The Medium #20:

Experimenting With Play Styles

by Karrin Jackson
2004-05-04

What is true of life is true of gaming; things rarely change unless they have to. Since 1993, when I started this crazy hobby, I've role-played pretty much the same way with little variation. I’m not talking about the quality of my play, I'd like to think that has improved drastically over the years. However, in terms of the basic structure and assumptions regarding role-play, I've conformed to a simple model followed by just about everyone else in the genres in which I've played.

However, the changing demands of real life have infringed on my hobby of late. The fact that I can't be online as much as I used to be is a big motivator in reconsidering my RP approach, as is the fact that I have more or less given up the stress of public MU* for the relatively drama-free yet small and insular world of private games. Things have changed, and the time-tested play style I've had all these years needs a little tweaking. This article is about making those adjustments, and though it is aimed at the gamer who has cut back and toned down, there might be a nugget or two of wisdom for the diehard as well.

Same Old, Same Old

In the eleven years I've been MU*ing, I’ve seen play styles come and go. There are fans of different types of play (e.g., pose order vs. free for all or long poses vs. short poses), and a decade or so of hacking away at this hobby hasn't caused any one single method to rise unquestioned above the rest. However, there is one common theme throughout these different flavors of RP that is so taken for granted it is rarely questioned. The basic idea is this: one person poses for his or her character. It's so elementary it hardly bears questioning isn't it? I play my character, you play yours. I type out what my character is doing and saying, then you do the same with yours. If there is a staff member or storyteller in the scene, he or she might pose for an NPC or describe any changes of scenery, otherwise it's just every player giving the input of his or her character.

Another common thread in MU* that is so much a part of how it's done that it never gets questioned is a character's regular presence on a game. It is often assumed that, unless otherwise stated, a character is going to be somewhere in the game at all times. Maybe the character is sleeping or at work when the player is offline, but a 'properly' played character will be there at least once a day and usually for several hours. He or she is a resident of the city, deeply involved in whatever is transpiring. This is so much the case that one of the things that screws up an active playgroup the most is when a character goes inexplicably AWOL. His or her friends and family end up in a tizzy because their players don't know how to play with the character in question failing to be present.

That is just the way it has always been done, with reliably present players each playing a single character's perspective in some kind of order, with staff members or storytellers providing backdrop and atmosphere when necessary. That isn't to say players haven't and can't contribute to said backdrop, but it is usually done with the prior approval or at least observation of a staff member. Your experience may differ, but this has been mine. After eleven years of this, I’ve gotten a few crazy ideas about how it could be done differently, particularly to cater to the smaller, more casual playgroup.

The Occasional Character

This is an idea I've actually put to the test before writing about, and so far it has worked marvelously. I have an alt character I didn't want to commit to being around all the time. This alt is from out of town and only comes to the town in which the game is set occasionally. When I log out, the character heads back home. If a bunch of stuff goes down in-game that everyone in town would realistically react to, I can do that in the capacity of my main character while the alt is several miles away and likely clueless. You would think that in eleven years of gaming, I would have thought of this one earlier, but it took this long for it to occur to me that my character didn't actually have to be present in some capacity at all times.

Imagine the possibilities. Not only could a player manage alts this way, but if a player enjoyed occasional MU*ing but didn't have the time to commit to a 'regular' character, he or she could play a cameo, someone who is either in the background of the story most of the time or for some IC reason isn’t around. Maybe the character travels a lot in his or her job, or maybe he or she is only an occasional visitor to the town in which the game is set perhaps he or she comes to stay with friends and family once in awhile or owns a summer home somewhere in town. This way, if a player doesn't have time to game online for several hour a day, there is a built-in excuse for the character only being around once in awhile.

I like the idea of the occasional character so much I'm tempted to dip my toe back into the swamp that is public gaming and try this method out in the big league. I'm sure no staff member would accept a feature or sphere character who wasn't there all the time, but maybe a simple mortal would work. Of course the game would have to have a generous idle-nuke policy and no minimum time commitment. Do any games like that still exist? When I left public gaming, you had to promise away a pretty good chunk of your week just to keep your character from being nuked for inactivity. Which I think is ridiculous, but that's a topic for another article entirely.

Troupe Style and Rotating Storytellers

Another idea I've been challenging lately is the notion of one player, one character, one perspective. That old system works fine for a game with a sizeable database and an array of plot staff to tell stories for the players. On a smaller game with a more casual staffing atmosphere, it's an invitation for things to get stale. Rather than trying to emulate large games, I think small games, particularly private ones where the player base is more or less hand-selected, should lean on the strengths of possessing a more intimate atmosphere. Rather than leaving new avenues unexplored in favor of keeping with the same old formula, small and private games should realize that a new type of game could benefit from a new way of doing things.

One of the advantages of a small and hand-picked data base is that you know your players. Not only do you know them, but you enjoy their play and trust their attitude enough to invite them onto your game. With a group of hand-picked top-notch players, is there any reason why they couldn’t take on more than one role in a story? Like a troupe of actors might portray many roles in the same play, a small player base could portray different characters in the same story. Of course the characters are ideally not on stage at the same time, and the audience may know it's the same actor wearing a different wig, but with an appropriate suspension of disbelief and a good enough performance it’s still an enjoyable show.

True, it would require the possibility that a player's alts may mingle in the same storyline, if not the same scene, but on a smaller game not only is that likely anyway, it's practically inevitable. Plus, on a smaller game the players are easier to monitor while on a private game they are in theory at least reasonably trustworthy. The problem with alts mingling on a larger game is a matter of trust, i.e. an unscrupulous player might use one alt to the advantage of another by having both characters share information or acquire particular items or opportunities they wouldn’t on their own. For example, if one had a police character and a criminal character, with no rule regarding the mingling of alts, the player might use his police character to get his criminal character off the hook. On a small game where everyone is aware of which characters are portrayed by which players, it's a lot harder to pull that kind of trick without someone noticing.

I’m also interested in tinkering with the idea of rotating storytellers and of players owning a piece of the storyline or setting. Not only would this take pressure off of staff members, who are often expected to actively entertain a passively reacting player base, it would give players an investment in the storyline that runs a bit more deeply than their character's involvement in it. For example, a player could 'own' a part of the setting by way of controlling, say, a haunted mansion on a hill. Any plots surrounding that mansion and the crazy old woman living there would be run by the player of said crazy old woman. Meanwhile, another player more or less runs things down on the wharf while the player of the corrupted prince runs plotlines about the setting's royalty.

In addition to character 'owned' areas, there could be common plots that get passed around, with players taking turns in the role of storyteller. There could be NPCs everyone knows so well that it wouldn't be difficult to spoof them in a scene if necessary, and the thread of the plot could be loose-ended enough that changing hands between one storyteller and another wouldn't ruin it. In fact, seeing how a plot evolves as it is passed from one player-turned-storyteller to another would be part of the fun. Again, this is something that could easily go awry on a big game, but on a smaller one, especially one where there is more trust in the player base, it could be immense fun.

Old Vs. New

I realize my tone at times can come across as somewhat cynical in regards to large games and public player bases, and that is because I am generally cynical toward them. However, in the interests of being fair, I should note that they aren't all bad games, and there is a definite appeal to the old way of doing things, otherwise why would we continue to do it? There is definitely a place for the one player, one character, one perspective approach, and I don’t see it fading into obscurity any time soon.

On the other hand, private games with small player bases are catching on, and they are an intriguing thing which I would like to see flourish. I don't think emulating the way it's done on large games is how to make that happen, though. Intimate and private games need to explore new styles of play and plotting, and to rely on the strengths of a small and select player base, not to try to act in spite of them.

[ <— #19: Oh No! It's Mary Sue! | #21: Morality and Consequences —> ]

Recent Discussions on The Medium: