| rdfs:comment
| - Roleplaying: It's inherent in our nature. As kids, we pretend to be good guys and bad guys, chasing each other around the yard. Bang-bang! You're dead! Am not! Am too! Our games have rules, we're expected to play our roles within certain parameters. When we grow up, we play new roles: Parent, employee, spouse. But it's still a lot like childhood: The games have rules, and we're expected to play our roles within certain parameters. In my experience of running games for the better part of a decade, I've found that most problems encountered with players stem from one of the following: Good luck!
|
| abstract
| - Roleplaying: It's inherent in our nature. As kids, we pretend to be good guys and bad guys, chasing each other around the yard. Bang-bang! You're dead! Am not! Am too! Our games have rules, we're expected to play our roles within certain parameters. When we grow up, we play new roles: Parent, employee, spouse. But it's still a lot like childhood: The games have rules, and we're expected to play our roles within certain parameters. Many of our world cultures have put a high value on roleplaying, from the tragedies of the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare to motion pictures such as The Lord of the Rings. Through roleplaying, lessons can be taught and traditions can be passed on. Stories can be told. With the advent of the Internet and easy access to the programs required to develop text-based MUDs (multi-user dungeons or dimensions), hundreds of games evolved in the digital Petri dish. Many of these games are incorrectly labeled roleplaying. Many of them are more accurately called roll-playing. You create a character, but you don't inhabit a role or bring that character to life. Instead, you wander the virtual map, killing monsters, gaining experience points and collecting loot and gold. True roleplaying games, such as OtherSpace, Chiaroscuro and Reach of the Empire, actually hold a higher expectation for the people who play them. You create a character, give that character a history, a reason for existence, and you set them into a matrix of other characters with their own goals and aspirations that may create friction, opposition and alliances. Your character accrues real experience: Victories, failures, battle scars. Personal growth in a roleplaying game can be measured in much the same way as your real personal growth: Events transpire, you react, you deal with consequences, and you scour the wreckage in the aftermath of bad choices and revel in the successes yielded by good choices. In true roleplaying games, it's common - and not unwelcome - to get a strong attachment to your character. If you're buying into the fiction of a virtual world and immersing yourself in the moment, then you're likely getting the most out of the experience. The key often comes in keeping a healthy back-of-the-mind sense of context: When bad things happen, they happen to your character, not you. This is one of the prime pitfalls of novice roleplayers. Roleplaying is an escapist environment, and you should be encouraged to have a good time. No one likes to lose. But, in environments where factions form, it is inevitable that someone will win and someone will lose. If no one loses, if no risk of failure exists, then the environment stagnates. No one grows. Watching a movie, you can easily separate yourself from Frodo and Saruman, while still feeling for them. But you don't face any risk if Saruman wins over Frodo. If someone decided to act out The Lord of the Rings in a real-time MUD environment, with real people inhabiting the roles of characters both good and evil, then one would begin to see the price of immersing real people into such roles: Squabbling, bickering, logging off in a huff when Shelob jabs them in the belly after they escaped fair and square. But, it's not all bad, folks. We'd also get to see the benefits: Players can often take storylines down unexpected paths. Each player brings something different to their roleplaying environment. In a real-time, evolving RP environment, each player also has the opportunity to make their mark on the growing history of the live game. In my experience of running games for the better part of a decade, I've found that most problems encountered with players stem from one of the following:
* Inexperience with roleplaying as opposed to roll-playing
* Lack of familiarity with basic roleplaying etiquette
* Lack of familiarity with interface commands
* Failure to separate the player from the character In this course, Roleplaying 101, I'll endeavor to address as many issues as possible to help remedy these problems. The goal of this course is to provide insights and information that a player new to our games can absorb to help assimilate them into our society. We've got a lot of basic rules and concepts that seem second nature to veterans, but to a total newcomer, they can seem alien. It's unfair to expect everyone to come into a roleplaying environment with the same baseline of knowledge as the most astute veteran. But it's absolutely fair to expect a new player to learn the ropes. If I go to England, I'd better get used to driving on the left hand side of the road. If I visit New Jersey, I'd better be ready to deal with the lack of left turns off major roads. So, if I visit Chiaroscuro, I'd better know how to talk to people, how to interact with them, and how to shape my character over time. This course should be a useful guide. Much of it will be conducted on this website, but at least three workshops will be conducted live on the games of jointhesaga.com. New and old players alike are invited to pose questions and share insights. Good luck!
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)