[Guide] Storytelling Roleplaying Method (by Manovan)

Introduction

As I´m writing this introduction, I´m sitting in a small and insignificant cavern in the deep woods of Sweden. There isn’t much to do here without Internet connection if you’re not used to be outside of civilization, so I thought I might as well write something creative. And what’s not more creative than a guide of extremely advanced roleplaying in the World of Warcraft? You might wonder what kind of sick, twisted and sinful activities I`m doing out here in the woods. To tell you the truth, I…

What is it that makes roleplaying advanced? What is it with it that would attract players to try it out? Can anyone do it? Probably not. You need a creative mind. You must be able to fully see your character as a real character. Not as a real person because he is not, and will never be. View him as a fictional character in a novel or a TV show. In a drama that develops, or as you might want to call it – an epic adventure. The character will start as a zero and try to move towards one hundred. But as this is a never-ending game if you want it to be, that hundred might never be reached.

The advanced roleplaying is to no only give your character a face, but to give him a setting. He should have a goal (something whether only you knows or your character knows as well) and while reaching this goal he should face hindrances; conflicts with himself, his setting, his goal or other characters.

This way of roleplaying is what makes the difference of normal roleplaying and storytelling. Your character is now the protagonist of your story. And every story needs something for an antagonist. But first…

How do you play this? Is this even doable? Who the hell do you think you are?

World of Warcraft is a very limiting game when it comes to what kind of roleplaying possibilities a MMORPG should have. The environment, the game mechanics, the items, the appearances and animations, life and death – everything has limits in what can be considered realistic of the story you want to tell with your roleplaying. Understand that it’s important that you make a difference of what actually happens in-game and what happens to your character. You will need to make things up as you go, and add that to your story, whether or not your character experiences it or not. In most occasions, this is when you deliberately want to form your character’s storyline and change it into a direction of choice. You have made a decision, and must deliver that message to the public. Whomever that may be.

The point of this kind of roleplaying is to create a story, and it’s very rare for people who creates a story to not want to share it wih the public. Who is your public? It might be your guild friends, it might be random friends or to everyone who wants to know about it. You might want people who interacts with you in-game to out of character know who you are and what kind of story you are playing by. Share this your own way. I use forums.

It’s a great plus if you’re a great writer. Or if you have a good way to provide information in an interesting and exciting way. Pictures, comics, flash animations, poems, in-game footage. Personally, I write. I still don’t feel a hundred percent comfortable writing in this slightly weird and foreign language called English, but it has to be done if I want more people to read what I write. But what do I write? My way of providing character information and story development is to create a short prose story where I write what can not be played out in-game. Parts of it might have been experienced by my character, but then I alter that experience with words to make it more appealing to the public. This way I can also share my character’s inner feelings and ambitions; how his sick and twisted mind works.

What you actually play out in-game is your character’s now. His personality – and the beauty of this method is how that will change. Character development is the basis of a good story. The rest of this guide will show how you can create a story, how you can play by it and how you can tell it to the world.

The face!

The first thing you do is to give your character a face. Give him little of a background story and a basic personality. What’s his strengths and weaknesses? Is he a good or a bad person? Good and evil are of course a matter of perspective, but what I mean are the traditional meanings of the words good and evil. Common is to believe that a good character is altruistic while an evil character is egoistic. Try to experiment with that. You can balance out good and bad within him to make him more alive. Give him reason. Play Freud. Character development can be to start out as good and slowly force him on a path to evil, or vice versa. Or if you are a little of an amateur psychologist (or a real psychologist for that matter), scrap the whole idea of good and evil and just give him person.

When you do this kind of roleplaying you can’t start out blank and then make your character develop a personality as he goes. He need some basic traits to start with, something to make him real. A few personality traits which you remember or write down. I started out easy as I had my same character as a human before I rolled undead. Then I just used the same story. All that really made his personality when I started was this short summary.

Born in Lordaeron. Fled during it’s fall. Lost his family to the Scourge. Lived a few years in Southshore and Theramore, then became a paladin and was sent to Northshire Abbey in Elwynn Forest. (Human starting area). Personality: Slightly arrogant. Dislikes orders. Lazy.

From here I started playing on my human paladin. Casually. I joined a roleplaying guild and around level 25 I got tired of the class. I wanted to play undead, but I liked my character, so why not bring him with me? This is what happened:

Requested to be sent back to Lordaeron on a mission by his guild, Stormwind Militia. Got killed by Forsaken. Remains brought back home and cremated. (I wanted to be a warlock with a complete new appearance so I made a solution). Stormwind Militia threw the ashes into the wind. An apotechary from the Forsaken found much of the ashes and used it for an experiment, where he put it in the heart of a dead warlock. Woke up in Deathknell. (Forsaken starting area). Personality: Angry and hungry!

This was the face I had given my character when I started. Now I played the game as it was supposed to be played (quests and grind), and from time to time interacted with other characters. Though all my character was now was a Forsaken cliché. I wanted to give him more characteristics. So I came up with the idea of creating some duelism between him and the new body of his. I decided that the mind of the warlock still existed, but he was pissed and wanted his body back. Now I had created an antagonist. By adding that other voice to the story I had given my character a conflict and at the same time extended his personality and made him more unique. Would it be possible for the voice to get his body back in the end?

The setting!

As I had started playing and given my character characteristics, I still hadn’t realized what would be the point of this plot-driven roleplaying method. I had to give my character a target, something to move towards – a final destination. All I had was his inner conflict and that’s what I had to use. The inner voice wanted to get his body back from my character. It was the antagonist’s target, to win over the protagonist. The protagonist’s goal was to survive and keep the body. I came up with the idea of giving the voice more power the stronger the body got, and then (as this was long before the Burning Crusade) when I would reach level 60 the body could be strong enough to give up to the voice. I thought that this goal would open up opportunities for more fun and interesting roleplaying. But this was still only the conflict. My character needed a goal as well, he needed to be able to stop this from happening.

This far, all I had created was a face, a person. As I was questing in Dalaran and found the in-game book Belamoore’s Research Journal, I thought I could have some time over to read what was in it. That book changed my roleplaying completely. I was a warlock, more bad than good, and the journal explained the power of bloodstone and how it was used in rituals to summon demons. I decided to make my character very interested in that ore and driven to it by impulse. His current goal was to find out what it was, and why the antagonist voice in his head was against it. I thought that now I had given my character enough person to share it with the public, so I made a short story of when my character found the journal, read it, and meanwhile made dialogue with the antagonist voice. Then I added the newfound interest for bloodstone as a cliffhanger to make the reader interested in what would happen to my character next. This story (fan fiction style) was not really roleplaying as very little of it happened in-game, but it affected my character’s face in-game and I would also get to know what other players thought of my story. Those who read got interested, and I wanted to write more. 

I continued to quest and grind, and from time to time add another story in the forums about my character’s progress. At this time he had found the bloodstone veins in Drywhisker Gorge and was mining it freely. But my roleplaying was know more outside the game in text then inside the game in action. I needed to show other roleplayers that I actually played by this story, so I took some screenshots from time to time which I could use in new reports (forum posts) and I made sure it was brought forth in dialogues with others in-game. I also sent bloodstone by mail to an alchemist in the guild together with the journal (which I had saved in my inventory) and asked him to make some research on it. He reacted to my roleplaying and answered my letter with his results. I reported this to the public.

My story proceeded like this. I had created a setting in-game where I could put my roleplaying into action, and by reporting it to the public I could make people believe I roleplayed without interactions (when I actually quested, grinded and had dirty conversations in the guild chat). By now people thought of me as a fulltime hardcore roleplayer, but all I had done was written reports and given my character face.

But does my story have to happen in-game to exist? Is it the fact that Bob the Dragonslayer hunts dragons that makes it roleplaying, or the fact that you know that he is a dragonslayer when you pass him by in-game?

The twist!

Every good story needs twists. That’s when your character’s path forks itself and he must choose which direction to move along. If he walks left something bad will happen, and if he walks right some other bad thing will happen. Twists can be affected by in-game experiences and conflict roleplaying with other people. It can also be a twist of your own making to get your character into something you really want to add to your story. To make it more interesting or just to make a change. Whatever your twist is your character should always face hindrances. If he has a twist into a positive way (a love interest?) that should sooner or later change into a negative way (love interest dies or run away?). A fact is that people enjoy depressed characters more than happy characters.

My character got strongly addicted to bloodstones and they made him schitzophrenic and partially demonic. A change he wanted to improve by devouring stone. The antagonist voice got strengthen as the character’s mind got more unstable. Next twist was the formation of a guild, the Bloodstone Order, with devoted minions who fought for false ideals and harvested bloodstones to their corrupted master. Guild leadership leads to guild relations and guild roleplaying leads to conflict roleplaying. Soon thereafter, the next twist provided assassination attempts and spies within the ranks. A negative twist occured with the disbanding of the guild, and a short time of raiding guild and casual character progression (for the sake of experiencing more game features). This followed up by another twist where the character sealed himself in Drywhisker Gorge with the bloodstones for three months (which was a roleplaying reason for a three months break). Next major twist was the come-back where the character once again walked the world and now was more corrupted by bloodstone than ever before. His mind was unstable, the antagonist voice had much control and he was evil enough to once in a while eat the orphans of Stormwind.

I made twists in the form of cliffhangers when reporting in the forums and all the twists led to great character development – the enjoyment of the storytelling roleplaying method. Now I was more casual as I wanted to in peace experience the content of Outland (the Burning Crusade had come out). What was my character’s reason for going to Outland in the first place? I made another twist. My character was in need of dominance. He greeted the blood elves to the Horde with the goal to use them, as he is a man of words (good to manipulate). As blood elves are addicted to magic they wanted his bloodstone instead but as he refused they banished him from their lands. He sought aid among the Horde but they wouldn’t listen. None trusted this character anymore and he traveled to Outland to seek new goals. He hated the Horde, he hated the Alliance, next twist was to form a guild for the hateful only. That guild was not a success and got disbanded early. But the important thing is that it lead to character- and story development.

The storytelling roleplaying method is all about going on an epic adventure, but as it’s never-ending as long as you don’t want it to be, you add a twist whenever your character achieves a goal or something just monumental to how the story would progress. Your character will be alive and your story will be real to others. Whether you actually do anything in-game or not. You roleplay meanwhile you PvE and PvP, you don’t neglect it because your a roleplayer.

Conclusion

So here I am, alone in a cavern in the woods. It’s rainy and it’s cold, and I´ve been writing. In the refridgerator I have the hearts of sacrificed virgins and I`m warming my fingers at the lit candles on my altar of skulls. I have finnished a guide on the storytelling roleplaying method, something that might be too advanced for the casuals, but too good to neglect for the hardcores. I hope whether you’ll try this or not that you’ve enjoyed the guide and that you have learned something to bring with you. Now sticky this and tip your friends. Carpe diem, memento mori, see you in-game when I`m cannibalizing your corpse, ta-ta.