All the World’s a Stage: Roleplaying 101

When it comes to various high-brow roleplaying concepts, it’s amazing how difficult it can be to find some basic common gaming ground. I’ve spent time roleplaying in MMOs, MUDs, tabletop games and Live Action Roleplaying environments. I’ve played elves, vampires, cyborgs, angels and robots. I’ve had the honor of being the game master for massive LARPs and the immense pleasure of being the dungeon master for a small D&D pen-and-paper game.

The thing that I’ve had constantly reinforced between all of these experiences is how radically differently the diverse groups can approach the idea of roleplaying. For large network games, for example, roleplaying is about existing in a sort of pervasive sim. Their games run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week — whenever a player has the ability to answer email, their characters are assumed available for roleplay. By comparison, in a tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons or Rifts, you only have the option of running your character during game sessions.

So let’s have a short discussion about World of Warcraft roleplaying and help introduce players to the basic ideas. The natural caveat here is that Blizzard doesn’t mandate much about roleplay, so there’s a lot of variance from group to group and server to server. My guide is just some general rules of thumb I’ve seen over the years.

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Filed under: All the World’s a Stage (Roleplaying)