I have a question for anyone who plays on the Percival DAOC server (or on MLF I guess): what EXACTLY does the role-playing component consist of? Is it just the names? When someone in a group is down on hit points, does he say, "Grant me this boon, noble healer, for I am wondrous fain to continue this fight?" Or do they just say "heal pls?" Also, what linguistic proto-language is postulated to have caused magick faeries to speak Ye Olde Englishe? I know these aren't new questions, but I'm really curious as to what people find different about the r-p servers. I played very briefly on Percival, but the only thing I found that was different was that everyone kept addressing me as "friend." It seems like real role-playing comes from reacting to situations "in character," but because of the completely static nature of the game world, the only "situation" in DAOC is pulling the mob. I know people have role-played their characters getting married, but that's happening on other servers, too, and frankly is a bit scarier than I'm ready for.

Okay, I know it was unintentional -- but that cracked me up, Geryk!

"Grant me this boon, noble healer, for I am wondrous fain to continue this fight?" HeeHeeHee!

I can just imagine...Okay, no, I can't!

Percival is a great lay, mostly due to his rusty, crucifix-shaped tongue stud. That thang drove me over the climactic brink more than one late night alone at the computer, if you know what I mean.

Oh, you mean the Percival server.

*shudder*

"It seems like real role-playing comes from
reacting to situations "in character," but because of the completely static nature of the game world, the only "situation" in DAOC is pulling the mob."

I can't speak to DAOC but you're right about this as far as the few MMORPGs I've been on. The world is static and physical conflict between PCs and mobs is the only stimulus the coded world offers aside from the incentive to keep fighting, over and over again, which is getting more powerful to fight yet bigger things. It's hard to build any kind of roleplaying on that basis.

I've only encountered one kindred spirit on a MMORPG that understood how to portray a character and had a decent enough vocabulary to pull it off. But our roleplaying generally consisted of sitting around in taverns telling tall tales about deeds and battles or past histories (which means jack in an immutable, oblivious and unchanging world). There was nothing to really create deeper roleplaying or subtler conflicts. There was no past or future a character could make for himself that would really change his experience or the world around him. The world is an endless loop of the oldest cliche in dime novels "In walks a man with a gun."

Even the best intentioned roleplayer can't do much with a setting like that other than express the same things in a different way (funny languages or though the lense of personality) or blindly ignore the throbbing numbness and fakeness of the celestial machinery around him and develop narrative lies that he can somehow convince others to accept. Perhaps that cooperative imagining is the basis of all roleplaying to some extent but the task isn't made easier by a world that puts the lie to it at every turn.

>I have a question for anyone who plays on the Percival DAOC server (or on MLF I guess): what EXACTLY does the role-playing component consist of?

I actually do role-play one of my characters (the only one not called "Desslock") -- he's a dwarven fighter and he just does goofy dwarf things, like refuse to swim or go through water because it scares him, refuses to sell gems until he has shinier ones to place in his inventory, goes over hills instead of through forests, hunts giant sized enemies whenever possible. He's also a tad evil, but only in a slightly misguided way.

It's pretty goofy stuff, and it helps that I play on a LAN with a friend who's doing similar RPG nuttiness, but it's fun too. One of the things I like about Camelot (and the genre), is I can just boot around, exploring, freely doing what I want and having my own adventures -- that's pretty hard to do in a single player RPG (the only game that came close to offering that sort of gameplay was Daggerfall).

Giving a character personality and putting him through a variety of situations and getting immersed in the gaming world is one of the things I like about RPGs. It's certainly not a prerequisite for me and, in fact, I rarely do it in any meaningful way (since it's certainly disadvantageous to be bound by the self-imposed personality traits), but it's also pretty much the opposite of munchkinism/power-gaming, a style of gaming I really dislike.

Stefan

I play on Guineviere, the other role-playing server. You can appeal names that aren't in theme. It's refreshing not to see names like "dArKsHaD0w mAzTeR" and "Killboy" (although we've had "Amberlynn Shadowpanties" on /appeal for weeks now. /sigh...)

There is some roleplaying. Maybe not in heal messages, because combats are so fast, but in other aspects. Joining a group is often a courting process. No /shout 42 dr00d LFG! kkthx! Usually a few lines of interaction, more or less in character, happen first.
Instead of /say task people often (although not always) say things like, "Puny human! Task now!" (heard from a troll melee) or "Dost thou have a task you wished performed?"

The roleplaying servers have more active messageboards on the vault network then the other servers, by a wide margin.

Umm.. on the other servers we tend to use "/whisper task" then nobody else even needs to know.

And if you turn off broadcast messages, you never have to see all that shouted garbage.

Really, other than names, the other DAoC servers aren't much different than the RP servers. We get lots of stupid names on the regular servers.

My main character is on Percival. The difference is that people are 10% less likely to say, "LOL." That's it.

"Even the best intentioned roleplayer can't do much with a setting like that other than express the same things in a different way (funny languages or though the lense of personality) or blindly ignore the throbbing numbness and fakeness of the celestial machinery around him and develop narrative lies that he can somehow convince others to accept. Perhaps that cooperative imagining is the basis of all roleplaying to some extent but the task isn't made easier by a world that puts the lie to it at every turn."

I agree with this 100%. But does anyone think Neverwinter Nights will change this?

"although we've had "Amberlynn Shadowpanties" on /appeal for weeks now. /sigh..."

Great, now I can't use "Frodo Thong-Hiker", "Edyble Pasties Tinuviel", or "Sir Fredericks of Hollywode".

Rob: There are plenty of folks who just don't care about 'roleplaying' in-character, or haven't really experienced it, and they're the ones who keep MMORPGs and MUDs in business. The whole paradigm of leveling and monster slaying as a route to power is a pretty weak platform for more interesting characters, themes and stories.

That said, it was D&D that put all of this into motion. Later systems and even the genesis of the concepts that grew into deeper roleplaying came from the potentials that even the earliest groups recognised there. It's much easier for a DM and a small group of players to route stories around power inflationary systems than to expect an undifferentiated mass of anonymous players dealing with an automated world operating on the same flawed principles to make anything resembling a roleplaying experience out of the parts. The world can be responsive without hard rules and simulations because the human DM can scale responses and abstractions to his whims and the needs of his small group.

So, in a word, yes. NWN will allow players and DMs more control over their experiences even though the basic functions - combat and levelling - remain the dominant paradigm. I don't, however, think even this is the best answer for hardcore IC roleplayers but it could fill a need for folks who like to roleplay a bit and whack stuff a bit while dealing with a world (the dungeonmaster) which pays some attention to them and will customize that experience. Just like the good old days of face to face. Still, I'm more interested in the future...

"Still, I'm more interested in the future..."

Dude, plug me in. My girlfriend is dreading the day they develop Neuromancer-style plugins for your head, she knows I'll be in the Beta (the closed one even).

I'm a throw-back roleplayer circa 1980, and I can't wait for the next step. There isn't anything about playing on the computer that compares with the face-to-face gameplay of D&D. But with NWN I am looking forward to having a dungeon-kit that I can use to build worlds and put real players through. I hope the micromanagement piece works well. I played some V:tM (how about that acronym?) and while that was flawed in a major way, it didn't seem all that far off. But it became apparent that having control, and being the omnicient DM are two totally different things. In D&D, as DM, you see everything at once because its all upstairs *taps temple*, but in V:tM you had the same first person view as everyone else. Who the hell new where your players were, or what they were up to?

Yeah, I can see the problem. Another problem that's going to be tough or impossible to address will be the containment of a DM/Storyteller's imagination within the constraints of a graphical engine. This probably isn't even an issue for the good number of D&Ders that use/used miniatures and focused mainly on combat but other styles focused more on imaginative techniques. Say my guys want to visit the Plane of Fire? Ride a Dragon? Explore a sunken ship? Heck, form a caravan and explore the world? That's alot of level designing. Dialogue and nuance heavy styles (politics, romance, and sidebar RP) don't do quite as well in graphical formats either. While they're certainly doable spending time writing clever dialog while everyone's graphic characters stand around like posts doesn't really convey much in the way of nuance. Don't even get me into things like flashbacks or adlibbed adventures.

I'm not shooting NWN Nights down, I'd really like to try it when it comes out, but from a roleplayer's perspective there are going to be limitations as well as strengths. For now I'm mostly partial to text based MUSHes but they're not the whole answer either as they're weak on rulesets and simulation and much too dependant on a bevy of brilliant, reliable and unpaid administrators.