The meaning of role-playing

[Morreion]

Tobold's MMORPG Blog: The meaning of role-playing

The 5% minority of people who think that role-playing means theatrics, background stories, and speaking in character, did achieve one important victory in insisting that their activity was called "role-playing", and was the only true way of role-playing. They even got their own "role-playing servers" in some games. Unfortunately for them, their triumph ends there. Many people still regard them as weirdos or at least geeks, and those scientists attesting to their "psychological problems" aren't helping. But in reality most of the self-styled true role-players are pretty normal, and just enjoy the added creativity. It isn't much different from people doing improvisational theatre, and few people think those have psychological problems (except those who think that all artists are weird).

The meaning of roleplaying...this topic could go on for a while! Acting and reacting as your character would in their setting seems to make sense as a reasonable definition to me. Regardless of my 'psychological state'

[sinaedh]

I've always viewed roleplay as a combination of allowing the character to act as they would (sans, for the most part, accents and what I call really stupid acts that the character might do but that I as a player know are... really stupid) and interactive novelization. When I roleplay, I'm effectively writing a novel in conjunction with the others that I play with or interact with. Granted, that novel will more than likely never be published, but for me, it can be as much fun as reading my favorite authors. I also am more of a "free form" roleplayer, in that I do not like scripted plots. I prefer to let the action flow as it will, according to the characters and their wants and needs. In the early days of Percival, I found the environment supported this method of play, and I loved it.

[EchoVamper]

Many people who denigrate role playing have never really experienced a fully functional RP community. Such a community is really easy to participate in, and contains all levels and types of RPers that coexist quite well. There will be some theatrical plots that even the casual player who is "listening" can contribute to without getting bound up in the drama too much. There will be novelization, where written stories are guiding in-game role play, but also stand on their own as interesting works of art. There are the "free form" role players who can enrich a wide range of in-game interactions, from the complex to the mundane. In a good role playing community there is a very large menu of participation options to choose from.

People can enjoy such a community from total immersion or just from the occasional contextual emote that allows the role playing to unfold before them. It really doesn't have to be as much work as some would have people believe. All that is required to participate is the ability to respect what others are creating and not muddy the context of their efforts. Even a non-role player who is willing to just stay out of the way is very valuable to the community, and is almost always accepted by true role players.

Dedicated role players do need to develop a thick skin, for there are plenty of players out there that will bait them and interfere with them. But by the same token, there do exist role players who try to thrust role play onto players who really aren't that interested. To make the whole thing viable, a fairly mature server population is a real advantage.