Roleplaying The Old Republic

[ZeroMachine]

Every now and then something comes along and reminds me as to why I extremely dislike Ol' Ben here as a person.

This is one of those things.

But at least something good came out of it:

Impossible to care? It's obvious that you haven't witnessed the awesomeness of Sir Bearington!

Spoiler

I may just have to do that in a game at least once...

why what is it about him you dont like?

The funny/sad thing about this article is that you could easily believe it was written about a single player RPG.

When I'm playing an RPG like Skyrim or Old Republic

Very easily.

what do you mean by that? that TOR is essentially a singleplayer RPG dressed up as an MMO?

"I feel this way, therefore it is true."

He presents his articles in a pretentious way, ignoring the fact that although HE doesn't care about such things, thousands if not millions do.

That, and some other things, but I honestly don't feel like listing them. I may get harsh, and I don't feel like calling upon the wrath of the ModGods.

Also, to answer your question to Sixcess, SKYRIM. He's talking about MMOs, and he mentioned SKYRIM.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

I found myself connecting with the Smuggler class as well. I rolled a build of each character class and ran them all up to advanced class status. The Bounty Hunter and Smuggler were easiest to RP for me. They seemed like the most grounded and easiest to relate to. The more military characters like the Republic Soldier and the Imperial (whatever) I couldn't relate to and my Force characters I just played to type (Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Vader, and Palpatine respectively).

I think of all the SWTOR gaming I've done so far, the Smuggler has been the most entertaining. He afforded me the ability to really role play and therefore left me feeling more connected, as Yahtzee said. All the classes are fun of course, but the Smuggler seems the one that can really swing Light, Dark, a mix of each, whatever you want to make of him and it all fits.

 

[El Dwarfio]

Proper roleplay is, like you danced around in the article, the interaction with others. Your facepipe only makes any interest in the interest it gets with others.

But that's not necessarily what he's talking about - he's referring to your roleplay experience as a whole. Obviously when your interacting with others our sort of creating a join story, one which is applicable to all parties.

When your creating a backstory / recounting previous events etc it' solo, there is no interaction and for a group - very little relevance. It's a personal thing.

I mean not of my role play chars have back stories (not pen ad paper ones - i dont play anything like that) - but their personal to me because only I went through the creation process of them I couldn't give a shit about another jackasses backstory cos it isn't my character.

 

[[Esoteric Reference]]

Of course we naturally don't care about what other people have to say about themselves. That goes without saying and it applies to a lot more than the things you listed. We have to train ourselves and work hard at being truly interested in the things other people say, especially when they are talking about things that really are only interesting to them, but that's part of being a better person and it leads to closer friendships and relationships. Read a book by Dale Carnegie all this shit is in there.

Also, maybe this was your point but my first reaction was that this article was one of the most asinine things I've read in a long while (I know its ironic OK? but it actually proves my point, because no one would call me one of those better people)

 

[LostAlone]

It's so true about tabletop RPG characters... They share many similarities with buttholes, in that the only one's I could ever care about are mine and my girlfriends, and even then only under fairly specific circumstance.

Then again (it may just be the people I play with) all the characters I have ever been lectured about have always been defined by the ludicrous events that the GM let them get away with rather than the rich and interesting backstory that was behind it. No-one I know except me in my group EVER came up with more than a handwave of a story for them and that's what murdered the roleplaying experience. The players almost always seem to play every character in the same cynical opportunistic style (because that's what always gets you the best gear) which rendered any concept of moral choice or individuality completely moot. It turns their tales of their characters into a litany of 'So we killed that guy and took his stuff' rather than 'I had to wrestle with my ethical code, and I am still haunted by the decision'.

I am ok with being talked at about that stuff, because even though its not life changing, its a window into a friends mind and that's interesting enough, assuming I actually like the guy who's lecturing me.

But dear god, the sheer number of people who talk about killing their gods to consume their essence for no reason other than it comes with good powers and xp... That's just terrible. Yeah yeah the rules technically allow that crap, but its practically become everyday in D&D to slay the gods. The players want to do it because its a cheat to ultimate power. They take the dark past flaw to get an extra 2 points of strength and hope the GM never remembers to do anything with it.

Essentially what I'm saying here kids is that if you are going to lecture someone about your character, make them a real character, and actually get into the roll. Talking about memorable sequences of dice rolls is the most boring thing ever. Talking about a long self imposed exile to expunge the shame of failing to protect your family, only to discover that your formally infant son has been adopted by the dark prince you have to kill to save the world, and are now tortured with the knowledge that saving the world will again subject your son to the pain of having his family torn apart... That cool. I'm totally in to that. I want to play in that game. I'm already thinking up my character. Maybe a bard who can sing a melancholy ballad about the situation.

 

[ischmalud]

Impossible to care? It's obvious that you haven't witnessed the awesomeness of Sir Bearington!

Spoiler

noooooooooooooooooo
image is brokded for me!!!!

 

[Frostbyte666]

In some ways I agree but others I disagree. Around a group of gamers I usually find they are interested in the latest things that have happened to my game character or PnP character and vice-versa for myself.

A video game example was I had a friend who was interested in Skyrim so I showed it to him. I then picked a fight with a dragon and started losing very, very badly. But all was not lost said I, look over yonder there is a nice patch of water from which to hide from the dragon's flame until it gets bored and attacks a giant or something. So off I ran with the dragon on my heels and gradually killing me. Finally I made it to the bank before the water and with a mighty jump propelled myself to the safe waters. Upon landing I found myself knee deep in a very big puddle and a very amused dragon staring down at me (and a friend who was crying with laughter).

A PnP character I had was in a village getting attacked by a necromancer and his zombies. I thought, hmm villagers are dying and they will become zombies to attack our backs. Looks at shed, a lot of small boats there, so I then decided to start tying the corpses to boats to make sure that we wouldn't get eaten.
Unknown to myself at the time we were getting overrun, and eventually 1 of the npc's screams we have to escape down river, he then grabs 1 of the aforementioned boats turns it around and promptly has hit throat ripped out. 1 of the party members asked who was the idiot who tied zombies to boats. I speak up with that guy there pointing to a random recently dead villager.
GM: make a bluff check
Me: <roll:success> Oh thank god no death by irate villagers or party members today.

 

[SiskoBlue]

I'm assuming this whole article was a ploy by Yahtzee to flame LARPers and what-not in to saying "but MY character is interesting" and proceed to tell us all about it. (Some examples but not many).

Half the issue is personality. Personality is not an independent trait that exists in a vacuum. It only occurs in context. As Yahztee said, an unlimited context in your mind means there's no personality to whatever character you create. As people have said above, once you start setting down a universe with rules and context, other people become more interested.

I find hearing about other people's characters in much the same way I hate hearing about any experience second-hand. You had to be there. Unless someone is a good story teller, and knows how to spin an anecdote, any story about some event you weren't privy to is going to come off as boring. If it's a story about the real world, at least it has some relevance to everyone. If it's fantasy then it hasn't even got that.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

I'm confused.

Whether you care about a Pen & Paper character depends on the same factors as caring for any other type of fictional character. If the storyteller can't convey his story well enough to immerse you, that's a problem with the narrator, not the thing he's talking about.

That's exactly it, though. When we discuss our characters from a game like Skyrim or Mass Effect, that's a tremendous amount of contextual experience instantly available. That character is immediately framed by a universe we care about, and scenarios and NPCs we're familiar with. This context gives us a reason to care about the decisions and behaviours of that character.

With a pen-and-paper character, as Yahtzee says, the possibilities are infinite. Effectively there's no frame of reference and trying to resolve one to contextualise that character is an insurmountable task, for the most part.

YMMV

But if I tell my friend who has never played a game of Skyrim or Mass Effect, they won't have the context either.

From what I could gather, Pen & Paper campaigns have returning settings as well. The DM can abstract them, but for convenience they are usually close to modules people will recognize. People know the world of magic and cyberpunk of Shadowrun, they know the generic fantasy settings from Tolkien's backyard, heck, a ton of people try to combine existing gameplay with a setting and figure out what stats Krogan should have.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Impossible to care? It's obvious that you haven't witnessed the awesomeness of Sir Bearington!

Spoiler

noooooooooooooooooo
image is brokded for me!!!!

Have a reupload:

Spoiler

 

[viranimus]

Well, you know I was right with this article up until the notion came forth that having people talk about their in game chars other people might find interesting.

Honestly there is nothing more tedious to me than listening to listen to someone drone on and on and on about what they did with their avatar. Even if its a game I play.

I knew a guy who I worked with, who would drone on endlessly about his WoW toon, and how I should subscribe and join his server. I had played WoW before but I had nothing major in my backlog at the time so I figured I could kill some time. It did not take me long to realize that all he wanted to do was craft someone so he could have someone else to talk about his gear configurations, his PVP set, his tier 3 and various different stuff. Even playing the game I had no ambition to hear about his gear, or what raid he ran or any of that stuff, because it had no bearing on my personal experience. To me listening to him drone on endlessly about how awesome his druid was was such a grating experience. Basically the same sort of experience described when discussing pen and paper rpgs.

The water cooler experience, I sincerely disagree with. Just because you happen to play the same MMO as someone else does not mean your going to be personally interested in what they have to say about the game, unless there is a deeper connection that exists within the game such as being in a static group, same guild, or habitually playing together, and if that connection exists it ceases to be water cooler discussion.

ToR is potentially the same. On some levels you will not have vested interest in the affairs of someone who plays on a different server than you. However, to their credit, ToRs narrative depth and how that narrative plays out in a group context CAN allow you to be able to relate to someone elses experience who you are not directly invested in. I think wow fails to capture that given how much of its content is text based, and thus, contingent on ones imagination. But in TOR having cut scenes and being able to watch events unfold and alter the events depends on who in your group wins the roll lends it more to the same sort of discussion one could have about watching a tv show or movie, and explaining their impression of what happened. Thats simply something you wont be able to capture in text based format.Especially one where events essentially do not vary and cannot be altered.

But none the less. It boils down to the fact that really, no one gives a shit about your innane prattle, regardless of what the subject matter is.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

it is impossible to give a shit about someone else's pen and paper role playing character

You just got that now?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

When your creating a backstory / recounting previous events etc it' solo, there is no interaction and for a group - very little relevance. It's a personal thing.

Then your doing the same thing people do for themselves - you can either stick to the varnished truth - "I once climbed Snowdon"; the unvarnished truth - "I once went up Snowdown with a camping trip" or the total make-up - "I once climbed Everest in my pants". And this can happen with online characters as well.

The first two can still be an interesting story, and I think it's Yahtzee's misanthropy that's holding him back here - he could say "That's sort of like opening a Mana Bar", sit back and be smug.

The latter is definitely godmodding though, it's just you're roleplaying yourself - and that's far worse - and DREADFULLY boring.

But very open to subtle trolling

 

[bificommander]

Impossible to care? Tell that to the Spoony One. His Counter Monkey series were a big hit. I found some of the stories funny, some too long, but still. Now I don't like to hear a 4 hour discussion on another character, and you can have a person who's just not very entertaining to listen to. But still, I could be interested in another character in another campaign, even if I'm not familiar with the setting. I'm amused by PnP role playing games, and as such I can find it entertaining to hear what kind of things others did and how they played. And for instance, I glossed over Yahtzee's backstory just there. I don't play TOR, and don't particularly care about Star wars in general. So yeah, I can understand that people don't like to hear about your character, in any setting. But 'impossible to care'? Not buying it Yahtzee.

 

[Sixcess]

what do you mean by that? that TOR is essentially a singleplayer RPG dressed up as an MMO?

That was my impression of it, yes. There seems to be a trend in MMOs now to set the world up so that it (superficially at least) revolves around you, the player, in the style of Bioware's other games, or Bethesda's. TOR isn't unique in that - WoW did the same thing with Cataclysm. That's good for those who like it, but for me at least it takes away something of the unique atmosphere of the best MMO worlds.

Also, to answer your question to Sixcess, SKYRIM. He's talking about MMOs, and he mentioned SKYRIM.

Exactly. It seems to be a recurring theme of coverage of SWTOR to discuss it as a mmoRPG, and I think it's telling that in an article about roleplaying the only mention of interacting with other players is in 'water cooler moments', rather than within the actual game itself.

Of course that's quite probably just Yahtzee being Yahtzee.

 

[Fredvdp]

During general testing I made a female Jedi knight, tried to make her look good, and then gave her a huge burn mark on her face that implied a back story. I tend to give all my role-playing characters scars for the same reason.

 

[Akio91]

what do you mean by that? that TOR is essentially a singleplayer RPG dressed up as an MMO?

That was my impression of it, yes. There seems to be a trend in MMOs now to set the world up so that it (superficially at least) revolves around you, the player, in the style of Bioware's other games, or Bethesda's. TOR isn't unique in that - WoW did the same thing with Cataclysm. That's good for those who like it, but for me at least it takes away something of the unique atmosphere of the best MMO worlds.

This is my main problem with Biodrones. Why on earth would one pay a monthly fee just to play what is essentially a single-player MMO? (not saying you're one of them, just quoting you for reference)

 

[ischmalud]

i read through the article again, checked sir bearington - got the link to work awesome.......
......and on a personal level all i could think of
there is not enough joghurt in the world

thats howmuch i care about other ppl caring about my rgp characters in whichever shape or form they may come

so unite for joghurt ppl its a worthy cause

 

[Triaed]

Oh Ben, by that same token I should not care about what you think, say or write about Old Republic, Skyrim or whatever because I do not play them. Yet I do.

You have completely dismissed table-top RPGs saying that they have no interested audience because they live in players' heads and not in their interlocutor's; the counter-argument you take for valid is that in videogames this is opposite, while in reality it is the same thing but with a much larger user base (an tabletop RPG will have possibly up to 10 players, while Old Republic will have 10 million) same difference.

I should not have cared one iota for Mogworld because it lived in your head and I do not know you from Adam, yet I cared about the things that you have to say because you have established yourself as a person I trust, so I bought it and read it. Why would I not care what another person is telling me about his or her dream, or table top RPG, or a novel they are planning to write? After all, presumably this person I choose to talk is someone real, quite likely a friend or family member, with whom I have taken the time to develop a relationship.

As far as I know, you are probably an electronic platypus who makes videos at the Escapist and has a chip on his shoulder... in other words, you may not be real, yet I do care about what you have to say