What is Roleplay? Episode Three

Stories within stories…

Warcraft has a considerable back-story and mythology informing it. Quests have purpose. You’re collecting twenty vehicle parts because some lazy gnome needs them to build his new invention. Real rivalries exist, as anyone who has been ganked more than once by the same enemy will realise.

Camaraderie is genuine and unforced. Bringing down a raid boss with your guild, or fighting for long months in a pre-made battleground or arena team will demonstrate this feeling.

Arch villains haunt the world with their schemes, and servers have their own legendary heroes and villains.

So why then feel the need to ‘go and do some role-play’?

To me this is akin to a group of Dungeons & Dragons characters, playing in a richly imagined campaign world, deciding that they will sit down and… play some Dungeons & Dragons! Thus creating a fiction within the fiction, but one that is contrived by the players instead of the Dungeon Master.

Now some innovation can indeed add depth to the WoW experience. On our server a guild called Theatre of Blood decided to put on an afternoon’s entertainment by staging a theatrical play in Duskwood. Other’s have organised parties or opened shops in Stormwind. These are natural developments within the existing structure.

However, contriving stories within the game or sitting in the tavern creating made-up material shows a lack of understanding that we are the players and that Blizzard are the DM’s!

Does it matter? Is this not a legitimate form of proactive creativity within the game?

It matters because those who ‘take time out to role-play’ are missing the point that role-play should not be distinct from any other part of the game.