Guide to Roleplay by Lirena of Earthen Ring
Introduction
Hello there! We’re Ariyel and Lirena, the authors of this guide and head coordinator-people of a little RP guild called Seneschal. We’ve been playing and roleplaying in WoW for a long time now, and one thing that frequently crops up for us as a topic of discussion is the eternal question of “what makes for good RP”.
Traditionally most RP guides that tend to get posted here or on similar forums try to summarise some key points in various areas, and cover some general Dos and Don’ts for new roleplayers.
A lot of the time however we find these guides usually leave some contentious issues up in the air, and invariably there’s always a “but” to come in the comments that follow. We’ve always felt that this is down to most guides taking the form of a list of rules and pointers, rather than a discussion of the underlying intentions and motivations involved in most roleplay.
As a result, what we want to attempt in this guide is not to provide a list of bullet points that you should take into consideration when roleplaying, but rather discuss the attitudes, approaches, and decision making involved in RP. We don’t want to list whether a certain type of character or situation makes for “good” or “bad” RP, but rather go into the reasons for why people can think of it in those terms, and what you as a roleplayer can do to broaden your horizons and gain a deeper understanding of these issues.
We’ll be getting quite critical and in-depth with these things, and we recognise that we’re treading the line of turning something fun and silly into a serious analytical topic, but for those interested and passionate about RP we think it’ll be worth it!
At the very least we’d like this guide to be food for thought, touching on things you can take into consideration when you approach topics related to roleplay in a more meta sense.
Social Awareness
In our experience, the most critical skill involved in good roleplaying is an incredibly simple one, one that everyone is familiar with, but that’s often overlooked or taken for granted when people are grasping for more tangible reasons as to why roleplay is successful or unsuccessful: Social Awareness!
The simple skills of interacting with other people (ones which unfortunately tend to be forgotten online more often than not due to the internet’s disconnection from reality) are the most important part of a successful, enjoyable roleplaying experience, and an absence of them is generally what leads to many of the problems associated with our pastime that get discussed frequently on this very forum.
Now when we talk about social awareness we’re primarily referring to it in an OOC sense. Certainly a degree of it goes a long way to being able to tailor a character’s behaviour effectively, but a far more important skill is to be able to assess and adapt the way you’re interacting with the people behind the avatars you’re seeing on your screen.
It requires a degree of objectivity that can sometimes be hard to come by, but the key ingredient to determining whether an RP encounter will be an enjoyable one or not is often to take a step back, consider what you’re doing, where, how, and most importantly with whom.
We’ll go into this in more detail in the Compromise and Cooperation section, but it’s essentially the idea of wearing different social masks for different occasions. You don’t behave the same way around your grandparents as you do amongst a group of your close friends, and you don’t go to a fancy restaurant dressed like you just got out of bed.
The same is true of the variety of RP situations we come across, and this in particular is why we’re not fond of creating guides that list specific Dos and Don’ts; almost any RP possibility you can think of can be appropriate and engaging (or inappropriate and tiresome) within a certain context, and we’ll explore this specific idea more in the Keeping RP in its own Context section later on.
The overall point here however is a very simple one: roleplay is a social activity, one that’s enjoyable less because of what we’re doing and more because of the people we’re doing it with.
The better you’re able get on with others and hone your interpersonal skills the more enjoyable and less frustrating RP is likely to be for you. From deciding on a fun event with your guild to handling the succubus daughter of Sargeras at a Stormwind bar, all of your interactions within roleplay and the roleplaying community are regulated far more by your social awareness of the situation than your affinity for the lore or your dedication to crafting a quality character.
Compromise and Cooperation
Now this is a difficult one for a lot of people, but it permeates almost every aspect of roleplay to some degree. One of the most difficult concepts about this medium (especially for newer roleplayers) is the idea that our character is not the hero, but that they’re a smaller part of a greater whole.
Once again, this isn’t just applicable to your IC actions but also your OOC attitudes to others as well. One thing that we see coming up again and again on the RP forums is how different players have different views of how certain aspects of the game “should” be. This can range from specific interpretations of the vague source material to sweeping generalisations on the nature and purpose of roleplaying as a whole.
One of the most important things to recognise within roleplay is that most people will think of it in a different way to you. The very things that you consider to be correct and integral to enjoyable roleplaying will be nothing more than footnotes on another person’s list of RP rules.
This is just a natural part of finding your own niche and settling on what you enjoy – and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that at all. We ourselves have plenty of preferences and biases.
The important thing however is how you choose to respond to those preferences coming into conflict with someone else’s. There will never, ever be a roleplaying Bible that we can hold up as a definitive standard for how all roleplaying should be conducted (which I think many would agree is a good thing, for a casual enjoyable pastime like ours), so all we have to work with is how we reconcile our own RP with that of others.
Generally this sort of thing tends to go one of two ways; either players compromise and cooperate, allowing their preferences to slip a little for the sake of smooth and mutually enjoyable roleplay, or they outright reject one another.
Of course there are times where outright rejecting another player’s type of roleplay can certainly be justified; some people might from time to time play out something so absurd and immersion shattering that you just can’t respond to it in an enjoyable manner, but these cases should be very few and far between.
On the other hand, the benefits of compromising your standards a little should be fairly self-evident, but I think it’s important to touch on the alternative and the negative impacts it can have on an RP community in a little more depth.
While on the surface ignoring and segregating yourself from “bad” roleplayers might seem totally fine, one of the knock on effects it tends to have is that it splits a community. In a world where there is no RP police, there’s really nothing you can do against people who play differently than you other than to segregate yourself off from them.
What this tends to result in over time is the formation of cliques and, in extremis, groups of roleplayers who have large blacklists and whitelists of other players and guilds hanging over their RP.
Furthermore, and in accordance with this being an RP “guide” of sorts, ignoring other players is not something that’s going to help you improve your roleplay.
Nothing is learned from avoiding a challenging situation, and very often it can result in players separating themselves from types of roleplay or roleplayers that they might end up enjoying a lot if they made the effort.
When you challenge your comfort zone, force yourself to think a little outside the box, make your character interact with things that might seem strange or unusual, you find yourself expanding your skillset for handling different IC situations, and learning how to turn an uncomfortable experience into an enjoyable one. Even if it’s something as simple as your character assuming another player’s insane because they claim to be the son of Illidan, that in itself can make for a surprisingly enjoyable experience, and might teach you something about how to better play your character in the process.
Of course, we don’t want to come off as preachy about this – we’re not saying it’s wrong to separate yourself from other areas of the RP community if you really can’t handle them (after all, this is a video game about having fun, it shouldn’t become a chore), but in our experience people are often far more ready to dismiss others than they are to compromise a little and indulge an alternative style of RP every once in a while.
When you run into someone who’s too silly, too serious, too lore-bending, or too inarticulate, always try to compromise and get along before you pass too hefty a judgement. In accordance with our central point in this guide, remember that roleplaying is a social group activity, and always bear in mind what’ll be best not just for yourself, but for the group experience as a whole.
Putting up walls between sections of the community very seriously impacts the roleplaying within your social circle at large, and it should only ever be a last resort. The more you help out your server, the more it’ll help you!
Context and Internal Logic
So this is where we might move into more controversial territory. I think we can all agree that there are certain roleplaying choices a lot of players consider taboo, which can often lead to the sort of situations mentioned above.
There have been countless discussions about whether it’s all right to roleplay as, for example, high elves, dragons, demonic half-breeds, and so on. And throughout these discussions, there is one phrase that tends to crop up every time: “I guess it can be good, if it’s done right.”
Let’s take a moment to carefully examine what that means.
Anything can be pulled off in the right context. This applies to all of the RP you engage in, not just the controversial kind. Considering the circumstances of our situation, as well as asking ourselves if our behaviour would be appropriate or inappropriate, is key to successfully managing any social scene.For example, Merry and Pippin’s jokey shenanigans are appropriate for the comic relief scenes in Lord of the Rings, but they’d have been horribly inappropriate if they cropped up during Gandalf’s death.
It doesn’t make those characters wrong or bad for the movie at all, but they have to be placed within their own context and not shoved into a situation that isn’t fitting for them.
A band of thieves’ dramatic hijinks might be better suited for an event filled with danger and excitement, whereas a tavern-based event meant to ease roleplayers into some casual and relaxing RP might turn out badly if they showed up demanding everyone’s money or their life.
It all depends on who you’re playing with, the scenery, the tone of the event, and so forth. No RP concept is inherently wrong or bad, but some have to be kept within the appropriate context.
This ties in with the idea of certain types of RP being ‘unrealistic’, a common criticism of the types of taboo roleplaying we’ve mentioned above.
In order to define what’s unrealistic in a setting like WoW, we must first determine what’s actually considered realistic and logical. But in a fantasy setting like this one we’ve already broken the standard rules of logic by, well, making it a swords and sorcery fantasy in the first place. Instead, it uses something we call internal logic.
For those not familiar with the term, internal logic is more or less the method to the madness, the governing rules of a situation that has already broken the basic boundaries of logic by being set in a sci-fi, fantasy or supernatural genre. It usually exists for the purpose of servicing the story being told, to ground things in something relatable and give us a baseline for what to expect.
A perfect example would be a universe like that of The Matrix – it’s a world where incredible things can happen, but it’s important that we be told how the rules are bent, but not broken. This gives us a basic framework of what we can expect, and allows us to extrapolate what’s “realistic” in a world where people can dodge bullets and run up walls.
One of the problems we encounter with WoW however is that it doesn’t have much internal logic. Not a lot of stuff has one definitive answer or a general consensus, and it’s because there’s so much information out there on what theoretically can and can’t be done that we end up with such varied views on how to RP ‘realistically’.
Just as an example, say you have a player who’s played Warcraft 3, leveled as a human through Elwynn and Westfall and the Plaguelands in Vanilla, and generally tends to RP in and around Stormwind. Their perspective is likely to be rooted in a more Tolkien-esque vision of the fantasy world, so it’s understandable that they might find things like high technology and the latest range of artificial goblin vibro-breasts a little jarring.
Then on the flipside imagine you have a player who rolled a goblin as their first character, running through all sorts of crazy wacky adventures from Kezan to Azshara, and likes to spend their RP time hanging out around the Pleasure Palace. Their perspective of the game is going to be anything but a Tolkien-esque world of swords and sorcery.
Neither of those players are any more right about what makes their RP “good” or “realistic” than the other, but it’s easy to see how the context of their roleplaying can create two distinct styles that aren’t necessarily compatible with one another, due to their broadly differing contexts based on different interpretations of Azeroth’s internal logic. You can refer back to the section on Compromise and Cooperation for more on this!
The overall point to take away here is that nothing is inherently right or wrong in a broad sense within WoW RP. We aren’t roleplaying in a world with a definitive tone and strict rules on what can and can’t be done, and the source material is so vague that it’s hard to say with any real authority what is or isn’t “realistic” within the internal logic of a world like Azeroth.
Diverse roleplay in both tone and purpose is something that all of us can and will run into at one point or another, and none of it should ever be dismissed out of hand as being wrong or bad without giving careful consideration to the context in which its taking place. Any story can be good, it just depends on the way in which it’s being told.
“Good” Roleplaying
One other thing we’d like to touch on in more depth is the idea of there being a quantitative measure of “good” roleplaying. Generally in most entertainment mediums there exists a critical, academic body of individuals who’ve studied the area in depth, noted successes and failures, analysed how and why these work, and reached a general consensus on what aspects of medium can be qualified as “good” or “bad”.
Because roleplaying is such a comparatively unique and niche pastime however (and one with no major financial industry tied into it), we don’t have this kind of academic rigour involved in understanding the medium. All we have to go on are relatively narrow guides, like this one, about the experiences of specific individuals, often without a lot of study or hard evidence to back up our claims.
You can’t quantify successful roleplaying in terms of sales figures or critical response, because they just don’t exist.
With this in mind, it’s difficult, even for roleplaying guides, to provide an informed and definitive consensus on what constitutes quality roleplay. What we can do however is direct ourselves to similar mediums that do have a history of study and critical analysis.
As students of literature, film, game design, and storytelling in general, the authors of this guide can definitely say that our education in these areas has proved incredibly helpful with our roleplay in WoW. Things like character creation, constructing storylines, engaging players with events, and even typing out dialogue are all areas you can improve on by looking into areas of study related to them.
If you have the opportunity to study these things in school or college: take notes. If that area of education isn’t a realistic option for you, look around on the internet, there are plenty of resources available for learning about storytelling and characterisation 101.
Roleplaying guides like this one can only tell you so much when it comes to honing your skills at creating a good character or an interesting backstory. Academic studies into similar subjects will give you the kind of critical understanding to be able to accurately judge whether an idea will work or not, what context it might be appropriate in, and how engaging it’ll be to yourself and others.
That might seem like a lot of work, and we’re certainly not suggesting that roleplay has to become this serious, academic subject where we all sit in leather chairs and twiddle our monocles deciding on how best to go about it, but it’s a useful thing to bear in mind if you have an interest in these areas, or if you ever end up touching upon them in your everyday life.
If the Arts pique your curiosity, it certainly won’t hurt to incorporate anything you learn about them into your RP, and doing so will often allow you to ground your RP in something more concrete than the opinions of others on a forum somewhere.
Conclusion
In closing, we think it’s important to note that ultimately it’s not about good storytelling or how to correctly play with dolls in a virtual world. It’s about the people you’re doing it with!
Most of all this is a social activity where we mingle with others whose opinions and priorities can vastly differ from our own. It’s about tolerance, communication, and most importantly of all having a good time!
Always be ready to take a step back from your RP, think about what you’re doing, why, who you’re doing it with, and how you can make it fun for everyone involved! An open mind will allow you to broaden your horizons, improving not only your own RP but also helping others to enjoy theirs!
So that’s that! We hope you enjoyed our little “guide”, and whether you agree or disagree with the sort of ideas we’ve discussed here at the very least we hope it’s given you something to think about the next time you hop into RP!
If you found our post helpful or interesting, please do click the like and request sticky buttons at the top so that we can help share it with other roleplayers on this forum!