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Am I Not Right for HJ?
Tiran
Member Posts: 8
I'm stuck...
I've been following HJ for an awful long time, and I've been reading these boards and the boards at play.net/hj daily for months. Don't let my low post count fool you--I don't like to post, but I do like to read and understand what's happening. I am a mature, fun-loving adult. I like to think I add to any community I become a part of.
As I said, however, I'm stuck. I don't like RP'ing in the traditional sense. I never have, and I never will. I do, however, respect everyone that does and do my utmost to make sure my play style doesn't interfere with others. I like to experience all the content a game has to offer. I like to maximize my character. I like to be that "wow, did he really just do that all by himself" guy.
Again, I don't like traditional RP'ing. I do, however become my character in my own way. I like my online characters to be an extension of me. I like them to joke about my life, just like I joke about my life. They ARE me...why not have the same problems I have? Now, some of you might say...well, that's RP'ing. My experience, however, has been that the traditional "hail, and well met" crowd doesn't like my "kind' of RP'ing. So I don't interfere with their gaming, and I happily find others to adventure with. I have fun, they have fun, and we exist in peace. But what if not joining the "hail, and well met" crowd means I can't succeed in HJ? What if being me and playing as me isn't wanted?
My fear is simple--HJ looks amazing, I've been following it forever, and I can't wait to play it. But I DO NOT--UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES--look forward to being forced into a "hail, and well met good sir" style of playing.
I laugh, I joke, I make references to pop culture...that's who I am, and as my online characters are a personification of me, that's who they are...
Will this type of gaming be frowned upon in HJ?
Please, don't misunderstand. I never try to interfere with anyone's gaming, and I'm not that 13 year-old community member so common and so unpoplular in games like WoW. I'm an adult, with a family and a career, that happens to love online gaming. I left WoW because I couldn't handle the 13 year-old miscreants any longer. I don't, however, want to feel ostracized for being myself...and I don't want my gameplay to be hindered by overzealous GMs that are upset because I don't drop my cloak over the puddle for the fair maiden walking by that happens to be a 22 year-old man in real life playing the part of a damsel-in-distress or because I neglected to specify that "Derek the Dashing" always greets players with a hearty "Good Day! This morning is a FINE morning for adventuring...as are ALL mornings!" It's not me, and it never will be...
Here's hoping HJ is all we hope it will be--and all it seems to be...and that all players that add to the community--even if in their own way--will be welcomed.
Comments
Won't be a problem. I'm certain there will be non-RP servers where people like you and I can play. I"m not a RPer either, but I get into my character just as much as RPer's do but in ways more akind to how you get into your character. RPers are looking to HJ becuase of Simu's background in RP and the fact that they dont really have a grahpical MMO that really supports them, so they are pretty sensitive about it IMHO. I'm sure there will be servers that if you don't RP, you're gonna get the boot, just make sure not to roll a character on on, play one of the regualr servers with me and You'll be fine.
Thanks Morneblade...I appreciate the response. Whether I'm considered "right" or not by whomever doesn't change anything, however. I'm way excited for HJ and I'm definitely going to be playing...
Now, about that beta...
I'm a roleplayer, and at times I can be pretty serious about it. Depends on the situation.
That said, I don't think you'll be seeing GMs booting people out of the world for saying "dude" or anything like that. They'd have to boot tens of thousands of people if they did that.
What I take the HJ statements about emphasis on RP to mean is simply this: They intend there to be "roleplay" options that you would not find in a typical MMORPG. What these might be, at this point, is pretty much anybody's guess. But I think just because those options are there, doesn't mean you have to use them, and I certainly don't think you'll be shown the door if you don't avail yourself of them.
C
BAH. Double post. Sorry.
C
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
I have always considered myself a natural roleplayer, right from my very first online game -- although, to my surprise, very few would think of me as a roleplayer.
I don't stand around typing painfully long "emotes" as if I were writing a novel -- and, frankly, people who do pretty much creep me out. Also, players who constantly type ((OOC text)) in double-parens just fairly screams of loss of immersion.
My sense of roleplaying is to leave real-world events outside the game and let the make-believe world, for a time, become the real world. And I don't need a 5,000-word background story (usually: "my parents were killed by blah-blah and I was raised by blah-blah and that's why I hate the blah-blah and want to destroy them all) to make my character come alive.
I simply think of my character as an extension of my own personality, but a personality whose real world is in a cybernetic fantasy land. I pretend. I make believe. And we have all done that since playing our first games as kids. It's not elaborate -- it's quite easy.
I type regular language, devoid (hopefully) of leet-dood speech. "Hail" and "Aye" are about as Elizabethan as I get. I do not address your character as if I was talking to some person, somewhere, sitting at some computer monitor.
If you're a Dwarf (for example) I already know I hate you and will make fun of you (in a gameworld sense, not a personal sense) -- because I hate Dwarves, Halfings and some Gnomes (although I admit Gnomes can be good for snacking).
If I have likes, dislikes, prejudices and biases, so does my character. And that kind of roleplaying seems very real for one reason -- it IS real -- in an emotional sense.
If I like to explore, so does my character. If I want to be greedy, surprise, so does my character. Also, if I am vain, show-offy, silly, crazy, witty or whatever -- my character will also be that.
However, that said, if I personally like cheeseburgers or heavyweight boxing or the Sci Fi channel in real life, you will not know that (unless we are speaking privately and in tacit OOC) because that has nothing to do with the gameworld (unless, in the unlikely event that it does have something to do with some gameworld).
If you are acting a mage, or a melee fighter, or a druid, or a ranger, whatever, I will treat you as such, even though I am aware that you may be playing several types of characters.
I have even gone so far as to suggest that I have a "friend" or a "brother" or a "sister" *wink wink* (my other characters, my alts) who will be coming "soon" (I will be logging them on) if you would just wait for them to arrive. It's just a fiction but a fiction that I use to maintain the identities of the various characters; characters who, after time, tend to develop certain personality quirks as you play them.
Generally, if I see someone roleplaying, I roleplay along to the degree that I am comfortable with it. If I see someone not roleplaying, I tend to "not understand" exactly what they are saying because my avatar does not have knowledge of the real world.
Let me go on a bit more.
I saw something little noticed but very charming on a roleplaying server in World of Warcraft. You might be familiar that there were inns and resting in them while offline would build up bonus XP. What I did, and saw many others doing, was to enter an inn, climb the stairs to a bed, lie down to sleep and "log off." Nobody HAD to actually lie in a bed, but it made a lot of roleplay sense and was done without fanfare. Sometimes players would do an emote "yawn" and then lie down and go to sleep (Zzzzzz....).
No big deal. Just a little sense of roleplay without a big to-do about it, but something that preserved the sense of the gameworld.
That's the stuff I like.
~ Ancient Membership ~
I too consider myself to be an adult. 48 years old with wife , 4 kids and debt past my eyeballs.
I played DragonRealms for years with a group of really great people. My Mentor was an even older than me woman who went far beyond her duties. She made us a family unit. When I play I do not enjoy being reminded there is a real world and I am in it. I play to escape reality. That is why I loved DR. I loved seeing a game making someone mute for breaking the fantasy that you are suppose to be immersing yourself in. After my best in game buddy died of a massive heart attack in real life I no longer could enjoy the world of DR. I tried to RP it as he lost favor and hit perma death. It just didn't cut it. Since then i have gone through game after game after game only to be disapointed that I am in this beautiful fatasy land to be barraged by current topics, computer performance discussions, and wails and screams of lag lag lag omfg this game suckzorz.
Do I role play? Darn right I do but the Hail and Well met is of the Planet Earth. Hail, Hello, Hi, Howdy are all fine and dandy. My character predates my online gamming. Sadly ther was not enough interest for us tohave a real D&D experience. Then I got into console games so I have my own style. I am a semi literate barbarian type. "Hey bud, I dun know bout ya ,but I sure have a taste to crack some Gargoyle heads. Feel like wetting some steel wit me?" That is about as far as RPing needs to go. But it a whole lot better than "Hey want to go camp the gargoyle spawn and get fat XP?" I do use Aye a lot. So much that I use it in RL. I HATE the people who do not take the time toread the basic instructions and then stand there yelling, How do I run?? My ususal answer is "One foot in front of the other , Fast!!" As for emotes?? I love em !! ! But I have a fairly vivid imagination and quick wit. Hopefully Simu will cary over thier macros so I can make a dozen on hand emotes. /emote Jaryd pulls out his knife and scratches a note to himself on the back of his shield
Just remember what world your character IS in and leave the real world out of it and you will do fine.
As for who is sitting at the computer what does it matter? If the character you are interacting with is a female or a male that is how you react. As for races. I tend to be a Dwarf if at all possible so me and the other guy .... well we not gonna git along so well. See all that extra long body does is keep ya too far from da ground and yer brains become muddled tryin to keep yerself upright. But dats OK wit me. I like everyone specially if yer willin ta share a mugga or 6 wit me.
Stay Vertical !!
Do this - "/emote laughs loudly, wiping away tears of mirth. 'You're killing me...'"
Not this - "LMFAO! u r so funny!"
Also, slang has existed even back in medieval times, so it's not too extreme to consider that "awesome" or something similar would exist in Elanthia. Or if you're the type who doesn't like that kind of thing, you can just put it off as either... a) the person is a kid and your character's aware that they're always coming up with new words to confuse their elders, or b) it's an older person who heard it from a younger character and figured it was 'all the rage' and started using it themselves... or of course c) the person is just insane. You don't have to lose your immersion and whisper fussily at them that it's not IC for them to do that.
Well, if they're smart... they will do what SWG did with emotes.
If you typed /lol in SWG, your character emoted "(name) laughs out loud" and the animation had the character slap his knees laughing.
If you typed /rofl, your toon actually rolled on the ground (in animation) laughing and holding his/her stomach.
Etc...
They also had it "detect" certain conversation (this could be toggled on/off) so that if you said, "No" at the start of a sentence, your character shook her head "no". If you said, "Yes" at the start of a sentence, or "yeah", the toon nodded. If you said, "Tsk tsk" your character did a "shame, shame" emote, rubbing one finger over the other. And so forth.
In a visual medium where you can have lots of animations, long narrative style emotes are not necessarily important. In SWG, I found that short emotes text poses, + dialog, +animations from their extensive emote list, worked the best.
C
I don't know if anyone else has answered your question yet, but let me relate to myself on this topic. Hero's Journey is going to be a game full of role-playing, and a united community. In fact I'm helping create one. However, will I be role-playing? Not very often, if ever. I'll be playing on whatever server offers the most PvP, and I'll stick it at that. I don't find myself always wanting to act in character. My guild will be on Ventrilo constantly to communicate. Kind of hard to role-play on Ventrilo. We'll also be conducting a way to become the best, and role-playing doesn't really help us in that goal.
The way Simutronics has developed Hero's Journey it will invite everyone to join their game. Not just role-players, not just care-bears, not just pvp fanatics. Everyone will have a server that they will enjoy, and it seems that the Hero's Journey game will in itself be one of the better coming out. So if you're enjoying what you are reading about Hero's Journey, then still follow it, and play it! Theirs my 2 wyr.
Something about this topic brings us lurkers out of the woodwork. Anyway, I'm in complete accord with Morneblade here. I've left games I was otherwise loving because the community was so obnoxious. Part of what's attracted me to HJ is its emphasis on roleplaying, even though I'm not all that into roleplaying myself; I figure if people have their brains busily engaged by their character, they'll be distracted from saying racist/ sexist/ homophobic/ jingoistic / what-have-you crap. I was playing City of Heroes when the verdict from the Michael Jackson trial came in last summer. Suddenly the chat channels were completely overwhelmed with weird, aggressive spamming from both the guilty and not-guilty camps. I would have gladly traded it for a chorus of "by your leave, m'lord." (Although I must say that I will never understand why the King James Bible has become the standard for how people are supposed to talk in a fantasy setting -- but no, nobody explain it, please, I said I'll never understand, and I never will.)
I'm happy to roleplay when the people around me are doing it, but I'm otherwise right there with the OP and Morneblade in thinking that it's a computer game first, and darn it I want to kill something and kill it well. Some of the worst pick-up teams I've even been on (in terms of getting our butts handed to us) were the ones where, ten minutes in, somebody said, "Let's role play!" But some of the most fun I've ever had online was with people who were both good gamers and good at (role)playing their characters.
anyways. i play dr still. just waiting for hj to go beta and hope i get in on that part of it so i can help build a good community with the rest of you. i still play out my character in my own way. its nothing like me, and yet, you will find traces of my personality in my character. im really squirely in life and my character is even more so. of course the text based environment really helps foster that as i can pretty much do anything i want with the smile and act verbs. thats one part i will really miss. sure you can emote it in chat, but it just won't be the same if my character is still sitting there.
but my rp style is just like a lot of what i read here. that whole hardcore rp style just takes sooo much time and intrest to invest into doing, you wouldn't be playing the game. to busy writing a ten line peice of theatre for every action you did in the game, that they forget to or are not able to heal or buff or whatever they do in the party. find a balance in your play style, speak in a manner that is as informative as possible without compromising your ability to actually be a good player in the game, and above all, have fun. if your roleplaying a game because you think thats the way it needs to be, but it requires so much effort that your not just enjoying the game for what it is, that to me is no better then the hardcore powerlevelers. just an extreme on the opposite pole.