Roleplaying: Defining Good or Bad RP
Roleplaying: Defining Good or Bad RP
Original Post: You just don't know it yet.
Quite an accusation, let me explain what I mean:
I am defining Roleplaying to be playing your SB character in a way that is consistent with how the character would act were the fantasy a reality.
Historically this has been rare in online RPGs because your character's fictitious interests do not coincide with your real interests. In EQ a given player may be interested in accumulating a big pile of gold, while his fictitious character is interested in escaping from the troll shadowknight and his dozen friends who just came into sight. Without any real threat from the trolls (no PvP), your character's interests are immaterial to your success or failure in your gold gathering quest, and roleplaying becomes an extra, nonessential task.
But what if those trolls could attack you? Will they? The answer in UO was "Yes", because they have nothing to loose and much to gain. Again, roleplaying is not required, for the same reason. This time the PKs can accumulate their pile of gold, and while their fictitious characters may worry about punishment for their actions, the players know that their actions will have few or no consequences.
And what of your companions, the characters whom you group with in order to have a better chance of defeating things while out adventuring? A roleplayer might pretend caution when meeting new people, after all they might be acting friendly in order to get you away from the guards where they can rob you blind and kill you. But in most online games, this is not possible. If you have nothing to fear from your allies, then you need not act in the manner in which your fictitious personality would act.
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All of the above problems have been addressed by Shadowbane (check the FAQ and Features, or ask if you don't know the specifics.) The result (if it is implemented correctly) will be to cause players to act in the manner in which their characters would act. IMO this is roleplaying. If people want to pick nits over speech patterns (thee and thou vs. 3l1te sP33k) that is their prerogative, but I think the way one talks is of minor concern compared to the way one acts.
By- Werdna
Answer: I don't want to get into what roleplaying is or isn't - that's a topic all gamers are still puzzling over. Defining GOOD roleplaying is even harder - to borrow a phrase from a good pal of mine, many of the "I know what roleplay REALLY is" discussions I've read all boil down to "my fu is mightier than your fu" repeated over and over ad infinitum. I'm not posting to weigh in on that debate.
But, as the developer of the lore and backstory and one of the architects of the meta-plot, I can give you a little perspective on SB and roleplaying, or lack of roleplaying, or roleplaying by not roleplaying, or whatever.
When Warden first brought me onto the project a long time ago, one of the first things he did was explain to me, in exacting detail, how people tend to behave (or not behave, as the case may be) in the other MMOG's out there. Part of my job has always been to try to craft a world background where this kind of player behavior is accepted, commonplace, and not at all extraordinary.
Ever wonder why so many races carry a grudge against EVERY other race? Why so many factions want to kill EVERYBODY else? Why the post Turning world is so messed up?
Basically, I tried to craft a place where at any moment, people journeying through the wild could be attacked by a wide variety of people who roam around Killing Everything They See (and then, of course, taking their stuff). If your play style falls into that mode, there are close to a dozen race/class/factional archetypes in SB that fit you like a glove.
It doesn't really matter to me if, in the end, the players doing the marauding know or care WHY the lore set their race or class up to act that way - the mere doing of it is enough to reinforce the story. Those who read, follow, and try to advance the lore will have rewards of their own skewed at them, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. There are mechanics in place to encourage some races and classes to group together, and that's enough: the power gamers will do it for the extra bonus (no matter how small), the lore readers will do it to follow the feel of the world, and the people who want to play the way they want to play or else still can - they're not missing out on that much of a bonus, after all.
Even wierd ARAC combinations can be justified, up to a certain point. Crises can make strange bedfellows - the US, paragon of freedom and democracy, worked in military alliance for more than half a decade with the greatest totalitarian mass murderer in human history, all in the name of toppling the second greatest totalitarian mass murderer. Odd, that. Imagine what a true apocalypse can bring to the mix.
In feel, Aerynth as I imagine it owes as much, if not more, to the Road Warrior than it does to Lord of the Rings. Imagine... tight-knit groups of people building settlements and trying to make a better world, while all around them the marauders try to pull it all (and each other) down.
As J. once noted, we built a broken world to accomodate the actions of broken people. Griefers? I like to think of them as Marauders. And as somebody pointed out earlier, random PKing after dark was a big problem on the streets of Rome, even at the height of the Empire. As for the whole carebear vs PK argument, I'm not sure that roleplay necessarily invalidates PvP or combat (other than the fact that good 'acting' might slow you down for all the typing). There was a lot of roleplaying going on in Conan the Barbarian. A lot more in Excalibur and Braveheart.
I'm hoping SB will be a game where if you invest any effort at all, no matter how small, in roleplaying, the world will give you rewards - tangible or intangible. If you don't, that's cool - the patterns of behavior you're likely going to indulge in hopefully won't contradict the lore to the point where the theme gets lost.
