...

Few people realize that in order to make the games that we want, we would need the programmed minds of humans. We are talking about AI here now, not computer games. REMEMBER: Games have a limit.

If you are dying to sit on your but and pretend to be a paladin, play d&d... Or hell, go outside with a trashcan lid and a mop, knocking on peoples door asking them if they have shelter for the night from the goblins.

(Warning: LONG)

I certainly see Silvermyst's point and I would almost agree with his statements if it was not for some great role-playing experiences that I have had online through simple chat interfaces. I write 'almost agree' because I can also not dismiss the experiences of 'real' role-playing in MMRPGs that others have written about here in this thread and elsewhere on the net, even though I do not think I can get anything out of trying to RP in any of the current MMRPGs myself (then again, I doubt I could ever do any serious roleplaying in a tabletop game with levels, such as AD&D, either). The games where I have been able to achieve real role-playing experiences have mainly been games with mature themes, such as Vampire: The Masquerade (the tabletop version, not the computer game), Call of Cthulu and Kult. I have also done some actual role-playing in fantasy and sci-fi settings but only in the live-action form of role-playing.

My experience from role-playing over simple chat interfaces is that those interfaces offer similar creative freedom to that which you get when writing a novel, and that is certainly enough to make it a good alternative to face-to-face role-playing. I would in fact claim that you can explore much deeper sides of your roles and more sensitive subjects when playing through an anonymous chat interface than when acting out your role in front of your friends. One reason why I make this assertion is the fact that I have only let myself be touched to tears when playing online, never in a face-to-face session (it doesn't go very well with my macho image hehe). I should add that a number of the people that I were playing with are incredibly talented writers, a few of them even have some published works. As someone with English as a second language it was a great learning experience and I did my best to keep my writing from disrupting the atmosphere by sticking to simple descriptions and often playing foreign characters to allow certain errors in the dialog.

So if you accept the possibility that written communication can provide a channel for real role-playing, what does that have to do with computer games? Well, the people I were playing with in the role-playing chat-rooms were people I had never met before (and still have not, after knowing them for 5-6 years now, due to the fact that most of them are living on the other side of the earth) and our games were not lead by a GM/DM/ST, two aspects that also apply to most current online RPGs.

We quickly noticed that complete free-form role-playing where every player could do whatever he wanted was not desirable, both because it could be abused by disruptive non-roleplayers and because it ruined every possibility of creating a common setting against which people could act out their roles.

By stating that free-form role-playing can be abused by disruptive non-roleplayers I am mainly thinking of people who has some idea of what role-playing is about but try to pursue RL agendas through their in-game identities, at the expense of plausible role interpretations. The purpose of role-playing is after all to enable a sort of shared immersion into imagined situations so, like in literature, the actions of a character do need to be at least plausible. These disruptive people come in both malevolent and harmless versions but they all share the common trait that they let the way in-game conflicts are resolved be affected by their RL motives instead of what their character might do.

The malevolent version is typically a horndog who is only really interested in playing out shoddy sex scenes by creating a powerful character that dominates the female characters and keeps out all the male ones by all means, no matter how implausible or inappropriate to the setting. For instance, a game without rules can not really stop a character in a mediaeval setting from inventing a time machine to bring 21st century military technology back to his time and become powerful. These people can be hard to get rid of in a polite way but it is occasionally possible to get quite funny reactions from them when a female character plays along with the horndog's dirty fantasies and afterwards reveals that the player behind the female character is actually male.

The harmless version is usually a player who is so desperately trying to be friends with everyone that she does not separate the in-game conflicts that her character ends up in and her out-of-character relations to other players. This is the type of player who will disrupt the immersion or dramatic enjoyment of the other players by having her character be rescued from dramatic deaths or other uncomfortable situations in totally anti-climactic and unbelievable ways instead of trying to act out the negative emotions that her character might be experiencing at the moment.

Anyway, we solved both the problem of getting a common setting and resolving conflicts between characters by playing by the rules of a certain RPG (the chat-room was already themed for that RPG so it wasn't a biggie). This meant that we were also using dice-rolls to determine the outcome of various actions. The chat-room also allowed us to use different fonts and post pictures that could add to the shared experiences. All of these are features that only support creative freedom and can be provided by a computer game, the challenge is to be able to do it without ending up restricting the creative freedom of the players too much.

Then again, the word RPG has a different meaning when applied to computer games than when applied to tabletop games and LARPs. I am very fond of several of the current MMRPGs, but not as a medium for acting out roles.

Henry
- formerly anonymous and unregistered, now anonymous and registered

Edit: slight rephrasal

Edited by - HenryApe on January 1, 2002 1:01:29 AM

Edited by - HenryApe on January 1, 2002 1:03:19 AM

What if new players are put through role-playing school and are required to graduate before being allowed into the game world?

quote: Original post by chronos
What if new players are put through role-playing school and are required to graduate before being allowed into the game world?

If the game were commercial it would lose a lot of money, very quickly.

I don''t think players are the problem (at least not in comparison to the completely static worlds of our current MMRPGs). I just brought up disruptive players as an argument against free-form role-playing. I guess the point of my post was to show that role-playing can actually benefit from certain restrictions to the players'' creative freedom, something that might not seem so strange when one considers that all forms of expression (writing, music, acting etc.) are usually made better through the application of certain aesthetic rules. That in turn could mean that the restrictions that today''s game technology places on the creative freedom of the player might not make it impossible to support role-playing in computer games after all, if used cleverly.

Henry

Dang my mouse sucks today.

I''ve read just about this whole thread from beginning to end. I ended up just skimming through the last few because i was so eager to throw my opinion into the pot.

Personally, I liked Everquest. Sadly, I had to give it up a few months before Luclin came out. Why did I like Everquest? Probably for the combat. When you get down to the core of things, the thousands of subscribers to EQ liked the game for the combat. Let''s break it down. There''s money in everquest. There''s money in real life. Getting money in real life is good. It lets you buy food. It lets you buy video games. It gets you into college. Money in EQ is good too. It lets you buy better weapons/armour/magic spells so you can defeat evil monster X. At the base of it, people do work in EQ to make beating up monsters easier. And they''re fine with that. And I''m fine with it too. And I don''t RP on the regular servers. Because Everquest isn''t a mass multiplayer online rpg. It''s a mass multiplayer online race to be the richest and strongest thing on norrath, which is a fun genre in my opinion. I make no attempt to make it a roleplaying game. It''s about as much of a roleplaying game as monopoly. But it''s still probably my favorite game to date.

So now that that''s past us, what makes a better actualy RPG? A few things. Someone hinted at this first one really early: ways to advance your character other than combat. Has anyone here ever played Dragonrealms? It''s a MUD. and a very innovative one at that. It had the basic character classes, and you could level up to become more powerful, but your level was determined by your SKILLS, not your experience in combat like many games. So, if you were a ranger, you had to practice your tracking abilities and get them to a certain proficiency before leveling. Of course, you had to practice your archery skills too which involved combat, but combat was not the sole focus of the game. And I think there was some type of healing class that was forbidden to ever engage in combat. The character of this class would receive harsh penalties for harming any physical being. So people are doing something other than mindless hack ''n slash.

Someone also might have hinted at dynamic worlds. That example where the people had to combat the invading shadows pops to mind. There was another MUD (maybe Terris??) where orcs often held large-scale attacks on the cities, and the players and the guards would have to fend them off. That was FUN. One second, you''re just walking around, talking to friends, and the next second, you see a town guard and a big orc battling it out. This also appeared in Everquest in Highpass Hold where the guard NPC''s fought with the orc and gnoll NPC''s, and also in Highpass Keep where the guards fought the goblins. Also, even though it''s by no means an RPG, in Halo, there are 4 different sides that you come in contact with, and when they come together, they duke it out. I''m sure there are other games like this, but Halo came to mind first (since I got it for xmas ) You really start to feel immersed in the game when the Covenant''s outnumbering you badly when suddenly a buncha human soldiers start firing at them and both sides engage in combat. Another one I just thought of: Half-life. I''ve only played the demo, but I''m thinking of when you''re creeping around a corner, and you can see into an open area and you see fire going back and forth between the aliens and the humans.

But I digress...

So those are the 3 things I''d like to add.
1) Everquest to me falls into a different genre: MM-Leveling Race. But it''s still fun.
2) If you wanna make a good RPG, get out of the frame of mind that combat is the only way to advance.
3) Even if NPC''s aren''t realistic, atleat have them interact on large scales.
Oh, and 4) I almost forgot, but I remembered. I like the idea about making stats abstract. There was a big thread just about this one. Basically, in MMORPGs, people are gonna want a way to compare themselves to others. Up to now, this has been through the leveling system. "Ha ha, I''m level 20 and you''re only level 16!" But this isn''t role-playing. There are no levels in real life. But if you hide the levels from the player, I believe they''ll come up with another way to compare themselves. The designer doesn''t even need to make a way for the player. For example, like someone said above, let the players compare what the biggest thing they''ve killed solo is. To me, that''s realistic because I would hold someone that''s killed a rhino bare-handed above someone that''s only squished a beetle on the pavement.

Guess #4 got a little longer than it needed to.

Just my 2 copper.

I think Omega is the person whos outlooks on this subject are closest to mine. Everquest doesnt have any roleplaying, all im asking is thr RPG be removed from the self acclaimed title MMOPRPG. I guess we will see if Verant does any better with Galaxies.

Most people seem to be ok with the fact that todays MMORPGs dont have any role playing. I wish everyone actually got to experience good roleplaying at some point. If you have a good character in a game like DAoC or Everquest you feel accomplished. And you say to yourself, "Man, my guy is the shit!" Think about how much more awesome it would b if character classes held true to their conventional roles. i.e. A thiefs strongest point was what he could do outside combat, or to actually avoid combat, then take care of business without beinbg seen

Hopefully a game will break the rules soon, so we can have our role playing back. If not you all will have to wait for my game

Noods

I personally have been playing pnp roleplaying games for along time and continue to do so and will probally continue for another 20 or so more years.

I on the other hand have not really played many crpg''s infact the first crpg I ever played was Phantasy Star 1 for the sega master system which I still consider to be the best crpg I have seen/played.

I did manage to be sucked into ultima online for 2 years however after the creation of Trammel I think uo lost alot of its roleplaying. If nothing else back before that day you could fear steping out of town or being all alone fighting something.

Anyways to get to my point my basic problem with crpg''s and mmorpg''s is lack of freedom and yet too much freedom at the same time.

You sufer lack of freedom in bounds and spades, for example im in a dungeon what if I want to use chalk and mark the walls so I know the path out,etc can I? Not in any crpg ive yet to have seen. Another thing that suffers is creativity your locked in by rules and limitations.

As far as my point on to much freedom what I mean mainly applies to mmorpg''s is the lack of story to pull you along.

Lets face it most people like to be controlled on some level total freedom with little goals other than self created goals can be a drag.

Anyways when someone can make a crpg that allows the player to do whatever they want let me know. Unfortunally I doubt it will ever ever ever happen and thats why pnp rpg''s will always be more of a true roleplaying.