What is the point of adding the ability to play a role in a game?

The answer might simply be, "because it's fun." But why? What makes it fun?

I'm interested in what you think are the most important features or elements of a game which cause you to feel as if you've taken on a role or identity; how you think they could be strengthened; and what kills roleplaying for you.


For me I think the start of roleplaying begins when a game offers me strong identities which can be heavily customized. Usually this comes in the form of a character I play throughout the game that I can, at a minimum, name; but I feel hints of roleplaying even in strategy games that allow me to upgrade and name units. Things that really kill roleplaying for me are things like distinctions without a difference, such as a game that offers dozens of outfits but only one path to victory or way to solve problems.

Although it's not vital, roleplaying is really strengthened for me when I can intellectually respect the world. A world filled with conflicts among ideas or philosophies is a big bonus, especially if they can be articulated in a way that's morally gray as opposed to simple good/bad.

That's what works for me. How about you?

I think roleplay contributes a great deal to replay value in a game. The first time I play through, I'm engaging the game as a player, learning its systems, its foibles and its weaknesses. When presented with the "ethical" choices so popular in games these days, I'll think, "What should I choose in order to glean the greatest possible reward from the designer of this game?" My desire to succeed and excel in the most mercenary and pragmatic sense will totally eclipse nuances of the story or personalities of NPCs or even the pleasing symmetry of my own character's development.

In subsequent runs through the game, having mastered the fundamental gameplay, I'll play as a character engaging the world. I'll eschew unique equipment and equip my party with "Government Issue" gear, or I'll invent a persona for my character and stick to it in each situation, or I'll build a Dwarf Fortress that depends entirely on the capture and processing of fish for its economy, selling fish bone necklaces and refusing to pursue easier methods of food acquisition.

Roleplay, at its heart, is restricted gameplay. Requiring it or rewarding it so highly that it may as well be required will compel your players to ignore a portion of the game's breadth in order to stay "in character". I think this is fundamentally unwise in game design, but the draw and value of roleplay to enrich the game and to provide the players with freedom is undeniable. I think every player should roleplay, but they should do it on their own terms, and they should have a chance to take in the big picture of the game before they have to be locked into one aspect of it.

Several recent threads have addressed the concept of lateral or horizontal levelling, where you earn new and interesting content or abilities that isn't better or worse than what you had before, in an absolute sense. Mixing that with my own archetype of the "first round all business, subsequent play more playful" gamer, I suggest the following:

Allow players to play selfishly, with metagaming and detachment and freedom, to sample the entire breadth of the game in a fairly short period of time. Let them set themselves up as a mercenary, grind some money, level up their character and their ship, and wander around the galaxy collecting upgrades, trying their hand at gunnery, navigation, planetary exploration, mineral harvesting, and small squad leadership. Maybe even make that experience a scripted sequence, like a tutorial.

After that, let them take off the training wheels and get into the sandbox for real. Those metaphors don't go well together, I'm afraid, but what I mean to say is that the next character they play (I'm still under the impression that your game will allow players to inhabit the same world again and again as different people) can be based on a passing fancy that struck them while they were in jack-of-all-trades mode. Maybe they took a job from a military liaison and they want to know what it's like to serve in that military, so they sign on as an ensign and work their way up the ranks. Maybe they really liked mining asteroids, so they make a roughneck character and make their fortune burning tungsten out of floating rocks. Perhaps they find that they're terrible at dogfighting, but excel at higher-level strategy, and so they recruit an armada and conquer a solar system.

In each of these personas, they can explore the profession of their choice in great detail, trading the breadth of the all-purpose merc character for the depth of a more focused role. That way, everyone gets an idea of what your game has to offer, and they can pursue their own idea of victory and success within it.

To name a few examples, the two games I find easiest and most natural to "role play" in are probably Rome Total War (mostly modded, though) and Football Manager series.

There are very few things my two favorites have in common. The most obvious one is that they're pretty much sandbox - you pick an empire or a football club to run, the game starts, and you're on your own. Sandbox is the easiest part to figure out, though. Elder Scrolls games also check this box, as do most 4X games, and they still don't cut it for me in the roleplaying sense.

The second thing Total War and FM have in common is that the game world doesn't revolve around the player (his empire/club). In Total War, the player can lead a small faction on the margins of the known world, fighting off the aggressive neighbours in battles that, although vital for the player, are completely insignificant in the big picture. Major empires will still engage in wars and shape the political map of the game. The world is not balanced to accomodate the player, and these games make a very strong point of it - often you'll find yourself in situations where it is impossible to win, yet they were impossible to avoid as well.

The point I'm trying to make here isn't that games should be as realistic and unforgiving as possible - it's that defeats should be part of flavour and fun of the game, not a failure that makes you want to reload and retry. It makes the game world credible, as well as characters in it. Characters that eventually succeed at everything they attempt to do and don't suffer defeats are not believable characters.

The third major thing the two games have in common is that they aren't impersonal.

In Total War, each general has a name, a portrait (that changes as the character ages), and a set of personality traits that affect his in-game abilities but also tell you what kind of a man he really is. These traits change according to the character's actions in the game - such as showing bravery in battle, getting education, or just being rich and bored. They get married and have kids that will also one day become generals and governors (they'll inherit some of the father's traits as well). They can die in battles, they can die of old age, they can get assassinated, but they will die. As generic as they might seem at first, from a roleplaying perspective they're more real than any fully fleshed out protagonist that you just drag around from one quest to the other.

Football Manager also makes a strong point of this. A typical game holds a database of around 10,000 people involved in the game, including footballers, staff, other managers, even referees and directors / board members. All of them have names, distinct personalities, dynamic relationships with any number of people they played or worked with during their careers, motivation and morale, and all of these factors are of massive imporance in the game (as much as their actual skills, and probably more). A significant part of the game is all about figuring out what goes on in a player's head, what to tell him before the game or at half time to get him motivated, and how to make him respect you. The game makes it really easy to think of them as actual people, even though they're only represented as textual character sheets.

I might be odd, that I hate roleplay.

I don't play games to be someone else. I don't want to pretend I'm in some fantasy land. In fact, I find the entire thought somewhat distasteful and unhealthy.

That said, I love role playing games. I like levelling up characters, customizing them, and to a lesser degree, following them through the story. I like seeing them do cool things, and devising new and interesting ways to make cool things happen.

Take that as you may.

Telestn, do you identify with the your avatar? As in, do you think of the character as yourself instead of as some sort of imagined or made-up character?

I'd say roleplaying is about escapism, living a more interesting, dramatic, special, life for a while. So the essence of roleplaying is story, because that's what creates drama, tells you who you are and what world you are living in and why you are special. The ideal roleplaying experience for me would be like reading an interactive novel, preferably a sff romance novel. The gameplay needs to support the way in which you are supposed to be special - do you look unusual? Do you use strategy to outwit your enemies? Are you the fastest gun in the west? Can you make big magical kabooms? Are you going to be the one who 'catches em all'? Do you patiently dot all the i's and cross all the t's? Do you cleverly solve puzzles? Are people intimidated by you or admiring of you? Do you get the girl/guy and live happily ever after?

Things that kill roleplaying for me are when I want to do something within the game, then find out it's not possible, or arbitrarily not possible for my class/gender/race. Another thing that kills roleplaying is when I do accomplish something I think is praiseworthy, like soloing a dungeon in an MMO, but there's no reward because the game doesn't care that I did it all by myself, it only cares that I'm not the prescribed level. And even in a beautiful world like those of the Myst games, I have an extremely difficult time roleplaying if there aren't any NPCs or someone to talk to me.

There are probably two facets to my playing a role.

1) Story driven, a really strong story with strong characters I can identify with. I agree with sunandshadow - really this style of play should give the experience of an interactive novel with drama, characters and a theme that makes me think.

2) Sandbox style, with a more open world I find that clear ethical decisions help with playing a role. When I am presented with generalised standings - does my character steal or not steal? Does my character avoid conflict or seek it out? - then I tend just to devolve into a gamer doing what is most profitable, more how can I beat the game rather than what would my character do. What really gets me into a role is macro ethical decisions that are presented clearly as part of a story arc - the intro to fallout 3 did this really well but as soon as i was out of the vault i lost a bit of interest with the game falling back to the standard good/bad character split based on generic actions rather than your reaction to ethical dilemas posed by the game.

It is likely that when I am playing a role then if the game presents to complex a decision I can loose track of where my character may stand and just fall back to my own latent instinct, which tends to reduce the enjoyment quite a bit as I like to play games for other roles rather than confirming my own views of the world. The exception to this may be where the game inserts interesting ethical conflicts and dilemas which challenge my own personal views.

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Original post by JasRonq Telestn, do you identify with the your avatar? As in, do you think of the character as yourself instead of as some sort of imagined or made-up character?

No. That's just messed up.

Actually, it's quite natural for people to pretend they're somebody else in a fictional reality. They have various fantasies about who they want to be and what they want to do. Whether they do it inside their heads, or as kids playing in the backyard, or by playing a computer or pen and paper RPG, or by acting or writing - most people still do it.

Then again, many aspects of human personality are messed up, but they're still there. And very exploitable in games, as well.

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Original post by Telastyn I'm interested in what you think are the most important features or elements of a game which cause you to feel as if you've taken on a role or identity; how you think they could be strengthened; and what kills roleplaying for you.

I think the best example of this that I've played is Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit for y'all across the pond). I think I've discussed that game here before, but what the hell, here I go again.

Indigo Prophecy took the incredibly ballsy step of making your characterization not matter, or matter in unintended ways. Early in the game, you have just committed a murder, and are tasked with getting rid of the evidence and fleeing before you are discovered. In a conventional adventure, this would be where the game would be all like "You forgot to clean up the blood stain! You fail! Restore/Restart/Quit!?", but in this game, other than escaping, there's nothing you really have to do. Moreover, in the next scene suddenly you're playing the detective tasked to investigate the murder. Did a good job of covering your tracks before? Great job, Bucko, now you just made your job harder. The experience of playing two people whose goals are (apparently) in opposition puts you off balance. You're not sure how to min/max. At the same time, the game subtly convinces you that there's no need to do that. Play the game how you want, make the decisions you like, and you will have a satisfying narrative experience without having to consciously manage it.