Roleplaying: What Roleplaying is or isn't
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Meridian on Roleplaying - April 24th, 2001
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Hey gang!
As is evident from Mr. Ransom's thread, the release of the Articles of Faith seem to have caused some discussion, or at least some controversy.
This can only be a good thing.
Ransom implies that we at WP will draw some "line in the sand" to define what good RP and bad are. He also wonders about the existence of some document that will rigidly set down what each and every FCs attitudes will be.
I hate to disappoint you, but we won't. As regards the FCs, in the end, they'll have opinions. Like everybody else.
It's a mistake to think of the Articles of Faith as hard coded rules. They're not. They're a set of words, written by a Human who started a Church. Some have been jazzed by his message, and have taken the granted powers of Templars and Confessors as evidence that he was "right" or "correct." Others, less jazzed, have come up with other interpretations. (I would refer you to Furr's thread nearby).
In the end, the Articles of Faith are just that: Articles. And in the end, only Faith can tell you how to live or not live by them. How many ways are there to interpret the Ten Commandments? How many of them does our Government bend or break on a regular basis? How many wars have been fought between opposing societies who BOTH believed that God told Moses "Thou Shalt Not Kill?"
So, Ransom. Yes. If an Elf were able to convince a group of Confessors of his "righteousness," they could easily follow him. We just want to say that not every Confessor will think so.
Gurgler - whether or not your guild and national policies follow the trends dictated by the fiction, the Guilds and Nations WILL exist in the World. It's not hard to think of reasons why enemies might work together. It's also not hard to believe that even clergy can be hypocrites. Even if the Guilds or Nations don't bother to, everyone else will interact with them, and come up with their own interpretations of their behavior.
Your characters aren't machines: they're people. They'll have opinions, agendas. Disagreements. That's what they're for. Make your own interpretations of the Articles. Go tell them from the Mountain. Find evidence in the histories to support your arguments. And then duke it out, rhetorically or militarily.
We want dogmatic arguments. We want discussion. Read the backstory. Think about it. Decide what YOUR CHARACTER thinks, what they believe and don't believe.
That's roleplaying.
But if you're looking for absolutes, for what the "ultimate right answer" is, don't ask me, because I'm not going to give you one.
If we do our job right, an absolute answer will never exist.
It's all up to you.
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Meridian on Roleplaying - February 28th, 2002
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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 weird 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 accommodate 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.
