{"id":170,"date":"2010-06-01T11:59:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T15:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/?p=170"},"modified":"2010-06-01T12:00:24","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T16:00:24","slug":"on-what-rpg-truely-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/2010\/06\/01\/on-what-rpg-truely-means\/","title":{"rendered":"On What RPG truely Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. – Abraham Lincoln<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0RPG. Remember when that used to mean something? Role. Playing. Game. Role playing.\u00a0 Immersive, complete, take over Role.\u00a0 <\/span>As much as a love a good MMOrpg , and the graphics that come with it, I can\u2019t help but feel, there is something missing.\u00a0 <\/span>I enjoyed Neverwinter Nights beyond anything I could dream or fathom, and it was so close to perfect I still think about loading it up for another try.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Almost everything I wanted to imagine could be done with it.\u00a0 <\/span>I recreated my greatest characters, DMed games and made items and lands, quests, and even (dare I saw) dropped in few zingers.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But\u2026I was missing something\u2026 That something about \u201cThe time when we [all our characters] were all splayed across the floor, every item used, every potion expended, and T Man stood up.., pointed at our DM and said \u2018this is done. I\u2019m rolling a 20.\u201d Stepped back, and opened up the heaven of woop ass.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We.\u00a0 <\/span>Our.\u00a0 <\/span>My.\u00a0 <\/span>It was real (within the context of the game world.).\u00a0 <\/span>I was invested, (and still am). I remember to this day, the incredible feeling and awfulness the first time (after years) my character died, and how it made my next character an obsessive defense master.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But I also remember Diablo, and shouting and yelling as we had a \u201cLeroy moment\u201d[running into the room, activating all monsters] and realized someone had aggrooed all the guards in hell\u2026.that first character death was bitter, more so when I looked up from my computer walked out of the room to yell at my roommate who had gotten us all killed.\u00a0 <\/span>It wasin\u2019t the playing, but the social interacting of the panic, the yelling at the screen and of course talking about it at lunch with the other Diablo players. \u00a0<\/span>That shared experience about hell and wild panic.\u00a0 <\/span>A hidden geek social contract. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span>Online playing vampire, and Mage and so many others, I still have stories about the man cliff hangers, the tension and the 20 character rooms waiting for the pin to drop.\u00a0 <\/span>RPG at it\u2019s finest.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We knew each other by character colors, descriptions, methods of typing.\u00a0 <\/span>Who knew who ruled, in truth and online\u2026 it was a community.\u00a0 <\/span>What did they have in common? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1. The Social aspect.\u00a0 <\/span>Whether it\u2019s net gaming, internet chat, or Xbox, being part of the group was always about\u2026 being part of the group.\u00a0 <\/span>Things happened in the group, the jokes, the Coke, the \u201cI can\u2019t believe you just jumped off a cliff\u201d and GM reacting to the whim and craziness of the players. My chat room days was just as fun describing a battle as being in the battle afterwards, and my good friends relived mass moments of gaming lore, where someone did something we\u2019d remember together. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2. I love seeing it, but I also like describing it.\u00a0 <\/span>Gamers talk with their hands, and their imagination.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>There is not a GM, DM, storyteller, et al on the planet who has not had the perfect game fall apart, as the player does something \u2026.unintentional.\u00a0 <\/span>Better yet, the adversarial (GM vs Players) nature of the game is preserved, and trust is rewarded.\u00a0 <\/span>The GM is not out to get you, because you CAN win\u2026. But you can fail, and it will be more than creating another character or rebooting. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This game up because I saw a slide for a website. The slide had \u201cRPG\u201d on it, and described real mechanics, gorgeous graphics, storyline and epic quests, and strategy based battles, and right then I figured out what I didn\u2019t like about modern RPG\u2019s of the video game Varity. I figured out what was missing in today\u2019s RPG\u2019s.\u00a0 <\/span>They are Role playing \u00a0<\/span>in title only.\u00a0 <\/span>You are not \u201cGrandro, King of Servat.\u00a0 <\/span>Or Jim Danger, unlikely mage.\u201d No, you\u2019re playing a video game, where you get to make choices, sometimes, but it has an end, it has a story, and when you play again, it will be the same story, and no record of it will be kept. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Immersion is missing.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>No, it\u2019s not Mass effect.\u00a0 <\/span>Or Bio Shock. That\u2019s just you, and some hanger on NPc\u2019s you get to drag along, and when you die you curse and restart.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019re forced to know about the world, because you need it to get the shotgun, and the \u201cbio weapons of Boom\u201d you really could care less about why. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, how many people know or care about the actually WORLD in Warcraft? Halo? It\u2019s just a nice mechanics.\u00a0 <\/span>Very nice mechanics.\u00a0 <\/span>The backstory is Useful for if you raid or guild or which character you start as, but.. what about when you enter a town and the towns people boo? Or if you and the other players assemble to take the Castle and can\u2019t overcome the defense.\u00a0 <\/span>Just long on and try again right? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why does this matter? For years, I\u2019ve had this game in my mind, and everyone who plays get\u2019s invested in the game, their characters, and more importantly, the people they play with.\u00a0 <\/span>The game is mechanics heavy, but truly, it\u2019s not (not if I can work it out) but it does require trust (as all rpgs) and time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

When White Wolf Studios closed their chat, I realized we\u2019d lost something.\u00a0 <\/span>Many many people couldn\u2019t find a group, lost the ability to really get into roleplaying as much as they could.\u00a0 <\/span>Furthermore, it was very much the way the game could\u00a0 <\/span>be played, exposed to sooo many people, and so many lives, it showed me a microcosm of life I didn\u2019t know, as much as it sucked away my weekends.\u00a0 <\/span>I miss it.\u00a0 <\/span>I know it\u2019s gone for the best (and my eventual growth) but just once, I wish to once again type out \u2026 \u201cI enter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind. – Abraham Lincoln \u00a0RPG. Remember when that used to mean something? Role. Playing. Game. Role playing.\u00a0 Immersive, complete, take over Role.\u00a0 As much as a love a good MMOrpg , and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[416,258,413,414,415],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lessons","category-thought-crime","tag-gaming","tag-learning","tag-rpg","tag-whitewolf","tag-wow"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thestormypresent.com\/ocean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}