What is Role-Playing?
This question pops up a lot in a lot of places, and the genuine answer is it's the adult term for the art of playing make believe. Another word for it is acting, but there's no stage or camera pointed at you. It's the time honored art of putting on a fictitious show in a given medium. Some jobs use Role-playing as a tool to illustrate a point or scenario. A simulation if you will.
I've been Role-Playing as a hobby for a very long time. Before the internet, me and my brother and school chums would play pretend we were characters from popular cartoons and whatnot, engaging in made up battles or scenarios using whatever was handy. When the internet became a thing I was exposed to the wonders of chat room role-play in circa 1999 when Geocities chat was still a thing (it might still be, I haven't checked back on that).
Eventually the medium moved out of the chat rooms and into the chat bars of Online Games. Even though the show itself is taking place in the chat, the visual aid of having characters and scenes at the ready helps tremendously. It's a beautiful collaborative practice in storytelling, where each person involved brings their own personalities and characters to the proverbial stage. Over almost 20 years of engaging in it, I've written enough stories with people across the internet to cover several trilogies of books, and enough characters I keep a personal lexicon of them, all very dear to me, and who occasionally wind up in my personal writings.
What is an MMO RPG?
I'm pretty sure by now you've heard of World of Warcraft. It's 2018. You have, right? It's only the most successful online Role-playing Game in the world right now. You can plug that question into google and get a definite answer if you want. I'll just say it's a video game connected to the internets and there's a lot of other players running around the game world. I'm just going to assume if you're reading this you've at least played an MMO. If not, I'll include the names of a few you can play for free at the end of this blog entry.
Why do you role-play?
Primarily because it's great fun. It can bring people closer together, and you can learn a lot about a person from how they role-play. Also for me, it's a means of escaping from the stresses of real life for a period of time and immerse myself in another world. Also as a writer, it allows me to experiment with a variety of character types. What some people call being an "Alt-aholic" (term for person who rolls up many characters in an MMO), I call fleshing out a roster and tackling a different character type.
But you're already playing a game, why play make believe in a--
Let me stop you right there, because yeah that comes up a lot. Everyone has their thing in an MMO. Some people are in it purely for the combat. Some are into doing nothing but running dungeons and demolishing everything in their path. Some are all about that PVP and pitting themselves against other players. Others seek to create the prettiest or most outlandish character they can imagine, and then some. Then you have people like me who like to get together with friends and invent our own stories and situations within the game world for our own amusement.
How does Role-playing in an MMO help you write?
Excellent title drop.Let's get to that part, shall we?
Inspiration- The lifeblood of any writer is the ideas on which we build upon. Every story, every article we write can be traced back to that "Ah Ha!" moment. A scene with friends online might just click on that light bulb for that sword and sorcery epic you've been hashing and rehashing in your brain for five years. Perhaps a scene or session just finished but you have an awesome follow up scenario come to you afterwards. One thing leads to another, and you build and build on it.
Working on our flaws- As a writer, I admit to making a lot of mistakes in the storytelling process. I tell people in my personal circles that I can always tell a fledgling writer or inexperienced role-player, because they always put more focus into describing what their character looks like over their personality. Granted, MMOs being a more visual medium, I personally find describing one's look to be a moot point, I can see what you look like. I want to know about them, not their clothes. Or maybe say I'm having a bad time in my personal life and it's reflecting in my role-play. How's my grammar? How's my writing flow? Am I writing too much or too little? Is my brevity making people think I'm not really feeling this scene? Am I not really feeling this scene? Role-playing is like equal parts dress rehearsal and opening night all at once, where you have the freedom to adjust as you feel you need, and learn from your mistakes.
One of the biggest lessons you can learn from MMO's is allowing yourself the ability to have your characters change over time. Allow them to evolve with the stories they participate in. They may be digital constructs, but their personalities and likes and dislikes are all your invention.
Testing out concepts- Role-playing in MMO's gives you a lot of freedom to experiment with storytelling conventions and character types. You shouldn't be afraid to try out things to see if they stick, you can always go back and retool a characters personality. Don't think everything is set in stone. It's a very fluid medium. Sometimes it even means rolling a level 1 character of a different type than you're used to and see the world from a different perspective. Admit it, you see a game world through very different eyes as a magic user in an MMO than a Melee class. You approach situations differently, you focus on different skills and abilities. It broadens your horizon, and maybe gives you a little more appreciation for the healer in your dungeon group when you yourself walk a few miles in their shoes.
I wouldn't be as passionate about storytelling or writing as I am today if it wasn't for playing a lot of MMOs. Working with other players to tell a story that's satisfying and enjoyable for everyone involved is to me more fun than actually playing the games' content the developers spent years cooking up. Exposure to other people and their ideas can help us formulate our own ideas, our own storytelling voice and flow that can carry over into our own original writing works.
So if you're interested, there's a few MMOs on the market as of this writing (but I certainly hope they survive well into the future) you can play for free without much restriction and not a dime spent, but they will certainly tempt the ever loving hell out of you.
-Wildstar
-Star Trek Online
-Blade and Soul
-The Elder Scrolls Online
-Black Desert Online
Gives these a spin and see which is to your liking, see what speaks to your creative muse. Take a chance and see what stories come out of it.
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