Posted by Sa Chi | 18 Comments

All The Galaxy's A Stage: Enforced RP Rulesets?

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.  Join in the discussion and share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

I know last time, I promised to discuss some of the challenges of real time RP in an MMO in the next column, but I caught a post by BioWare Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid in the Dev Tracker and could not resist.  He wrote something that I never expected to see even being discussed:

We’ll have PvP servers, and we may have ‘soft’ RP servers (ie, labelled as such, but with no enforcement)… however, enforcing an RP ruleset is a big decision and one that’s higher up the chain than me.

We’ve been getting wind of soft RP servers for a while now.  Given that folks such as Daniel Erickson are self-noted avid Role-Players themselves, there’s no doubt that the RP community of SW:TOR really has some important allies in high places.  Contemplating official RP servers is definitely a practical approach by BioWare – after all, they have to know that if they don’t give us RP servers the community will only go and select a single server to overwhelm as our unofficial home anyway, right?  But to read that the idea of an RP ruleset driven server is even on the lips of BioWare staff made me do a double-take.

That said, I do agree with Mr. Reid that this is far from a trivial matter.  Whilst I’m not going to get into enforcement of in-character elements of RP (that’s never going to fly), the idea of a ruleset on RP is still fraught with complications.  And yet, I will confess that the idea does fill me with a dreamy look of a young schoolgirl overwhelmed by her first crush.  The idea of a server where there are consequences for OOC (out-of-character) griefers disturbing the RP scene really is tantalizing.  And yet, I know I am definitely reading more into this than is realistically happening behind the scenes.  Perhaps this really is a heavy dose of wishful thinking?

Regardless of what Mr. Reid may have meant by all this, we would like to hear your perspective on this post and experiences around RP in MMORPGs.  What do you think?

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Posted by Sa Chi | 16 Comments

All The Galaxy's A Stage: Story And Role-Play In TOR – How Are You Preparing?

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™.  Join in the discussion below to share your perspectives and experience as we co-create magical story in that galaxy far, far away!

I started role-playing first edition Dungeons & Dragons when I was 8 years old.  I am now 40.  Setting the math aside, I’d also like to note that I’ve spent a number of years role-playing in various on-line settings.  And so, when I first heard about Star Wars: The Old Republic and its story focus I was excited.  I’ve been a Star Wars fan since 1977, and the idea of a story-focused RPG in an MMO, with ‘consequences’ was very, very intriguing to me.  However, my second thought was, ‘wait a minute…’

 

 

Many of the role-players I’ve created story with would agree with me that story and character development are critical ingredients to amazing Role-Play (RP).  And yet I also know that the role-playing community (in any genre) is filled with exceptionally creative people with diverse takes on what role-play actually is.  Such creativity results in a cross-spectrum of play-styles, a continuum that stretches from the very casual to the serious writer-actor.

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