The Institutions of Roleplaying

The Institutions of Roleplaying

The Institutions of Roleplaying

1-17-09 Mid-Day

This may be a single day entry, since I am in the metaphorical ‘zone’ of creating a list of guidelines for roleplay in this exact moment. I will refer to the act of roleplaying as though it were an exchange of person-to-person contact, with other references to ‘should’s and ‘should not’s of the act. Though this is in no way a formal list of rules, I believe they are a fair interpretation of what should and should not be done in an act of roleplaying scenarios.

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I. Examples of Social Roles

Throughout the history of our world, humankind has experienced different types of social positions and taken on various traits which result from these positions. In Sociology, men and women study the effects of these positions on humankind, whether it is the study of a single individual or society as a whole. Studies (such as the prison experiment by Philip Zimbardo) have shown drastic changes in human behavior as direct results of milieu.

In simple terms, the positions we are put in by society change who we are, whether we are fully aware or not. In the prison experiment, those college students who were given power by Zimbardo became sadistic guards within the six-day period. Though they were ordinary college students, no different from any you would see in a local university, they had become the guards they had been asked to pretend to be. Various testimonies from real wardens or prisoners would prove that they observed behavior frighteningly similar to what they had experienced. As one would expect, the prisoners also became exactly what they were told to be: prisoners. They could quit the experiment at any point in time, but these students became enslaved by their milieu and believed they were prisoners, to be subject to mental torture by the guards. Though there were some slight exceptions to these rules (some guards were ‘good’ and some prisoners were ‘rebellious’), for the most part, these individuals became the controlling, overbearing overseer or the autonomous, robotic prisoner.

The Stanley Milgram experiment is similar. Milgram set out to prove that Germans in World War II had fatal character flaws which caused them to accept authority and orders without question. Milgram, in need of a control group, tested his experiment on Americans in New Haven, under the impression that we would be less obedient to the questions of the experimenter. Milgram played a ‘God’ role in the situations he presented to ordinary individuals. Through the experiment, he proved Americans in New Haven just as ‘obedient’ and ‘willing’ to provide torture as the Germans he wanted to prove sadistic. Everyone in the experiment was an actor except for the one being observed.

The individual being observed would be given the role of ‘teacher,’ with someone on the other side of a small wall hooked up to a shock generator ranging from 15 to 450 volts. The experimenter would explain to the individual that it was a test to rate the “learner’s” ability to answer questions through negative reinforcement, or the process of giving undesirable responses to incorrect answers. Every incorrect answer, the experimenter explained, would require the teacher to shock at a voltage, and then increase the penalty for the following incorrect answer. Milgram expected the ‘teachers’ to stop shocking the ‘learners’ at around 300 volts, if even that. Much to his surprise, a wide majority of individuals tested were willing to shock the learners all the way to 450; theoretically killing them if the shocks were real. The only thing any experimenter would need to do is calmly ask the teachers to continue, that it was necessary to continue, and that they would take full responsibility for anything that happened to whoever was on the other side of the wall.

The conclusion I draw from experiments like these is this: people are highly influenced for what they pretend to be, and what they are asked to do. These findings have already been made, obviously, by plenty of individuals which include Milgram and Zimbardo. In actuality, these examples only serve as a base for me to explain how roleplaying should be done, and how being in a particular role could cause one to take on the traits of who they try to be, at least until they are reminded that they are not such characters.

II. Personal Experience

In the past two to three years, I have visited (and participated in) various roleplaying websites and forums, from Eon High School to Meinior Mansion; from the Codecia Academy to Roleplayers Anonymous, on SheezyArt. Each website has had particular sign-in sheets and specific claims to what they expect from the users there.

For example, the (now dead) Eon High School forum expected its members to subscribe to one of three groups: Blue Eyes, Red Eyes, and Green Eyes, which required melee combat, ranged combat, and gun combat, respectively. Members were expected to portray mainly high school students who were attending a prestigious school meant to teach basic subjects for learning and advanced combat tactics. As expected, those who wanted to use guns subscribed to Green Eyes. Those who wanted to use bladed weapons subscribed to Blue Eyes, and so forth. But rather than use the page for what it was intended (the interaction of characters in battle situations, sparring, and missions), those who joined did what they knew to do best: social interaction. Eon High became a fake social milieu for individuals to relive their high school experiences, perhaps as a character with more than desirable traits. I am inclined to believe that most individuals would create characters they envy in some area of their personality, or perhaps make a character most closely connected to themselves, so that they need not have characters they dislike to be.

Each forum had its expectations of character design, and for the most part, characters were what were expected. This is a fundamental rule of most roleplay forums, because all it takes is a few individuals who choose to play sandwiches or humanoid chickens before the forum can no longer be taken seriously. Small social deviations from the norm were accepted, because of two factors:

*Nobody wishes to offend the creators of specific roleplay characters, and
*It in no way ‘truly encroaches’ upon the other members

As such, it was easy for roleplaying communities to accept (and sometimes further develop) institutions of murder, homosexuality, acts of sadistic quality, and intercourse. Assuredly, after such things were introduced, it became easy for these qualities to also become social norms, and thereafter were simple to speak of and roleplay.

I, personally, strayed away from these newly forged social ‘norms,’ because I could not effectively place my characters in such positions. This does not prove a fine example, because in doing so, I show myself to not be portraying a character. Instead, I prove to be roleplaying myself in those situations. As a result of being unable to do such things, I make sure that my characters remain unable to do them as well. Or at least refrain from being able to do so.

It would be fair to state that I have created characters who are willing to partake of such ‘taboo’ acts in roleplaying situations. The question, then, would be whether I, as a character, am willing to allow these to be explained in full detail or not. As a social experimenter, and that is precisely what most roleplayers are, it would be my duty to space myself from my characters in order to play a role most effectively. In other words, it is my duty to assume my characters are not me, though they may possess plenty of the same traits.

III. Fundamentals of the ‘Good’ Roleplay

In any roleplaying situation, it is expected of those involved to abide by an unspoken set of rules, which may be difficult for the new roleplayer to understand or follow. Though they are simple concepts to grasp, they are decidedly not simple to follow for most.

Among such fundamentals is the unspoken ‘no powerplay’ rule.

Powerplay is the act of taking informal control of another person’s character(s) and having them commit to actions without the consent of the other party, otherwise known as taking control of a character that is not yours. Social powerplay is almost acceptable in that, if correctly established, characters could interact in a number of ways in response to speaking or any kind of gesture. Sometimes the powerplay is sweetly urged because actions are anticipated or required for the scene to move on. One character pushing another is nearly powerplay, because whether or not the other character moves is up to the use of that other character. Often, I would invoke the use of the word ‘attempts’ or ‘attempted’ to get my point across. Ultimately, it is up to both parties to remain realistic of their character’s abilities and actions so the story can move effectively.

Powerplay becomes a problem when players wish to consider themselves in full control over any situation. They want to not only assume that their character is dominant over another character, but that if I grab him, he is grabbed, and that because he is grabbed, I may punch him, and that if he is punched, he is in extraordinary pain and cannot fight back; there is nothing he may do to fight back. This leads to disputes between real individuals, because one party assumes total control and the other may argue that they did not receive the chance to prove otherwise. Any roleplayer with control over an environment or milieu should give fair opportunity to the other party, instead of being one to automatically assume what would happen every step of every action. This does not only make the other party irritated and upset that the social aspects of the situation are broken, but it also makes the powerplayer appear tyrannical as a human being, unable to accept that he/she is not in control of a situation.

Powerplay includes defensive powerplay, which is the act of being unwilling to accept defeat in any terms. Defensive powerplay doesn’t directly take control of another character, but inadvertently makes things difficult by controlling milieu. For example, in the situation of one character pushing another, the first may say he attempts to push the other and the other may assume he cannot be pushed. If one character attempts to grab the other, the other may say he cannot (and was not) grabbed. Being grabbed, the first party may attempt to punch the other, only so the second party can say they don’t feel the punch. These players are passive in their powerplay, but they remain powerplayers; unwilling to lose, and all too willing to control interactions so they turn to their favor. Passive powerplay is not as big a problem in institutions of roleplay, but it remains a problem big enough to cause issues. Characters are not meant to truly bend social boundaries or the effects of logic on the nature of things, unless the creator of the roleplaying realm makes it possible, acceptable, and indeed necessary. However, in my year of roleplaying, I have not seen a situation where social norms deviated greatly from the logic we see in today’s society.

A useless addition to a roleplay would be inactivity. I, as well as plenty of others in roleplay situations, have become attached to these specific forums in attempt to escape from the real world, if only for a few minutes before delving back into it. The truly powerful roleplayers understand the meaning behind quality realism. As one of my good friends eloquently put it, “research never hurt anyone; stupidity does.” A roleplayer willing to do some research in order to make a character or situation more important is decidedly one who holds a high level of unspoken power.

The opposite could be said for those who read long paragraphs of roleplay salad and decide not to respond in that exact moment, or rather, choose to not finish reading or form a good response. Like procrastinators, they put off the rest of the reading for a day, and another day, and still another day, and fairly soon they forget all about the roleplay they decided to take part in. This inactivity dulls the mood of the situations. Granted, some roleplayers have much more important things to take care of, and the point remains valid: real situations should always take priority over ones which are not, unless those ‘fake’ situations serve a significant purpose. At no point do I condone the missing of classes, work, sleep, or any other truly important vices in exchange for the art of roleplay, unless values placed on such things are at a minimum or can be made up.

Nevertheless, inability to respond to a roleplay effectively makes the air in that world stale, and the situations old news. An understanding community will always accept such inactivity, so inactivity could almost be considered ‘normal’ and ‘more than tolerable.’

A true thread-killer is multiple responses to single topics. In multi-person roleplays, there is an unspoken turn order which takes place between those inside the virtual world: character traits speak priority and certain characters may take movements before others. In some situations, in roleplaying scenarios where over six people are present, too many miniscule and tiresome interactions occur simultaneously, and each of these interactions further confuses the others from the point of the thread. Characters, though some may be inclined to ignore the situations at hand, must (to some extent) remember their exact point in storylines and stay true to the tasks in the moment. Negligence to the main point of a thread could cause a spread of many small, pointless topics which lead to nowhere. In a nutshell, roleplayers must remember to space out their responses and find the correct time to post what their characters’ actions will be.

Speaking of thread-killers, I believe it’s about time to introduce the ones known as Gary and Mary Stu. Stu characters are the characters who fail to be realistic and believable due to their perfection. They are flat characters who assume multiple powers on a grand scale; they have very few character flaws, if any, and are whatever the creator wants them to be. Typical Stu characteristics are above average intelligence, great strength, quick reflexes, abnormally good intuition, being charismatic, and having a wide variety of personal skills such as art, being the best at a sport, playing an instrument like a prodigy, and et cetera. Stu characters are most unwelcome in normal roleplaying situations, due to their infallibility. Those who fall into conflict with Stu characters (which, in a good roleplay, would be neigh unavoidable) often lose due to their inability to match up, physically or mentally, with the said Stu character. They are what their makers want them to be, and the users often want them to be the best character, or a ‘main’ character.

In a storyteller-to-group or storyteller-to-single-person situation, it does not matter as much whether characters are Stu or not. Storytellers usually place limits on the characters which other individuals create, and for good reason. If the storyteller creates Stu characters, they should be for the purpose of giving the roleplayer something to aspire to, or perhaps an impossible boundary to face for the time being. They act as effective walls; placed to stop roleplayers from advancing too quickly. They provide a near-sense of realism for those who play ‘main characters,’ as they are expected to grow as the story progresses.

A good roleplay revolves around a storyline which is both flexible and keeps to some small sense of reality. Those who create roleplay storylines must keep in mind that those who take part in their threads will expect to have at least a vague understanding of what they are getting themselves into before they can act effectively. At the same time, they must keep a delicate balance between keeping the player ‘on track’ and offering ‘multiple options.’ Most storytellers struggle with such a feat, and lean into one or the other options without trying to do so.

IV. Research in Game Roleplaying

In the genre of video games, it has been widely contested that both good story and good game mechanics fuel a great game, though it was never concluded which of the two were more important/fundamental to the overall scheme. Roleplaying games can be broken down into story, mechanics, characters, and the master of the game, should there be one in existence. The one thing all gamers seem to agree on is the idea that the audience rules the game. If the audience cannot decide on a balance between game and story, the mechanics fall asunder and the roleplay becomes little more than a story-in-progress. Originality is required on part of both the players and the master of the game, in order to create a cohesive environment. For the most part, a level of reality is also required of a good roleplaying game, else the story falls asunder and the scheme becomes little more than a game.

-- Credit goes to The Escapist Magazine, for my test trials on 2-12-09, fundamental question “Tabletop RPGs – Does the Story Really Matter?”