Roleplaying

[Lusipher]

Found this on the NWN2 boards.Elithil Handir posted it and Its a very good read about roleplaying. Take a look and discuss:

Roleplaying.

You’ve heard the word a million times, and you’ve your own idea of what it really is. Almost everyone has tried it, and dare I say, most of us have even found it to be disappointing, or we’re not simply caring anymore since we’ve gotten used to something inferior. The reasons for this are many, but in the end it goes down to the simple question, “where is the fun?”.

You’re probably familiar with this, getting bored. Some of us remedy that by reading through tons of pages on “what to do when I don’t hunt?”, start new interesting characters in a neverending loop of new characters, do odd things like trying to recite that elven love poem noone has ever heard in hopes of getting some attention (or just standing around in the starting city) from DM’s, and finally, the players, to no avail. It just doesn’t help, eventually, you are back again, being bored, and you realise it isn’t helping, it just isn’t enough.

Some of us read through the D&D books, be they Drizzt Do’urden or the 3.5 ed. Rulebook, and perhaps some of you begin to wonder. Why is it, that these books have so much life in them, so much potential, when my NWN2 server haven’t? How come the characters speak so well, have such bonds with allies and enemies alike, and my multiplayer character hasn’t? Where are my characters stories, where are my deeds, where is my part in society?

People scoff at this with a multitude of explanations. A very common mistake dare I say, is to blame it on the frame we set for our world, when it is a multiplayer world in a game. There has to be limits, they say. You can’t get everything, they say. A computer game isn’t, and can’t be, anything like the books or the pen and paper variant, they say. But who are they to judge?

I claim it is very possible. It is possible to play interesting characters that others want to know more about, even if you’re not especially good at roleplaying. It’s possible to have so much fun, that you completely forget about getting that next lvl. It’s even possible to have this every single time you login. So why aren’t we?

We all have, or had, that romantic understanding of what roleplaying is, but we’re just not reaching it, settling for something that is lesser. No thrill, no meaning, and we once again, get bored.

The following is my viewpoint, on how to find the fun in roleplaying, something no guide out there talk about. There are many pitfalls, and not enough truths. I think we’re doing it completely the wrong way, and I’m going to show you how.


Character creation:

This is a simple step in the NWN2 world, and most of the so called guides out here on the net, describe this part, and this part only. You’re encouraged to select proper names, have a background (sometimes extensive!), learn more about the races to “fit in”, pick classes that suits your playstyle and the roleplay you had in mind. Further, perhaps you read through other guides describing the correct behaviour of a certain alignment, what deity to represent, how to roleplay your high or low Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. You might even get tips on how to use certain skills.

Now, these things have a little credit to them, but more often than not, you’re believed to think these are major, sometimes critical aspects of your roleplay. They’re not. Let me elaborate.

You start a new character. You come up with an amazing background of how your character became an orphan by an orc raid, how you travelled the lands, found the light of Torm, and now just want to do some good in this world. You decide upon class, feats, skills, stats. Everything is perfect, you just can’t wait to throw this character into the world, it’s very exciting!

You encounter other players. You soon notice that while you’ve an exceptionally interesting character, noone is really interested in you. There is the “hunting of the creatures that look different than us and possibly are evil” to attend to, finding decent equipment, and gaining levels. Because without levels, you believe you can’t really roleplay your character correctly, isn’t that so? And in this, you really struggle on how to really get people to understand the background you’ve so carefully made up, how to explain, get the chance to tell them all about it, and make it last in their minds. And you fail. You fail hard. Next to noone cares, and if they do, chances are you rarely meet them again.

And there’s more; a few detailed guides out there will tell you that you should plan your future. Know what you’re about to become, how to strive for that, even create goals. This, is the first mistake in roleplaying. You know the concept already, and we’ve all met that character that was a humble fighter in the beginning, who barely dared to speak, and now, suddenly, he takes that 7th weaponmaster lvl. He becomes awesome. He is truly a master, where he weren’t before. It may even be that now, with this last lvl, he starts to PvP, or fight dragons, where he never ever even considered doing so just a lvl ago.

The rules of roleplaying:

So why is it a mistake then?

Consider your real life. You’ve goals and plans, and they’re healthy to have. But, there is nothing in this world that says that when you turn 20, you enter the university. When you turn 25, you get your first wellpaid job. At age 30, you marry. 31, children. 69, retirement. Simply put, you don’t have your future planned out exactly. Then why, should your character? Why, should he suddenly become brave and bold when he reaches that critical lvl in your build?

Do you see the resemblance? Goals are good to have for a start, but they’re not critical. More often than not, they shouldn’t even be anything but a starting point for your character. Think about that. Your background is a cool thing to have, but it is not important. Why is that my background, my build, my alignment etc., have so little meaning?

To answer that, will take us on to the the most shocking fact of all when it comes to roleplaying:

YOU’RE NOT IMPORTANT!!!

You heard it, picture that in roleplaying. The reason for this are, as said above, that a character, like you, has nothing in his life fixed. He starts out as something, but from there, he can go in every direction, and you know, most probably he should go in a new direction. Many want to become firefighters when they’re young, and few of us do. Characters have the same dreams, and yet again, very few of them *should* make it the way it was planned.Goals change. You begin to develop new fears. Motivations and ambitions change with experience, in a way that you cannot possibly expect them too.

Further more is that YOU, the reader, are a very small percentage of the world population on earth, and so is your character in a multiplayer environment. You’re not a hero. You’re not famous. You’re, frankly put, noone. You’re not important in any way. If my character isn’t important, then, what is?

EVERYONE ELSE!!!

Everyone else is important. But NOT you. Remember that. And why are they important?

Because they, are the actual roleplaying. If you think about it, the best roleplayers are those that interact. The best roleplay is about interacting. It is like your real life. If you only care about yourself, noone will care about you. If you care about others, others will care for you.

This is important, as we do it wrong today. NWN2 players and their characters, only think about themselves, we’re selfish and we’ve this mentality that “I’m going to play for my own fun, not for others!”, without realising that playing for others fun, will make your playtime a whole lot more enjoying, entertaining and lasting than anything you could ever do by yourself. So what should we do then?

Learn from other players. Get to know their stories, and tell yours when asked. Show interest in them. Share their views, goals and thoughts. Inspire them, evolve their stories, become a part. But most of all, LEARN from them.

Let other characters shape who your character will turn out to be. Change. These people change you, for your character consciously or not, gets changed. Actions change you. Environments, socially as well as places, change you. Certain fights change you.

Have your moral agenda, have your starting point, but let the world around you change who your character will be, and not you as a player. This is so critical, that I’ll repeat it. Let the world around you change who your character will be, and NOT you as a player.

One of the very best things to make a world come alive, is to talk about characters, even when they’re not there. Spreading rumours, talking about deeds, discussing. It sets a roleplaying frame for these characters, and few people truly understand how fantastic such an action really is, and how much it actually gives the world, without barely an effort. On that matter and more, here’s a quote from a great NWN2 roleplayer that sums it up:

“Playing a villain can be different, but in the end you can still praise your enemies in some way shape or form. Respect the villain, and the villain will respect the hero. When that happens, something amazing will occur. Both players will realize there is no difference. You cant go into this being thick headed and self centered. Once people realize there is no difference between your character and the other, something great will happen. Another characters beliefs are just as important as yours, if not even more important than yours. Another characters story line IS more important than yours. Attempt to make yourself a part of his/her story line instead of watching 20 different characters with 20 different story lines. Try having 5 different story lines, put your 2 cents in it, allow the other player to put his 2 cents in it. You will find yourself in an amazing story line that the entire role play world is a part of. Your name will be remembered when you are considerate, you will be praised for your maturity. You will realize how awesome it is to roleplay, it will be like watching your favorite movie that you can actually be a part of.”

3 Common pitfalls:

Many of us do several things “wrong” in a multiplayer roleplaying experience, too many to really be listed. But here are the top 3 candidates that you just should avoid at all costs, in order to truly find that fun in roleplaying, for you, and for others:

1.) Bad praise. As you read above, it’s truly an easy, and amazing thing to talk about other characters while they’re not present. However, a common sin is to talk about *your own alternative characters*. I’ll go as far as to say that this is the absolutely worst thing you can do. It has nothing to do with roleplaying, and if you’re desperate for attention, don’t turn it on yourself. Praise others, and others will praise you. It really is that simple.

2.) Not roleplaying roleplaying. A strange phrase, but this really means to roleplay only when it suits you. This is very common among evil characters. You’ve meet the stereotype before. That player that had no qualms about entering PvP when they knew they would win, and at the same time, cried out to be left alone when they where going to loose, qualify neatly into this description. Try to be consistent in your roleplay, no matter who you run into or what your characters lvl or the other characters is.

3.) Metagaming. This basically means applying Out Of Character (OOC) information to In Character (IC) information. That is, letting your character know things he don’t know, but you as a player know. This is ruining the immersion of roleplay, but I dare say that this is the absolute most common pitfall of them all.. How many of us haven’t hit the examine button on another character, in trying to reveal the threat they pose? How many of us don’t threat lowlvl characters different than highlvl characters? Forget about the nonsense of “but they look more experienced!”, that is simply not true. Nor is it true that your character should behave any different when they’re a lvl1 or a lvl30. Arrogance doesn’t grow with levels.

Player Vs. Player

NWN2 is fastpaced. Fights happen quickly, there is barely room for conversation, manouvering or even tactics (despite some people’s claims). In these times, it is very easy to forget about the character in the midst of combat. Was that critical hit fatal? Is my character afraid of large smoking fireballs coming down my way? Can I fight poisioned or fatigued?

The point I’m trying to bring out, is that PvP is not considerate of roleplaying, these are two separate things. Need it be so? No, not at all. While some, pehaps even everyone, from time to time enjoy raw PvP where you fight to maximum effectiveness, one can also find fun in nondangerous PvP. There is a need for thinking in combat however, to make it fun. Let me elaborate.

First and most importantly, it depends on the character not doing things ingame-effectively. Take a break between the duelling, and spar up a heated conversation once in a while. Cast unusual spells, like poison or bestow curse, and if you’re hit, act upon it. Fall down. Act wounded once in a while. Even yield in circumstances you OOC know you could win, but IC don’t know.

A fighter could knock down a mage, and the fight could really be over by that. Or the mage could cast a hold person spell, succeeding and defeating the fighter. No need to cast a ton of IGMS afterwards or cut all the HP down, or for the fighter to leap upon the wizard once he breaks free. He lost, yields, and takes the consequences. Realises his folly, mistakes, etc.etc.
This in itself, gives great roleplay opportunities for grudges, respect, geas, curses and could even start a potential alliance or the rise of a nemesis, whatever you can imagine.

Such PvP depends of the maturity and roleplay of both parts, an ability to trust each other to be accurate and reasonable, playing to the weaknesses that most people forget that they have in an online game when fireballs are flung here and there like it was something normal.

Playing weaknesses

Every character should have a weakness, or even, every character should have many weaknesses. Or even better, every character should have one MAJOR weakness. It can be anything you can come up with, and some of you have even read whole lists of weaknesses. The problem is though, what to do with your weaknesses? Simply having them isn’t going to do you much, you should live the part, no matter what level you are.

In fact, higher level characters more often than not have more weaknesses than lowlvl characters. For the low lvl ones, it’s simply the fear of the unknown, uncertainty and whatever you can come up with, but for higher level ones, they’ve experienced a whole lot. They’ve lost friends to vile creatures, seen the horrors of the world and the aftereffects of certain actions and behaviours to truly know what to respect. They even have enemies they highly respect and fear, NPCs or Players alike.

This is usually not the case in the multiplayer world today however. Noone has weaknesses. Especially the high level ones, with the argument: “I can beat everything, what should I fear?”

That is often not the case though. Such a character can even be described to have the weakness: arrogance. But is it roleplayed? Do they go and challenge that dragon that they *know* mechanicwise that they will get slaughtered by? No, they never do, because they apply their OOC knowledge and arrogance onto the character, a thing we should avoid to make things more fun, interesting and beliavable.

Weaknesses are used for just that, to make people interesting and beliavable, which in turn creates fun for everyone. Weaknesses relates to stories, to events, things that everyone wants to hear, but also to strengths. Without weakness, then what is the strength? A character without weaknesses, is a dull character that few find it fun to interact with.

Fear is also a healthy thing to have, and to respect. You don't have to start with many weaknesses, perhaps just a sound wish to stay alive. But as said before, you should evolve more weaknesses as you progress, to further your own, and other’s roleplaying.

The Conclusion

So how do we find the fun in roleplaying?

Relax. You don’t need to roleplay all the time, don’t advocate pressure on yourself.

Immerse yourself. Live out the character, bit by bit, through others. Learn from them, and let them, events and the environment shape your character to who he/she is to become, and enjoy the journey. It can, and will, end up somewhere you couldn’t believe before as long as you let the reins loose.

Think. Consider and reconsider your companions, their stories, the events and consider your own character in relation to everything else. What roads can I take, what will I take? Have the travels of my character made him/her realise she needs to change paths, because noone feel like me, and for good reason? Or have I found something that strengthens my resolve and my reasoning?

Find some pillars in your characters life. People that mean something. The closest and most courageous allies. The most hated, feared and respected foes. Environments, perhaps even cities, that mean something special to my character, even to the point that he/she would die defending it?

All in all; Evolve. Relax, think and watch. And most importantly, enjoy the show, and the journey.

[hollyfant]

Wise words indeed; I cannot but concur.

[Burt]

I disagree with the anti-PKing part.

[Mayhem]

Sounds like my own mantra.

The primary focus of your efforts should be to entertain* the other players**. If everyone plays in that fashion, then in the average party of 4 plus DM you will get back 4x the entertainment that you put in.

*Other players includes the DM
**Entertainment is not limited to comedy)

[HATEFACE]

awesome find.