I think the easiest route to begin with is to simply admit that such games are biased towards players who work with others... most ''narrative roleplayers'' won''t mind that. After all, if they wanted to play on their own and follow a story there are plenty of single-player RPGs for computer and consoles. It''s not a perfect solution, but I think it''s better than trying to integrate 2 RP systems into one new game and working out how to balance them, both internally and with each other.

The Slashdot Karma system might work... the Advogato trust metric might be another.

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If I ever made an MMORPG it would feature mandatory role-playing. This would require the support of GMs who would drive much of the plot through direct control of important NPCs, cooperation with talented players, and deliberate manipulation of the game's environment. GM's and players would work together toward a rich, story-driven experience, opening up many dramatic opportunities for all the people involved.

On the meaning of "role-playing" in "RPG", here is an excerpt from an interview with Gary Gygax (co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons):

quote: Q. You have said CRPGs aren't "real" roleplaying - as online multiplayer games become fuller featured, do you foresee this changing? What kinds of technological advances are necessary to make "real" roleplaying via machine possible?

First question is: To whom does one ROLEPLAY when gaming? Obviously, CRPGs are not really RPGs at all, are they? Unless there is direct communication between the Game Master and the players, that communication affecting the GM's decisions on the results of actions other than random number results, there is no roleplay of any meaningful sort involved, although some role assumption and playing within the bounds of the character set forth is possible.

I foresee online gaming changing when there are good audio-visual links connecting the participants, thus approximating play in a face-to-face group.

When AI approximates Machine Intelligence, then many online and computer-run RPGs will move towards actual RPG activity. Nonetheless, that will not replace the experience of "being there," any more than seeing a theatrical motion picture can replace the stage play.

[edited by - chronos on October 14, 2002 10:26:30 PM]

... But doesn''t Gygax have a vested interest in lowballing CRPGs? No offense meant here, but I don''t think he has a leg to stand on. To me, whenever you try to make a decision in a game, and you make that decision based on your interpretation of the mindset, personality, and beliefs of the character you are using as your avatar, then you are roleplaying.

It is completely possible to roleplay in a computer game which presents the opportunity. Give your character a name which is not your own. Give him an appearance which is not your own. Have him act under a set of principles and beliefs which is not your own. Have him say things you wouldn''t say and do things you wouldn''t do, because he would do them. If that isn''t roleplay then what the hell is?

It is also possible to not roleplay in a game which gives you every opportunity. Just play yourself. Be who you are and do what you do. A large number of people do this in modern MMORPGs. It''s not a big deal.

I''m a "character roleplayer" - my highest goal is to perform a role flawlessly. I''m not interested in winning so much as putting on a good show. So I doubt I''d ever play myself, because I have fun playing someone else.

How could you force someone to roleplay? You''d never be sure that he wasn''t just playing himself, and not some other "role." Conversely, banning roleplaying doesn''t work either... as we tell little lies about ourselves all the time, and that adds up to a role.

If by "forcing roleplaying" you mean preventing people from talking about things that are outside of the game, then I doubt there''s any way to force that. There''s a way to discourage it though - encourage people to talk about things in game while they''re in game. How do you do that? Make the game interesting enough to talk about even while you''re playing it. How do you do that? That''s what game design is all about.

quote: Original post by Kylotan
I think the easiest route to begin with is to simply admit that such games are biased towards players who work with others... most ''narrative roleplayers'' won''t mind that. After all, if they wanted to play on their own and follow a story there are plenty of single-player RPGs for computer and consoles.

True, but I just realised one more thing:
I tend not to be a cooperative narrationist. I''m very disruptive as a character (not as a player) to most roleplaying groups because I am not willing to just go along with the plot if it doesn''t suit my character. I''ll go into deep roleplay whining (in-character) about why exactly it''s such a bad idea that I have to go along into that dark, nasty dungeon to get something I don''t care about.

However, this kind of player might get rated "bad" by some, and "very good" by others. Some players will find it annoying that they have to spend some serious playing effort convincing me to come along, and some others will love it because it gives them a sense of my character.

The slashdot "meta moderation" somewhat counters this problem, but I think on a grand level it''s more a case of attracting the "right kind of player" to your game, isn''t it?

Well, I''m going to read and try to understand that Advogato''s Trust Metric now

Too much role-play ruins the game. If you aren''t playing a game while in a role, you are just playing a role. You could do that in IRC. If you aren''t playing a role while in the game, you might as well be playing checkers.

There has to be a balance.

£§

quote: Original post by SpittingTrashcan
... But doesn't Gygax have a vested interest in lowballing CRPGs?

I don't see why. It's not like people who are interested in pen and paper RPGs will suddenly stop playing them because of CRPGs. It's an entirely different experience.

quote: To me, whenever you try to make a decision in a game, and you make that decision based on your interpretation of the mindset, personality, and beliefs of the character you are using as your avatar, then you are roleplaying.

In most CRPGs there are very few choices available to the player, which means there are very few ways to express a character's mindset, personality, and beliefs.

quote: It is completely possible to roleplay in a computer game which presents the opportunity. Give your character a name which is not your own. Give him an appearance which is not your own. Have him act under a set of principles and beliefs which is not your own. Have him say things you wouldn't say and do things you wouldn't do, because he would do them.

That would be fine, except that in the kinds of games Gygax is talking about you don't really have that much freedom in choosing your character's actions. You can do that in MMORPGs if you like, but there's little point in roleplaying if other players around you make no effort to interact with your character in meaningful ways. Roleplaying is more than just acting; it's also about listening and reacting. The lack of reciprocity from other players makes roleplaying a wasted effort.

quote: It is also possible to not roleplay in a game which gives you every opportunity. Just play yourself. Be who you are and do what you do. A large number of people do this in modern MMORPGs. It's not a big deal.

As long as you respond to your environment in a manner that is consistent with that environment, it doesn't really matter if you're playing yourself or somebody else.

quote: How could you force someone to roleplay? You'd never be sure that he wasn't just playing himself, and not some other "role."

It doesn't matter who the player thinks he's playing, all that matters is what the player is actually doing (or not doing). If a player's actions are consistent with what a character might do if he was part of a book or a movie, that's good enough roleplaying for me.

quote: If by "forcing roleplaying" you mean preventing people from talking about things that are outside of the game, then I doubt there's any way to force that.

Simply monitor players' conversations and confront any players who act out of character. Those players undermine the efforts of other players by clashing with the overall sense of the game's reality.

quote: Make the game interesting enough to talk about even while you're playing it. How do you do that ? That's what game design is all about.

It's not enough to make it interesting to talk about, you must turn roleplaying into a meaningful act. Your character's actions determine how others react to your character and shape the story in meaningful ways. Rather than something you add on top of your character, roleplaying becomes the primary way you interact with your environment.

[edited by - chronos on October 15, 2002 7:31:33 AM]

quote: Original post by LoneStranger
Too much role-play ruins the game. If you aren''t playing a game while in a role, you are just playing a role.

That would put you in the "gamist" category

Seriously, there are players that do fine without any "gaming" at all. Some of the best sessions I''ve played have revolved around set characters, set outcomes, but allowing the player to "fill in the gaps". Given the right set of players, this can be very enjoyable and thoroughly entertaining.

Doing this on a PC is, for now, entirely impossible.

Chronos,

I will address your points in order.

quote:
I don''t see why. It''s not like people who are interested in pen and paper RPGs will suddenly stop playing them because of CRPGs. It''s an entirely different experience.

I still say Gygax has a vested interest. If his philosophy has been that P&P RPGs are a superior form of entertainment to electronic media (which to my knowledge it has been, and in many ways they are), then of course he will be reluctant to admit that MMOGs, an electronic medium, will ever be able to assume even some of the capabilities of his beloved P&P. By the way, as a narrationist I love P&P roleplaying - but as a simulationist, CRPGs are the way to go as they have the potential to offer a much faster, more realistic rulebase. That they don''t is the fault of the KISS paradigm they inherited (unnecessarily) from P&P games.

quote:
In most CRPGs there are very few choices available to the player, which means there are very few ways to express a character''s mindset, personality, and beliefs.

But that doesn''t mean it''s impossible to offer those choices. And that doesn''t mean it''s impossible to exploit what choices there are. Let me put it this way: as long as I have the freedom to make my character look how I want and talk how I want, I have the opportunity to roleplay.

quote:
That would be fine, except that in the kinds of games Gygax is talking about you don''t really have that much freedom in choosing your character''s actions. You can do that in MMORPGs if you like, but there''s little point in roleplaying if other players around you make no effort to interact with your character in meaningful ways. Roleplaying is more than just acting; it''s also about listening and reacting. The lack of reciprocity from other players makes roleplaying a wasted effort.

The only MMORPG I ever played was the Ragnarok Online beta. Seven character classes, murder-based advancement, strict inequality weapon series, the whole works. But it did have free chat, and you could choose your character''s hairstyle, and you could give him a distinctive chapeau. And most importantly, there was sitting. While out in the fields and stabbing furry animals to death, a character would take damage. The only cheap way to recover the health was to sit down. While sitting, you couldn''t do anything but talk. That was a remarkable stimulus for roleplaying. People would congregate in crowds of sitters, with a few rested-up people patrolling the edges to keep wandering monsters at bay, and talk while they sat. I suspect most people were RPing themselves, but who cares? I chatted with all and sundry and had a marvelous time. I roleplayed SilveRing the swordsman, who was fond of his natty fedora and loathed beetles. Had I more choices I would have exploited those too.

quote:
Simply monitor players'' conversations and confront any players who act out of character. Those players undermine the efforts of other players by clashing with the overall sense of the game''s reality.

I think your simple solution forgets what the first M in MMOG stands for. That would be Massively. As in Massively Multiplayer. As in there are a LOT of people playing. If we were talking about a game where there were five, ten, or even twenty players it might be possible, as you suggest, to "monitor players'' conversations and confront any players who act out of character." But these sorts of games have userbases in the thousands if they are successful. Your team of twenty-odd staffers (which is a high number I''m just guessing off the top me head) will be harried enough just quashing bugs and keeping the server running. Any "solution" to the "problem" of lack of roleplay would have to be carried out by either

1 a simple algorithm which doesn''t add too much to program complexity and thus lag the servers, or
2 the players themselves as a self-policing group with consistent goals.

Since (1) is at this time not nearly sophisticated enough, I sugggest (2). But who defines "not roleplaying"? Could you please define "not roleplaying" for me? I''m having a hard time imagining a way to "not roleplay". If you interact with others in character, that''s roleplaying. If you interact with them as yourself, that''s also roleplaying. If you don''t interact at all, that''s roleplaying the strong silent type. If you bring up out of game knowledge or break the fourth wall, all it takes is a userbase who will either ignore you or say something like "I know not of these Bears of Chi-Ca-Go. Are they wild and hairy?" Or give you a warning, either just verbal or an in-game flag which marks you as a BAD RPer. I guess that''s sort of a karma system. Works for me.

quote:
It''s not enough to make it interesting to talk about, you must turn roleplaying into a meaningful act. Your character''s actions determine how others react to your character and shape the story in meaningful ways. Rather than something you add on top of your character, roleplaying becomes the primary way you interact with your environment.

This I can get behind. I''d love to play a game which gives me more opportunities to roleplay, where there are many decisions I can make where neither choice is necessarily "better", where I can define myself independent of the restrictions of class, and where combat optimization is no longer a primary goal. Of course, this means that combat must no longer be the primary way you interact with your environment, as it is in most modern MMORPGs. And, come to think of it, in a lot of P&P games too. Particularly Dungeons and Dragons, where you walk through Dungeons and kill Dragons. Okay, that''s a gross oversimplification but I''m not through getting my digs in on that pompous blowhard Gygax. You''d think that the creator of D&D would be more open to new ideas. Sheesh.

Realistically, you will never have enough gm''s to enforce roleplaying in the more strict sense.

However, there is this one mud I ran across, where the first 50% of your levels could be gained any way, but the last 50% were gained through roleplaying only.

Basically, the game gave you experience for roleplaying.

"superior form of entertainment" <-- ok...I have no idea what can possibly be meant by this...its kinda like saying that one person''s favorite color is superior to someone else''s...

Hmm...I guess calling CRPGs "role-playing" is misleading, but they are still fun games. That is the point, after all. When people start up EQ or one of those (I''m guessing at this, I''ve never played them) I don''t think they are doing it because they want to act. I don''t think the problem of making an avatar so expresisve has yet beenn solved. What they play for, I think, is
1. to be part of a community of players(not characters)
2. enjoy CRPG-style adventuring.

Without being together in person, it seems very hard to roleplay effectively. Maybe we should start calling them MMO fastasy games, instead of RPGs.

So, what I think would be best for encouraging roleplay, is to make the characters emotions a bigger part of the game. If it borrowed a few ideas from the Sims, a game could do this quite easily. For example, the player may enjoy making his character crawl through the sewers, but if it adversely affected the mood of his character, it might help remind him that he isnt supposed to act like he enjoys it. The idea expressed earlier in the thread about experience gain being based on the attitude would probably handle this real nicely, since character advancement seems to be a major motivator for players. The player would have to understand what is happening though, otherwise he might get frustrated at gaining experience at different rates for no apparent reason.

But is that what you want to reinforce? This idea is more like the computer roleplaying for you than encouraging real acting. I dunno. I don''t think I''ve aded anything really new to the discussion.