All The Galaxy's A Stage: Real-Time RP In An MMORPG

All The Galaxy’s A Stage is a regular column at Ask A Jedi with some lofty, creative goals.  On one hand, we will be discussing and exploring meaningful topics to support the role-play experience and community.  On the other hand, we also want to introduce the casual Role-Player to the writing-acting experience that can add so much more to an MMORPG like Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

As I was thinking about RP in SW:TOR, one of the defining moments of my MMORPG Role-Playing experience came to mind.  When Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) was launched I founded a RP guild.  It didn’t take us long to grow, and by the time of our first major RP event we had about 60 active members.  The leadership team had a real passion for creating guild story arcs, and one such arc resulted in what came to be an epic experience.  Players were morally challenged, sacrifice was required and all in all the event initially looked, from where we were sitting, to be a great success.

Many of us would like to have a word with you.

Have you ever been in an MMO-RP scene with 50+ players RPing at the same time?  Have you experienced that rush of text dialog and emotes in the chat channel?  And I’m not talking about random cantina RP (where you can easily see 50+ RPers in the same space).  I’m referring to big story events that have taken weeks or months to bring to a significant storypoint and most of your guild have shown up for.

I’m a fairly fast reader but at times RP in an MMO can be quite challenging.  We have to contend with the pace of the scrolling dialog and emotes, not to mention NPC (Non-Player Character) chatter.  And if you’re involved in a scene as one of the GMs (or story-tellers as we called them) responsible for coordinating NPC reactions and events surrounding the PCs then it can get even more interesting.  As someone who has had plenty of experience with real-life RP gatherings it was a defining moment for me as a MMO RP guild leader.

Even more interesting was that the feedback from the event’s post-mortem was quite clear.  Some members had been challenged by the event, expressing some disatisfaction at how uninvolved they had felt at times.  We had learned a big lesson.

Most people cannot type 150 WPM, let alone read the rapidly scrolling text.  Adding the built-in /say distance limitations of LotRO as another factor led the leadership team to realize that RP in an MMORPG is unlike any other RP experience.

Our response was to create a ‘Narrator’ role for big RP events.  The Narrator was charged primarily with making sure all members were involved, a go-to person as it were.  They weren’t necessarily privy to story plans but they might have an NPC to portray.  But above all, their role was to keep an eye on all the players in attendance.  They would check in with those looking less involved and free the GM(s) to lead the event.  Depending on the situation they might either prompt inactive looking players with questions about what they wanted to do, provide them with an update of what had happened to this point, and/or get them more directly involved by having their NPC go over and bother them.

We didn’t look back.  From the moment we implemented the Narrator role it was clear it had been the right move.  We also made sure that massive events were fewer, and that where possible we would have smaller events that all contributed to the story.

Forum RP is sedate in comparison to in-game RP.  You can take your time, you can prepare your responses, and all in all it is generally a very forgiving format.  However BioWare implements the chat channels in SW:TOR will definitely have a bearing on the RP experience.  Admittedly, for the limited RP scenes with 2-10 players this is non-issue.

As I’ve scanned the various RP activity amongst the various communities, it’s obvious that forum RP is clearly in a healthy state.  From what I can tell there is a wonderful mix of both those who have experience with RP in MMOs to those that are trying RP out for the first time.

It’s my experience that an RP guild that puts some thought into these kind of challenges ahead of time will gain from the effort.  How many of your members have Role-Played in an MMORPG before?  Do those with less experience have an idea of what to expect?  Does your guild have someone (or a team of people) in RP mentorship and/or story-planning roles?  If your guild is into planning structued story RP events, have you considered how to make sure everyone is engaged during the scene?  I am curious to see how other RP Guilds plan on approaching this sort of challenge.

In the next column I’m going to explore the mix of RP with in-game mechanics.  But until then, please share your experiences below.  What is your experience with big RP events in an MMORPG?

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