All the World's a Stage: Pros and cons of total-immersion roleplay
by David Bowers 
Jun 15th 2008 at 7:00PM
There are degrees to roleplaying. Some people like it "light," so that it never gets too intense, you never have to actually "work" to make your character profound or lore-worthy, and it's generally just a fun way to pass some time. Others like it "heavy;" they view their characters as works of art, taking special care to make their characters believable and interesting, and sometimes planning special roleplaying events for their guild to enjoy. Some even try to do everything in-character, from repairing armor to marking out targets with raid symbols.
Recently I joined just such a full-immersion roleplaying guild, and have been trying out their particular style. To be fair, I still have a number of friends on my server that I usually speak out-of-character with, because that's what we're used to, but for everyone in this guild, I do my best to stay in character at all times, with everything my character says and does. To some this may seem like an unnecessary pain, but to others it's a fun experience. Here are a few of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of roleplaying.
Pros:
1. Creativity: It's an amazing challenge to try and roleplay everything your character does. There are lots of things that even the most hardcore of roleplayers tend to just overlook, such as the raid symbols I mentioned -- Malebrignon over at the Twisting Nether Gazette roleplays them by saying he has enchanted gems which can create various illusions his team can see to mark out targets and make plans for battle. Really all he's doing is changing the terminology he uses to talk about raid symbols, but he talks about it in a way that makes at least a little bit of sense within the context of the fantasy environment, and more importantly, reveals a little something about his character as well. "Raid symbols" sounds like gaming language, but "illusion gems" sounds like it could be part of a story.
Another player named Zima added a really nice touch of immersion in his guild's Ventrillo channel when he gave an inspirational speech before his guild attempted to kill Muru. Normally we think of raiding and voice chat as two of the least RP-friendly environments in WoW, and yet Zima makes it work pretty well for him, with a funny dwarven accent and a well-timed musical soundtrack in the background.
This sort of thing makes me wonder if there's anything in the game that can't be roleplayed with a bit of creativity.
2. Immersiveness: Another aspect to a game like this is the feeling that you are in another world, with its own rules and conditions that you enjoy. If the people around you are doing it well, this sort of roleplaying heightens the sense that you're taking part in a story instead of just playing a game. A lot of the regular noise you get in everyday conversation is filtered out, and people only talk about the things that apply to the situation and characters at hand.
In fact, I suspect this is one of the major draws of this kind of roleplaying -- it has the power to shut out so much of the noise overload we get from living in an information and advertisement-heavy society. Every day we are absolutely deluged with a spamload of words and images we don't want, and didn't ask for. Anything from the sounds of cars driving by on the road outside, to the sight of people kissing in public spaces, to the huge amount of time given to advertisements on television. When people play WoW on full-roleplay mode, all that stuff is shut out, so they can just concentrate on the game and the characters in it for a while.
Cons:
1. Blandness: It's tough being creative all the time. Sometimes people don't have the energy to really get into it, and they just substitute their new, supposedly "in-character" phrases for things in the game, without really roleplaying them at all. So, for example, instead of saying "bye everybody, I have to log off," they might say, "bye everybody, I'm putting my hearthstone down." It means basically the same thing for guilds that roleplay hearthstones as a kind of magical communicator system which can explain things like guild chat, long-distance whispers, and other such forms of communication that wouldn't otherwise fit in a fantasy setting.
The problem isn't that people use these terminologies -- it's that the terminologies themselves aren't enough. Their purpose is to prevent issues like guild chat and logging off from disrupting the roleplaying atmosphere people like to create. "LF1M MrT need tank!" in the guild channel may seem like just so much useless noise to a roleplayer leveling up her new mage alt, but "All we need is a protector and we'll be ready to go to Magister's Terrace!" can feel the same way if that's the only sort of communication people are doing over the guild channel.
There needs to be a lot of real character and expression, relationships and real communication in a roleplaying guild in order to make this full-immersion feel genuine and fun.
2. Communication lockups: There are often some things you want to say or questions you want to ask as a player, even though your character would never do so. I've recently been very disappointed with the Jewelcrafting profession for example, and even though I originally created my draenei hunter thinking that she would be really into gems and jewels of all sorts, using them in a semi-religious way (like crystal balls or tarot cards) in addition to putting them in sockets. It would be a fun thing to roleplay if I didn't find the actual gaming element so dull and uninteresting. I wanted to ask other people in my guild if they thought it would be a good idea to drop it for engineering or something, or if maybe there was something really fun about Jewelcrafting that I just wasn't getting. I couldn't very well say "I'm thinking of dropping Jewelcrafting" one day and then "Look into this Living Ruby to see your future!" the next -- it just didn't make sense to me from my character's point of view.
Conclusion
Personally, I'm finding that I prefer the system that my blood elf warlock's guild uses. Their guild chat is in-character, but they have a special out-of-character channel that everyone in the guild can join. People use both all the time as much as they like, and the different colors you can assign to each channel help very much to distinguish them. If you log in and feel like being really creative, you can roleplay your heart out in guild chat, but if you're just tired and want to level for a bit, or ask about the best talent build without having to dance around gamer terminology, that out-of-character channel is right there for you.
In the end, however, it's all up to you. The whole reason different guilds exist is for people with similar wants and needs to get together and play the game the way they enjoy.
While you're reading All the World's a Stage, check out how it all began: take a look at WoW as a Work of art, both as a beautiful set of gaming mechanics and as a platform for other new arts to thrive.Filed under: WoW Social Conventions, Virtual selves, RP, All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MisterMoose Jun 15th 2008 7:32PM
You left out a huge drawback with full immersion. If you have a crappy day, then you really can't talk about it with your guild friends. In fact, your guild friends just won't ever know that much about the real you, because you always have to use your character facade.
Roleplaying is fun, and I enjoy it, but I prefer guild chat to be out of character discussion. It makes forming real friendships with your fellow guildies much easier and those friendships are more satisfying, imho.
David Bowers Jun 15th 2008 11:59PM
That's a good point too. However, I think for a lot of roleplayers, it's not necessarily so important to make more real life friends through the game. They have plenty of friends in the place where they live, and they want to use the online space for their creative expression and temporary seclusion from the hassles of real life.
But to say that they aren't interesting in learning the personal details of other players online doesn't mean they don't care about those people. It's just that they don't need to know things like "are you a girl in RL?" in order to give or receive that basic human caring between friends. If their characters are friends, then the players are friends too -- the personal real-life details really don't matter so much in the context of the environment they share together.
MisterMoose Jun 16th 2008 3:10AM
I have to disagree. Someone's life, the good and the bad, is not something that one can really segregate. You can have friends at work for instance, but if they know nothing of your life outside of work, then the friendship is lacks a lot of depth. It doesn't matter if your work friends would care about your problems or not; if you make yourself a rule that you cannot share your life outside of work with them, then that stifles the growth of the relationship.
If a guild is pure immersion, then you can't share the happy moments with them, such as getting married or having a child. You can't share, as I mentioned before, the bad times either. Your entire experience with them is inside WoW, and while that can be fun and entertaining, it is quite lacking as far as friendships go. True and deep friendships have to go beyond just one aspect of your life, however much fun you derive from that aspect.
Honestly, for these reasons, and for the more critical aspects of life that can take you away from the game (emergencies, vacations, etc), I think any roleplaying guild has to have some mechanism to talk out of character.
Demgar Jun 16th 2008 11:06AM
I think AoC will lend itself well to full immersion RP. I think the low fantasy "realness" of the game will be a huge draw for the fans of full RP.
Definately take a listen to the link of the speech, it's actually rather moving, I feel like going and soloing Mu'uru now.
David Bowers Jun 16th 2008 9:53PM
Well, yes, from one point of view you're definitely right. This can be one of the major downfalls of total-immersion roleplaying, if you're looking for that kind of deep friendship with people where you share everything going on in life. There are so many things you might want to share and yet never have a chance to do so.
I've had some friendships which went from total immersion to real life friends where we even traveled to visit each other. Once our characters became such fantastic friends, we both thought that maybe we could be friends in real life too, and so (obviously) broke the total-immersion rule we were following at the time.
Some other friendships seem perfectly natural and normal when they're kept in character all the time -- both people have some kind of unspoken agreement that this is how they enjoy spending time together. While it's true that it never goes "deeper" than that in the sense of sharing real things from life, there's also something special about knowing you can roleplay with that person any time they're online without having to talk about all the frustrations of life as well. You can sort of put those aside for a while and just have a nice time. Not every good relationship has to be "deep" in the same way.
Anyway, so there are some exceptions to various norms and things which mean that sometimes total-immersion can really work for people. Othertimes, yes, there are drawbacks, but for whatever reason people are willing to deal with those. It all depends on who people are and what they want out of the experience of the moment -- sometimes that changes over time too, and it's okay. I myself have drifted between total-immersion some times, and hardly any roleplaying at all at others.
Mmackdaddy8 Jul 12th 2009 11:43PM
I agree with much of what you said but one point I differ in is that my guild used Guild Chat for most out of character discussions or just plain talking. Personally, I think it helps build a better relationship with your guild and thus can make Role Play much more realistic from a standpoint because it makes me gain more trust with the person and feel much more comfortable Role Playing with him or her.
Daryl Jun 16th 2008 10:31AM
Is there a physical difference between a RP server and a pve server?
Is the "RP" just a tag or a name or are there differences in the software on the severs?
Zali Jun 16th 2008 12:04PM
No difference. Blizzard has a few more stringent rules about naming conventions.
Marco Polaris Jun 15th 2008 7:36PM
I've stopped being a huge proponent of full-time roleplaying long ago. Forcing yourself to explain why that coyote you just killed had a [Pike of Ridiculous Size] strapped to its back, or why such systems as the gryphon taxi, leveling, instant mail, and small scale of the game make sense (especially in conjunction to many quests) might make you feel smart for a time, but in the long run, I feel as though the fun of soloing and instancing is detracted if you spend more time logicing out the where's and why's of a game's mechanics rather than just hanging out, making fun small talk, and discussing the tactics of a fight. And time spent rationalizing strange happenings that most people can safely ignore is time you could have spent improving your character or, you know, RPing something that is important to your character.
Storylines can suffer under full-time RP, in my opinion, as the threat of the dark powers of the world and the vast, sweeping nature of the landscape itself is trivialized by the means Blizzard has created to keep the game engaging, and people who want to full-time RP and still experience the content are force to either create characters who for some strange reason get involved in every threat, danger, or amoral mercantile offer they are involved it, or create a swath of characters, including some in RP roles they do not enjoy - my main warrior would never have gone into the Dark Portal come tBC if I limited myself to my character's RP, and I know of a full-time roleplay guild that could not run Karazhan until the latest patch, because they refused to help the orcs in the Caverns of Time due to the crimes of the Warsong against their people. Full-time RP also creates a sense of sameness - everybody's gone to the same dungeons, faced down the same hazards, traveled to the same exotic locales, because Blizzard wants us to experience their world. Some people are able to create a unique feel in recounting their experiences, but they are an elite few.
There's nothing wrong with RPing the occasional instance with friends, but when you're doing it just to grind that last bit of Sha'tari rep ("Oh, this time, we'll kill the Prophet for sure, and the naaru will sing our praise!"), the repetition and resistance of a game's system to correspond to human logic and intelligence is going to start wearing you out (It's the 25th time you've killed them, you're here for those few extra kills at the start of the instance to boost your rep by 100 to Exalted, and you're hoping this will be the time that insectoid monstrosity will drop the boots you wanted), because Blizzard does not make the game to be immersive.
Consider 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. A lot of roleplayers are getting upset because the new rules are less realistic. But the thing is, to a lot of people, they're fun. They're engaging, and they don't force you to wait. 4th Edition has taken a close look at the older rulesets to figure out how to make the game overall more enjoyable, rather than build up a dice-simulated real-world environment that accounts for every possible variable. Myself, and most the people I know, would say they succeeded.
With MMOs, you need to have this factor even more, because of all the expectations and the larger potential crowd. Blizzard has done a lot of great things to immerse their players, in a variety of ways, but it is first and foremost an MMO based around gameplay that is easy to learn, hard to master, and light on grinds and punishment (Not saying how well they've succeeded, but that's the goal). People who can explain away every new rule Blizzard creates may feel proud of themselves for keeping a solid line of immersion - but the world they live in becomes increasingly surreal and inconsistent. I'd rather keep my gameplay and roleplay separate where they don't mix, thank you very much.
Kaljin Jun 15th 2008 8:49PM
Omg I just orgasmed from how awesome your post is. Bravo, sir, bravo.
Yes, Gameplay and Story Segregation please.
David Bowers Jun 15th 2008 11:54PM
You raise a lot of good points Marco; someone who shares your values about what's enjoyable in the game and in roleplaying would do well to follow your advice here. The thing is, however, that there's no one form of roleplaying which will work perfectly for everyone.
People who enjoy total immersion RP like it for a number of reasons -- first of all they enjoy those same creative challenges you say are a waste of time, but more importantly, they don't want to bring real world issues into their fantasy game. They want to shut all that out for a while -- and why not? Just like you don't want to bother with excluding all real-life references, they don't want to bother with including them.
That said, there are a lot of different ways of doing total-immersion too. Some really go for explaining away every detail, but most tend to just overlook and ignore a lot of the things that get in the way of their stories. Nobody complains about the lack of toilets in any big cities, for instance. Everyone is just trying to find the balance they enjoy most.
Michel Jun 16th 2008 8:28AM
I mostly agree with you.
I still mix game and roleplay when it fits. and I also avoid to slow the pace of the game.
and of course, my character does not tell "we killed Melchaazar, the darkshire is now bright !" for the 35th time. (all we can is push back the daemon and just help the country )
Sean Riley Jun 15th 2008 9:19PM
While I'm not a huge fan of Total Roleplaying, it's not inherently bad. There's surely an argument to be made about that sort of immersion. But I do have a problem with how it usually gets implemented: Humor gets chucked out the window. Pop-culture references get slammed, in particular, as being 'immersion breaking'.
This in a universe that has a goblin zeppelin operator named, if I remember correctly, Hin Denburg.
Embrace your pop culture referencing! Describe how your Minor Recombobulator restores a person's Dynamic Natural Attunement and thus their shape! Inform a Blood Elf woman that her dancing is dreadful, indeed, downright toxic. Play up the comedy! Warcraft is a comedic fantasy universe that often veers into serious drama. There is no reason why total immersion means forgetting the jokes.
David Bowers Jun 16th 2008 12:03AM
I love humor in roleplaying! I'd like to do an article about how to RP humorously, but it feels a little pretentious to me: "How to be funny haha." Still, I might just go ahead and write it anyway, because many roleplayers seriously do take things way to seriously.
I mean, it's fine that people want to be dramatic and deep and all -- I want those things too -- but there should always be a time and place for the absurd, the silly, and the ironic reference to pop-culture.
Gavin Jun 15th 2008 11:27PM
Total immersion is absurd. When I played pen and paper RPGs back in the day, we acted in character when appropriate but cross table chatter and random chitchat certainly didn't distract from the experience and the same should go for MMO style RPGs.
Did you see the recent South Park where they go to the Pioneer Village and the people who work there refuse to break character? That is how annoying and asinine total immersion role-playing is.
David Bowers Jun 16th 2008 12:10AM
I didn't see that episode of South Park, no, but I still think you're missing the point. Total-immersion roleplayers are not playing the game this way just to make you feel annoyed -- they're just enjoying their own hobby with one another and don't want others to bother them in that. The annoyance you feel is coming from somewhere inside you, your own reaction based on your own choices -- not from their behavior.
That said, you're entitled not to like it if you want. Just don't go around insulting people because their preferences are different from yours.
Gavin Jun 16th 2008 12:20AM
Since when is insulting a concept insulting people? I didn't say that the people who are into total immersion are stupid or call them names. I just said that I find the process to be asinine. It means silly...look it up. The annoying aspect come in to play when you try to deal with someone who won't break character. This doesn't just go for MMO games but pen and paper RPGs as well. Have you ever had to deal with someone in real life that won't let the chracter go? It get to be really annoying. I highly suggest you seek out the South Park episode because it does a good job of sending up the whole concept.
David Bowers Jun 16th 2008 9:55PM
Oh okay, I misinterpreted you. I thought you were insulting the people too. You have every right to dislike this particular hobby of course, and I can imagine your frustration at having to communicate with someone who doesn't want to go out of character, especially if they're just pretending not to understand what you mean by "spell damage" and "defense rating" or something. It can be hard to get things done.
The best total-immersion roleplayers I know however, are pretty much able to take everything in stride, and talk about most any topic without breaking character. They can't talk about Britney Spears of course, but then in WoW we usually don't have a "need" to talk about things outside of the game that way. If they're good enough at it, they should be able to talk about everything in game from their character's point of view, enough so that it shouldn't bother you too much.
That said, maybe there's something of your meaning I'm missing still. Would you care to tell a horror story of what happened to you?
Michel Jun 16th 2008 7:59AM
I agree with Gavin. I love "immersion" and roleplay, but for my guild I explained "guild chat" can be what they want.
Because people need to chat about the game, about their problems, about friends.
And, I still think good rp is better when played with the character in front of other, not simply text.
-
and I agree, good rp can be comedy and "pop culture", I play an gnome engineer mage for the love of inventing totally crazy machines or whatever theory of the day.
For example, I explain " tectonic " is a crazy tale. The world is shaped by elemental forces, obviously , as Ragnaros. I saw it for Kadghar's sake :)
or than the world is flat (and round, you can see it from the Black Temple) with crazy explanations about "end of the world" and some weird "map" concepts.
Verit Jun 16th 2008 1:31PM
I tried RP out and it was fun, but I had a hard time staying in character all the time.
And once - someone told me to leave my pet outside a building (warlock) kinda freaked me out for some reason.