Musician players in RP

Argent Dawn
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Everyone has a right to RP whoever they want.
I’m very biased against macro players.

^ These are two opening lines I’d like to start with to make it clear about my stance before I’ll proceed with my question.

  • What are people thoughts / opinion / perception of the bards that uses macro in RP?

To elaborate further (and perhaps entertain someone’s mind) where this question comes from:
Myself as a number of other people were heavily invested in learning how to play on musical instruments back when those were introduced in Guild Wars 2. Those were good times, trying to figure out how to transcribe melodies, learn how to play them in solo or duets, quintets and so on. But what our community couldn’t stand for, was macro players. It felt not only soulless to hear midi files being played by someone but also hearing that someone plays a melody you’ve spent hours if not days to practice.

Such strong resemble stays true even to this day, as I walk across SW and hear macro players who (most but not everyone) play with more than one instrument in their midi, melodies that just stick out of RP vibe too much and especially what gets me, is how their characters casually say: ‘Oh, I’m just an apprentice’ → plays 2nd part of Moonlight sonata or “I’ve been playing for 20 years” → plays 2-3 instruments at once

As someone who plays only live on a typical PC keyboard, I understand that they do whatever they wish with the time they pay for (aka sub) but it still triggers me somewhere inside. But what picked my interest, was that people sometimes just gather up around a macro bard more then around a live performing one, so that raised a question in the very beginning.

P.S - To those who want to write “sounds like a you problem”, this wasn’t the point of my elaboration. I merely wanted to give an insight of where my question comes from and why. Nothing else.

Cheers!

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I always appreciate originality, be it with music or anything else. Roleplay is about creativity and it is great to see when people put effort into what they do. One of my favourite things is to see people bringing life into the things they do in RP, making it feel authentic and inspiring.

However I also understand that we’re different and perhaps someone does not enjoy learning something from the get-go just to play a character, instead they want to focus on the RP itself rather than the playing of an instrument. And that’s okay too.

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Even though it’s not as impressive as playing live, I think crafting and editing a macro to sound good and immersive is somewhat a skill of its own. I don’t agree that using a macro is worse, but I agree with the wish that people would give it more thought than playing vivalavida.midi if their goal is to bring immersion. Alas. :pensive:

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Having messed with instruments in FF14. I lack the patience to learn how to play them properly to get a tune out. But I agree with Ruld, making a macro to do it is somewhat of a skill and investment in itself.

I think honestly? I personally wouldn’t let it bother me so much, they may have just pressed their macro button, but I’d be content that I had learned to play it myself.

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I wish we had playable instruments in wow like the ones in Lord of the Rings Online. You can always find someone playing a song or two in Bree on rp servers.

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Personally, as an amateur piano player who has practiced for three years now, I have no problem with people automating their music performances in any MMO, be it WoW, FFXIV, or LOTRO. Admittedly I’ve done so myself.

Bards are part of the fantasy atmosphere, and I’m always happy to see more of them IC. We’re at an improv acting hobby, not a concert. I don’t think we should gatekeep bard characters whose players don’t play musical instruments in real life, any more than we should decide the outcome of an RP combat event based on the player’s physical skill with a sword.

Besides, I find a computer keyboard vastly more inconvenient to play on than a piano keyboard, and not everyone would be willing to buy a MIDI keyboard to perform for what is, ultimately, a game of pretend elves and orcs.

As for music styles, while I personally find any kind of modern heavy music (rock, metal, etc.) IC in a fantasy universe jarring, and have strong preference for fantasy music (of which WoW’s own soundtrack is a good example), I acknowledge that Warcraft is a kitchen sink setting that has different music styles in its lore, including in-universe performances by The Tauren Chieftains in Shattrath. I simply don’t go to events that don’t play music to my liking.

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What’s… wrong with that? 2nd movement of Moonlight sonata is not the ‘hard’ part of it, no?

I think the question is different depending on the game. I haven’t played GW2, but you make it seem as if well… you can live play something. That’s not possible in WoW, you’re entirely reliant on emotes. I’d actually say that’s more role-playing than it would be in GW2, where you’re not actually roleplaying. You’re playing.

The same way when we emote fights we may fall into patterns of how we write combat, or make dumb mistakes because we’re not HEMA specialists IRL, or how we write about magic despite shocker - not being spellcasters IRL, the same will be true for people who want to write about playing music without being musicians IRL. Being able to play an instrument in real life shouldn’t really make your way of RPing better than someone else’s.

Now, I haven’t really seen a macro being used, but if someone has a character who has a go-to piece they like to perform, I do not mind it being written into a macro. The character would’ve practised it to the point where they can give the same performance over and over. Of course, some character being a novice pianist of three months and busting out Liszt will just be bad RP, but not because they’d use a macro to play it. The character would still be bad even if the roleplayer wrote out emotes manually about how their character somehow manages to play Liszt despite being new.

That’s also me going off by assumption that by macro we mean a standard emote macro, not something done with help of Add-Ons that let you liveplay, right? I remember there being some add-on that let you play music (if not literally live-play music?), but I have no experience with that. F.e. in GW2’s case an authentic performance would be preferred, but I do not fault someone trying to circumvent that just to be able to RP a bard. It’s also hard to judge whether someone copied someone else’s macro or made their own. After all, I’d say even live performers would want to make macros just because having to live perform every time you want to RP your bard will start to feel like a chore.

As someone who has played an instrument for 8-10 years (studied for 8, played as hobby for a bit longer) doing performances is very stressful and I wouldn’t want that to spoil the fun of RP for me.

That’s also true, however I’d say maybe classical music can be given some leeway as… well, a lot of fantasy is taken from similar timeframes. Organs exist in the Warcraft universe, and so do many other instruments (and while I failed to see a piano with a quick google I wouldn’t say it’s out of place in Warcraft given the existence of the organ), someone playing classical music would also feel pretty… in-universe to me. I’d even say that you can have very creative characters who end up playing more modern classical music, as the instruments used are (at least mostly) the same.

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You can but only with two addons - Musician and Musician Options where latter replicates same functionality as does GW2.

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That’s also what I mentioned:

While I do not think the addon itself is bad, I do disagree with requiring addons to be able to RP. You should be able to play an authentic bard without reliance on existing addons to facilitate the performance. (Or be able to RP a character without needing TRP, for instance - I’ve seen some ignore characters who don’t have a RP addon because of this.)

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I think classical music is an entirely valid aesthetic choice within the Warcraft setting (especially in more “classy” societies like Gilneas with its Victorian England aesthetic, or the Quel’Thalas nobility), and I don’t know what Lamenthea’s problem with the Moonlight Sonata is, assuming that is the problem.

If the problem is that it’s too well-known a work, I think it would be severely underestimating how many people know classical music pieces by names. Besides, if I can stomach recognizing a track from Heroes of Might and Magic 2 at an elven musical rendition of the Ainulindale in LOTRO, I’m fine with the Moonlight Sonata being played (perhaps on piano IC) at a ball in Aegwynn’s Gallery.

Hearing multiple instruments when the character is supposed to be playing a single instrument is indeed jarring, though.

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Low-key I would tip in-game money if someone managed to perform HoMM5’s Sylvan theme to me.

But also, not impossible! Though, I’m pretty sure in real life that generally has been mostly noise or y’know… not good sounding, when you think of the one-man-bands. You can play two instruments at the same time though (three if you count singing too?), especially if it’s just like, a cymbal with your legs or something else for percussion that you use your legs for (and play another instrument with your hands).

But I misread it - indeed, if you write your character (or make them perform through an addon) playing one instrument only, then if you link to an audio file or the addon plays an audio file… it should be also a single instrument being played.

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I think most people agree on this. I’ve seen Musician fall out of popularity as of recently, but not bard RP. It’s fun, regardless of what method you use to potray it. However, from what I understand, this thread is specifically about the RPers using that addon for their RP, not a comment on bard RP itself.

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Imo it’s fine, as long as the macro spam doesn’t overtake crowded spaces, i.e gatherings, social RP with lots of people involved, etc etc.

It is sometimes hard on its own to read and pay attention to what is being said in a very crowded space, and that is without multiple paragraphs being pasted into the chat by a macro.

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I do not see a problem with a player that has no musical skill at all, playing a bard and having a macro to help with that. We are not our characters after all, otherwise we should be really mad at all the magic wielders etc. for casting spells they can’t cast irl either.

That being said, I don’t know how that macro stuff works for bard things, and have yet to encounter a character like that. That I know of at least.

What I do have a problem with, is the bard characters that play modern/contemporary music and pretty much just do a direct copy-paste of the lyrics without even making an effort to adjust the “song” to the fantasy setting we play in. An example a couple of months ago was a “bard” in Stormwind doing this with Joan Osborne’s song One of Us and then proceeding to taking other requests such as Evanescences’ Going Under.

At least make an effort and just the lyrics and style to a fantasy setting please.

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“Musician” = A WoW addon that lets you play live music and midi files in game.
“Macro” = In GW2 terms, playing music using automations. (In this case, Musicians feature to save and import midi files.)

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That definitely explains a few things…

I think there is nothing wrong with importing midi files of other converted music, though, but it is a slippery slope with the copyright issues and just blatant plagiarism, so I think opinions will vary a lot in that.

But in the end, if you do not like it - you can just turn off the addon.

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They’re fine unless they get spammy, use pop culture songs, or are a whack assortment trying to impersonate an entire band of instruments at once.

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Personally I don’t mind the macro players. Since not everybody might want to invest the time for something that is just a flavour for their character. However, it will always be more impressive when someone plays a tune live.

As others have pointed out, it’s mostly a matter of time investment and some people prefer to do one thing over ther other. I know, shocker.

Perhaps my rather blunt approach is due to the fact that I do neither and enjoy whenever someone plays something that fits the setting/mood. But needless to say, more power to the bards that go out of their way to make things less dull.

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Musician and other relevant addons have the potential to make RPing out playing a song more interesting, however i’ve found that it usually is just used as a crutch for lazy bard RPers who don’t want to actually emote anything. Using musician with nothing but the automated “/e is playing a song! (Download Musician to listen!)” is just lazy, lazy, lazy.

Mind you that’s just Stormwind RP for you.