Making Role-play happen, an essay

This is my attempt to write a short essay on the Theory of Role-play and trigger a discussion, and to follow in the footsteps of our greatest theorist - Etular. I hope Prof. Etular will positively review this thread and agree with my opinions.

One does role-play because he thinks that immersing himself in another, unreal world is a fun way to spend his time. Some use this immersion to fulfill their dreams or put in practice their creative fantasies. Actual process of role-play is an interaction between the character and the imagined environment (world, npcs and other characters). Interaction can go in one of the two directions (or both of them) : action - character affecting the environment, and reaction - character being affected by the environment.

Importance of character-concept

Role-playing is writing an ongoing story with your character being the protagonist of this, his or her own, personal story. Your character can progress in one of the two ways, action and reaction. It is very important to decide upon character-creation how this person will react to different situation, and how he wishes to act. Stories fascinate often fascinate us because of the characters and their personality. Role-playing a hot-headed character who is easy to anger is an entirely different experience and will result in another story than, lets say, playing a cowardly conformist. You role-play because you want to follow your character's story and see where it leads. It is very important to stay true to your character's personality and simply enjoy the flow the story; feel the tension of difficult situation, laugh at false danger and cheer at your character's succeses.

Here is the take-hope messege of this section: when creating your character focus foremost on his personality, flaws, strengths and aspirations. And once set, avoid breaking the character. Also note that character progression is part of your character's personality - some individuals never learn and are stubborn beyond belief, while others adapt easily. A defiant warrior will visit the Dragon's Lair a second time after being kicked out, while most other people will realize that a second visit is not such a good idea.

Why action is the difference between life and boredome

If you focus your character-concept on reaction, you will be forever dependant on 'stuff happening'. That would either mean Blizzard releasing patches and expansions with new lore or other characters interacting with you. For instance, a character focused on reaction might catch fright and flee from a scene of battle. Or, character focused on reaction might see the grave injustice of being robbed and swear revenge against the thief and hunt him for the rest of his life. Here action and reaction overlap. A character whose concept allows action can however initiate role-play, because he has dreams and aspirations and wishes to affect the world around him or at least interact with it.

Personally, I find that small and realistic goals are very important because they enable you to start role-play not only you, but hopefully others will enjoy. Action does not have to be epic, you don't have to gather a party of heroes and go slay the Dark Lord in order to enjoy. Simple goals can be quiet satisfactory. Trying to befriend another character, pursuing a romance, taking offence on revealing clothing, stamping out the practice of thuggish accent, annoying people on the streets with silly questionnaires, teaching some philosofy or simply mugging people.

I believe that having a good set of aspirations, dreams and practical plans for your character to pursue is important to the enjoyment of role-play. Many people are lingering on the border of action and reaction, and whenever a big event happens they start to play out their dreams and aspirations and ideals. Such moments always result in the 'boom' of RP on the server. If you have your own story, own ways to act - you can enjoy a personal boom almost every day.

Information is the key to everything

Every community has own established IC and OOC rules. Every community has places to go and people to visit if you want specific things done. Not to mention there are open events happening once in a while and semi-open personal plots you might be interessted in. Without having access to all that information, your role-playing experience can be severely handicaped.

First and easiest way to receive information is through the In-character interaction with other characters. You meet a friend and go to a bar to exchange the latest news, for instance. If your character is not very social, such interaction can be problematic. Or it may result in a circle of friends who know everything of each other, but nothing from the outside. There is nothing wrong with the latter, as long as you are aware that such might happen.

Second easy way is to have OOC friends; people you say "hi' to when they log-in and with whom you discuss stuff while bored or in a battleground. Usually they are informed of semi-closed storylines of their own circles, and might've heard about the open events going on, or have a good advise. "Hey, so you want to role-play a guard? I've heard <x> is doing the same, may be you should poke him?" This way of getting information is subject to same restrictions and dangers as IC-friendships.

Harder way is to join an active guild (or a community-channel). These usually send out calendar-invites to in-guild events, and sometimes even to open events. At any rate, the Guild Chat has people you won't usually RP with but with whom you will talk regularly and who might provide you wish some useful pieces of information now and then.

Advanced way is sign up on forums - guild forums, community forums and realm forums and check out the threads out there. Announcements can inform you about people&places to visit and open events going on, and reading IC stories posted by other people will let you know about semi-closed and even private story-lines going on. Posting on forums will allow you to inform people about anything you host, and writing IC stories will inform them about your own story-lines - who knows, somebody might be willing to join? This is how I founded the Chapter. I wrote stories and people whispered me "I want to join in on this, lets make a guild."

Remember well: talk to people IC and OOC, poke your nose as far as allowed to sniff out every bit of information. For instance you might find out that RP you always wanted to do is also done by players A and B, and you can join up with them. Or that if you want to open a tavern, player C can help. Register at forums if you can, and bother to read them often.

In conclusion

-Focus not on a heart-tearing story of your character's troubled childhood, work out his personality as first priority! How does he react to various happenings, what are his opinions on different subjects, what is he hoping to achieve in life? Only then write a story to explain these character traits.
-Do not neglect -ACTION- in your concept. Having small things to work to will provide you with regular role-play and if action is fun for others, you can even produce unexpected spin-off RP that will be talked about by people for months to come.
-Seek to share information both in-character and out-of-character! Unseen blockades in the flow of information and the slowness with which it happens is the main obstackle to making large open events, getting people to join interessting plots or simply to people realizing their dreams within the community.

Practical advice regarding information-sharing

-Guild leaders, members and officers! When you see an open event advertised on the forums, make a calendar-invite for your own guild and copy the advertisment to guild-forums. This applies also to other relevant information such as community-laws, people to visit, wanted posters and such.
-Players, visit the forums regularly and encourage others to do the same!
-Inform your OOC friends about 'stuff' going on and share what you know.
-Seize the opportunity to share news, rumors, announcements and other information in-character when possible. Guild meetings are a good place and time, but so are bar and campfire conversations.


Feel free to seize upon these ideas and discuss or extend them. Yes, I care for your two coppers.

Excellent "essay"! I really like the point about out-of-character reaction with role-players. I think that everyone should try to develop friendships with who they role-play with out-of-character and to take it further, I think it's always polite (and nice) that both parties thank each other after each interaction for the "entertainment" each side provided for the other. A simple "thank you" or even a ":)" can go a long way, in my opinion.

On the other hand, a lot of people seem to have the problem of letting their out-of-character feelings about a certain character / role-player slip into their character's actions. I've seen this happen a lot and I'd like to emphasize that people should try to stuff all their complicated or whatever in-character emotions into a tiny little box and push it into the closet where it should only be opened when you role-play.

Whilst this was not really mentioned in the OP, I'd like to bring it up: alignments. While I do think that alignments are helpful to the beginner role-player to get his or her head around their character, I really and sincerely despise the very thought of giving your character an alignment! Things are surely not that black and white so that you can identify your character as "Lawful Good" or "Chaotic Neutral" or whatever the heck the labels are. Most of the characters role-played tend to have a lot more depth than that and it's always irritated (but mostly confused) me as to why people use these "alignments" so much.

Whilst this was not really mentioned in the OP, I'd like to bring it up: alignments. While I do think that alignments are helpful to the beginner role-player to get his or her head around their character, I really and sincerely despise the very thought of giving your character an alignment! Things are surely not that black and white so that you can identify your character as "Lawful Good" or "Chaotic Neutral" or whatever the heck the labels are. Most of the characters role-played tend to have a lot more depth than that and it's always irritated (but mostly confused) me as to why people use these "alignments" so much.

I just ask myself "What would Jesus do?"

*looks up from GCSE Exam Revision*

Prof. Etular

Yes, Yes... Very good! A* Work!

...taking offence on revealing clothing, stamping out the practice of thuggish accent, annoying people on the streets with silly questionnaires...

My boy, you're going to go far. You are a genius, for having gave Professor Etular a few more good guild ideas. Now what shall I call this guild... Hm... I know! "Anti-Vulgarity/Thuggish Squad, Unite"!

*looks back at GCSE Coursework Revision, impressed by the article he has just read*

lector Imanuel, I am most impressed by your writings and your theoretical viewpoints upon RP and the community surrounding it serves as and inspiration to us all.
Prof. Etular's, who has theorized more upon RP than any other being, apparanty appriciation for your paper only aids in confirming the fine points you present.

To further and support your points, I will add two of my own:

Conflict and roleplay
In this point it is of the utmost importance that the In Character and the Out of Character stances are seperated. Rarely is an OOC conflict of any use to either side.
It is my hypothesis that conflict is at the core of RP itself, however. I will present this through an example:
A fisherman is selling fish, a man approaches him with a wish to buy a fish. The fisherman states the price, the man pays and goes home.
In this example there is no actual roleplay, is my take. The interaction between the two involved characters do not provide any development to either character and while the fish may represent a major thing in the man's roleplay plot, it is achieved too easily to justify that it should pay a major part. But in the following example:
A fisherman is selling fish, a man approaches him with a wish to buy a fish. The fisherman states the price and the man raises his voice to a shout, attracting the attention of the entire habour, "FIFTEEN SILVER!?" ....
In the example above, I have chosen to add three dots. This represents that the story cannot simply end here. Now the man will inevitably argue that the price is too high and the fisherman will argue against it. But to further that, this shows the characters in regard to one another (how wealthy they are, for instance), but furthermore it serves to develop and enhance the characters, fleshing them out as a part of the RP and yeilding RP not only to the participants, but to other parts of the community aswell (if the man, as an example, returns to his poor wife without food or begins to fight the fisherman, involving guards, judges, witnesses etc.)
My general deduction is that, while talking to your friends around the campfire may bring you roleplay, character development only really kicks in when your character is faced with conflict.
Thus, in character conflict is not something a roleplayer should strive to avoid, rather the opposite. This must be seen in my first regard, stating that conflicts out of character rarely benifits anything.

Roleplay and simplicity
Well knowing that many will see this point as ironic given my previous statements and the fact that I read a thread such as this, I will present this point either way.
Usually, the best way to experience roleplaying is without doing all the theoretical background, but getting out there and do it. Roleplay is, in essence, a very simple thing: You create a character with a certain personality and then you act as your character would, as he or she reacts to the world he or she meets.
Thus it is easy to begin roleplay without any specific elaborate background and without theoretical knowledge of RP at all. It is my theory that this is the best way to get a feel for RP.
During my time as a roleplayer, I have come to the conclusion that elaborate and highly developed background material for characters is not always benificial for the roleplay. In most cases, it is better to create a simple character concept (a greedy character, a dwarven character, a brave character) and then start out roleplaying. Thus you will get a feeling of what kind of roleplay you like and what sort of character you want as you gather empiric evidence and actually roleplay, which also increases your awareness of how to RP, how to enter plotlines etc.
My general conclusion is here that an overcomplication of RP rarely benifits roleplaying. Because it is such a relatively simple process, it is often better to start out with a simple concept and play it out. Advanced character backgrounds and such can always be created later.

*Newly elected Prime Minister Jayse looks up from his large oak desk in number 10*

"I see.. the schools of Roleplay are exceeding expectations.."

"MORE FUNDING FOR ROLEPLAY! oh.. and Mr Gotch.. a tea would be lovley"

Good work on resurfacing once again how simple Roleplay is in its essence. Get out there and be proactive! Well written, thought out and informatives.

*Subscribes*

*reads and likes*

During my time as a roleplayer, I have come to the conclusion that elaborate and highly developed background material for characters is not always benificial for the roleplay. In most cases, it is better to create a simple character concept (a greedy character, a dwarven character, a brave character) and then start out roleplaying.

THIS!
RP is, atleast as far as I know, the least predictable thing you can do in the game. A small background idea (i'm not saying story, write away all you like) that can work as guidelines would work better than having a black/white concept of handling things, it's the grey areas that make everything interesting.