Roleplay - A guide

[Reverend Del]

I write this as a veteran roleplayer of nearly two decades. Since my very first character, Thorax Groinhead The Abdomen Smasher, stepped off his character sheet to face adventure using the Dungeoneer system I've been entranced by the sheer possibilities roleplaying can provide for entertainment. From high fantasy to gritty cyberpunk and onward to space opera, nothing is impossible when the limits to what can be done rest within the human imagination.

In my twenty years I've learned a lot about roleplay and roleplayers and I thought it high time to share some of my wisdom. But first a mini lexicon for some terms that may be unfamiliar to you.

Rules Lawyer (verb) To quote passages of rules with intent of gaining benefit. In Discovery terms this often means misquoting the rule or interpreting it to the Rules Lawyers benefit

Rules Lawyer (noun) Someone who interprets the rules to his advantage whilst interpreting the same rule to anothers disadvantage. Rarely seen in Discovery, but considered a vile beast where ever they dwell within roleplaying circles

Min-Max (verb) To severely hamper oneself in one area to maximise strength in another. In discovery the missile boat is a strong example of min-maxing, going all out for figthers whilst rendering yourself utterly helpless against other capital vessels

Munchkin (noun) someone who endlessly min-maxes every character they ever have in order to gain the most advantage from each character.

Roleplay (verb) Quite literally what it says, to play a role. To immerse yourself in one role and pretend you are that role. Much like cowboys and indians you played as a child. Unlike those childhood games, roleplay games often have rules that allow for prevention of the "Bang! You're dead!" "No I'm not!" that is so common to childhood games.

Roleplayer (noun) Someone who roleplays. Simple as that.

Win (verb) Winning at roleplay is unlike winning at any other game, more on that later.

Four of the other terms are not particularly pleasant, and rightly so. The Rules Lawyer is a pestilence at any roleplaying game. Endlessly going on about the rules, or at least his own interpretation of them, he causes much despair for regular roleplayers who just want to enjoy the game.

Min-maxing is more of a pest here than it is in tabletop or even live action play, in a tabletop game the GM knows who is min-maxing and can take steps to avoid it or punish it. Here such steps need to be taken by each individual player and often times the munchkin in question has the element of surprise.

Roleplay is about fun, end of. It is a game played for enjoyment and if you're not enjoying it then something is wrong with the game. On Discovery that can take many forms, but often time the root cause of lack of enjoyment, is lack of fair play. For us fair play is important, we don't have a GM to stat up our opponents according to our strengths and weaknesses, no GM means that challenges are set by other players on the server. If those players are in it to win at all costs, fair play goes out the window. Which brings me to my most important point, winning.

Winning at roleplay is not like winning a race, you don't win at roleplay by beating everyone else. It's impossible and you might as well take a course in teaching starfish to dance the fandango. Winning at roleplay is done by beating the challenges with your party, in following the storyline and partaking in the game the GM has crafted. Smashing all in your path is often a detriment to good roleplay, and never more so than on a game such as the one in which we choose to indulge. When everyone can celebrate the victory, victory is that much sweeter.

Losing at roleplay is very easy, you lose when your play causes others to not enjoy the game. There is an exception to this, if the other's enjoyment involves doing anything that creates less enjoyment for the greater whole, than they lose, you just carry on as normal, but likely feeling sore about it. Recently I've seen a lot of folks losing, and losing quite heavily, at roleplay. It's depressing, because with a touch more decency and respect for their fellow players, these folks could have easily won at roleplay.

In short play fair, fair play brings the enjoyment back to the masses, fair play does not mean balancing every fight. Bad odds are a challenge, stupid odds are not a challenge, they are simply annoying. Double standards are also unfair. Calling someone a coward for not taking their ship into hostile territory whilst you flee for your life is seriously double standards.

The "In it to win at all costs" mentality is a mentality that should be unwelcome here. "In it to win" is fine, we're roleplaying a character here, but the other, whilst perhaps making roleplay sense, means the other loses enjoyment. For Freelancer lost enjoyment can be terminal.

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Saint Del is considered a holy healer of diseases of children, but also as a protector of cattle.

[Kambei]

lawyers arent rare on disco... try to stop few traders in NB and you will see how much lawyers are among us.

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[Derkylos]

Munchkin (noun) someone who endlessly min-maxes every character they ever have in order to gain the most advantage from each character.

Hmm...Munchkins are usually described as those that bend the rules of game mechanics (not possible in freelancer), in order to gain an advantage over everyone else. Your definition more accurately represents a "power-player", which is the kind of guy that will look at the numbers over the RP aspect.

This is not to say that powerplaying and RPing are mutually exclusive...you are no better at Rping if you use class 3 guns than you are if you use class 9s. In fact, some may say it is bad RP to intentionally nerf yourself, as most people in RL would prefer to be good at what they do.

Power playing becomes a bad thing when the person in question disreguards RP in favor of power play
(2xtizona+4xnomad on a Sabre is powerplaying with no respect to RP, 2xDebs+4xKrakens on the same ship is powerplaying with respect to RP)

Other than that, I totally agree that noone can "win" at RPing, but it is very easy to "lose" ('tho the correct term is, really, "fail"), and I have definetly witnessed a large number of people "failing" on Disco, and, yes, I find this sad...

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[Rudo]

Put succinctly:

Disco is as much a stage as it is a sandbox. When playing a character, think of yourself as an actor. Take the roles you're given. Ad-lib where things happen unexpectedly. If someone pushes a boundary, strike it up with them respectfully.

The cardinal rule? Never lose your cool. Never take things personally.

It's a game. Don't get mad over pixels. Don't be a jerk.

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[torchwood]

Liberty has a sueing culture...no idea where that came from


anyway good work del

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[looqas]

I sign this.


Especially the fair play part. What the Disco sorely needs is the positive atmosphere of your definition of winning. Everybody can be winners here in Disco and it's part of the appeal.

The winning at all costs that has slowly crept into the game is seriously a cancer to this mod. It's like the attitude of going to look for a fight is becoming more prevalent than an attitude of going to look for good role play. There's a difference of having fun with them and having fun at someone's expense.

I'm so happy that we do not have any statistics available to player's whose K/D ratio is the biggest.

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Flying under radar.

[carlabrams]

The winning at all costs that has slowly crept into game is seriously a cancer to this mod. It's like the attitude of going to look for a fight is becoming more prevalent than an attitude of going to look for good role play.

From my lofty status as someone who has played role playing games for a decade MORE than Del has (get my cane and rocking chair, I really AM a grandpa - :lol:) - I consider this to be a symptom of video game consoles.

We grew up playing board games with the family, and you'd have to interact with real, live people at the kitchen table. While you could move into larger games, those tended to fill up 4'x8' sheets of plywood. (Anyone who's ever played Terrible Swift Sword or World in Flames knows what I'm talking about.) Role playing comes from the roots of make-believe, and you actually had to use your imaginations. Sure, we would use miniatures on the table to represent our characters - but we'd also use an assortment of dice to represent monsters, or just pieces of paper sketched out quickly.

Nowadays, you don't have to pretend. The graphics immerse you into the game. And unfortunately, with the prevelance of games such as Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and other first person shooters - even though they can have a roleplay-like element in the game, they're just not truly RP games. With the ability of Freelancer as a game to be just another starship shoot'em-up game - and with so many other servers primarily just BEING shoot'em ups with no real RP elements - what happens is that people see the Disco Mod, think - "wow, cool, I can fly the big ships that I never could in the single player game" - and just join, never actually paying attention to the rules.

Then they get banned for violating the rules two weeks into playing - and that's when they make their first post on the forum, asking why they were punished.

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On a lighter note, Del forgot one term: The Akumabinto - the annoying player that has something happen to him and NEVER lets it drop, to point of ad nauseum. In real world games, this person would be told to never come back and play. Online, you're stuck with him until he gets perma-banned from the game and the forum.

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Sentient Machine Alliance

[Zapp]

Hear hear, words of wisdom all around if I've ever heard them. I might impart some of my own later when I have more time, eh? For now, know I give this thread the "Zapp Stamp of Win and Yus".

That is all.

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[swift]

Hear hear, words of wisdom all around if I've ever heard them. I might impart some of my own later when I have more time, eh? For now, know I give this thread the "Zapp Stamp of Win and Yus".

That is all.

/absolutely and utterly signed

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<span style="font-familyalatino Linotype">

<span style="color:#000000">All morons hate it when you call them a moron.

</span></span>

<span style="color:#33FFFF">The CFF</span>

<span style="color:#33FF33">CFF Communication Channel and RP Collection</span>

[joojoo1975]

From my lofty status as someone who has played role playing games for a decade MORE than Del has (get my cane and rocking chair, I really AM a grandpa - :lol:) - I consider this to be a symptom of video game consoles.

We grew up playing board games with the family, and you'd have to interact with real, live people at the kitchen table. While you could move into larger games, those tended to fill up 4'x8' sheets of plywood. (Anyone who's ever played Terrible Swift Sword or World in Flames knows what I'm talking about.) Role playing comes from the roots of make-believe, and you actually had to use your imaginations. Sure, we would use miniatures on the table to represent our characters - but we'd also use an assortment of dice to represent monsters, or just pieces of paper sketched out quickly.

Nowadays, you don't have to pretend. The graphics immerse you into the game. And unfortunately, with the prevelance of games such as Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and other first person shooters - even though they can have a roleplay-like element in the game, they're just not truly RP games. With the ability of Freelancer as a game to be just another starship shoot'em-up game - and with so many other servers primarily just BEING shoot'em ups with no real RP elements - what happens is that people see the Disco Mod, think - "wow, cool, I can fly the big ships that I never could in the single player game" - and just join, never actually paying attention to the rules.

Then they get banned for violating the rules two weeks into playing - and that's when they make their first post on the forum, asking why they were punished.

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On a lighter note, Del forgot one term: The Akumabinto - the annoying player that has something happen to him and NEVER lets it drop, to point of ad nauseum. In real world games, this person would be told to never come back and play. Online, you're stuck with him until he gets perma-banned from the game and the forum.

Excellent work Del and Agmenatwork

i only been RP'n for nearly a decade, but i would like to add my 0.02$ on something else that puts the "taint" on RP'n

Just like Agmenatwork had said, the "yesteryears" of gaming(sittin around with your friends or family playin D&D, Risk, Monopoly or whatever floats your boat) was heavily dependant of immagination and fairplay. you inter-reacted with actual live people, these people you generally liked and wanted to enjoy a few hours(or days, when we would have D&D weekends) of thier time, hence you didn't try to pester them with annoying sub rules or try to anniahilate them from the get go. But then the Nintendo(imho Gaming became mainstream here) came out and we all were introduced to Single Player Games. There was no interaction with other people, no comroddery with mates. just you and your console taking on aliens, mobsters, or what ever "bad guy" the game threw at ya. now lets flash forward 23 years(nintendo hit N america in 85) with all the console wars the PS, PS2, PS3, N-64, lets not forget sega and we have a generation or 2 of people playing consoles in basically firet player. in first player, you didn't care what the computer felt, the computer didn't have any feelings. you did what you wanted.(you see where i'm going with this?) so after all that time we have people coming into Disco with the "Single player" attitude. Which basically is. . . my actions doesn't affect anyone but me, so i wanna do what will make me happy.
Now lets take a look at the MMO outlook. I would bet my house on the fact that anybody who's been playing any MMO longer than a month has a Gank story. For me it was (WoW)in Ashenvale my 20 something alliance character being pwned by a lvl 70 horde char(ashenvale was the first contested land, and coincidentally after you reached 20 you had to goto contested lands to level up and contested lands were a open pvp zone) that's like saying a pirate GB fighting a rhino. no way in hell the rhino is gonna survive this. I was gonna give you a gank example from my Jumpgate days, but everybody and thier brother has heard of WoW

The bottom line is when you have anonymity, your going to see the "worst" in people. because integrity is doing what is right even when no one will see you do it, and nobody can look into your face, when your staring at a computer screen.

so in conclusion will we always have these problems. Yes, cause if the game system can't enforce all the rules, then your gonna have people bend and abuse them. the admins can only do so much.

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To Protect The Helpless From The Heartless