What is this Roleplaying thing, anyway?

Ask any of those involved in this hobby of ours, in all its various venues and stages, that question and you're bound to get almost as many answers as times you asked. It's a tricky question to pin down, and it also begs another question to follow along: Do we even NEED to pin it down?

Within the confines of your own personal sphere of influence, the answer is likely "No, we don't need to pin it down, thank you very much". A roleplaying style develops organically among members of a shared playgroup, often wordlessly, just by the simple method of Seeing What Works And What Doesn't. There are very rarely issues or conflicts between long-term members of a gaming circle (on the subject of roleplaying, that is, other subjects are meat for another time) because they subscribe to the same basic structure, the same basic code of belief.

Try to mix two groups, add new blood to an established group, or worse yet, create a group or community from scratch, and you're in for a much different story indeed.

See, everyone has a different idea of what "Roleplaying" really is. One friend of mine firmly believes that it means taking the time to speak every line of dialogue his character would speak. Another friend believes that "anything that happens out of combat" is roleplaying. A third believes that it has nothing to do with either of the above, but is actually "Making choices that never contradict my character concept and backstory". I've known players who insist that the path of games or interactive stories follow the pre-scripted events "Of Their RP", I've known others who believe that rules of any sort mean that the game can't be considered a roleplaying game, I've even known people who insist that if you don't show up to the game dressed as your character, prepared to speak in your character's voice (including accents), know everything your character would (including foreign and often fictional languages, as well as fictional sciences and magic) and be prepared to pull off, with flair, every physical feat your character would, you weren't a roleplayer.

All of them are wrong.

Or, more accurately, none of them are entirely correct. All of them miss the mark, and fail to see that what they are describing as "Roleplaying" is actually a structure built on an underlying foundation. The foundation, in this case, is what I consider "Real Roleplaying", with the rest being simply embellishment. What is the foundation? What is this "Real Roleplaying" that I'm about to egotistically claim to understand better than all these other people?

Simply put, I believe that roleplaying, at the heart, is about nothing more than making choices based on the information at hand, viewed through the lens that is the character. Roleplaying is very close to tactical gameplay in that regard, except that one is not necessarily after the most desirable outcome, but rather the "best" one for the character, from the character's perspective. If one looks at the accounts of early RPG sessions (and I'm not just talking about in the history of the game, but in the history of any individual tabletop player), one sees an awful lot of "Black Dougal opens the chest" and "Millicent the Magnificent gives a speech to the crowd" and not a lot of "Forsooth, fair townspeople, lend me your attention for just one moment so that I may impress upon you..."

In other words, the basis of roleplaying is the decision. Talking in character is very nice, but that's the realm of theatre, which has overlaps aplenty but is not the same exact creature as the RPG. Writing a backstory, journalling, blogging, having a future plan for a character or a story is wonderful, but is in the realm of authorship, which again overlaps wonderfully, but is not part and parcel of the experience. These and other practices (Dressing in character, knowing character skills, being able to apply player skills overlapping character skills (which is a subject for a new post, I think)) add wonderful verisimilitude and depth to the RPG, but are not required for it to be considered roleplaying.

In closing for the moment, not because I have exhausted my screed, but rather because I'm getting a bit tired of typing and want to save before my post gets eaten, let me offer an example or two that highlight what I'm talking about.

I play EVE Online. Casually, mind you. I enjoy it largely because I can improve my character skills without active effort on my part, so when I play, I don't have to worry about that side of advancement. It's a lot of fun for me, it scratches my sci-fi itch very nicely. And everyone playing EVE roleplays. That's right, every single player.

I do not say this because everyone in-game has a character backstory, has a "RP-friendly" name, or even speaks in character. I say this because it is impossible to break the immersion. You are space pilots in a very large swath of space, with hundreds of inhabited planets (that you never visit personally, just fly by at high speed) each of which has millions of inhabitants. If you're talking about Real-Life stuff, it's less than a half-skip away to say to yourself (as an observer, that is) "Oh, so-and-so is talking about events on his home planet that he keeps up with!" If you're talking about game concepts...hit points, armor points, damage per second, etcetera, you could well be talking in-character, since it's entirely possible, likely even, that these concepts are actually measured in the world. Armor ratings give us standardized damage ratings, subdivided into "points", measured by our onboard computers, there we go. Even if you're talking about "Logging Out" or "doing stuff Offline", you could be speaking about it in terms of "I'm leaving my ship now"...thus "offline" as far as that community goes. Strange names become pilot callsigns and nicknames. All of the immersion-breaking off-topic rigmarole is done away with, leaving players making choices based on information and inclination at hand. In other words? Role-playing.

I also play World of Warcraft, where not everyone roleplays, but everyone could. The thing which seperates WoW from EVE in this case is the players. Where in EVE, immersion is just a rationalization away, and you can take it or leave it but can't break it for other people, in WoW, being set in a fantasy setting, and a largely medieval fantasy setting at that (I'm sensing another thought coming on, which I'm putting aside for the moment...goodness, writing this stuff down IS good for the old bean), game mechanics can't be discussed in "earshot" of a character while "remaining in character". That said, however, ignoring someone is just as easy as in real life.

No, the big reason not everyone roleplays in WoW is that deprived of the ease of it that EVE offers, deprived of the prevalent immersion, players convince themselves that they are not roleplaying, or that others are not, and some of them have even convinced themselves that it is all right to draw lines and heckle people who cross them (for there is as much griefing and bad blood coming from the "Pro-RPers" as there is from the "Anti-RPers", it's just often more visible coming the other way). In reality, though, immersion aside, everyone there roleplays as well. The constant jumping, the running everywhere, that can be overlooked. In the end, the population is composed of characters taking actions based on preferences and available information. What's different is the dressing.

Am I saying that embellishment is bad? Absolutely not. The entire reason that the culture of "tabletop actors" arose is that it can get boring for many people to simply state "I attempt to woo the djinn princess" and see where the dice fall.

What I AM saying, though, is that it's important to see the foundation you're building on before you start to build, so that other people helping you build aren't trying to do something completely different.

Hello, World!

So, here I am, joining the ranks of the virtual elite. I have my own space, my own private little playground to set my thoughts down.

Problem is, I don't have many thoughts to set down, at least not on a set schedule. This blog isn't really "about" anything, though its title sprung from my primary hobby. It's no surprise, then, that the majority of posts will be about roleplaying in some way, shape or form. Let me get out of the way right up front that I don't have a posting schedule, and will not be commiting to one, but rather will post when something needs to be posted. Expect subjects ranging from essays to stories, from game design thoughts to actual play accounts, from quote collections to work frustrations. If it sparks something I think will be edifying or amusing, I think it'll end up here.

A tiny bit about me, to close out my opening:

-A Music Education major who was forced out of school due to money running out and an unwillingness to take on loans. Bright, bright decision there.

-Currently employed as a coffee-slinger and espresso-monkey.

-Avid reader, primarily of science fiction, fantasy, and pulp works, but with tastes that have ranged from Ceasar to Wolfe and anywhere in between.

-Avid strategy and role-playing gamer, starting with the old Avalon Hill wargames and a set of Little Brown Books, and going from there.

-Current hobbies: Reading, music performance and collection, tabletop and online roleplaying, fencing, weapons exhibition, sleep. Yes, sleep. It's well worth it.

-Past hobbies: Coin and stamp collecting, model trains, other model building, military history, archaeology, linguistic study (yes, as a hobby. I had a sad childhood in a way), cycling, and other things which I have since likely forgotten.

So, that's it. Hopefully this will spark something from my mind, and if not, it will languish, likely unseen!