[Guide] Storytelling Roleplaying Method
by Manovan | 30/06/2007 13:28:37 Introduction As I´m writing this introduction, I´m sitting in a small and insignificant cavern in the deep woods of Sweden. There isn’t much to do here without Internet connection if you’re not used to be outside of civilization, so I thought I might as well write something creative. And what’s not more creative than a guide of extremely advanced roleplaying in the World of Warcraft? You might wonder what kind of sick, twisted and sinful activities I`m doing out here in the woods. To tell you the truth, I… What is it that makes roleplaying advanced? What is it with it that would attract players to try it out? Can anyone do it? Probably not. You need a creative mind. You must be able to fully see your character as a real character. Not as a real person because he is not, and will never be. View him as a fictional character in a novel or a TV show. In a drama that develops, or as you might want to call it – an epic adventure. The character will start as a zero and try to move towards one hundred. But as this is a never-ending game if you want it to be, that hundred might never be reached. The advanced roleplaying is to no only give your character a face, but to give him a setting. He should have a goal (something whether only you knows or your character knows as well) and while reaching this goal he should face hindrances; conflicts with himself, his setting, his goal or other characters. This way of roleplaying is what makes the difference of normal roleplaying and storytelling. Your character is now the protagonist of your story. And every story needs something for an antagonist. But first… How do you play this? Is this even doable? Who the hell do you think you are? World of Warcraft is a very limiting game when it comes to what kind of roleplaying possibilities a MMORPG should have. The environment, the game mechanics, the items, the appearances and animations, life and death – everything has limits in what can be considered realistic of the story you want to tell with your roleplaying. Understand that it’s important that you make a difference of what actually happens in-game and what happens to your character. You will need to make things up as you go, and add that to your story, whether or not your character experiences it or not. In most occasions, this is when you deliberately want to form your character’s storyline and change it into a direction of choice. You have made a decision, and must deliver that message to the public. Whomever that may be. The point of this kind of roleplaying is to create a story, and it’s very rare for people who creates a story to not want to share it wih the public. Who is your public? It might be your guild friends, it might be random friends or to everyone who wants to know about it. You might want people who interacts with you in-game to out of character know who you are and what kind of story you are playing by. Share this your own way. I use forums. It’s a great plus if you’re a great writer. Or if you have a good way to provide information in an interesting and exciting way. Pictures, comics, flash animations, poems, in-game footage. Personally, I write. I still don’t feel a hundred percent comfortable writing in this slightly weird and foreign language called English, but it has to be done if I want more people to read what I write. But what do I write? My way of providing character information and story development is to create a short prose story where I write what can not be played out in-game. Parts of it might have been experienced by my character, but then I alter that experience with words to make it more appealing to the public. This way I can also share my character’s inner feelings and ambitions; how his sick and twisted mind works. What you actually play out in-game is your character’s now. His personality – and the beauty of this method is how that will change. Character development is the basis of a good story. The rest of this guide will show how you can create a story, how you can play by it and how you can tell it to the world. The face! The first thing you do is to give your character a face. Give him little of a background story and a basic personality. What’s his strengths and weaknesses? Is he a good or a bad person? Good and evil are of course a matter of perspective, but what I mean are the traditional meanings of the words good and evil. Common is to believe that a good character is altruistic while an evil character is egoistic. Try to experiment with that. You can balance out good and bad within him to make him more alive. Give him reason. Play Freud. Character development can be to start out as good and slowly force him on a path to evil, or vice versa. Or if you are a little of an amateur psychologist (or a real psychologist for that matter), scrap the whole idea of good and evil and just give him person. When you do this kind of roleplaying you can’t start out blank and then make your character develop a personality as he goes. He need some basic traits to start with, something to make him real. A few personality traits which you remember or write down. I started out easy as I had my same character as a human before I rolled undead. Then I just used the same story. All that really made his personality when I started was this short summary. Born in Lordaeron. Fled during it’s fall. Lost his family to the Scourge. Lived a few years in Southshore and Theramore, then became a paladin and was sent to Northshire Abbey in Elwynn Forest. (Human starting area). Personality: Slightly arrogant. Dislikes orders. Lazy. From here I started playing on my human paladin. Casually. I joined a roleplaying guild and around level 25 I got tired of the class. I wanted to play undead, but I liked my character, so why not bring him with me? This is what happened: Requested to be sent back to Lordaeron on a mission by his guild, Stormwind Militia. Got killed by Forsaken. Remains brought back home and cremated. (I wanted to be a warlock with a complete new appearance so I made a solution). Stormwind Militia threw the ashes into the wind. An apotechary from the Forsaken found much of the ashes and used it for an experiment, where he put it in the heart of a dead warlock. Woke up in Deathknell. (Forsaken starting area). Personality: Angry and hungry! This was the face I had given my character when I started. Now I played the game as it was supposed to be played (quests and grind), and from time to time interacted with other characters. Though all my character was now was a Forsaken cliché. I wanted to give him more characteristics. So I came up with the idea of creating some duelism between him and the new body of his. I decided that the mind of the warlock still existed, but he was pissed and wanted his body back. Now I had created an antagonist. By adding that other voice to the story I had given my character a conflict and at the same time extended his personality and made him more unique. Would it be possible for the voice to get his body back in the end? The setting! As I had started playing and given my character characteristics, I still hadn’t realized what would be the point of this plot-driven roleplaying method. I had to give my character a target, something to move towards – a final destination. All I had was his inner conflict and that’s what I had to use. The inner voice wanted to get his body back from my character. It was the antagonist’s target, to win over the protagonist. The protagonist’s goal was to survive and keep the body. I came up with the idea of giving the voice more power the stronger the body got, and then (as this was long before the Burning Crusade) when I would reach level 60 the body could be strong enough to give up to the voice. I thought that this goal would open up opportunities for more fun and interesting roleplaying. But this was still only the conflict. My character needed a goal as well, he needed to be able to stop this from happening. This far, all I had created was a face, a person. As I was questing in Dalaran and found the in-game book Belamoore’s Research Journal, I thought I could have some time over to read what was in it. That book changed my roleplaying completely. I was a warlock, more bad than good, and the journal explained the power of bloodstone and how it was used in rituals to summon demons. I decided to make my character very interested in that ore and driven to it by impulse. His current goal was to find out what it was, and why the antagonist voice in his head was against it. I thought that now I had given my character enough person to share it with the public, so I made a short story of when my character found the journal, read it, and meanwhile made dialogue with the antagonist voice. Then I added the newfound interest for bloodstone as a cliffhanger to make the reader interested in what would happen to my character next. This story (fan fiction style) was not really roleplaying as very little of it happened in-game, but it affected my character’s face in-game and I would also get to know what other players thought of my story. Those who read got interested, and I wanted to write more. |
by Vaneras | 02/08/2007 18:41:20 This thread has been added to the “Informative & useful threads for Roleplayers” compilations sticky: Informative & useful threads for Roleplayers  |
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