Does Roleplaying Matter?

Roleplaying does matter, but it’s not a text game. Text MUDs are always several years ahead of what the graphical games can do, in terms of things like combat, sure, but also in roleplaying, socializing, etc. It’s been my opinion that unless given at least a meager supply of tools to roleplay, it’s not really worth it.

Jumping into an IRE text MUD, you are presented with hundreds of options, thousands of character possibilities because of what’s hard coded, and with things like custom says, or the emote command, you can create scenarios no one has ever seen. But when you log into WoW, you get to understand the history behind your character’s race/faction, and you get some fancy emotes. Given the fact that the tools to roleplay in WoW are lacking, I never joined a roleplaying server.

So one question is, will EE start out like the little boy who had his finger in the hole in the dike, trying to hold back the water (trying to keep the “flood” of leet kiddie gamers away), and two, do you alienate the other 90% when you call them out for not roleplaying. When I guide in Lusternia, you tell someone to change their name to something more appropriate, or stop acting completely ooc, half the time they log out in the next minute, sometimes to never return. Perhaps it comes down to simply profitability (time/money it takes to code additional RP tools, disaffected players quitting/never playing more than five minutes) versus what we want (a deep, immersive roleplaying world, but this time, with graphics). Because it’s a business, that runs off of money, I’m going to go ahead and say it’s the former.

The first thing most games should do is make sure they don’t *penalize* role-playing efforts. Too often the game design is driven from the achievement perspective of gaining exp or levels or equipment which makes the “winners” maximize towards those goals — if the in-game rewards for role-playing do not exist it will always remain as a quirk few individuals engage in within the game.

Often the penalizing effects of RP are not intentional by the developers but occur as a side-effect of the traditional D&D inspired hack’n’slash ruleset the developers almost automatically cut&paste into their game. Tried and true. Since the algorithmic and codified ruleset for rewarding RP doesn’t exist, most devs don’t even make attempts in that direction. Whether it is lack of budget, lack of perceived business benefits or lack of innovative thinking is anybody’s guess.

The most difficult aspect of RP is of course the part that cannot be codified in your traditional boolean algebra — that is the communication between the participants. The contradictory forces here are the desire to create a game where people are forced to interact, and at the same time the desire to control the form of that interaction. Computer code is only capable of *limiting* the communication into certain channels or modes but whatever communication channel is left open is open for the abuse of the user. The unsolved problem is how to direct the open communication towards more RP’ish mode.

The background and initial seed community is most likely important but further along it requires quite a bit of social engineering to achieve any significant steps towards more RP friendly environment. Personally I think looking at the existing communities on the Internet that require their userbase to work together within certain accepted etiquette or communication pattern might yield some ideas how to achieve similar goals in games. Wikipedia might be one example to look at and try to understand what makes it work as well as it does (which still is not “perfect” but at least somewhat coherent environment with useful results). Then there are also many examples of Internet communities that broke down once the “unwashed masses” were unleashed upon them who didn’t care for the existence of etiquette and rules. What is then the difference of those that survive today and those that didn’t?

The second contradictory force is the paying customer’s desire to be forced into a specific mode of operation where it cannot be strictly enforced — in some cases a community with strict rules that are quick to ostracize anyone who break their established etiquette may bear fruit but at too high a cost for business to be considered successful by their founders. Setting the customer expectations correctly from the beginning is crucial here — having a server clearly marked as RP is one tiny step into that direction.

Finally RP means many things to different people. Having different player groups emerge within the game that follow their own in-game goals, culture or convictions would no doubt enrich the experience — the difficulty for all of these is that either you design it upfront in a static game world which is time-consuming, expensive and yields no guarantees the players agree to the preset mold created for them, or the game environment is sufficiently dynamic to allow the goals, culture and player convictions to evolve and fluctuate to drive the background that encourages and rewards RP’ish play. Even for the most convinced, acting a role against a static background soon becomes stale — imagine acting a role in a same play a hundred times over.

You’d actually be amazed to know how much role-playing is going on inside Habbo. Obviously the style of playing is different from MMOs but a huge number of the games being played involves users assuming a role, be it a guy working at a pizzeria or a being a bouncer. This is just a guesstimate but I would say maybe two million Habbo users participate in role-playing style activity each month.

I once played a MUD where you could turn on an RP flag (visible only to yourself) that allowed you to gain xp while you did exactly that. People who abused it were punished, and of course something like that is much easier on a smaller scale text game (where the # of players was between 20-40 during peak hours). But maybe you could implement something like that with EE?

The’re called MMORPGs because of single-player CRPGs. Those also do not involve themselves in roleplaying in any way at all. Oblivion contains approximately the same amount of roleplaying as Doom or Tetris.

It’s just abuse of the term “because it’s got levels and experience points” and the problem is, so many players now firmly believe that an RPG is a game with levels and XP. They are horrified by the idea of actually playing a role.

There is no cure for this.

I would disagree with that last comment as far as saying Oblivion has the same amount of roleplaying Tetris, and possibly Doom.

In my mind, roleplaying is exactly what it sounds like: Playing a role. In Oblivion, you have the choices available to you to live your imaginary life however you wish. You could completely ignore the main quest and decide to become the archmage. Once at that rank, perhaps you decide that your duties are to patrol the grounds of the mage academy and speak with all of the members on a day-to-day basis. In the evening, you return to your quarters and sleep until morning.

This may be boring to do in a single player game, as the feedback you receive from the NPC’s never changes. However, to be the leader of the Magi Guild in Achaea would be a completely different experience, even if you followed the same basic steps.

I said possibly Doom because you are, in fact, taking on the role of the protagonist in his quest to kill the zombies. You are not able to develop your character in any measurable way other than gaining more powerful weapons, really, but there is certainly the acceptance of a new persona that is not available in a game like Tetris.

Large-scale MMOs have role-playing servers because that level of support for RP is basically free. If your game has at least ten servers, calling one of them an RP server will help the people who want to immerse themselves in the world a little more find each other. Unfortunately it also helps the people who want to harass them for RPing find them more easily too.

If you DON’T “dedicate” an RP server, your players will do it for you, and probably won’t do as good a job. The pre-launch Star Wars Galaxies community decided that SWG needed an RP server, but Sony didn’t want to declare one. So the players decided that Starsider would be the RP server. The result was that Starsider was massively overcrowded simply because it got the same number of users as all the other servers PLUS a bunch of role-players. Declaring 10% of your servers to be RP solves this problem and costs you nothing (because you have only to type (RP) at the end of the server name wherever that’s defined.)

I’m not much of a role-player, personally, but of all the games I’ve played, the only one that I’ve come even close in was City of Heroes. Their massive set of character customization options meant that I wasn’t tied into a preset class/race combo, which led me to create: a little old lady who kicked butt named “School Marm”, a misguided robot crime-fighter named “Prototype V”, and a classic big scary monster video game bad guy named “Wumpus” (who couldn’t talk.) Every once in a while I would even try to stay in character — something I never did in any other MMO. That experience is one of the reasons why I’ve fought so hard to keep a player’s appearance and their effectiveness completely divorced in PotBS. I’m hoping it brings out similar responses in people in our Pirate game as it did in Cryptic’s Super Hero game.

I’ve seen this work in Dofus, where one of the three alliances is purely roleplay based and progression in that alliance is done that way (whereas in the others it is NPC based). However, they only do it on the French-only servers, not on the international ones.

Language may play a bigger role here then you think. In a text-based MUD everyone has/needs a decent grasp of the language to get arround. In a graphical game this need is (a lot) less (you just need to understand the basic turbolanguage that is used everywhere) and roleplay will suffer because of it.

I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want to roleplay (although some don’t), I think it’s that the majority of games emphasize gameplay instead of roleplay. I run into a lot of people in the games that I play that will sort of silently fall into character if they see other people doing it. It’s just that most of the time, they’re not focused on being in character, they’re focused on levels, loot, and their quest journal.

In order to encourage roleplay in graphical games you need to not divert the players attention from the parts of the game that would bring them into character. Meaning that you need to find ways for them to focus on the setting, the backstory, the lore, and so on, rather than on their experience bar. Metagames that heavily reference or influence the behavior of the game world and that give players a sense of ownership are a good way to do this. For example, if you have a diplomacy metagame where players can influence various kingdoms or nations to sign treaties or go to war, that relies on extensive knowledge of the existing backstory and lore, you’ll find that a lot more players are getting into that - and getting into character as well. Especially if the effects of the metagame are readily visible in the game world to other players.

The trick is to give players a reason to identify with parts of the setting and thus get into character. If there’s a reason to do that, then people will naturally fall into character and roleplaying will occur. On the other hand, if it’s purely optional and you can go through the entire game without ever thinking about it, then it won’t happen. Even simple things like the dialogue options with NPCs can help with this. For example, if you are having a conversation with an NPC and you have to pick an appropriate response, the more in-character the dialogue options are, the closer you get that player to actually roleplaying.

Ultimately I think that a game that encourages roleplaying will:

- have a strong setting and backstory that’s easy for players to identify with.
- de-emphasize advancement
- have metagames that promote playing in-character (usually through strong association with a particular NPC group/faction)
- have a lot of customization tools and emotes available.
- have mechanisms to help the player feel a sense of ownership in the world (housing, dynamic events, etc).

Role playing matters. But historically it requires culture and a self policing society. And that is a problem in an open world. The responsiblity is on the group and the group lacks any and all avenues to enforce the culture.

In a small table-top setting the DM/GM/ST dude (or dudette) sets the standard and can enforce it. Players who commit to an alignment that do not follow through with it can be dealt with. Those that wish to alter their character can be given opportunities to do so over time.

In an MMO there is no DM following the players around. No one to make sure that the Paladin is not off doing nasty things with dead bodies. No one to throw some rewards the way of the guy who decided he is mute and will not speak.

Instead it is up the other players to police themselves. Should it be? Yes and no. The world should help. The world can do a lot, but it can not do it all. It would be very difficult to code for every behavior or word.

I welcome the day when someone can code not only a really good AI, but a really good alignment system that allows me to be held to task on some basic role playing things…

cl

Do you remember how the Horizons beta and early community labeled itself as a roleplaying heavy type of group?

My memories of that game indicates that roleplaying only works if the “gamey” sides of the game actually are well built, or everything will degenerate to a destructive competition where the roleplayers always gets owned by power gamers and everyone gets to be unhappy as a consequence.

I think Damion’s men in Tights talk brushes this topic somewhere http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/09/08/agc-damion-schubert-moving-beyond-men-in-tights/

Role-playing in EE would be wonderful.
“Rewarding” players for RPing is not your job. It’s the job of the players. If the founding generation is as RP-oriented as it seems, then we will do penty to maintain the atmosphere. For one, the “noobs” will want to fit in. And the “I do not understand your babbling” responses will get them to rethink their speech.

EE will never die. We won’t let it.

The reason we all “role play’ in Real Life is that we have complex, conflicting, meaningful choices and relationships that matter. Role-playing is a consequence of that environment. Players “create” role playing by imagining such choices or having them provided by the game.

“Leveling” is a one-dimensional incentive scheme - it is not surprising that no one role plays in games where the only incentive is to level.

If you want role-playing in games, create complicated, conflicting goals that matter. Make people part of families, clans, etc. (whether they want to or not) that impose requirements on their behavior.

Preferably that cannot be simultaneously satisfied.

If your character’s father wants you to settle down and marry a farmer, you have to role play the consequences of running off to the BIG CITY to SEEK YOUR FORTUNE.

Maybe you get more XP for marrying the farmer?

I would say that you shouldn’t worry about catering to Role Players. IF your game has a good set up that allows for them to foster a good Role Playing environment, then they’ll find a way. Star Wars Galaxies was a good example of this, and still is.

As for WoW, they don’t cater to RP at all and it shows. That’s fine, it’s a casual game aimed at the masses.. and for that they’re successful.

Well, I think MMO RP is done completely wrong. RPG has its roots in the lounge of houses, where people sit around and sip coffee and roleplay here and there, when it suits them. Some are good at it and some think they are and are not. It surely isn’t done to get extra experience points, it’s done “for a laugh” and sometimes purely for intellectual reasons - “What would Mordenkainen have done in that situation?” Much of the enjoyment of rpg is after the event when you recount what you did last time and how you made some terrible decision which cut off the right ear of a compatriot….
RPG is not “serious” and it should never be “imposed”, but it should be serious when it needs to be. Does it need to be rewarded? Well reward normally comes from the other people in your group and maybe a system could work, where members of the group vote on who RPGed best that night for an RP point or two maybe?
MMO RPG needs to be voice (pref with options to alter voice a bit). You simply can’t RPG outside the tavern without slowing down the action and sometimes you jeopardise the adventure, if you’re typing when you should be fighting. This to me precludes the use of text emotes too. I would much rather have a WII style means of using physical gestures or simply describe what you are doing verbally. At least that’s how it would be done in an RP session.
Is roleplaying important in an MMO? Well I agree it varies vastly between types of MMO. DDO is actually very good for RP, whereas EQ2 and the other “plastic” worlds aren’t really very good. Thousands of players on a server also isn’t conducive to RP either, as it loses its “immersion” completely. No, I don’t think it is important in any MMO yet to have RP (bar perhaps DDO), but developing an MMO with RP at its heart will bring in a lot of players, who have been waiting for such a beast. None have really tried yet - maybe Bioware is the one to watch?

Said right by Talaen: “I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want to role-play (although some don’t), I think it’s that the majority of games emphasize game play instead of role-play.”

As long as there are tangible rewards and goals in a game (XP, loot, etc.), those will win out over role-play. I used to be involved in a message board role-playing game based on vampire culture. The only rule was to create a vampire and stay in character. Playing was simply storytelling and passing off response cues to other players. It was fun and lasted months.

The reason it failed was because I decided to take the venue and turn it into a MUD. Tangible goals such as XP, “loot”, special powers, etc. became more of a focus to the players. The social interaction stopped.

I think it’s the same for most of today’s MMOs. In games I play with a group of long-time, real-life or game-life friends, we stay in character…but our goals are definitely not role-play…they are to try and be the best at the game as possible. That’s just human nature.

Believe it or not Mud’s are limited to what users can experience, if not from a gamers perspective that at least from a programming perspective. It’s simple basics, no matter how vast a world you envision in creating a perfect game there will always be bottle necks. Whether it is graphical, text based, otherwise; If Mud’s indeed are the so called origin of rpg’s, why are their just as many flavors of Mud’s as there are MMOG’s??

It’s all about perspective, playing a game sucks you into a world where you measure its freedom by how you play. This niche does not change whether a game is ancient history or a rivaling technology, I don’t think games will ever change. I think peoples oppinions about games is constantly changing, it comes down what you like no matter how you look at it!!

Placing players into a group or clan which they are forced to cooperate with in order to level strikes me as a particularly good way to enforce roleplay, so long as the people in charge of leveling are always role players.

Not that I know so much…