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Estarra · 01-31-2005, 05:03 PM

Besides race originality, another point designers ought to look at is how to encourage racial roleplaying.

In Lusternia, we designed both original races--at least, we thought they were original!--and archetypical races (humans, dwarves, elves). It was my philosophy that while we wanted originality in races, we also didn’t want to disappoint those players who identified their ‘alter egos’ as a particular archetypical race (i.e., I have a friend who always insists on being a dwarf). In any event, from my past experience, I noticed that race wasn’t taken as an important roleplaying feature; rather, players chose a race because they wanted the stats or special powers and roleplaying their race was almost non-existent. To help encourage a little bit of racial roleplaying, we made some of the races transform to different stats for some guilds (i.e., classes) attached to cities. In other words, our ‘elfen’ race players get their stats adjusted when becoming druids--making elfen druids desirable (and their race transforms from ‘elfen’ to ‘high elfen’), though you can certainly be elfen and a member of any other class (I’m not a fan of class-restricted races). Also, our history of the cities and races were written based on this racial feature.

Honestly, I hadn’t held out much hope on this design encouraging racial roleplaying, thinking that ultimately players will continue to just choose race as an afterthought (as nothing more than 'a piece of equipment' as someone else suggested). Much to my pleasant surprise, however, I’ve seen extremely strong racial roleplaying, to the point where some races are actively discriminated against (i.e., certain races have become ‘second-class citizens’ in the evil city) to serious discussions on which races should be leaders of major player organizations (i.e., only someone of the aquatic merian race should be a candidate to become the prince of the city founded by merians). Mind you, all of this roleplaying of races has been generated by players on their own.

01-31-2005, 05:03 PM	#49
Estarra Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Home MUD: Lusternia Posts: 191	Besides race originality, another point designers ought to look at is how to encourage racial roleplaying. In Lusternia, we designed both original races--at least, we thought they were original!--and archetypical races (humans, dwarves, elves). It was my philosophy that while we wanted originality in races, we also didn’t want to disappoint those players who identified their ‘alter egos’ as a particular archetypical race (i.e., I have a friend who always insists on being a dwarf). In any event, from my past experience, I noticed that race wasn’t taken as an important roleplaying feature; rather, players chose a race because they wanted the stats or special powers and roleplaying their race was almost non-existent. To help encourage a little bit of racial roleplaying, we made some of the races transform to different stats for some guilds (i.e., classes) attached to cities. In other words, our ‘elfen’ race players get their stats adjusted when becoming druids--making elfen druids desirable (and their race transforms from ‘elfen’ to ‘high elfen’), though you can certainly be elfen and a member of any other class (I’m not a fan of class-restricted races). Also, our history of the cities and races were written based on this racial feature. Honestly, I hadn’t held out much hope on this design encouraging racial roleplaying, thinking that ultimately players will continue to just choose race as an afterthought (as nothing more than 'a piece of equipment' as someone else suggested). Much to my pleasant surprise, however, I’ve seen extremely strong racial roleplaying, to the point where some races are actively discriminated against (i.e., certain races have become ‘second-class citizens’ in the evil city) to serious discussions on which races should be leaders of major player organizations (i.e., only someone of the aquatic merian race should be a candidate to become the prince of the city founded by merians). Mind you, all of this roleplaying of races has been generated by players on their own.