Inside My Head

Great article at IGN about playing Sarah Morrison, with the three devs who trade off playing her in-game. The "expanding her character as we go along" sort of dynamic is one that's always really drawn me to the roleplaying side of MMOs, even if I'm REALLY bad at RP.

And by bad, I mean I'm antisocial and quiet at the best of times, so I tend to do all my roleplaying inside my own head. All of my MMO characters have fleshed-out backstories to greater or lesser degrees, but I'm the only person who knows them. It's still a pretty big part of my fondness for any given MMO, though.

Fleshing out the history and relationships between my characters and figuring out their place in the world gives my creative brain something to do while muscle memory drives most of the gameplay. Some games make this easier than others - contrast Ultima Online, where I could play a half-mad shepherd priest who ranted about the Virtues while running around barefoot and praying fanatically at shrines while being followed by a docile herd of goats, to World of Warcraft, where about the quirkiest thing I can do is collect booze (no, really - my rogue has a bag and a half full of quest reward flasks and beer-stein maces) or play a Retribution paladin (which I don't, actually.)

City of Heroes was probably the best for RP, of my previous MMOs. It had detailed and cohesive worldbuilding and a plausible framework for the characters to fit into. There weren't very many restrictions on the actual character appearance/backstory/whatever, but the world itself was fairly restricted - you play a hero involved in the struggle against evil, both banal and profound. That restriction, in my mind, actually makes RP easier - and more fun. It feels less like pointless wankery and more like just interacting with the world.

Tabula Rasa works for me in much the same way that CoH did - I have a definite framework to build my character in, but I can imagine whatever motivations and history I want to. Instead of the fabulous costume creator, there are the "ethical parables" - they're minor touches, and they seem to be almost impact-free in terms of actual gameplay, but so far they've been the hooks to hang my character development on. (Well, that and the cloning system, which I swear I started playing with at least 48 hours before reading Old Man's War.)

Why is this important, since it only takes place in my head? I don't know if it is, to anyone else - certainly of the above list, the least RP-friendly game is doing the best. But for me, if I can thoroughly develop a character or two - story-wise, not gameplay-wise - I'm pretty damn hooked. I still mourn for my UO character Itarion, deleted untimely, and his descendent Jeremiah, sold off on eBay in a fit of madness. I've been playing UO for ten damn years. I have an incredibly high level of investment in that game - those characters, partly, but also just that world, in which I've created a whole epic saga spanning generations. We don't have enough data on longevity and MMOs to make generalizations about this level of commitment and a game's long-term success, but I know it makes a difference in how invested I get in a game.