[ReanA]

Hello,

I was thinking about why I love the RP in Achaea so much and I realized it was because of the character immersion that developed since I started to play. In Achaea, I'm a Minister of War and a deadly combatant. Anywhere I go in Achaea, that's the character I am, and it's the character other people see. It's steady and isn't "scenario" based -- all activities are in-character. However, some people feel that pure immersion isn't really RP, it's just staying IC.

Pure immersion sounds a little bit more fun and spontaneous to me, I've had a lot of situations where my character has been approached by a novice and I've had a lot of fun answering their creative questions and explaining to them how the game works (while staying in-character). Spontaneous RP is easier for me than planning something out, and it's more enjoyable for me as well.

I'm not really a huge RP buff, so pure immersion makes it easier for me to still be a part of the RP community without going out of my comfort zone. I'm wondering what RP buffs think of the pure immersion atmosphere in Achaea / Iron Realms games. If you would, try playing Achaea or another Iron Realms game a bit and tell me what you think of the RP. Post what you liked, what you didn't like, etc.

-ReanA

[dentin]

I did manage to create a character on Achaea at one point, though by the time I made it through the half hour mandatory introduction and LPC coding that prevented the use of normal obvious commands in critical places, I was pretty irritated. Once I was logged in, it looked like an ordinary combat mud to me.

To answer your question, I prefer unscripted, because other players are incapable of following even the most rudimentary of scripts. When I run scripted events, I put reasonable safeguards in place and simply accept a moderate level of failure from the people who can't keep up.

Honestly I've never really understood the whole RP attraction, and I'm surprised that RP is such a common recurring theme in muds (given the failure rate of RP muds, you'd think they'd learn.) Most people find proper RP irritating - it's time consuming, with uncertain and/or minimal payout, and constant trips out of immersion to fill in and keep track of gaps in your character.

I've also never been properly 'immersed' in an RP character; quite frankly, I don't understand how one could be without being schizophrenic, spending way more time than is healthy on it, or being professionally trained to do so (acting school/PUA/social engineering.) Properly emulating even just one additional personality is a huge and continuous amount of active effort, and I find it unsurprising that the biggest games on the net don't have any meaningful RP aspects to them.

Immersion on non-RP games is far easier, and far more complete. When I play Diablo II or Starcraft, I'm immersed. I lose track of time, and I don't have to head back to reality to figure out if what I said to the mayor last week conflicts with what I'm about to tell him now.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD
http://www.alteraeon.com

[SnowTroll]

Some people would say that if you artifically plan some kind of RP, then have multiple characters inexplicably show up in the same place with some kind of contrived excuse to be there, that alone ruins the RP. It's like building a house on an astroturf foundation. The only "real" RP is exactly what you described: pure immersion. If everybody logged into a game gets deeply into their characters and walks around doing what their characters would do, then when people bump into each other, the conversations and actions that flow from that are natural and fluid because the characters have things they were doing and things to talk about. That beats the hell out of showing up in a public area at a predetermined time to act out a preplanned "scene."

If a game wants to drum up RP, the people in charge of it can always run (unscripted) events, giving the charaters something outside of the normal daily game experience to talk about and interact with. Some of the better games I've played give players themselves flexible abilities to manipulate/create their environment and manipulate/create objects to facilitate player-created RP.

Non-RP muds do well because they can appeal to the general gamer. You know the type: those kids and stay at home moms who play MMOs all day but the few times they've seen in character gaming, declare that roleplaying is nerdy and stupid. Not just something time consuming with no payout, but something dorky and unattractive. You can attract people like this to play a really robust mud (like Aardwolf, which totally rocks if you're into non-RP muds), with the idea that while text-based, the game is huge, populated, and free to play. People who reject RP muds don't reject RP because it's hard or takes too long. They reject RP because they think RP is stupid and they'd rather just play a game. For people who exclusively play RP muds, RP is the game for the most part, though you can have a 50 page debate on exactly where people fall on the spectrum of in character chat room mush games versus RPI/RPE muds that "less pure" roleplayers prefer due to the desire for a hard coded game to play, versus non-RP games.

[Will]

Originally Posted by dentin I did manage to create a character on Achaea at one point, though by the time I made it through the half hour mandatory introduction and LPC coding that prevented the use of normal obvious commands in critical places, I was pretty irritated.

Nothing turns me off faster than mandatory tutorials.

To answer your question, I prefer unscripted, because other players are incapable of following even the most rudimentary of scripts. When I run scripted events, I put reasonable safeguards in place and simply accept a moderate level of failure from the people who can't keep up.

What is a "scripted" event?

Honestly I've never really understood the whole RP attraction, and I'm surprised that RP is such a common recurring theme in muds

To each his own. I enjoy building characters, gaining skills and levels, amassing gear and wealth, but it's tons of fun when there's more to it than just better numbers and more stuff. Playing the role of a thief, warrior, mage or whatever, becoming involved in stories where the decisions I make help determine the course of the world's history can be thrilling. There can be much more to character building beyond just the next level.

Are there folks who don't get into that? Sure. But a lot of us do.

(given the failure rate of RP muds, you'd think they'd learn.) Most people find proper RP irritating - it's time consuming, with uncertain and/or minimal payout, and constant trips out of immersion to fill in and keep track of gaps in your character.

Can you define "proper role-play?" I think this is some of the problem. The snobbery that has crept into the RP side of mudding, that tells players how they must play their roles and ridicules them when they don't meet expectations is laughable. I don't think it's too much to ask people to check real-world chatter at the door. But forcing folks to stick to a pre-written character background or insisting that they RP by paragraph is too much for me. In my view, a good game allows players to do their own thing, as long as they aren't ruining anyone else's fun.

I've also never been properly 'immersed' in an RP character; quite frankly, I don't understand how one could be without being schizophrenic, spending way more time than is healthy on it, or being professionally trained to do so (acting school/PUA/social engineering.) Properly emulating even just one additional personality is a huge and continuous amount of active effort, and I find it unsurprising that the biggest games on the net don't have any meaningful RP aspects to them.

"Properly" immersed. Interesting.

It sounds like to me that you've had some bad experiences with games that made ridiculous demands. RP can take some effort, but so can anything else worthwhile. It should never, however, be a chore. As I said, RP isn't for everyone. Maybe it's just not for you. I also think that there are WAY more reasons that "the biggest games on the net" succeed beyond the fact that they don't demand role-play.

Immersion on non-RP games is far easier, and far more complete.

Not for everyone.

When I play Diablo II or Starcraft, I'm immersed. I lose track of time, and I don't have to head back to reality to figure out if what I said to the mayor last week conflicts with what I'm about to tell him now.

People contradict themselves lots. It happens. I would say, however, that if you consistently worry about what you are about to say in-game, maybe your character doesn't have a set of ideals, beliefs, or anything else on which its opinions, decisions and reactions are based. And if you're trying to role-play, that could be a definite drawback.

[dentin]

Will,

A scripted event is one where I become an active DM for a while and decide what events are going to happen, then find a way to lead the players through the campaign to get there. I try to be a good DM and I try to cover all the bases, but sometimes I just have to leave people behind or leave them out because they can't adhere to the storyline or follow simple instructions.

Like you, I also enjoy 'getting into my character', and playing it as though I were that class - but the important part of that statement is that -I- am playing it as though -I- were that character with those abilities. Sure, I can use magic and healing spells, but I'm a cleric that listens to death metal, reads HPMoR, and surfs the web. I don't necessarily care to talk about how "the orc army blah blah east of town invasion" or "you offended the king and he demands an apology" when I'm interacting with other players.

This goes to your question of "proper" role play. In my mind, "proper" means that you become a character in the provided setting, in that world that you're role playing in. In the case of a medieval RP mud, that means using the world provided to you. You can't just "be yourself" in that environment without strongly separating the information sets of the two personas. If you let inappropriate information from the RL world leak into the RP world, that's not "proper". Maintaining consistency like that is hard, unpleasant work, unless you're trained at it or have a genetic predisposition for it. I have neither.

It has nothing to do with nerds or geeks or distaste; it has everything to do with consistency. I don't care if someone uses a one word response or two paragraphs, and I'm perfectly fine with retconning your character if you need to, as long as it's not of the "retcon per week because I'm an attention whore" variety.

Immersion to me should be easy, it should be quick, and it should be entertaining. Proper RP is difficult, requires a lot of setup time, and depends on other people for payoff. A lot of this depends on my definition of RP (above), but frankly I don't like to do things halfway and say 'good enough'.

-dentin

Alter Aeon MUD
http://www.alteraeon.com

[SnowTroll]

Originally Posted by dentin A scripted event is one where I become an active DM for a while and decide what events are going to happen, then find a way to lead the players through the campaign to get there. I try to be a good DM and I try to cover all the bases, but sometimes I just have to leave people behind or leave them out because they can't adhere to the storyline or follow simple instructions.

Opinions vary on this one, but if a MUD admin animates various mobs, creates special objects, and does things to have the world interact with the players' characters in a way that doesn't normally happen, but leaves the players free to react and interact however they want, that's not really a "scripted event," more like "I see 58 players online, so let's spice things up a bit and let the people who want to take part in something unusual jump in." I've always felt that to be fine, but had a really strong aversion to mush-type, "scene" oriented RP, i.e., "OOC: Hey everybody, come meet me at the fountain for some RP instead of doing what your character would normally be doing; IC: Hello there. I just happened to be wandering by the fountain today even though I'm a soldier stationed in the remote wilderness, and although you're a normal nondescript peasant sitting in a public place that I'd never notice, I'm going to approach you and take an interest because we set this meeting up out of character, then get bored and quit this mud when we have nothing interesting to talk about and everything feels contrived and artificial, declaring that the roleplaying here sucks."

Originally Posted by dentin Like you, I also enjoy 'getting into my character', and playing it as though I were that class - but the important part of that statement is that -I- am playing it as though -I- were that character with those abilities. Sure, I can use magic and healing spells, but I'm a cleric that listens to death metal, reads HPMoR, and surfs the web. I don't necessarily care to talk about how "the orc army blah blah east of town invasion" or "you offended the king and he demands an apology" when I'm interacting with other players.

Remember that Dungeons and Dragons cartoon where a bunch of real world kids end up in a fantasy world when an amusement park ride goes south? 99% of people who are into RP muds will tell you that's not RP, and that if you're just playing the role of yourself at a keyboard, it's not roleplaying, just playing. In whatever fantasy swords and sorcery world that cleric lives in, there's no such thing as heavy metal, and there is such a thing as orcs, so a cleric's going to talk about orcs, not the music some guy in another universe who pushes buttons to control his every move happens to like.

That does, on some level, have something to do with geeks and distaste. People who aren't into talking about "the orc army blah blah" tend to think it's kind of dumb and just want to play a game. They don't consider all of this play acting and in character chit chat a game. They consider that a tedious distraction from the game.

Like Will says, RP isn't for everybody. If it's not fun for someone, they should play a game that's fun for them, but I think both RP mud players (even the snobby ones who think there's a certain right and wrong way to play a game) and non-RP afficionados can see over the fence well enough to know what the other side likes about their way of doing things. I've played both and often do one or the other depending on the mood I'm in.

[Will]

Originally Posted by dentin Will, A scripted event is one where I become an active DM for a while and decide what events are going to happen, then find a way to lead the players through the campaign to get there. I try to be a good DM and I try to cover all the bases, but sometimes I just have to leave people behind or leave them out because they can't adhere to the storyline or follow simple instructions.

Ah. I see. Yeah, I spent seven years running weekly live events. They can be difficult to do well, but they can also be a lot of fun, for GMs and players alike. Like you, I often found myself getting frustrated, but I think my problems were different than yours. As a game admin involved heavily in the day to day happenings in my little world, my philosophy on role-play was that players should push the action, not me. I created and played lots of NPCs with personalities, histories, issues and agendas, and introduced the tip of the iceberg to players, but where the story went and how it ended was up to the players. What I encountered a lot of times was players waiting around for me to tell them what to do, which wasn't gonna happen. If I was gonna steer them around toward some predetermined outcome, I might as well have just written the stories and sent out a mass email. Sure woulda saved us all a lot of time.

To me, role-play is all about making decisions and accepting the rewards or dealing with the consequences. If folks can't listen to what is being told to them by a NPC and agree on a course of action so they can follow the lead, tough. That's part of life. Not every foray is going to end in success.

Like you, I also enjoy 'getting into my character', and playing it as though I were that class - but the important part of that statement is that -I- am playing it as though -I- were that character with those abilities. Sure, I can use magic and healing spells, but I'm a cleric that listens to death metal, reads HPMoR, and surfs the web. I don't necessarily care to talk about how "the orc army blah blah east of town invasion" or "you offended the king and he demands an apology" when I'm interacting with other players.

I guess it's a matter of what you're looking for. Some people aren't into becoming part of the world and some are. I like being part of storylines. I like it when there are repercussions to the stuff my character says and does. I don't think battling a hoard of invading orcs is exactly great RP, but if I'd have mouthed off to the King, I'd have had a good reason for doing it and be expecting some kind of response.

This goes to your question of "proper" role play. In my mind, "proper" means that you become a character in the provided setting, in that world that you're role playing in. In the case of a medieval RP mud, that means using the world provided to you. You can't just "be yourself" in that environment without strongly separating the information sets of the two personas. If you let inappropriate information from the RL world leak into the RP world, that's not "proper". Maintaining consistency like that is hard, unpleasant work, unless you're trained at it or have a genetic predisposition for it. I have neither.

Years ago my friends and I had tons of fun embroiling ourselves in the intrigue offered to us by the gaming world in which we played. We created a vast majority of the conflict, but the staff followed our lead, brought in live NPCs and used the tools available to them to enrich the experience. It was a blast. I never wrote a single character background or spent any amount of time worrying about whether or not what I was doing was "proper." Keeping last night's sporting event and the crappy day at work out of the game wasn't something any of us trained at or were born with the ability to do. We didn't work at making sure it didn't happen and nothing about it was unpleasant.

It has nothing to do with nerds or geeks or distaste; it has everything to do with consistency. ..snip..

And I think consistency has to do with what you want out of a game. If you want to be part of a virtual world where football and Facebook don't exist, resisting their discussion while you're there won't be a problem at all. One preference is not better or more correct than than the other, but they do both exist. Most people who enjoy RP like to occasionally drop into the realm and slink off somewhere to bash some heads and rip some guts without having to deal with the drama of the day. And that's ok too.

Immersion to me should be easy, it should be quick, and it should be entertaining. Proper RP is difficult, requires a lot of setup time, and depends on other people for payoff. A lot of this depends on my definition of RP (above), but frankly I don't like to do things halfway and say 'good enough'.

I think "proper role-play," per your definition, is easy and enjoyable to be part of if that's what you want. There are many degrees of RP, though, and what people expect from game to game can vary widely. The good thing is, there's scads of them out there, so nobody has to play anything s/he doesn't want to.

[Will]

Originally Posted by SnowTroll Opinions vary on this one, but if a MUD admin animates various mobs, creates special objects, and does things to have the world interact with the players' characters in a way that doesn't normally happen, but leaves the players free to react and interact however they want, that's not really a "scripted event," more like "I see 58 players online, so let's spice things up a bit and let the people who want to take part in something unusual jump in." I've always felt that to be fine, but had a really strong aversion to mush-type, "scene" oriented RP, i.e., "OOC: Hey everybody, come meet me at the fountain for some RP instead of doing what your character would normally be doing; IC: Hello there. I just happened to be wandering by the fountain today even though I'm a soldier stationed in the remote wilderness, and although you're a normal nondescript peasant sitting in a public place that I'd never notice, I'm going to approach you and take an interest because we set this meeting up out of character, then get bored and quit this mud when we have nothing interesting to talk about and everything feels contrived and artificial, declaring that the roleplaying here sucks."

I know exactly where you're coming from. This is why I prefer GM-played NPCs reacting to player-generated scenarios than vice versa.

My pet peeve is total strangers showing up at a bar begging for help from a bunch of peasants instead of going to the government or one of the all-powerful organizations in town.

[Erisine]

Originally Posted by dentin Honestly I've never really understood the whole RP attraction, and I'm surprised that RP is such a common recurring theme in muds (given the failure rate of RP muds, you'd think they'd learn.) Most people find proper RP irritating - it's time consuming, with uncertain and/or minimal payout, and constant trips out of immersion to fill in and keep track of gaps in your character.

The failure rate of RP Muds isn't so much due to the RP theme, or the "irritating" proper RP, but rather due to another collection of reasons. I can meet your statement and raise you another one - most non-RP combat MUDs also sputter and die.

Some of the reasons that RP Muds fail include (but aren't limited to):
+ Poor choice of modern codebases. Most up-to-date codebases are not well suited for "proper RP" games; the ones that are available are poorly extendable, or were released into the wild with an air of cynicism, loaded with bugs, poor documentation, and all the fury of a group of developers who couldn't agree on anything. In fact, some of the newer codebases have actually been pulled from the public because one or two developers had their panties in a twist. Keep in mind the famously draconian licensing.

+ Poor staffing. You see this in about every failed MUD, but there it is. Many of your existing or new RP MUDs have staffs that are actually splinter groups from other RP MUDs.

+ Sharp growth curve preventing sustainability. A combat MUD has one advantage to an RP MUD: you can develop the game in any way you choose, and there are naturally plenty of things to do for a solo player. In a RP MUD, a lot of the action depends on there being enough players already online to engage you. It's infamously difficult to go from 0 to 15 players within a year for ANY MUD, little less go from 0 to 30+ in under a week.

+ Sharp learning curves and poor interfaces. Again, this is something that will eat away at ANY MUD. We need fresh blood in the MUD universe, as our staple pool of players is aging and juggling their own careers and families, and we are no longer on the 'cutting edge' of programming (so newbie programmers will bypass our community completely in favor of things like mobile development). This means we have to learn to cater to a new decade, and we haven't quite done that yet.



I responded to this because your opinion of "proper RP" is that it's irritating and negative, and you've connected that to game failure rates. Everyone has a type of game that they enjoy, and in this case, the various types of RP games are basically sub-genres of MUDs. This is like saying "proper sci-fi" is irritating, and that must be why Syfy changed its name, cancelled all its good scifi shows, and put wrestling up in its prime-time slots. Yeah. Sure, that's why they did it. Point is, some people like it, some people don't, and there's games for everybody here and we need to start cooperating more.


====

To the original topic:

I never cared for Iron Realms games. I've boycotted them ever since the 'CEO' showed how much of a bigoted, narrow-minded arsehole he is several years ago after he went on an unprovoked crusade against religious players on these very forums. (Sorry, everyone has a right to their opinion, but as a CEO you need to have better sense than to not go on a tirade against a portion of your own customer base.) I also don't care for their pay-for-perks model, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

And yeah, the mandatory tutorials were brutal. <.<

I didn't feel immersed in IRE games, though. Sometimes the writing wasn't very consistent, but the biggest problem for me was that the RP was TOO laid-back. For the same reason that some people find "proper RP" irritating, I find half-hearted virtual cosplay equally irritating. If I wanted a world that was that open to interpretation or free, I'd go back to playing in chatrooms. :/ Meh. To each their own.

[ReanA]

Wow! There's so much to reply to, I'm glad to see such a discussion!

@dentin: Personally, I like the RP part of IRE games because it just feels natural. It definitely isn't me in Achaea leading armies, but parts of my personality definitely seep into my character. That's the beauty though, you don't need to spend hours plotting and planning a character; it's just as enjoyable to go with the flow. I don't put much thought into the subtext or underlining principals of what that may imply, it's all about having fun here, and I'm still enjoying it after 7 years. The mandatory tour is a pain sometimes, but it does help teach new-to-mudding newbies the way the game works, so it definitely has its strengths and weaknesses.

@SnowTroll: That's a really good point; the idea of a "RP" game does tend to have a negative connotation to it for the general person. It might be better if it was worded differently. The majority of the players I've seen when in RP games stay in-character rather than going out of their way to do "RP scenarios", so while I wouldn't call that hardcore RP, I'd definitely consider it a positive, stress-free break from real life. It's like being another person in another world for me rather than trying to plan out events or something like that.

@Will: I like your point of view and agree with you -- different people enjoy different things, so it's important that a game has something to offer everyone (or at least a variety of things). There are also very different ideals of RP and "proper" RP; so while there isn't some kind of law of gravity that everyone can agree on and declare "this is good RP" or "this is bad RP", I think the most important part is people enjoying what they're doing, whatever kind of RP it is. Approval from other people shouldn't matter, so long as they're enjoying it.

@Erisine: Another strength of Achaea is the varying degrees of RP that can be found if you look hard enough. Some people are very laid-back RPers (guilty!), others are very hardcore and a lot of people fall somewhere inbetween. While it can be difficult to find the sort of RP you want, you're bound to find some if you keep trying. There's a lot of players, I'd suggest giving it another shot if you have time. Try Ashtan out, the Occultists have fantastic RP.


Overall: Generally, what I've seen in Achaea is people simply staying in-character. I'm not sure if this fits your personal definition of RP, it probably doesn't. But the point of any game is to be enjoyable, and Achaea does a good job of providing that kind of opportunity. All of your input has been very interesting, it's nice to see so many different points of view.

[Newworlds]

I breesed through this thread and must say that when you are speaking of RP (Roleplaying) you must mean just the casual kind. Perhaps you refer to roleplaying in MUDs in general? Certainly every MUD is Roleplay since you are playing a character and not yourself and that is where the comment that RP MUDs are failing is coming from.

New Worlds Ateraan is a "roleplay enforced" MUD. It is very detailed and in depth and requires immersion. It is doing excellent with a large player base and a incredible rich environment. So perhaps someone can educate me on what you mean by RP MUD and what RP MUDs failing means, because I don't see it at all.

[SnowTroll]

I'm with NewWorlds on this one. People will proudly state, all the time, that muds, in general, are failing. They're an outdated medium that's tough to get into unless you're really determined.

This thread was the first time I'd ever heard someone state that solely RP muds are failing, and that this is because most people don't like "proper" RP and find it a time consuming, stupid, and tedious distraction. That's got to be one of those definition of RP things that people love to talk about ad nauseum around here. At least on these forums, most players who post are RP enthusiasts. But I think the people on both sides of the RP line are tall enough to see over the fence and understand why the other side prefers the games they do. I play both RP and non-RP muds, myself, depending on my mood.

[Darren Brimhall]

It should also be noted that Tabletop Gaming has, since 2000, been steadily declining in the face of graphical games--which have been enjoying a steady increase in user participation since then.

Another factor that goes against Tabletop gaming is what 'version' (Generatio) of said game is being used, as there are players who will favor one over the other--which can generate heated arguements over which is better.

As I see it, the negative aspects of Role Playing come from the fact that players have to 'work' at getting their characters 'up there', where as in video games the character comes with the wonderful skills as their base--and needs to build on them during the course of the Game. Another factor is with the video game, they player follows a predetermined path towards the items their character needs where as in RP the player needs to deal with another player who can very easily jerk them around as much as they like and never give them what they want--very much like a game I used to play.

I see this as lacking the paticence to work their way through, and having to deal with people with no concept, or care, of how much harm they cause by tying up a player for their sole amusement. It's just so much more easier to drop the disk into a machine, and press the buttons at the right time.

Darren Brimhall

[Newworlds]

I agree with both David and SnowTroll. Roleplaying at its finest is not easy, but then nothing worth its weight in success is easy.

That being said, this statement rings strongly true.

Originally Posted by SnowTroll I think the people on both sides of the RP line are tall enough to see over the fence and understand why the other side prefers the games they do. I play both RP and non-RP muds, myself, depending on my mood.

There is a good place for all types of games and I enjoy both hard core roleplay and casual hack and slash gaming. I enjoy graphics and stereo sound and pure text driven games. Just as I enjoy a good movie and a good book.

Roleplaying in NWA is tough but very rewarding. The beautiful part is the variations in style throughout the game. That is, you can start in a relatively calm, where freedom is more secure, Kingdom or in a very very harsh dictator type slave ownership, servant, and conscript Southland. This gives the ability for two very different types of roleplay. You also have the opportunity to be a soloist adventurer as well, so that avenue is available for those who play from work or school and can't interact as much.

My point though is that many games have various options and there are many games that are very different and offer fun experiences in their own right. For example, 4 Dimensions (a game I like alot) has a different setup with lots of mind teasers and numerous quests. There is God Wars II that is famous for PK and a complex combat system that is amazing. There is Materia Magica with a cool in game map and huge world. There is Threshold with amazing religions and a grand setting.

While yes, WOW and Runescape (two of the biggest graphic games) are attractive and fun and pull many players, what they do not have is serious roleplay, nor do they have the ease of use and availability that TEXT games have. And that is why NWA gets players from those games all the time and sometimes keeps them!