Telling Stories: And I’ll form the head
When you trust people, you’re usually willing to let them borrow your things. Your books, your movies, your roleplaying characters.
I’ve seen various people share their characters in the years that I’ve been roleplaying, ranging from fully shared accounts to versions of characters being controlled by multiple different players. (I’ve also seen players controlling multiple versions of the same character, but that’s a discussion for another day.) The idea is that it can form a shared experience, both players getting some of the fun of roleplaying in theory. In practice…
Look, I’m not one to say that this is something that can never work. But there are a lot of really big hurdles to climb here, ones that I don’t think are necessarily easy to surmount or even suggest a methodology. So before you even consider it, you need to really think about what you’re doing and why, especially if you’re talking about your main character and not an alt.
Telling Stories: Buddy event
I have several friends and acquaintances who are roleplayers. This is unsurprising, but it also doesn’t really mean a whole heck of a lot. There are several people who I can talk to about roleplaying but whom I have never actually roleplayed with, or if I have it’s only been in passing. Our connection via roleplaying is entirely based upon a shared hobby rather than any shared experiences, which is all right but does arguably lack a certain degree of immediacy.
I also have several friends with whom I do roleplay, and that’s a very different can of worms. I’m not talking about people like my wife, I’m talking about people who met me originally through roleplaying and we kept talking from there. Obviously, I don’t consider this to be a bad thing; I’m regularly podcasting with a friend I made via roleplaying, I talk to several of my roleplaying friends on a regular basis, this is a very welcome example of an online hobby feeding into actual friendships. But it does pose some unique challenges while at the same time offering some notable benefits.
Telling Stories: Tomato, Tomato, Shield Bash, Arm Thrust
How many classes are there in World of Warcraft?
If you said “eleven,” then you are wrong. But you’re doing good, that’s the number listed, you’re wrong with the best intentions. If you said “thirty-four,” you are also wrong, but you are very astute, noting that the choice of specs now is functionally like choosing a class. (Albeit ones you can swap back and forth between.) If you said “seventeen” then… er… you may wish to take some issues up with your elementary school teachers, that’s not even close to anything resembling a correct answer. But thanks for coming out.
No, the correct answer is “as many as you want there to be.” And the same is true of literally any game with classes or abilities. You’re only as limited as you allow yourself to be. You see a list of options and you group characters into small cliques, assuming that everyone who possesses these same skills must be the same sort of person… but that’s you talking, not the game. Not the game at all.
Telling Stories: Be afraid after all
Fear is one of the most primal motivators of human beings. It’s so important to roleplaying that I’ve talked about it before.
Of course, that article was all about the experience of fear, and there’s more to fear than that. Fear is a complex beast, multifaceted, snarling, and dangerous. To really understand fear, you have to understand not just what it does to your character, but all of the advantages it brings along with it. You need to understand how your character can use fear. You need to really understand the power of fear.
Because fear is a potent thing, a driving force, something that keeps us running and moving even when all reason dictates we should give up. Fear cripples us and at the same time enhances us, lifts us up and knocks us down. Fear is powerful. Let’s talk about making use of fear, investigating its power, and understanding how the greatest thing that you can do is start really playing into the idea of fear.
Telling Stories: With my weapon
Let’s kick this column off with a rhetorical question. Why did Final Fantasy XIV and WildStar both tie character classes to iconic weapons?
You could say it’s for ease of itemization, or for transparency in play, but I think the real reason is much simpler: weapons say something. We associate certain traits with weapons. They’re not just tools, they’re symbols, part of the language by which we understand our characters and their capabilities. An entirely different message is conveyed if your character is wearing a sword or a gun on his hip, after all. Human beings (and, presumably, almost-human beings) have an attachment to our weaponry.
This is a rich vein in fiction, of course, and most games go the extra mile by having several weapons with names and points of origin. World of Warcraft is awash in notable weapons, Final Fantasy XIV has Relic Weapons, Final Fantasy XI has Mythic Weapons, Guild Wars 2 has Legendaries, Lord of the Rings Online even lets you raise a weapon as a specific legendary item. It’s a fertile ground for roleplaying, and it’s well worth exploring what it could mean to have a special weapon or two… even if those weapons aren’t useful because of their power.
Recent Work
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Chocobo Dash
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Eliot Lefebvre 