Is actual RP in MMORPGs another next impossible thing?
Patrice:
I've read Dan's original post upon MMORPGs and P&PRPGs and have set my mind upon posting there in order to give account, and open discussion upon what was a major field of reflexion these last years for me. My premises, however, are so foreign to the discussion going on in the previously mentioned thread that I thought better to swing an entirely new upon genuine actual play basis.
Here is my discussion basis: I'd like to bring the matter into actual experience of play discussion, not about pure theory or high level only, and to see the discussion derivate from experiential seeds. For this reason, I'll be using quite a few elements of my survey or experience of both fields of gaming. Of course, theoritical discussion will, hopefully, sprout from this but I'll try to connect it to actual play.
I've been playing MMO and CORPGs for something like 3,000 hours in my life so far, mostly upon what they call "Roleplaying servers". I'll bring in here what are the issues RP-ers face in these games in order to figure out the connection, if any, with P&PRPGs. The thing is, in most sellers (WoW, AoC and now WAR), the designers do NOT provide any basis to distinguish what they call "Roleplaying servers" from other types of servers. The only frame they provide to inform the player (I'd rather say "user", but this question will come later on) is a series of rules barring you from certain choices in character's name or from blatantly Out Of Character open chat, that would obviously break or infringe the other players' immersion feeling.
Now, they sound to think that roleplaying is subsumed into "immersion feeling". There's no mention of being in-character or OOC, which are entirely players' designs. So the equation roleplaying=using chat lines, emotes and in-game movements to impersonate the character I'm playing instead of metagaming is very deeply imbedded in the practices and beliefs of MMORPGs roleplayers. Their definition, being almost similar to saying "Roleplaying is to avoid metagaming" is very different from the designers assumption, which is "Roleplaying is a deeper level or need of immersion in the game content". In some way, it converges, but the statements lead to quite different results.
The designers actually leave the players the job of defining the roleplaying, and event its rules or common shared principles and don't involve into what happens. Which means that they leave the definition of the social contract to the players. Being entirely without rules nor game mechanisms, since the game is only concerned with bare resolution mechanisms, the roleplay actuelly taking place upon the MMORPGs' RP servers varies hugely. I would almost say that each community created its own RPG within the MMO limitations. Some of them being very developped and many of them being slanted towards Narrativism. No wonder it is, there's no way to supercede the game's Gaming mechanism and the computer already provides its own Simulation. There's just one field left to conquer for would-be MMORPGs roleplayers, Narrativism. Some of these games had their limited share of glory. I have many examples of RP sagas happening within MMORPGs or, I would rather say, despite the MMORPG they would take place in. Houses of Tea ran by geishas connecting every night at the same hour to impersonate their geisha-looking human or elven character, Masses taking place every sunday morning in one of the big cities, lots of taverns and pirate crews, and I myself did found a Troll empire a few years ago. It creates a SIS alright. But this SIS doesn't adequate with the game's content. Why?
Because the game doesn't provide a shared system, but a content designed by the industry that the players receive as their own and are free to explore. The sole factor that the player doesn't have his word to say upon the content makes him an... User. It's in the shady ground of user-generated content that RP happens in MMORPGs and it is very directly, clearly and obviously stated this way by the designers. There's one consequence to that, it's that whatever you do, whoever you are and however it is shared, you'll never change the game content. What you can change is only free-flowing user content based upon the social contract the roleplayers of your server or game have designed and its span is encompassed within this limit. If ten or twenty people know and acknowledge you're the Mayor, you're the Mayor, end of the story. Yet, in the game content, you're not and you'll never be. End of the story again. There's still another limit, and a big one, it's that however your own privately user-generated SIS is large, there's always other users your character actually meet who don't share it. They're not part of it. This derivates in huge flaming and bitter RPers everywhere since they feel that, simply because they choose to RP, everybody must share it according to their views. It's of course very much biaised.
RP in MMORPG thus creates a gap between users and designers and a gap between users and users. It happens, often upon Narrativist ground, but happens against the game for all the previously mentioned reasons. There are, imho, the differences between P&PRPGs and MMORPGs.
So here are the issues I'd like to discuss with you folks:
1. What is saying "Roleplaying means to avoid metagaming"?
2. What means, in the designers' mind, "RP is a deeper level of immersion"?
3. Are these two statements wholly and totally opposite from the very beginning?
4. Does the fact that the games' mechanisms might nit be overidden and that the game, though picture, sound and movement provide its own Simulation in such way that there's no other coherent way to simulate confines RPing within MMORPGs into Narrativism?
5. Does giving a game content that the players can't change in any way turn them into users? If this is the case, isn't it also the case for quite a few industry content-based P&PRPGs? If that is so, do they still deserve to be called RPGs?
6. What happens when you have a SIS that other players don't want to share?
7. All these points being taken into account, am I right state that if actual RP did develop in MMORPGs, it is against the game logics and its non-sharing community?
Sorry for this lon, very long issue and the huge number of questions, assumptions and statements but that's a matter I've been giving some thought as I said and I really can't sum it that easy.
Your turn!
Callan S.:
Hi Patrice,
In terms of the mayor example, what about in a pen and paper RPG, where in the text there's a corrupt mayor? Say gameplay happens and your group describes themselves overthrowing the evil mayor and one of them becoming mayor instead.
I'll propose the idea that your not mayor here, either. The text in the RPG has not changed. Some corrupt npc is the mayor.
What you do have is that everyone in your group will not just agree your mayor, but will put X amount of mental effort into treating you as mayor. Even where that's contrary to book texts.
Let's see - I'm trying to think of how one might test whether my proposal is true? Hmm, can't really think of one. I can think of a method of proving if everyone agrees something is 'there', and act as if it were 'there', that doesn't make it true. For example, I could mime a pane of glass in the middle of the room - then everyone else mimes its existance and does not walk through where its been mimed. And hey, imagine this - someone gets so used to it, they were just walking through reading a book, and without even thinking about it automatically navigated around where the pane 'is' so as not to walk through it. It was actually embeded in the guys reflexive habits. I can imagine someone building it into their routine (quite easily). But no pane of glass exists, even though everyone is acting like it does. Heh, actually there was an old Mr Hulot movie where they broke a hotels glass pane door (with a metal handle)...and then latter the doorman is just holding the metal handle and moving it as if opening a door, when letting people in...hehe.
So I'm proposing that your in an identical position with a RPG game book as you are with a mmorpg. It's just that the amount of mental effort it takes to ignore a closed book is far, far less than it is talking over a mmorpgs gaming world, particularly if an NPC mayor is digitally depicted to walk past the player avatar that is 'the mayor'.
This basically ties into your fifth question
"5. Does giving a game content that the players can't change in any way turn them into users? If this is the case, isn't it also the case for quite a few industry content-based P&PRPGs? If that is so, do they still deserve to be called RPGs?"
On question 6
"6. What happens when you have a SIS that other players don't want to share?"
This is an interesting question from how you've phrased it.
Do you mean, what happens if you gave them the choice to share and they decline? Well if you gave them the choice, you'd put in any effort it takes to facilitate the option you offered.
Or do you mean what happens when they just don't want to share it, but that option isn't provided for by anyone?
On a side note, it's odd, I've thought of and refered to roleplayers as 'users' for years.
gsoylent:
I don't really understand questions 1 - 4 but I can have the stab at the rest.
5. I don't think the question as to what deserves to be called an RPG is of any use. One could argue that killing critters and going up levels has always been the key feature of table top roleplaying games and if that is the case MMOs just do it better.
You are correct in pointing out that in one of the key limiting factors of the MMO is that the world is immutable. But earlier in your post you also explain what the solution is for this; you don't focus your roleplaying on changing the physical world around you, what you do is change to people, or more specifically to their perceptions. And if enough people buy into your roleplaying initiative, it is validated and legitimised by the community. And that can be extraordinarily rewarding, especially when, like a ripple, your roleplaying initiative spreads beyond your circle of friends to people you have never met or heard of taking on a life of its own.
As an aside, I've been roleplaying in Anarchy Online (one of the older though far from the most popular MMO) for seven year now. Anarchy Online I think is quite unique in that the developers do take notice of the roleplaying community and interact with us at many levels. They will on occasion make changes to the game world, even significant ones like changing the faction that runs a specific town or introduce new items in to the game, based on player roleplaying storylines.
6. That's easy, you gloss over it. When I meet someone who doesn't roleplay or whose roleplaying is totally incompatible, you just shrug and move on. You can get all sorts of jarring moments in table top too. Real life issue often mean player character will appear and disappear from the party all the time. Or a tired GM might make a gross error and then rewind the whole scene. So what?
7. It depends how you define "actual RP". If what you mean is treating the one's "toon" as a character rather than a game token I would say it does happen all time in MMOs, though I will agree it takes a special kind of stubborn to make it really come to life because the medium does not make it easy.
Patrice:
Thanks for your answers!
I've actually started this post to take a different, experiential-based aim at the "what relates P&PRPGs and MMORPGs?" question and I think we're slowly getting at it here with a different swing. To get back to the Mayor example (the Mayor was actually a friend of my MMO character, a troll tribe leader then it's another live example by the way), I think you maybe confuse setting and RPG, Callan. Most, though not all, P&PRPGs do, true, provide a setting telling you how is the Mayor and sometimes even how he does behave, look like and al. I think that it comes from a major flaw in the way P&PRPGs settings are designed (you may see further reflections upon this in my thread Setting design reconsidered in the First Thoughts forum). A P&PRPG isn't a setting, nor always equates with a setting. I daresay settings went second in history after the system design. Why? Because the system provided a basis for the SIS and the backbone of the Social Contract, which a setting can't provide by itself.
To get back to MMORPG I don't see that they provide any answer for both SIS and Social Contract issues, and as such, aren't RPGs in the way P&PRPGs define what a roleplaying game is. They, on the other hand, provide a setting and a frame of rules for instant resolution of Challenges. The confusion, or should I say mingling because there's no defect or biais involved, is fostered by the P&PRGPs industry. Here we come at the user-player distinction that I've set. I think this dichotomy is somewhat clumsy and I would be eager if you adress it, but it's handy at the moment. Right, if we play, say, in Dragonlance, FR or Runequest, there's no way a player can change the setting except if this change is acknowledged within his group or players. Okay, we find pretty much the same thing in MMORPGs but since the Social Contract and the SIS aren't part of the game, you're quite playing at a different game when you TWIST a MMORPG in order to RP in it, still defining RP as we would for a P&PRPG.
Sure, much of the P&PRPG major industry goes the same way... Players wait for the new extension, or setting bit, and adventure within, never really changing the content themselves. What can we say? That the industry changed bunches of players wandering into "the realm of their imagination" into users of an externaly-generated content? Or that a P&PRPG allows full user-generated content contrary to MMORPGs? This all stands upon the distinction, maybe illusionary, I've set between users and players. I'm craving for your opinions there. I'm maybe just adressing an industry model.
Since neither SIS nor Social Contract are provided by the game itself, I state that MMORPGs aren't RPG in the way P&PRPGs define what roleplaying is. That doesn't mean at all, Soylent, that actual Social Contracts and SIS don't happen. They do, and they sometimes brilliantly do, especially in AO. But the so-called RP players play another game entirely set within the MMORPG. This is itself is a proof that a MMORPG isn't a RPG as P&PRPGs are. I take your point, though, Soylent, upon what should deserve to be called a RPG or not, I went way too far into that and yes, killing critters might be playing a RPG. I'm not adressing the players' RPG experience in MMOs, which I know might be deep and far-stretched, not its conditions, which involve a lot of effort and painstaking, but rewarding hours but I adress the fact that it always happen despite the game itself, regardless of the designers' efforts, and I know those to have been genuine sometimes.
On question 6, Callan, I must confess I've seen and met both. Obviously, the game doesn't imply the SIS option, except if you thwart the definition by saying that you share something with its designers, which is a nonsense because you don't actually play with them. The SIS is thus provided by the users themselves. At this point, I've met both open behaviours in the "let's come and play with us, the basis are simple and the experience is so cool, stop levelling mindlessly and enjoy some social adventure" mode and closed behaviours in the "forget about them, pretend they don't exist and go build our shell, it's the only way man" mode. This of course leads to different SIS because the nature of the sharing differs.
So, with your help, I think the main statement-question to adress is in the "To get back to MMORPG I don't see that they provide any answer for both SIS and Social Contract issues, and as such, aren't RPGs in the way P&PRPGs define what a roleplaying game is" sentence. It's maybe easier to kick start the discussion from that (maybe adressing the user-player distinction too, false or true) than the previously given questions. I would maybe edit my first post if I could, but it's always useful to see from where it sprouted anyway.
gsoylent:
In practical terms I do accept your claim that I am twisting the MMO to roleplay in the fashion I like to roleplay. I had figure out a meaningful and rewarding way to roleplay inside a MMO on my own, through trial and error and a lot of offline thinking. I think many eager rolepayers burn out long before they get there. I am one of the lucky or just stubborn ones.
However for the sake of argument, let's consider this.
D&D provides specific rules for killing critters, awarding XP and how to improve the character as one levels. In its purest form, gaining XP from killing critters is automatic in D&D, it's not something the GM needs to validate. And when I hit 2000 XP I know I get to level even without the GM telling me so. The same applies to MMOs.
D&D does not provide specific rules for how to become mayor of a town. Nor do MMOs. In D&D if you the player wants to become mayor of a town, you need to get the GM's approval. In an MMO if you want to become the mayor of a town, you need to get the approval your peers or ideally of the game's devs.
(( As an aside, in AO, there is one town in which players can become ministers. The mayor himself is a GM character elected by the player base, however the ministers are just players who applied for the post.))
D&D does not provide specific rules to draw graffiti on a wall. Sure you can say your character is going to draw a graffiti but it does not actually happen until the GM approves it or perhaps makes you do some sort of art roll.
In a MMO you cannot physically draw graffiti on a wall. What you can do, for instance, is take screenshot of the game, photoshop the graffiti on to it and post the doctored picture on a forum the roleplaying community regularly references. As with the D&D example the graffiti has not really happened until the community approves this. ( I chose this example because it something we actually did so it is an Actual Play. We once "egged" a police-themed guild's headquarters over some traffic violation tickets.)
I guess my point is in both table top and MMOs, there is stuff which is directly supported by the rules and stuff that isn't. The stuff that isn't, is resolved by a consensus process, the GM in table top, the community or the dev in a MMO. The difference being that most table top systems have a rule that explicitly says the GM can adjudicate stuff not covered by the rules whereas MMO manuals do not, it just something that develops organically and therefore is technically outside the game as designed.
However here is a thought. Say I am running D&D and I use a GM technique never mentioned in any D&D book, does that count as twisting the game too?
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