It started with my character saying one word. “No.”
Both men on the bridge were surprised to hear it, least of all from someone who at least had purported up to this point to be a bandit. “What do you mean by that?” asked the taller man first, who seemed to have a hint that something was up.
My character pointed her sword at the shorter man, who was growing rapidly aghast. “This isn’t genuine. He hired us to pretend at being bandits so he could rescue you and possibly have a reason to rough up your friend because he thinks she’s the reason you aren’t with him any more.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t need the coin in the first place. I was doing this to see how far he was willing to take the act and how dangerous he actually is. The answer to the latter question should be all the evidence you need that you shouldn’t be with him.”
That was when the actual fight started. It was a pretty good scene. And yes, it all happened in an MMORPG.
Here’s the thing about roleplaying: It is very, very dependent upon the group that you are running with at any given moment.
This is true for any sort of game, tabletop or otherwise. I’ve heard horror stories about tabletop Dungeons & Dragons games where the primary mode of play was a group of players who all played characters named after themselves, and the party would frequently descend into backstabbing over who got a magic item. Even a kind of useless one. I assume those kids were having fun, but it sounds miserable to me.
But if you’ve ever played at a tabletop, you know how much the group matters. You know that your group is going to have the one player who is super in-character all the time and the one player who is closest to just being along for the ride because every group has those people. If you’re lucky, the person just along for the ride is still fun and enjoyable to be around. Sometimes that isn’t the case. It’s just the way that things are.
We act like somehow this isn’t supposed to be the case for an MMORPG.
Over the course of the years I have roleplayed in MMORPGs, I have had characters die, get betrayed, get married, solve huge problems, go on adventures, forge lifelong friendships, watch friendships turn toxic, and basically do everything you could hope to have happen. I’ve played a character who believes in her fundamental awfulness slowly believe there might be some good in her yet. I’ve had someone stare down the choice between good and evil and decide he would rather be a devil. I’ve had some great experiences.
Which is why it always surprises me when people say that all MMORPG roleplaying is just nonsense or ERP in equal mixture. I don’t think the person saying that is lying about having that experience. But that’s not because of the medium but because of the people.
And to be clear, I get it. There are places that people only passingly familiar with roleplaying flag as “hubs” which are, in fact, basically just big open-air hookup spots. Goldshire in Moon Guard or the Quicksand on Balmung exist, sure, but they are not indicative of roleplaying in their respective MMORPGs. They’re not even indicative of roleplaying on those servers. They’re outliers, mostly populated by tourists who are aware of the reputation of these places and are looking for what is offered.
It’s the equivalent of two undercover cops trying to trick one another into offering to sell the other some drugs because neither of them realizes the other one is a cop. And if that’s what you’re basing your opinion on, you don’t actually have an experience of these things to draw upon.
That’s not to say that everyone you meet on a roleplaying server is one of the best roleplayers you will ever meet. Firstly, I don’t actually know the roleplayers you know. Maybe you know a lot of people who are really good at this in the tabletop scene. I’ve met a lot of people who are really bad at it, too! But the point is that you have to recognize that the group of people you are interacting with is not just some minor part of roleplaying in an MMORPG. It’s not a secondary feature. It’s a core element.
It wasn’t that long ago that I did a whole article about how roleplaying is more common than you think. This is the flip side of that. If you’re looking for roleplaying in an MMORPG to be a comparable element to what it’s like around a tabletop, you need to have a good group first and foremost. And if you don’t have that… well, it’s not going to happen by accident.
Please understand that I am saying this not as a way of shaming people who have not been successful in finding a good group. Finding a good group is a perfect case study of how things can be simple without being easy. All you need to do is find people who are fun to play alongside and have fun characters that are satisfying to play with. Very simple! But not even remotely easy. If it were easy, no one would ever opt for the alternative.
And by the same token, if you don’t feel like bothering, that’s not some sort of failing. It is understandable if you already have a good tabletop group, for example, that you might not really feel like searching for a good group in an MMORPG. Or you might decide that with X amount of time to play on a nightly basis, you would rather spend that time on content. If that means no big roleplaying stories like I described earlier in the column, oh well.
My point, rather, is to accept that this is something that does exist.
There are columns to be written about the ERP tradition in MMORPGs (which also predates MMORPGs and probably will never be written here because that ain’t remotely family friendly), but that is not the entirety of MMORPG roleplaying. Just like the entirety of tabletop roleplaying is not five teenagers who all low-key hate one another making dungeons full of traps designed to kill the rest of the group’s beloved characters. And it also isn’t all about a group of highly skilled people providing rich characters that deserve fanart. It’s fine if you like productions like Critical Role, but that is a show produced by skilled people with a specific goal, not actual totally spontaneous roleplay.
Which is fine. These things cover a wide spectrum. And it’s totally possible that you’ve never had a good group of people to roleplay with in MMORPGs, just as it’s possible that you’ve never seen a black swan. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist; it just means that you haven’t seen one. And if you become very certain they can’t exist, you might feel very very silly when a bunch of Dutch explorers prove you wrong.
Trust me, if you know history, that joke is very funny.
If you’re an old hand at roleplaying in MMOs, you can look to Eliot Lefebvre’s Storyboard as an irregular column addressing the common peaks and pitfalls possible in this specialized art of interaction. If you’ve never tried it before, you can look at it as a peek into how the other half lives. That’s something everyone can enjoy, just like roleplaying itself.
