All the World's a Stage: Pros and cons of total-immersion roleplay

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

6-15-2008 @ 9:19PM

Sean Riley said...

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.

6-16-2008 @ 12:03AM

David Bowers said...

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.

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