Do you "Role Play"? And I don't mean in bed, punk.

[LittleSlurpee]

Although my question sort've pertains to a kind of "game" I didn't think it would do well in the gaming discussion section. So here it is tossed into general.

Anyway, the form of "Role Play" I'm talking about is the type you either "type out" your description through text, or you "play it out" in a table top game. I really don't think the two are too far from one another in my own perspective. Similarly, you can RP in some MMO's, but I really haven't experienced that much. I tried it briefly in FFXI ages ago, but it didn't go anywhere nor did it last very long. I'm guessing because it wasn't a "RP Server" that it just wasn't a popular thing for FFXI.

Besides message/MMO RP, I have recently gotten into table top games like D&D and WoD. I was wondering who else were into such things, and if anyone had any interesting stories or experiences to tell.

Also, if GW2 develops well and people get together for a RP specific server, I'd LOVE that for sure, and would like to know who also likes the idea of joining a RP Server for GW2.

That's a lot of questions. WHOOPS!

[Ziero]

I've actually done all of the above...to a point. Back in highschool I tried to D&D with a few different groups, but none of us really knew what we were doing, and most people only really played once or twice before losing interest. Other then that I never really did much tabletop RP gaming but I'm sure it's a lot more fun in a stable group of people who actually know how to play.

As for MMO RPIng, for a while me and a small group of LS friends tried RPing as an exp group on alt jobs through the dunes, but we didn't exactly make it along too far. Exp was slow as it wasn't an optimal EXP group (back in the day when you needed tank/DD/Healer set ups) and some people's schedules didn't really mesh too well. Eventually we took it to message board RPing which is generally much easier seeing as it can be done on your own schedule. Though even that died out due people eventually losing interest. However as far as MMOs are concerned, I always have a bit of RPish traits to characters I play from simple things like having character appropriate town gear or just treating the lore and setting of the world with a bit of seriousness (kind of crappy explanation but it's kinda...odd...to really put into words. Incidentally, there's actually a few people from my XI linkshell who are planning to RP in GW2 when it comes out, but I doubt I'll be one of em since I have absolutely no interest in that game.

As for Message board RPing, it's pretty much what I've done the most RPing in and something I've been doing almost as long as I've been on the net. I've always been big on creating characters and such, but too lazy to write full stories on my own so text RPs like that are easy to just jump right into and sate whatever writing urges I get. The only hard parts are finding a story with a setting I might enjoy (I hate classic fantasy stories and fanfic style RPs) while also being something active enough to keep the story going long enough to really get good. I even tried my hand at starting one of my own by creating an original setting and character types and such, but as most of these RPs do it just suddenly up and ended as people lost interest.

[ⒻⓊⒸⓀⓎⒺⒶⒽ]

I've dabbled in roleplaying a couple of times in WoW on Argent Dawn, I like seeing them scattered all around in the most random places but I struggle a bit with it myself due to shyness.
Although it's generally frowned upon for being incredibly nerdy I would probably try LARP for fun and because I think cosplay is cool.

[Hitoru]

Never done the MMO RPing shit, to be honest. The most experience I've had with it is my friends who do on WoW telling me its just a bunch of people looking for a reason to cyber or something similar. I've played a bit of D&D and I suppose I got lucky since my group of friends who does it likes to have a bit too much fun with the character creation and overall play so there's a lot of room to be comfortable and yet still stay on track.

Most of the RPing I've done was board-side way back when starting on forums called FF Worlds Apart while I was in high school. There was a group of about 5-7 of us who decided to just create a bunch of stories centered in the FFIX world but with our own characters, villians and the related. This carried on for probably four or five years and we changed boards a few times, picked up a few new people but still managed to keep the stories and ideas fresh. It's how I met and still have a good amount of the friends I know scattered across the states and up in canada today and was actually a lot of fun. Looking back on it, I wish I had archived everything since it's been long gone and I only have probably one or two pages of our work on my pc. Either way, it was the most fun I've ever had writing and maintaining a story at any point and if I thought I could capture the same idea, I'd do it again.

[Silenka]

I actually hate roleplaying but I love things that revolve around it like D&D. I get a kick out of OTHER people roleplaying but for some reason I just think it's stupid as fuck when I do it.

I don't know where this loathing of roleplay comes from, but if I had to make a good guess I'd say it stems from outright hatred of the J-rock community I was part of's Livejournal RPs. Nothing worse than seeing your friends, who are otherwise completely cool and down to earth people, actually believing that they have some tiny Jrock avatars with different personalities living in their head who act out scenarios with themselves AND each others' avatars. To me, it was loathsome, as not only was there all evidence that they actually believed this but it caused real, super-retarded drama in the community. I never understood it.

But yeah, I've never enjoyed RP, personally. I'm curious to know if there are other people who hate doing it themselves but don't mind watching others do it. I feel like that's kind of a weird duality and that most people either love or hate it completely.

[ⒻⓊⒸⓀⓎⒺⒶⒽ]

Nothing worse than seeing your friends, who are otherwise completely cool and down to earth people, actually believing that they have some tiny Jrock avatars with different personalities living in their head who act out scenarios with themselves AND each others' avatars. To me, it was loathsome, as not only was there all evidence that they actually believed this but it caused real, super-retarded drama in the community.

Oh man I had some friends who were really into yaoi and used to play out ERP scenes with their favorite J-Rock and Anime 'bishies'.

[BadKarma]

I have a toon on an RP server in WoW. He's a goblin so I play him like a miserly old Jew, it's entertaining to say the least.

[Eleven19]

Back in 2000 when Gundam Wing was really popular, I had a Gundamesque screen name for AOL/AIM. I was young, like 14, got an email about some kinda online Guild that did.. something, with Gundam. So, naturally, I checked it out. Turned out to be a role playing guild. So, I got myself involved. At first I was playing a canon character from the series (I ended up playing Quatre for those familiar.. I think I played the only straight one on the internet lol). About a year later I created two stand alone characters of my own.

AOL RPing was a really large community between like... 1998~1999 and like... 2007 maybe? Back then the chat list would be several "load more" lengths long. Now its usually just one, and 50% of it is smut RP. But back in its day, it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of really interesting people, friends that I still keep close with even today. We used to make our own variations on the mobile suits, write out mock-specs (Most of which didn't make a bit of sense, but was fun none the less). From Gundam I got involved later in fantasy medieval/modern genres, which I enjoyed but not as much as Gundam in the old days when lots of people played.

The whole experience is probably the push that got me into FFXI (holyshit a video game that's like what I do in annoying paragraphs of text form!), and subsequently led me to BG and allowed me to meet the vast majority of people I consider to be my closest friends, and my fiance. So.. Yeah, Role Playing definitely worked out for me. Currently, my fiance and I have an ongoing role playing storyline based in a sort of.. original Gundam universe. Sometimes it gets a little tedious because I end up playing 3-4 characters at a time (change the text color, too lazy to write properly), whereas she plays two of the other main characters. Currently been going on for 130+ AIM "Sessions," few hours of writing at a time. Its interesting watching your own characters develop given the situations you put them into.

[Alleya]

Currently STing (GMing) a fantasy-setting game using New World of Darkness rules, all done over skype with people spread over the country. I have never actually been a player, only the GM/DM/whatever you want to call it (there's one game that calls it The Chill Master, and I'm fine with that). I've been wonderfully blessed in that my nwod group are all gung-ho players who are there to have fun and get in character. In the past, I've had players who always approached the game using videogame logic, and it just kills any sort of momentum or investment.

I've also done a number of d20 based games (3e, 4e, pathfinder, AD&D, d20). One of the major obstacles in games like this that always hamstrung roleplaying for me (and this is partly the fault of the players I had, too), was that too many rules, too many skills, too many options spelled out for the players tends to make them feel like those are the options. When you have a list of ridiculously granular skills, I find that players tend to look to them for a solution. It was even worse in 4th edition with all the power cards that reduced combat to literally a WoW encounter run very very slowly. I don't think I'd ever go back to a d20 based system at this point.

I've also done rules-less straight up story telling stuff via text. "This is where you are and what's happening, what do you do?" and go from there. It's tremendously liberating, but not very useful for any scenario where there's a lot of chaos-based conflict. Perfect for political intrigue, investigation, etc.

[Aristio]

I've tried it, but couldn't ever get into it. I always feel really silly when I try to be anything that I'm not. As in, I can't hold character long enough before I just give up.

[Rhyis.]

I've done it on 3 different Ultima Online severs made specifically for RP. All were enjoyable experiences but it's been years since I've done it. I recently talked about one of my characters in another BG thread a week back so I'll just copy it here for those interested.

Spoiler: show

Allow me to explain one of the most enjoyable RP experiences I've been privileged to partake in, and maybe this will give people a small glimpse into the world.

There was a server on UO where myself and 3 other guys had bandit characters that masqueraded as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. We had a special costume when we went as the horsemen, then normal clothes for when we were just men. The four of us had played the game for numerous years already so knew the ins and outs of the game, which helped us create pretty powerful combative characters quickly (RP servers on UO tended to be 50/50 on non-combative and combative players). I was also friends with the server admin, who RPed as the servers "King" at the time, so we were able to set up a proper lasting event for the server.

The four of us (only together, never alone. Very important) would loot, pillage, maim, murdrer, etc every village in the continent from time to time (not constantly, but enough to be considered a nuisance) and say the end was nigh, and all that jazz, but in reality our characters were just men who wanted to take advantage of an old superstition by instilling fear into other men and then loot them dry. We had to train ourselves in a secret hideout, purchase wares in the less frequented towns, hunt monsters for loot that were too difficult to explore or too difficult to get to etc to keep our identities hidden. It was actually pretty difficult to pull it off secretly, but that was part of the RP. Anyway, after a couple months of hit and run kind of battles with the player base, we eventually got done in by the most unlikely of players. A wandering thief was out and about stealthed in a random town picking the pockets of the unwary traveler. I (Pestilence) happened to be buying nightshade for my poison, that I always had on my weapon, in the same town. He went to pickpocket my pack and happened to take my horsemen robe, which was unique specifically to me (created by the admin). Realizing who I was this thief then proceeded to follow me to our secret lair. The thief, as the good RPer he was, thought to himself what would be the most profitable way to get this valuable information out... And it hit him. He scheduled a meeting with the King (meetings with the King were done on the forum. The server admin would schedule a specific time with you, which you could then come online and talk with him if it was of grave importance to the empire) on the grounds that he had found out the identity of the horsemen, who had been destroying his kingdom, and also knew where their secret base was and wanted to be rewarded handsomely for it (and he was). After this we were then caught, thrown in jail, and then executed publicly.

While the whole experience was great fun for myself and the other three horsemen, it was also a big hit with the rest of the server (after the fact anyway, people hated us when it was actually going down lol). The story was generated almost entirely through player made means (the only thing we didn't do on our own was, anything the King did, and our special horsemen robes). This was essentially an impromptu player made event that had lasted a full 3 months or more.... You will never experience this kind of thing in a normal MMO. It's just not possible. And it's those kind of experiences that RPers yearn to have. There's a lot of effort involved, but after all is said and done you know you were a small part of something truly special.

As for tabletops, I've never played D&D but a buddy of mine just recently bought the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay tabletop game. We were going to give it a go sometime soonish. He'll probably GM the first game and I'll no doubt do the second. Our other friends aren't as experienced as the two of us are with this kind of thing so we'll take the reins.

[Celestialstrife]

I used to the sort of text role play, back when lycos was still around. They had a couple role playing chat rooms that I would spend most of my time in. I wouldn't mind trying to get back into it on WoW persay, but really haven't found anyone else on there to roleplay with. Might try once Tera comes out!

[Greatguardian]

I enjoy RP'ing (D&D etc), but only with people I already know. Trying to RP with strangers or on the internet attracts all of the wrong kinds of people in my experience. The most important thing about RP groups for me is knowing that everyone else there knows that it's just a game for fun and not some replacement for real life or real interpersonal relationships.

Almost every online RP experience I've had has eventually degraded into ERP bullshit which I am absolutely not interested in. I do not like having people hit on my fictional character every 10 seconds, it's extremely uncomfortable. A good chunk of the online RP community seems less interested in having fun and more interested in hooking up. Even the more "grown up" portion of the community still has a lot of people playing to look for boyfriends/girlfriends even if they're not into cybering at the drop of a hat. I'm really just not into that. I'm a moderately attractive, sociable guy who has no trouble meeting women in general. I have met women online who I've gone on to date, but in both cases where that happened neither of us was actively looking for a relationship online - they were just interesting people who were fun to talk to, and I'm still friends with both of them today.

In general, I refuse to do any sort of roleplay which has me typing out emotes any more. I'll speak, I'll write dialogue, I'll flail my arms, but to hell with little asterisk emotes. They make me feel stupid, they aren't fun to read, and they invariably end up used as tools for other people to pinch my character's ass or other dumb shit. If I'm sitting around a table with a few friends playing D&D and someone really wants to pinch my ass, they can get their lazy ass up and come pinch it and see what happens. If they think that's a bad idea, then they really don't need to be emoting it.

[Kerberoz]

I get embarrassed even reading about other people RP'ing.

Can't watch porn with the sound on, either.

[Xantavia]

I first got into D&D when I was 8 and got the basic (red box) set. Over the years I've played on and off several different tabletop RPG's. AD&D (1st-3rd ed.), TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, and Rifts were the major ones. Its something I've missed the past 7 years or so after coming back from school and not finding a group to play with.

[Kuishen]

I enjoy RP'ing (D&D etc), but only with people I already know. Trying to RP with strangers or on the internet attracts all of the wrong kinds of people in my experience. The most important thing about RP groups for me is knowing that everyone else there knows that it's just a game for fun and not some replacement for real life or real interpersonal relationships.

Almost every online RP experience I've had has eventually degraded into ERP bullshit which I am absolutely not interested in. I do not like having people hit on my fictional character every 10 seconds, it's extremely uncomfortable. A good chunk of the online RP community seems less interested in having fun and more interested in hooking up. Even the more "grown up" portion of the community still has a lot of people playing to look for boyfriends/girlfriends even if they're not into cybering at the drop of a hat. I'm really just not into that. I'm a moderately attractive, sociable guy who has no trouble meeting women in general. I have met women online who I've gone on to date, but in both cases where that happened neither of us was actively looking for a relationship online - they were just interesting people who were fun to talk to, and I'm still friends with both of them today.

In general, I refuse to do any sort of roleplay which has me typing out emotes any more. I'll speak, I'll write dialogue, I'll flail my arms, but to hell with little asterisk emotes. They make me feel stupid, they aren't fun to read, and they invariably end up used as tools for other people to pinch my character's ass or other dumb shit. If I'm sitting around a table with a few friends playing D&D and someone really wants to pinch my ass, they can get their lazy ass up and come pinch it and see what happens. If they think that's a bad idea, then they really don't need to be emoting it.

This so much.

I've played some tabletops over the years but the majority of my RPing is on Forums that are based on pre-existing or unique universes (I've spent most of my time on Naruto-based boards, yeah yeah lolnaruto hate all you want, the universe itself is a fantastic place for RPing if you keep out the retards that want to be characters from the show, same with Bleach). Before you call that fanfiction... to me fanfiction is completely masturbatory writing and you're just writing whatever you think is cool mashed up into one big ball of awfulness, which is completely different from the type of writing that I do. Fleshing out a character's plot, creating situations in which said character can grow, that is the type of stuff I do.

I've stuck mostly with the same group of people because we have chemistry and we are able to weave stories together perfectly. But I know exactly what GG is talking about and you have to be vigilant to keep that shit off the type of sites I generally RP on.

Eventually I'd like to take all this practice and write a novel, maybe. /shrug

[Eleven19]

I've done some Bleach RPing. What I love about Bleach are the things some people come up with for their characters' abilities, some really neat stuff.

Sticking with a core group of people is the best experience I've had RPing, across whatever genres we explore. Building character relationships over time through different situations, hardships and triumphs is really interesting to play out.

[arus2001]

I've actually been kinda hankering for some good Bleach RP lately, but from my scourings, the MU* scene is pretty much dead there and, I dunno, I feel like some forums are just way too nazi. Yeah, there's a lot of faith involved when dealing with a genre that can be inherently twinky, but hey, nobody dies in Bleach, right?!

[Moridam]

I used to play D&D 3/3.5 with a bunch of my friends, stopped around the time 4e came out. Our schedules kinda drifted apart so it got hard for us to keep long-term campaigns going, and then I ended up moving away for a few years. Now that I've moved back, most everyone else has moved away. I know plenty of other people that play, but I don't think I'd want to get involved with a new group, most of the fun really came from the people I played with and I can't see that being replicated elsewhere.

Never had any interest in trying to RP in FFXI or anything though, and most of the people I encountered that did so were just excruciatingly lame/annoying about it.

[Maguspk]

We should try to have another BG D&D group. BRP did a 'Play-by-post' that was shaping up to be really fun until people just stopped :s