Roleplaying - Does PL Lend Itself To This?

[Spiritualist]

I was wondering, IYOs, does PL lend itself to being a game where people can roleplay? On the face of it, I don't see why not. Players can get into character and make sure their actions and chats are appropriate for their characters and the settings. But I was wondering whether there might be some limitations in what one could do in an RP environment. What are your thoughts? Does roleplay interest you at all? Can you see an opening RP?

[Snakespeare]

I see it more in PvP, but it usually comes out in people having real reactions to their character's success or failure. Once in a while I see it in PvE, when someone has their character say something in context, but it's usually a hack-and-slash context. I've been playing tabletop RPGs continuously for 25+ years, but that sort of roleplaying doesn't occur here. Just the occasional "die, you desert marauder, die!" comes out.

[Spiritualist]

But is there anything you think to prohibit RPing in PL? Any fundementals that would stop RP from working?

Tabletop RPGs do often feature two sides but I've seen many RP MUDs previously and in my mind, PL could follow these lines. If there were a group of RPers gathering around, they can chat in context, RP between kills and enjoy the RP experience, taking their time to complete a level - after all, XPing and leveling isn't their goal. Characters could come up with backgroud stories and the like, relationships could be forged between players... the normal RP stuff.

[Dharken]

First things that come to mind are typing being painful (unless you have an ipad i guess), a lack of emotes ... The game is obviously geared towards constant action and thats understandable given the devices it runs on.

Having said that there is no reason that people couldnt do it. But youre going to be surrounded by teenagers laughing and shouting "omg stfu and killz sumfink u N00BZ LOLLLZ!!!!!!'" or some such :-)

[Royce]

I used to see a lot more of the type of role playing you're talking about back in the days of the 30 cap or so. It seems this game attracted a lot of serious RPG nerds at first. A lot of them have gone or been washed out by the influx of teen gamer kids it seems.

Edit: And yeah, I agree the difficulty of relaying anything more than the most brief communications is the main barrier.

[Spiritualist]

I did think about emotes but it's not hard to setup a rule for RPers to say using a chat like:


* smiles sweetly.or similar.

Typing could be an issue.

And certainly RPing in Town could be hard but in locked areas/levels, you can avoid the kids shouting crap.

[Dharken]

Yes it is certainly possible but obviously not an ideal medium for roleplaying...

I definitely wouldnt mind seeing more of the casual type, just chat binds in battle, and using the emotes more. Its a shame i often fight through a few dungeons without anybody saying a single thing! Apart from "revive" :-)

I guess the thing is, anybody serious enough about it would probably rather jump on everquest 2 or a text MUD and use a proper keyboard etc. But sorry if i sound negative! I am all for a bit of in-char RPing, its all good fun especially when you're tired of just killing things :-)

[Spiritualist]

I suppose you might have a point there - I think the typing issue could be a massive constraint and certainly doesn't lend itself well to RPing on an iDevice. Hmmm...