by Scott Roberts
June 5, 2001

"Believe that you will succeed, and you will."
— Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955

We join you, our dedicated reader, after you’ve read the first few columns of the Mummer’s Dance, decided to take the leap into the online prose world, picked a universe to play in, read its help files, and created a character...

...only to find yourself wandering around trying to initiate roleplay with people who just look so together in their own little groups. Sure, there are people out there who make efforts to help you out — assisting “newbies” is a popular pastime amongst those who play online prose games. However, beyond the initial “how do I put my clothes on” and “where can I find something to do” question-and-answer periods, it’s rare you will randomly find someone willing to help you get started who also becomes your chum for life that fills your needs in terms of what you wish to get out of the game. Hopefully, this column will help you out in that department.

Winning Friends

At the beginning of your online career, establishing your character’s bona fides and finding a few people to get involved with should be your priority. If you have as a long-term goal the joining of a guild or faction, put that off for a little while. After all, you need to be sure you’re going to like the character you’ve decided to play before you can expect others to be convinced you’ll be a valuable addition to their group.

A lot of getting to know people in online games is passive. Watching people play and offering occasional comments on their (public) conversations is a key way to get involved in the game. Smile at them. Listen attentively. Comment when asked or when it seems appropriate, but by no means attempt to dominate their conversations. Ask people questions about themselves and their characters — few roleplayers dislike talking about their characters, if the questions aren’t too personal or prying. Try not to focus on yourself. It’s often much more effective to be more interested in what people have to say about themselves and the world around them than it is to be interested in talking about yourself. Being self-effacing can also be effective so long as it is not overdone. Add a curious mannerism or something enigmatic about your character that will make people want to know more about you; but don’t overdo it or they’ll see your actions as an overblown plea for attention. Take it easy and work your way slowly into people’s interests.

Dramatic scenes starring your character getting drunk, starting a fight, or otherwise causing or being the victim are not good icebreakers, although many people still suffer from this misconception. Attempts to be the “star” as your means of entering the social circle of those around you are often met with distaste if not outright rejection. One of the least recommended ways of getting involved in a game is setting yourself up to be injured or wounded at the start of an encounter if no one knows who you are. It’s likely that people will see this as grandstanding and wind up ignoring you or worse, paying attention to you but feeling resentful for your interruption of their roleplay with your scene.

Influencing People

In most online prose games, players tend to naturally settle into subsets or groups over time. These groups are often formalized in the code of the game — clans, factions, guilds, or even families in some cases. We’ll call all the different group types “factions” in this column for simplicity’s sake. Getting into them can involve a number of different hoops to jump through and, sometimes, the players who run or are in them are exclusive or difficult to approach. Most factions, especially popular ones, are somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of new players seeking entrance to their ranks. Differentiating yourself from the fly-by-nighters who seek to join a group to gain benefits from its more established users rather than out of a distinct interest in roleplaying within the group is essential to being admitted.

If joining a faction is your desire, you should begin by establishing an individual life for your character outside of the confines of the faction. If you start the game with a character that has no other interests or goals than joining the faction, you will most likely not be accepted, since you’ll be relegated to the role of a fan or follower of the guild. As well, this can lead to some incredibly boring roleplay if no one in the faction is around for you to pester or play with. Once you’ve established your character’s independent existence and life, find someone in the faction you want to join and ask them about the group. Don’t open with a direct request to join the faction. Find out what they’re about in character (even if you already know out of character). Ask the members about the guild; play a little hard-to-get. Find out what sort of people belong to the group, see if there’s anything they particularly need and see if you can figure out a way to give it to them.

Don’t be greedy. If your desire to join the guild seems to its members nothing but a method for you to get an item or a favor from faction members, that’s a good way to make sure you’ll never get into that faction. Instead, concentrate more on what you have to offer them than what they have to offer you.

If All Else Fails

Even with the suggestions mentioned above, it may be the case that the group you want to join is not accepting new members or the players in it are not interested in your potential membership in particular. All is not lost in this situation. It’s likely that if this is the case, in the course of your individual roleplaying with people of like interests that you have run into other folks who wanted to join the faction you are interested in but were unable or failed the entrance exam or what-have-you. Find such individuals and talk to them about forming your own faction. Often, this is exactly how most factions occur in games beyond the initial ones set up by the game designers. Dissatisfaction with the leadership style or rank and file members within existing factions combined with an inability to effect change within the group to redress this dissatisfaction leads splinter groups to form new factions or new players to create their own factions when faced with an inability to join existing ones.

The difficulty of creating your own faction varies from game to game and faction type to faction type. One of the primary concerns in creating a new faction is competition. Many factions on various games obtain and hold a monopoly on roleplay or items around which their factions revolve. Competition, in their minds, is a bad thing. It may be that the act of creating your own faction because you were unable to join an existing one will be the one thing you can do to guarantee you will be asked to join, as they try to absorb you to forestall competition. It’s also possible that the original faction you tried to join will work to prevent new players from joining your group or otherwise work to your detriment. In adversarial games you might find yourself in direct conflict with a larger group in an established faction, a war that you may not be able to win.

How to handle this situation varies depending on the environment you are in. Usually, the best way to do so is to contact the faction diplomatically if things get heated and roleplay with them a method by which you can form your own group without attracting their ire. This makes for some intense roleplaying and can be very interesting, especially to those Prince-type players. Barring that, you can choose to deflect possible competition by either changing the focus of your faction so that it does not directly compete with an existing one, or by being sneaky and pretending to be a non-competing faction with differing interests until such time as your membership is powerful enough to stand on its own, at which time you show your “true colors”. Fanning discontent amongst members of the opposing faction can be another convenient way to get members into your own group with essential knowledge. Just about anyone can plant spies, however, so if you are in the sort of environment where such roleplay is possible and encouraged, you should be careful.

What Plots May Come

Next week, I’ll be discussing the nature of plots in the online prose world — how they work, how to get into them, and how to make your own (and make them effective). I’ll also be covering a bit on how to get along with a game’s staff. I hope to see you then, and please, feel free to comment on this or any other Mummer’s Dance in the forums!