Does anyone here do any kind of roleplaying?
In your conventional social circles, roleplaying usually gets stereotyped as in the bedroom or your hardcore re-enactment circles. More negatively, it sometimes gets stereotyped as the LARP circles where people in that hobby stay in character the whole time themselves.
Here, however, I'm specifically referring to collaborative writing.
I've been roleplaying for the better part of 12 years now and haven't met anyone else who does (besides those I find on roleplaying sites, of course). I'm curious if anyone here on CFC dabbles, especially since DYOS and NES were/are popular.
If you do roleplay, what genres do you RP in? Is there a specific kind of roleplaying that you enjoy most?
Myself, I lean strongly towards original sci-fi worldbuilding that gets expressed through novella-style roleplaying. Creating a living galaxy filled with aliens, new technologies, and eccentric empires that get represented in stories written by a group of people is my longest hobby next to playing video games.
I've been involved in tabletop RPG for decades (January 13,1983, to be precise), when I bought
Warlock of Firetop Mountain... and several hours of my evening disappeared as I got lost trying to find my way through the Maze of Zagor and annoying the Dwarves who kept getting interrupted by my constantly finding myself back in their room where they were busily engaged in a gambling game. Turns out I hadn't done my map correctly and kept missing the exact corridor that would have gotten me out of that section of the dungeon and on to the final battles - fighting a vampire and the Warlock himself.
After all this time, this is the gamebook that I'm planning to adapt to novel form for my next NaNoWriMo project.
Fast-forward from 1983 and I got into Dungeons & Dragons, both original and AD&D, got hooked on Dragonlance, and then discovered that a lot of people in the Society for Creative Anachronism are also into SF/F and gaming (board games, tabletop RPGs, and computers - these are the people who taught me to play Civilization, both the original board game and Civ I and II).
I spent 12 years active in the SCA, but didn't get into my persona of a 10th-century Viking woman as much as some other people got into their personas (since I was the Chronicler, Exchequer, and Chatelaine - mka secretary/newsletter editor, treasurer, and PR person - I had a lot of mundane paperwork to do). I did learn a variety of crafts, and even got interested in cooking and feast planning. I've got my persona name and a heraldic device, and there are dozens of people who never knew my RL name but only know me as Freydis of Gloppenfjord. Back in my SF convention days, I was also in the SCA and had to let my roommates know that if anyone phoned our room and asked for "Freydis" it would be an SCA person from Red Deer or Calgary asking for me, so please don't tell them they have the wrong number. None of my roommates were into SCA, so they thought it was a bit bizarre.
On to collaborative writing/storytelling... back in 2004 when I first went online, it was primarily to join the forum for a specific gaming company's magazine. What I discovered there was that a bunch of people had this forum-wide thing going called "The Faction Game" - which meant that they often made their posts in character, according to whatever was going on within the game at that time. It was a kind of generic FRPG thing, with royalty and aristocracy, NPCs, and a kind of cooperative storytelling that wasn't really planned, but we managed it without stepping on each other. Any of us could be mentioned in someone else's storyline, as long as we didn't object, and our ranks were tied to our post count. On that forum it was so unusual to have high post count that there weren't many Emperors (minimum of 10,000 posts needed), and there was only one Empress - who in RL was an elderly lady from somewhere in California, but who was still very young at heart. Dragonlady was a wonderful person, in-character and as her RL self, and when she died a few years ago, several forums went into mourning. I still miss her, as she mentored a lot of the younger gamers.
The highest rank I achieved on that forum was Queen (7500 posts), and was only the 4th woman to make that rank. I wrote a little in-character vignette to mark my ascension, and the people in the factions I'd joined (Rabbits, Dragons, and Fuzzy Knights) had a little party to mark the occasion (this is all written out as a collaborative story, in which people take up threads of each other's portions and elaborate on them).
We had some crazy in-story parties. Ever have a virtual pie fight just by writing it? I still remember the second one I took part in. Some people were so good at writing medieval-style slapstick, and this became a traditional part of the annual Christmas party. And one of the things about it was because this was fantasy RPGs, cleanup was easy - just use a housecleaning cantrip, and the castle looked spic and span again (along with all the guests).
We considered the staff to be fair game as NPC characters, btw, unless they objected - and none did. We treated them respectfully, and there was one storyline where one of them went on a trip, lost his luggage, and the suitcase decided to go on a trip of its own - other planets, other dimensions... what it had inside was pretty important, though, so its owner tried to follow it to get his stuff back - and
he got lost. Someone decided to send the senior admin after him, and he ended up having a bunch of misadventures. We did finally get everyone reunited, although the admin accidentally got cloned, and both versions of himself insisted they were the original. I don't recall how, or if, that got worked out.
There's a thread in Site Feedback here with a brief example of how I'd write a post if we had such an activity on CFC. The thread concerns the request for proper punctuation for the subheadings of the OT and A&E forums:
It is dawn, somewhere between New Zealand and London (or wherever Plotinus is at the moment). Ainwood and Plotinus meet in an open field, their seconds ready to act if needed. The two duelists shake hands like gentlemen, and take their places, back-to-back. Each carries a dictionary and grammar book published in his respective country.
At the signal, they each take ten paces forward, turn, and face their opponent. Opening their books, they hurl rules of grammar and forum management arguments at each other.
The spectators are silent, waiting tensely to see what will happen... and it is decided.
The petitioners of CFC have won.
This is from the thread
Unacceptable Oversight - Fix at Once
