((Advanced Roleplay))
First draft of another essay (intended as another in-world book). This is hot off the keyboard, so it will hopefully be expanded and improved.
((This entire essay rests, languidly but watchfully, between double parentheses. In other words, it’s all OOC.
If you’re reading this- and you are- then you know the basics of roleplay. You know how to create a character, how to speak and act in character, how to react as your character would, for hours at a time. You can even get laid.
In other words, you’re a good roleplayer. What we’ll talk about here is how to be a great roleplayer.
Naturally, this is only one style of RP. But it happens to be what I like, so I’d like to see it spread.
1. WHAT IS ADVANCED RP?
Basic roleplay is what it sounds like: you create a role and then play with it. Any D&D player picks this up. Fancy ones can do a good accent, write a good backstory, know what their character will do both in everyday and unusual situations.
Advanced RP is a form of collaborative storytelling: you are not just creating a character, you are putting them into a story. But that is a little misleading, because the skills you need are not precisely those of a novelist. A novelist has total control over the story; all the characters do what she wants.
A DM who approaches a campaign like a novelist will create a railroad plot, where only the path he has worked out in advance can be explored. That works fine for a novel; it is not that satisfying for RP. Players don’t just want to watch a plot unfold; they want to participate and affect it. If they take it in an unexpected direction, the DM must take it in stride.
I think of RP as a form of improvisational theater. If you watch good improv, you can hardly believe that the actors are making it up as they’re going along; but they are. They are well trained not only to create characters as they go, but to work with each other to tell a story, smoothly and on the fly. They can do this not because of prior consultation, but because they are trained in improvisational storytelling.
Let’s look at some of the techniques they use.
2. STRONG CHARACTERS
You know basic RP, so I won’t cover how you create a character. How do you create a *strong* character? And why would you?
A strong character is memorable. Think of movie actors like Ian McKellen, Steve Buscemi, Alan Rickman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Bill Cosby, John Cleese, Christopher Guest. These folks are distinctive, easily recognizable, and above all fun to watch.
Notice a few of the things they do, that you can use as well:
* They’re high energy.
* They’re larger than life. They exaggerate their quirks, their speech.
* They have an agenda. We find them engaging because they have problems to solve, and we can watch them doing it.
* They’re flawed, and they don’t mind showing it. They don’t care if they look foolish.
* They don’t always solve their problems the ‘right way’. If they did, the movie would be over too soon. They mess up, create more problems for themselves, hit bottom, and finally figure it out.
3. HAVE GOALS
You don’t have a story until you have a goal. By definition a goal is something you don’t have yet.
In a traditional RPG you have the goals that the DM or the game set for you. That doesn’t work so well in SL, where you can’t really go looking for treasure, shoot up orcs, or even help out some alchemist by searching for nirnroot.
So, you want goals that are achievable within SL, but not immediately so.
Here are some possible long-range goals:
* I’d like to become the King’s consort.
* I hate vampires and wish to expose or kill them, or at least thwart whatever they are doing.
* I’m a vampire and I want to get close to the major faction leaders and give them my dark gift.
* I want to achieve reknown for fighting, to atone for my cowardice in defending my homeland.
* These two folks are an item. I want to break them up and sleep with the cuter one.
* I will not rest till I am recognized as the greatest swordswoman in the land.
* I want to spread the worship of my ancestral gods.
* I seek spiritual enlightenment, and I believe everyone has some insight for me.
Each of these goals motivates action and interaction. It gives you something to do rather than just to be. And if your fellow players have goals of your own, there will be both conflicts and opportunities to assist each other- and you’ve got a story going.
Goals can be short-range too: I want to seduce X. I want to pick a fight with Y. I want to join this faction. I want to break the will of this slave. I’d like to be captured and abused. There’s nothing wrong with these; the advantage of long-range goals is that you can keep working on them for session after session.
4. CREATE CONFLICT
In real life our goal is often to make things work smoothly. But we’re in a story now. Stories start when things go wrong. “How I took the plane from Boston to Chicago” is not a story. “How I got to Chicago when the plane never left” is a story.
In improv, we are always looking for ways to *create conflict*. When things happen, don’t just nod and accept. Think about how you contest them, turn them into something.
A nice example from Lumindor: With a bunch of bystanders, Kata watched the King propose to his love, and she accepted. Everyone else congratulated the couple. Kata did too- but sulkily. She acted troubled; anyone could tell she was jealous.
In real life this would be problematic behavior. But this is RP, and that’s great RP. Kata had taken one story- the King’s romance- and added another to it: her own jealousy. She wanted the King for herself, perhaps. Or the prospective Queen. In any case, she now has a new goal- work out the consequences of her jealousy- and can take different measures to pursue it.
Another example: Kata and I were talking in the village square with some other Lumindorians. Kata was flirty as usual (see: strong character, that’s good). I suddenly acted upset and left. When Kata met up with me, I was cold and then tearful. I was angry that she was flirting with a boy that *I* had my eye on. We quarreled for about an hour over this... entirely in character.
I did have a twinge of real jealousy at Kata’s action; but mostly I recognized the opportunity for good RP. We had a conflict here, and we let it develop our characters further. We happened to resolve it, but it would be perfectly good RP to make it an ongoing trouble spot.
5. YOU’RE ALWAYS ON CAMERA
A beginning actor worries about learning his lines and delivering them correctly and at the right time. That’s hard enough that it takes tim to learn that he has to act *in between* his lines too.
If you look at a good actor, they’re alert, alive, and in character at all times. They look at who’s talking and their faces react to what’s said. They may fiddle with things. If they’re really good,all these things help to tell the story: we know what they’re feeling, what kind of person they are.
In SL, you can’t do much physical business, but you can speak at any time, and you can emote. The key point: make your emotes more than reactions.
Boring:
/me listens attentively.
/me bows.
/me looks up at her mistress with love.
Interesting:
/me listens with increasing worry, and then with a flash of anger.
/me looks the visitor over with disdain, then curtly bows and turns away.
/me looks at her mistress with frank lust, then collects herself, blushing profoundly.
Not only are these more detailed; they offer information that others can use and react to. They create little conflicts or invitations, and they tell a lot more about the character and their emotions.
I hope this gives you some ideas and enhances your roleplay.))
* Mavia puts down her quill, with a frown. Has she said too much? Has she left something out? She shakes her head in momentary frustration, and then quickly rises and leave the room, her face agitated with thought...
((This entire essay rests, languidly but watchfully, between double parentheses. In other words, it’s all OOC.
If you’re reading this- and you are- then you know the basics of roleplay. You know how to create a character, how to speak and act in character, how to react as your character would, for hours at a time. You can even get laid.
In other words, you’re a good roleplayer. What we’ll talk about here is how to be a great roleplayer.
Naturally, this is only one style of RP. But it happens to be what I like, so I’d like to see it spread.
1. WHAT IS ADVANCED RP?
Basic roleplay is what it sounds like: you create a role and then play with it. Any D&D player picks this up. Fancy ones can do a good accent, write a good backstory, know what their character will do both in everyday and unusual situations.
Advanced RP is a form of collaborative storytelling: you are not just creating a character, you are putting them into a story. But that is a little misleading, because the skills you need are not precisely those of a novelist. A novelist has total control over the story; all the characters do what she wants.
A DM who approaches a campaign like a novelist will create a railroad plot, where only the path he has worked out in advance can be explored. That works fine for a novel; it is not that satisfying for RP. Players don’t just want to watch a plot unfold; they want to participate and affect it. If they take it in an unexpected direction, the DM must take it in stride.
I think of RP as a form of improvisational theater. If you watch good improv, you can hardly believe that the actors are making it up as they’re going along; but they are. They are well trained not only to create characters as they go, but to work with each other to tell a story, smoothly and on the fly. They can do this not because of prior consultation, but because they are trained in improvisational storytelling.
Let’s look at some of the techniques they use.
2. STRONG CHARACTERS
You know basic RP, so I won’t cover how you create a character. How do you create a *strong* character? And why would you?
A strong character is memorable. Think of movie actors like Ian McKellen, Steve Buscemi, Alan Rickman, Woody Allen, Bill Murray, Humphrey Bogart, Lucille Ball, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Bill Cosby, John Cleese, Christopher Guest. These folks are distinctive, easily recognizable, and above all fun to watch.
Notice a few of the things they do, that you can use as well:
* They’re high energy.
* They’re larger than life. They exaggerate their quirks, their speech.
* They have an agenda. We find them engaging because they have problems to solve, and we can watch them doing it.
* They’re flawed, and they don’t mind showing it. They don’t care if they look foolish.
* They don’t always solve their problems the ‘right way’. If they did, the movie would be over too soon. They mess up, create more problems for themselves, hit bottom, and finally figure it out.
3. HAVE GOALS
You don’t have a story until you have a goal. By definition a goal is something you don’t have yet.
In a traditional RPG you have the goals that the DM or the game set for you. That doesn’t work so well in SL, where you can’t really go looking for treasure, shoot up orcs, or even help out some alchemist by searching for nirnroot.
So, you want goals that are achievable within SL, but not immediately so.
Here are some possible long-range goals:
* I’d like to become the King’s consort.
* I hate vampires and wish to expose or kill them, or at least thwart whatever they are doing.
* I’m a vampire and I want to get close to the major faction leaders and give them my dark gift.
* I want to achieve reknown for fighting, to atone for my cowardice in defending my homeland.
* These two folks are an item. I want to break them up and sleep with the cuter one.
* I will not rest till I am recognized as the greatest swordswoman in the land.
* I want to spread the worship of my ancestral gods.
* I seek spiritual enlightenment, and I believe everyone has some insight for me.
Each of these goals motivates action and interaction. It gives you something to do rather than just to be. And if your fellow players have goals of your own, there will be both conflicts and opportunities to assist each other- and you’ve got a story going.
Goals can be short-range too: I want to seduce X. I want to pick a fight with Y. I want to join this faction. I want to break the will of this slave. I’d like to be captured and abused. There’s nothing wrong with these; the advantage of long-range goals is that you can keep working on them for session after session.
4. CREATE CONFLICT
In real life our goal is often to make things work smoothly. But we’re in a story now. Stories start when things go wrong. “How I took the plane from Boston to Chicago” is not a story. “How I got to Chicago when the plane never left” is a story.
In improv, we are always looking for ways to *create conflict*. When things happen, don’t just nod and accept. Think about how you contest them, turn them into something.
A nice example from Lumindor: With a bunch of bystanders, Kata watched the King propose to his love, and she accepted. Everyone else congratulated the couple. Kata did too- but sulkily. She acted troubled; anyone could tell she was jealous.
In real life this would be problematic behavior. But this is RP, and that’s great RP. Kata had taken one story- the King’s romance- and added another to it: her own jealousy. She wanted the King for herself, perhaps. Or the prospective Queen. In any case, she now has a new goal- work out the consequences of her jealousy- and can take different measures to pursue it.
Another example: Kata and I were talking in the village square with some other Lumindorians. Kata was flirty as usual (see: strong character, that’s good). I suddenly acted upset and left. When Kata met up with me, I was cold and then tearful. I was angry that she was flirting with a boy that *I* had my eye on. We quarreled for about an hour over this... entirely in character.
I did have a twinge of real jealousy at Kata’s action; but mostly I recognized the opportunity for good RP. We had a conflict here, and we let it develop our characters further. We happened to resolve it, but it would be perfectly good RP to make it an ongoing trouble spot.
5. YOU’RE ALWAYS ON CAMERA
A beginning actor worries about learning his lines and delivering them correctly and at the right time. That’s hard enough that it takes tim to learn that he has to act *in between* his lines too.
If you look at a good actor, they’re alert, alive, and in character at all times. They look at who’s talking and their faces react to what’s said. They may fiddle with things. If they’re really good,all these things help to tell the story: we know what they’re feeling, what kind of person they are.
In SL, you can’t do much physical business, but you can speak at any time, and you can emote. The key point: make your emotes more than reactions.
Boring:
/me listens attentively.
/me bows.
/me looks up at her mistress with love.
Interesting:
/me listens with increasing worry, and then with a flash of anger.
/me looks the visitor over with disdain, then curtly bows and turns away.
/me looks at her mistress with frank lust, then collects herself, blushing profoundly.
Not only are these more detailed; they offer information that others can use and react to. They create little conflicts or invitations, and they tell a lot more about the character and their emotions.
I hope this gives you some ideas and enhances your roleplay.))
* Mavia puts down her quill, with a frown. Has she said too much? Has she left something out? She shakes her head in momentary frustration, and then quickly rises and leave the room, her face agitated with thought...