| Ok so I've played rpgs ever since I was 8, all that time all I did was play the games and didnt really give much thought about the whole roleplaying aspect. If there was a choice to be made I made the character choose whatever I personally thought was the best choice, meaning I was always the character. But recently (actually early 2014 so not that recent) I ran across people making backstories for their own characters and actually roleplaying as their made up hero in games, this totally blew my mind since I didn't know anyone IRL who did that in games. And I never ran across it because I wasnt into forums other than to find out stuff I wanted to know like if I was stuck in some game and wanted to find a way out. Skyrim was the first game I tried it on and it actually fixed my "Oh I have this great idea for a character!" *10 hours later* "ok time to make a new one" I know this has been around forever and I was just living in a cave or never actually went inside the cave since it would be considered a "geeky" thing to do but it's actually a lot of fun. So Im curious, what other games do people actually do that on? the whole "Create a backstory and play the game as that character you created" And I guess I wanna know how MAL people feel about the whole roleplaying aspect to add depth to characters, otherwise my first 3 "paragraphs" were pointless. |
DemocracyDec 12, 2014 1:14 AM
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| Pen 'n paper aside (I'm a big fan myself) I actually do that quite often - not necessarily in RPG games alone. I would allways do it in MMO's - there was once a great Lineage 2 server called Alseron - you had to write short story and had it accepted before even getting an account. Still remember the time when I was playing Neverwinter Nights (the first one) and after every bigger quest I would write in the in-game notepad - something like a diary that my character was writing. I believe it adds a ton of fun - hell I even remember voiceacting my villagers in Black & White and creating short backstories for them to add some more flavour. |
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| Probably the best or most popular example of games where people would do that would be Bioware games when Bioware used to be one of the masters of RPG-game development. From the legendary Baldur's Gate to Neverwinter Nights to Mass Effect and to Dragon Age, these were games where you could create a character with whatever background you wish and make your own choices or decisions in the game while also having to watch your character deal with the consequences. Sadly, Bioware seems to be heading on a slow path to death, no thanks to EA. Currently, old-style but modern-made isometric games are bringing back these kind of experiences. Games like Shadowrun Returns, Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 are some of them and they all are great roleplaying experiences in their own way. And next year, there's Torment: Tides of Numenera. |
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| I had a backstory for my first character in Dark Souls 2. I didn't really care about it after a while so I just created a hot female character and mindlessly killed things with it for a 100 hours. |
| I don't think I'm creative enough to roleplay in games. I can only see a character in a game as a separate entity to be controlled, not an extension of myself. |
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| I've only done that in Dragon Age, though the game kind of encourages it. |
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Narmy said: I don't think I'm creative enough to roleplay in games. I can only see a character in a game as a separate entity to be controlled, not an extension of myself. On the contrary, I see every character I control to be an extension of myself, with the only thing differing being past and name. Which means I have zero creativity because I just control them as I want them. |
| Bioware used to be a developer who liked the idea, and as the others have said, even encouraged it, but recently they're not as convincing anymore. The Witcher and Fallout games also promote the above medium, but to a more restricted extent. In answer to your question, yes, I do it, since I discovered the actual thing fairly recently myself. It's such a simple concept, yet it baffles me as to how I've never given it a chance before. "Actual roleplaying? What's that, a type of fish?" Oh, how I was wrong. |
| I've started to experiment with it myself a while ago. It's fun to do things that don't make sense from a gameplay perspective when your character's traits call for it. Crusader Kings 2 is a good game for roleplaying. Although there's a risk all your characters will end up maniac psychopaths who castrate 5-year olds. |
| "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34 |
Garfild said: Narmy said: This.I don't think I'm creative enough to roleplay in games. I can only see a character in a game as a separate entity to be controlled, not an extension of myself. I mean, I don't quite understand all that "making stories", when in the end it's just the same playing the game even without it. I can empathize with this. For some reason, I can never see a character as an entity separate to my own, they are always just an artificial extension of my own personality. Plus, playing the game according to a pre-written personality or script regarding how your character should act makes many potential encounters boring. I'd rather have freedom of choice in the moment, I mean, who knows what you're going to do in any given situation until you've experienced it? I want that ability to choose, without having to worry about "Well, how would x character respond in this situation?" |
pf5t said: Minute said: I want that ability to choose, without having to worry about "Well, how would x character respond in this situation?" I always play as "myself" for the first playthrough, but for later playthroughs I make characters to explore other choices and get more out of the game. Obviously this depends on the replayability of the game. You get both the ability to choose and the fun of roleplaying this way though. That's a perfectly sensible approach, I like it. |
| Just one question. Are you a fan of the Ace Attorney series? Or are you slightly interested in trials, puzzles and crime solving? |
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| As a person who does forum RPG (or did, since I fell out of it recently after the few sites I were on went away for one reason or another), I do sometimes try to insert some roleplaying into certain games. This basically means that while I may not . Examples include Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which actually worked surprisingly well), Dark Souls (don't know yet, since I'm not too far into the game) and Skyrim (so far most successful one, but since the game is so damn long, I've yet to manage complete my goals). Also planning to try it out in Star Citizen once it comes out. It can be a bit problematic at times when the game lacks the proper options to implement the choices that you would want to make (in-character). |
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| I have done this in few of MMORPG I've played in the past. I was creating a couple of fictional alter-ego complete with their background story that follows the game narratives. I am declaring myself as roleplay characters in the game just so people not confused me with a real person, however my act is too convincing to some that people assuming some part of the narrative was real, particularly regarding the age and the gender of my character. Despite that I refuse to break out the character that I come up with as they are literally now have a life of its own, a complete alter-ego, just like how a character in a story has a narration of their own, to break your character is metaphorically kills them. Of course I occasionally breaks the fourth-wall by talking some real life events like the local news, weathers, etc. but I strictly limited it to casual talk and 'stays in-character' in commenting to these events. In one particular game I have created 9 complete alter-ego characters and a few side characters, all with different archetypes and pre-made relationship with each others. (as additional details I've used 3rd party software that allows me to open multiple accounts at the same time) Close people in the guilds knows my alts so they can contact me anytime, the best thing about the society is they love to play along with the roleplaying and some others does it too. My example would be: The whole experience really opened my eyes about human interactions in general, and role-playing in particular. People seeks out one another for acceptance, even though they felt afraid and used masks to do so. More often it is caused by the fear of being rejected, either by the society norms or by stereotypes. Role-playing really helps people to interact out of their 'characters' in real life, and living the inner chuuni 'true self' in it's fictional attire. |
| The most important things in life is the people that you care about |
| As a creator, I find going through a game as a certain character I've created/am working on really enlightening. It ca help me understand my characters better and make it easier to write my character. It's a lot easier on games where you're not playing with others-- I always keep the characters consistent there. I sometimes have a hard time keeping it up in MMORPGs since sometimes your characters act in ways which can probably get you banned, eh heh. That being said, creators can really use rping in MMOs and such as a way to put their characters in action and see how real people would react to their characters instead of assuming that everyone would be okay with them. If they have to tone down their character just to be able to talk to others when they intended for their character to be "normal" then that could help them see where the problems are in their characters. |
| Honestly, I feel this just falls flat in most games. In most RPG systems, you can easily promote actual roleplay with the DM giving bonus XP to those that do. Computer RPGs should aim for a similar thing. Something like the Origin stories in DAO, even if it is just a matter of combining different choices, would be a great way to let the player establish their character. Then enable and disable certain events and choices further in the game depending on your selected backstory, and add in sensible boons or penalties where applicable if you act out of character. |
Reketre said: Bioware used to be a developer who liked the idea, and as the others have said, even encouraged it, but recently they're not as convincing anymore. The Witcher and Fallout games also promote the above medium, but to a more restricted extent. Not the original Fallout games, no - New Vegas was a lot more free for this type of thing than any other big budget RPG I've seen in quite sometime, although Lonesome Road kind of went against it but you don't have to play it if you don't want. In the original Fallout games, you could be as free as you wanted (There's always some kind of restriction, obviously, but you know what I mean) - Even killing children. |
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| You're kidding? Almost every settlement in Fallout 2 has children - And they're all killable. In some pretty hineous ways too I might add. There's definitely children in Fo1 even though I haven't played it since forever. If you meant New Vegas then there's not many children, no, and you can't kill them - Probably to avoid any issues now that it's a AAA franchise. Older Fallout games are still the most eye-popping example of pure black comedy there is in games - You can do a lot of really horrendous things in them. |
Vinum_SabbathiDec 16, 2014 9:00 AM
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| There used to be a time when fantasy roleplay was not about if you could kill children or not. You know, lore and all that shit no one cares about. |
mecharobot said: There used to be a time when fantasy roleplay was not about if you could kill children or not. You know, lore and all that shit no one cares about. That's not the point, and lore has little to do with roleplaying - Any world can be fitting for a roleplay. Like the name implies, it's about "Role". The thing is games of old, and especially Fallout, really did give you an enormous amount of freedom to make your character the way you wanted him/her to be, at least in terms of morality. It's not just killing children - You can also marry someone, neglect and mistreat them until they descend in drunken whoredom and potentially even suicide. It's that kind of insane moral flexibility that aids the roleplay that I'm talking about - You want to be a true bane of humanity, who desecrates all thy walks on? You can be. You wanna be Jesus, where nobody can help but smile at you and your very presense inspires everyone to revere you? You can. Or just a random nobody looking get by? You can do that too. The days where that kind of flexibility existed are just gone - Particularly when it comes to doing awful things to people, probably to avoid any issues games these days can bring since they're put under constant watch by the mainstream as a way of explaining poor behaviour. |
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Vinum_Sabbathi said: The days where that kind of flexibility existed are just gone - Particularly when it comes to doing awful things to people, probably to avoid any issues games these days can bring since they're put under constant watch by the mainstream as a way of explaining poor behaviour. Maybe we will see the day when looting items from people homes and killed enemies banned from video games as it promotes a thug life. |
| The most important things in life is the people that you care about |
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