by Scott Roberts
May 8, 2001

“Who will go down to those shady groves
And summon the shadows there
And tie a ribbon on those sheltering arms
In the springtime of the year?”

— Lorena McKennitt, “The Mummer's Dance”

In ages past, throughout most of Europe, a seasonal festive celebration developed. For those who keep track of such things, it was a variation on the Winter/Spring cycle that figures prominently in modern Wicca. This celebration took several forms, but in the most prominent one, it involved a sacred play in which a main character, representing the current sovereignty of the land, was killed and brought back to life, and thus the land was rejuvenated. There was also a hybrid form of this play in which the band of revelers – also called Mummers – would go from home to home seeking alms for a feast. They would be playing the part of the characters in the play, dressed in their costumes.

In the towns, this tradition developed as the Mummer's Play. It was performed by the regular townsfolk rather than special actors. While it kept the same basic form as the sacred play, a number of secondary characters were introduced. The tradition was to change the play to allow anyone from the community who wanted to take part in it to play a role. The play became a vehicle for the symbolic expression of local issues and concerns that could not normally be expressed in the society.

This may very well have been one of the first forms of cooperative live-action roleplaying. Not all the characters were scripted, and not all of the players were actors – and they always had to improvise, thinking how their character would think. The parallels to online text-based roleplaying games are relatively obvious.

The preponderance of articles one encounters around the 'net and in gaming magazines which focus on gamers and gaming have more to do with the intricacies of designing, building, and creating game worlds than they do with playing in them. There are many articles which focus on background information, and of course quite a few strategy guides and the like, but aside from a few articles treating a specific class or type of gamer as a whole, there are few that I've seen which deal with the particular issues of being a player in such games.

The purpose of this column, then, is to discuss the issues faced by roleplayers in roleplaying games. I'll be presenting my thoughts on some of the prevalent theories, philosophies, and concepts present in such games, with a particular focus on online text-based roleplaying games. I don't claim to be an all-knowing expert in such matters, but I've been playing and gamemastering various online text-based games since 1992 or so; it may be that you'll find some of my conclusions differ from your own. If so, I hope you don't hesitate to let me know, and I might include your observations where they differ from mine in future columns.

Games People Play

Tabletop RPGs are often viewed as the genesis of most of the online text-based games which exist today, though as we'll see later, they are far from the only source of inspiration for online text-based games as they are now. The standard tabletop RPG is a wonderful way to wile away an afternoon taking up a role which the player can't emulate in real life. It's also a great venue for socializing with folks who have similar interests. Not only can you play a game where you get to be whatever you want to be, you can also chat with your friends about whatever it is that interests you. Its primary strictures involve time, size, personal attention, convenience, and group consensus.

Tabletop RPGs require significant time coordination – if Bob's not there on Saturday afternoon and you need to RP with him, whatever it is you were planning will need to be put off, and if Dana has to go to a friend's wedding at 3PM, the game needs to stop early. Size matters in tabletop RPGs – a group can be too small or too large, and there are benefits and drawbacks to both. The people you can interact with are limited, in terms of personal attention, to the characters played by your friends and the NPCs which are all played by one individual – the gamemaster, and monopolizing his or her attention can be detrimental to everyone else's experience. Convenience in this framework is also a concern – you can't leave the game (without causing a social gaffe) if you're suddenly bored, or if your television show is on; you need to break for food, you need to drive to and from your gaming location, and if you smoke or drink and your friends don't, you can't truly relax as you get into character. Group consensus is a problem in that if you want to play a game that involves being an alien from the planet Xarkon, but all your friends want to play elves in some fantasy world, you're out of luck in terms of your own enjoyment.

LARPs – Live Action Role Playing Games – are an outgrowth of tabletop RPGs and improvisational theatre. They are also probably the closest thing to the mummer's dance in that you play characters dressed in costumes, improvising your lines while loosely following a script or game theme. In these games, there's little out-of-game socialization, but there's a trade-off in that those folks you are playing with are all very into their characters. There's a more intense feeling of immersion into the game universe and the characters and the players tend to be much more into the game in and of itself, which can make for a very intense and fun experience. On the other hand, LARPs carry with them a few of the drawbacks of tabletop games writ large. Most often, they are in larger groups of players, which leads occasionally to an overextended GM and not a lot of personal attention. Timing and coordination are perhaps the biggest problems with LARPs, as they require significant time investment in terms of figuring out where and when would be good times to play, and planting and setting up the physical props and spaces where the game would be played. As well, some genres of game don't translate well at all into LARPs due to the fact that to costume oneself as a character in the world would require a complete special effects department to do convincingly.

Multiplayer Online Graphical RPGs, such as Everquest and Ultima Online (to name a few), address neatly several of the issues above. There's no true social restriction preventing you from logging off if you're bored. While there's not much in the way of personal attention from gamemasters, there are a whole lot of other players around to interact with. The graphical elements can make the place somewhat immersive. Automated monsters and NPCs tend to be pretty sophisticated. Timing and coordination go out the window in most of these games, because you can pick online friends who can be around when you are. The biggest problem with such games, however, are in terms of their immersiveness. Technology has not yet advanced to the point where your avatars in such games can express a true range of physical body language or gestures. Speech is done in text format, as are many emotes and other actions. Also, the current SOTA for such games involves resetting zones (a good treatment of the problems with this from a designer's standpoint can be found in Trials, Triumphs, and Trivialities' Dynamic Dilemma series). This precludes character actions having any real and truly lasting impact on the game world.

Multiplayer Online Text-Based RPGs – the primary focus of my column – address many of the issues and problems which exist with the above forms of gaming. Such games share some of the advantages of graphical online RPGs in that you don't have to worry much about timing, coordination, or convenience. You can log on or off whenever you want, in any physical condition or location you want; you can eat when you want, and you don't have to worry about getting a consensus on what pizza toppings you'll eat that day. You don't need to worry about the size of the group, either – the larger the better, for the most part. Personal attention isn't much of a problem; there are always a variety of people on who you can roleplay with and in most cases you can always switch to an alternate character if the one you're currently playing doesn't have much to do with those who are currently playing. Immersiveness is a given, moreso than in graphical games, so long as you possess the same ability to suspend disbelief you use when reading a good book. Text and prose are more dynamic than computer graphics – your picture of what an inhabitant of the world looks like or how they bow or dance is only limited by your ability to imagine based on words. Moreover, the nature of text-based online gaming allows you to convincingly play beings whom you couldn't costume yourself as in a LARP. The problem of dynamism still exists – the eternal equation of GM'ed scenes taking up too much time versus computer-created resetting zones, but there are more than enough minds out there trying to tackle it and in the meantime, there's always the myriad of player-run plots that you can get involved with or start on your own.

Future Columns

I'll be going into more detail in the future regarding the nature of multiplayer online text-based RPGs as they pertain to the player perspective. Some of the particular topics you'll be seeing in this column space in the future include (in no particular order):

Movin' On Up – Making the transition from tabletop or LARP to online text-based roleplaying games

Typecasting – What type of player are you?

Everybody Wants To Rule The World – Dealing with the fact that being the "best" is not something all characters can achieve, and how you can enjoy a game despite this.

How To Win Friends And Influence People – Basic tips on how players can get into groups without feeling helpless or alone.

Casting Call – Do's and don'ts of how to get into a tinyplot, how to start your own, and how to get along with a game's staff.

I Will Always Be... King Of Pain – Angst, depression, and its uses (and legendary misuses) by players trying to get attention in a game world.

See you next week!