In a fascinating essay at Waypoint, a dedicated player game master named Cass Marshall shares her experience cultivating and running a roleplaying community within The Secret World. Despite the MMO already having plenty of story, some players desired even more immersion and narrative.
That’s when Marshall and others like her stepped in to write scenes and conduct extensive roleplaying campaigns both inside and outside of the game itself. “I focused on hiring voice actors to create audio logs, drawing art, and figuring out environments — all of which led to running four-hour roleplay sessions for a dozen people once a month,” she said.
Unfortunately, the lines between reality and fiction started to blur, and tensions rose between players as well as the RP creators. Marshall said that even while her work was in high demand and quite buzzworthy, it fed into an “unhealthy” environment. Finally, after some health issues, she stepped away from managing roleplaying but not the game itself. It didn’t kill the RP community, but it effectively ended her part in it for better and for worse.
