents one of the most fascinating bits of roleplaying for me. This particularly occurs in my case when my character feels frustrated. Maybe he can’t accomplish some goal, like finding the object of a quest, or maybe he feels the dull ache of disappointment upon realizing that the world on which he lives turns out to be far less idealistic and far more dystopian than he’d realized.
I’m experiencing that at the moment with EVE Online. One of my characters, Kudon Astraisx, flies for the Minmatar Republic, a collection of tribes who won their freedom decades ago in a revolution against the nearby Amarr Empire and the slavery to which they’d been subjected. I’ve consistently played him as politically naive and too idealistic for the harsh environment in that game.
Now this situation has begun to cause even greater problems, as the government he serves starts to revert from a parliamentary republic to a tribal council. This has caused him to become disillusioned at a particularly difficult moment, as a state of (limited) war has broken out between the two nations, with the Amarr having recently regained substantial portions of the initial gains by Minmatar forces.
I feel his frustration. What does a soldier do in that situation? Normally he fights on, aware that defeat would lead to an even worse situation at home. Maybe after a time he returns to his homeland, having completed his tour. From there, all manner of options open up: political activism, quiet working life, mercenary work, government service, substance abuse and depression… The list doesn’t end. We can spin out archetypical templates ad nauseum.
But the characters in EVE don’t necessarily fit those archetypes so well. They’re transhumans, who don’t die except by sheer accident due to cloning and backups. The ability to fly ships via pods rather than a bridge crew makes them so much more effective than any other traditionally-commanded ship that they can strike out and do whatever they wish. As a sandbox game, players can pursue nearly any interest that grabs their attention.
So I’m not sure where he’ll end up; maybe I’ll focus on another of my characters, or maybe I’ll continue his story in unexpected ways. What I do know is that I love the sort of universe we have in EVE, where ideal choices just don’t exist and your character’s future can play out however you wish.
August 19th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Can somebody tell me what role-playing games have to do with the US presidential election? Apparently some Obama supporters have raised an issue about an event McCain claims occurred during his time in a Vietnamese prisoner camp, and the campaign responded:
It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.
I don’t get it. The Boing Boing post on this has lots of great comments; my favorite:
July 29th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
I have a passion for science fiction roleplay.
- I want a game that immerses me, both in flavor and mechanics.
- I want to be able to choose to play a character that interests me, live out his life in the game, and explore who he is.
- I want my space respected.
- I want to play with other people who feel like I do.
- I want a game whose developers respect me, the choices I’ve made in their game, and my play style.
- I want depth and complexity and chaos (most of the time).
- I want to blow crap up (most of the time).
- I want to have to stop and think and plan.
- I want to build and create.
- I want escapism.
What do you want?
July 13th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
I’ve had some really interesting discussions recently with a friend from SWG regarding MMORPG design. To be fair, we’ve had these discussions for a long time, but the recent conversations have really hit some hot buttons for me.
What is unique about SWG that causes so much angst among RPers? This is a MMORPG where roleplayers have developed alternate combat and Force systems, and constantly plot ways to simulate playing other races or create items that aren’t in the game. Given the huge amount of character customization and uniqueness of the player housing system, this seems oddly ironic. Hypotheses after the jump.
Continue reading ‘More on RP support in MMORPG design’
July 3rd, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Disclosure: I was the Roleplay Senator for Star Wars Galaxies for several months in early 2008 and stepped down for health reasons. Today, I still have an active SWG subscription but rarely play the game.
I’ve been mulling over the recent comments by the SWG lead designer, Blixtev.
“Too much time was spent on that “feedback” like 2543122 types of emotes/moods, chat bubbles with ice around them if you were in mood icy, etc. They should have been building quest tools and system backend work and the long term foundations of systems. I could go on about this for a long long time.”
After several people, including a friend of mine, vocally objected to the apparent derision for the RP community, he later clarified:
“Do I like emotes/moods? Yes. Do I think they had to be as elaborate as they were at launch at the cost of core game functionality? No.”
As part of the backdrop for this, the Events Manager (Jason “Pex” Ryan) recently left that position for another job within SOE. That job, which included running live events and playing canonical characters like Darth Vader and Wedge Antilles in player events, is not being back-filled in lieu of the Storyteller system which allows players to do some of those things themselves, though not play canon characters.
SWG is a great MMORPG and I’m not about to knock it. I spent nearly three years heavily immersed in that game and the community that surrounds it. One of the long-standing virtues of the game is that it “has great support for roleplay”. Largely, this is due to the character design system, the ability to decorate houses, cities, and ships, the highly customizable clothing and armor, the Entertainer profession, and a thousand tiny details in the worlds. SWG supports the flavor of RP very well.
But the game itself has moved away from being immersive. Character abilities have less and less in the way of in-character explanation, the timeline has not moved in the five years the game has been in production (Hoth is being implemented as an instance outside of the timeline), and don’t get me started about smuggling.
So we have flavor RP, but not mechanical RP. The game itself is not immersive; the world is. Those who really enjoy RP in the game essentially treat it as a themed Second Life; they may enjoy the game, but much of it is treated as being out-of-character (OOC). In a roleplay sense, it “never happened”.
EVE Online goes to the other extreme, as nearly every single game mechanic has an excellent IC explanation and there is considerable effort to track the storyline. This is easier in a “fresh” fictional universe like the New Eden cluster of EVE Online rather than the Galaxy Far Far Away of Star Wars Galaxies, of course. But EVE Online supports the mechanics of RP rather than the flavor. This is evident in the fact that avatars are unchanging portraits; for most game purposes, you are just a ship and a character sheet.
Game designers should keep in mind both sorts of RP support in the future. The games they create should make sense and reward suspension of disbelief, not stretching it too far. At the same time, they can include lots of systems like emotes, appearance, and more so that players can take advantage of them. While only a small minority of players consider themselves “hardcore RPers”, many many more enjoy the immersion to lesser degrees. They’re all worthy of consideration and support, not derision.
March 19th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
There are 10 kinds of roleplayers: those that understand binary, and those that don’t. (Geek joke alert!)
Well, I do believe there are two types of roleplayers, and I’m going to do my best to describe them here.
Group one, what I’ve called “immersioners” (or Motoko calls “rolegamers”
, focuses on playing the game itself and immersing themselves in it. These are the folks that try to take game mechanics as IC as possible. A “rolegamer” enjoys the underlying game and his RP revolves around that. That doesn’t mean taking EVERYTHING at face value, or every character since the NGE was rescued by Han Solo and Chewbacca. He’d barely have a moment for making time with Leia. For this group, game mechanics are the primary definition of the limits of their characters’ abilities.
Group two, what Motoko calls “worldplayers” (I never had a good name for them) focus on enjoying the world that’s been built on top of the game. Things like PvP, grinding, and gear are of little to no interest to this group. A “worldplayer” isn’t really interested in the game, but in using the environment for something close to freeform RP. The only limit on character abilities is “common sense”, which may vary wildly from group to group or even player to player, but certainly allows for much more variety than what SWG directly allows.
Obviously, this isn’t entirely cut and dry. There are folks that enjoy the game but keep it fairly separate from their RP, though I’d classify her somewhat in the second group because her gameplaying isn’t IC. There are folks that can indulge in the freeform RP from time to time, but prefer to play the game ICly. It’s a spectrum, not two discrete bins.
My personal belief is that most of the drama that infests RP communities (like /emote versus /duel or the proper role of Force users and powers) stems from not understanding on which side of the line another player is standing. As Motoko said over on the Starsider Galaxy community forum:
Worldplayers need to have as many people as possible around them to get to that critical mass where freeform roleplay starts happening or you end up with nothing happening. The more the marrier, to the point that they want to continually include the Rolegamers.
Rolegamers minimum player level is far far below that, and the addition of Worldplayers to their playerbase adds a much smaller amount of “fun” for them than vice versa.
Worldplayers need Rolegamers, but Rolegamers don’t need Worldplayers.
Regardless of which end of the spectrum you personally prefer, it’s important to realize that other players may have a different view. That doesn’t make one side right or wrong or even that you can’t play with someone with a different perspective, but recognizing and tolerating that difference is important to avoid OOC conflict and even expand your own notions a little.
(based on my post There are 10 kinds of roleplayers… on SSG and many thoughtful replies from other SS RPers)
March 19th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
Based on the Huttese dictionary at The Complete Wermo’s Guide, I created two sets of online flash cards for those wishing to learn Huttese.
Please let me know of any mistakes, corrections, or additions I should make.
Huttese-Basic
Basic-Huttese
March 19th, 2008 by Kyle Maxwell
First, some links (obviously not all are from official sources, but they’re well-referenced and I haven’t found any problems):
Star Wars Databank: Ithorians
SWG Wiki: Ithorians
Wookieepedia: Ithorians
Wookieepedia: Ithor
Wookieepedia: Mother Jungle
Law of Life
In my roleplay, physical mannerisms are always very important. Some mannerisms will be common to a species, or at least a culture. These are some I’d invented for my character; other players are welcome to use them, expand on them, or ignore and laugh at them, as they wish.
- Blinks slowly and stands still when nervous or afraid
- Extends trunk slightly to display interest and curiosity
- Speaks in “reverse Polish notation” (more or less Yoda-style)
- Sways his trunk in extreme emotional distress (e.g. grief)
- Prays in Ithorese to Mother Jungle
- Moves trunk up and down when happy or satisfied
Posts
Now, I don’t play D&D. My RPG choices are solidly science fiction and I avoid anything related to the fantasy genre. Regardless, this seems like an odd way to respond, criticizing a group that has nothing to do with anything remotely relevant to the issues at hand nor, really, anyone else. It’s like if the Obama campaign complained about all the ‘pro-McCain model railroaders’.
reposted from my personal blog