Hudson
Electron
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- Apr 27, 2016
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I have no idea how people would react to these thoughts I've had about roleplay, so I thought I'd post it as a quick thread and see what happened. If you read it let me know what you think?
Overview:
I've seen different styles of war roleplay, so I want to try and describe them and explain their benefits. To do this I'll walk each through the same scenario and show how they approach it.
The scenario involves a driver taking a Humvee into a battle, the Humvee gunner firing at hostile infantry, and then the passenger having the opportunity to take one of the survivors as a prisoner of war.
Deathmatch roleplay:
Typically this would be the case in a Battlefield game where the models and maps are immersive, so you're in the role of a soldier in a war, but the motivation is merely the enjoyment of defeating the opposing players and earning points on the scoreboard.
Killing enemy players is such a large part of the gameplay that people even seem to enjoy killing AFK players just for the sense that they successfully capitalized on the opportunity to earn an extra point, even though the enemy soldier wasn't fighting back.
In the scenario the player would take the Humvee regardless of whether it was empty or not, drive over to the nearest opponent, and move to the turret to fire it at the opponent until they were dead. Any wounded soldiers that were cut-off from their teammates were just easy targets to earn another point.
You don't feel fear or remorse, and have no motivation to try to take prisoners, and likewise none of the players involved would have a motivation to surrender, and it was never expected as part of the experience. The benefits are that the gameplay is fun and unrestricted.
So you're being put into the role of a soldier, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to roleplay your actions as if you were a real soldier.
If the Humvee was destroyed then it automatically respawns at the base after 1 minute of being destroyed.
Theatrical roleplay:
Typically this would be the case in a Garry's Mod gamemode like WW3RP. The idea behind theatrical roleplay is that your primary motivation is roleplay itself, not deathmatching. So if you can help it, you'd keep a character alive to maximize the roleplay you both get from the scenario, only ever killing a character(or player) if it serves roleplay and it's clearly what the dying player wanted to happen(or it critically serves the structure of roleplay).
In the scenario the player would either ask for permission to take the Humvee from the appropriately ranked officer character, or they already had permission to take it themselves. They would likely scrape a crew together from on-duty engineers, or take riflemen if engineers weren't available.
The commander of the vehicle would use a radio to communicate where they might be needed, and inform their comrades about what they were doing, partly to reduce the risk of friendly fire. Keeping in mind that in this gamemode there are no friendly indicators, so you need to identify friendlies manually.
When the vehicle arrives at the firefight the commander of the vehicle might direct the turret gunner to fire at certain targets or suppress a certain position. The hostile infantry would act as though they were in fear of being hit by this suppressive fire.
The gunner might stop firing at some point to prevent the turret from overheating, even if there wasn't an overheating mechanic in the game. Acting like this is done to help add some immersive realism to the gameplay.
One of the hostile soldiers is wounded, their rifle isn't in their hands, and they don't have friendlies nearby. One of the Humvee crew exits the vehicle to take this soldier as a prisoner. The soldier being captured doesn't resist, as they're in fear for their life and simply want medical attention.
With the prisoner onboard the Humvee, they start driving back to their base and radio the situation. Arriving at base they involve the military police and medic characters in taking care of the prisoner. The prisoner can try to communicate through any potential language barrier, make gestures towards their wounds, show of any insignia to show if they were an officer or an enlisted soldier.
The medics and military police players enjoy this opportunity to roleplay, and they happily engage themselves in it, until it runs its course and the prisoner is eventually released on something like a prisoner exchange program or just exchanged for "supplies" so they can rejoin their comrades.
Rather than hostile soldier dying like they did in the deathmatch roleplay scenario, in the theatrical roleplay scenario they survived and were involved in interactive roleplay. The commander of the Humvee crew writes a field report about the incident and notes the conduct of the crew.
The report can be used in reference on a forum for promotion applications/recommendations, and can also be used for officers to engage the enlisted soldiers with training roleplay if their conduct was subpar. There are a lot of rules governing what's allowed in such scenarios for serious roleplay servers like this.
Theatrical servers sometimes employ the shoot-to-miss rule to encourage the roleplay over deathmatching.
If the Humvee was destroyed then a theatrical roleplayer might see it as a roleplay prop and just spawn another one later on to use it as a tool to help tell character stories.
Self-interest character roleplay:
This is another way to approach roleplay in a Garry's Mod gamemode like WW3RP. Here the players involved still stick to the rules that govern what's allowed in serious roleplay, and they do involve themselves in roleplay, but they don't necessarily do it in a theatrical manner, and often the combat side of roleplay is closer to deathmatch roleplay.
As before, the driver of the Humvee may put together a crew and drive out to the battle, but they might not communicate with their comrades to the same extent. The gunner fires wildly at anything that moves. The passenger dismounts and runs into the battle, never to be seen again.
They might try to take a prisoner if the opportunity arises, but the prisoner is not complying. Instead, the prisoner stalls the roleplay, and it seems their player would rather just die than be captured. Reluctantly they agree to be captured, and eventually get into the Humvee.
They drive back to base and for a moment they get shot at by friendly small arms fire, but nobody's really bothered by this. At base they throw the prisoner into a cell and they're neglected for hours because its nobodys job to entertain the prisoner with constant roleplay. The players from the Humvee want to go out and get into another firefight.
The prisoner player now wishes they'd died instead, and vows to never be captured again. Impatiently the Humvee crew demand promotions because they'd managed to kill an enemy and drag one back to base, and would use this promotion to lift the permission requirement to take the Humvee out again, so they can keep fighting more often.
Technically nobody broke a rule in this scenario, although there may have been in-character regulations that were broken like the breakdown of communication leading to an incident of friendly fire. None of the characters get punished because none of them cared that much about realism
There could have been more roleplay to gain from the scenario, but if the players enjoyed the scenario then that's all that actually mattered.
If the Humvee was destroyed then the self-interest style might not include spawning another, because in this simulated war you're only working with what you've got. Spawning a new Humvee would be unfair to the opposite side that kept their Humvee safe. This adds a genuine layer of strategy where you might want to capitalize on the opportunity to destroy enemy vehicles because doing so has genuine consequences in the simulated war.
Conclusion:
Different servers have different cultures, and like-minded players tend to stick with their own kind. A theatrical roleplayer joining a deathmatch server might enjoy the deathmatching, but they still want an experience that's more stimulating than that.
The theatrical roleplayer then joins a culturally theatrical server and liked it more, so that's the one they end up playing more often.
At some point the theatrical roleplayer tries a self-interest roleplay server and decides they prefer the theatrical server better where there's more roleplay going on.
A self-interest roleplayer might enjoy all of the servers, although some of the theatrical roleplayers wished he wasn't so bloodthirsty.
A deathmatch roleplayer might not initially understand serious roleplay when joining for the first time, but could grow to enjoy it. If they don't engage with the serious roleplay then they will end up being in breach of the rules and likely get kicked from the server.
Self-interest roleplay might be considered as "lite-roleplay" in this case, while theatrical roleplay could be considered as "serious-roleplay" and the deathmatch-roleplay as simply "deathmatching." The problem with these definitions are that they change from community to community, and things aren't black and white enough to really stick labels to everything. Someone acting in self-interest might not offer much serious roleplay to another player, but they still engage with serious roleplay at times.
The only real use of this guide is to point to it and say "this is what I mean when I refer to theatrical roleplay." This can be important because WW3RP is a balance between deathmatching and roleplay, which can't compete solely on a deathmatch basis against other FPS games that have better framerates and faster respawn times, so there has to be some roleplay structure to WW3RP, and that can achieved through some theatrical roleplay.
Overview:
I've seen different styles of war roleplay, so I want to try and describe them and explain their benefits. To do this I'll walk each through the same scenario and show how they approach it.
The scenario involves a driver taking a Humvee into a battle, the Humvee gunner firing at hostile infantry, and then the passenger having the opportunity to take one of the survivors as a prisoner of war.
Deathmatch roleplay:
Typically this would be the case in a Battlefield game where the models and maps are immersive, so you're in the role of a soldier in a war, but the motivation is merely the enjoyment of defeating the opposing players and earning points on the scoreboard.
Killing enemy players is such a large part of the gameplay that people even seem to enjoy killing AFK players just for the sense that they successfully capitalized on the opportunity to earn an extra point, even though the enemy soldier wasn't fighting back.
In the scenario the player would take the Humvee regardless of whether it was empty or not, drive over to the nearest opponent, and move to the turret to fire it at the opponent until they were dead. Any wounded soldiers that were cut-off from their teammates were just easy targets to earn another point.
You don't feel fear or remorse, and have no motivation to try to take prisoners, and likewise none of the players involved would have a motivation to surrender, and it was never expected as part of the experience. The benefits are that the gameplay is fun and unrestricted.
So you're being put into the role of a soldier, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to roleplay your actions as if you were a real soldier.
If the Humvee was destroyed then it automatically respawns at the base after 1 minute of being destroyed.
Theatrical roleplay:
Typically this would be the case in a Garry's Mod gamemode like WW3RP. The idea behind theatrical roleplay is that your primary motivation is roleplay itself, not deathmatching. So if you can help it, you'd keep a character alive to maximize the roleplay you both get from the scenario, only ever killing a character(or player) if it serves roleplay and it's clearly what the dying player wanted to happen(or it critically serves the structure of roleplay).
In the scenario the player would either ask for permission to take the Humvee from the appropriately ranked officer character, or they already had permission to take it themselves. They would likely scrape a crew together from on-duty engineers, or take riflemen if engineers weren't available.
The commander of the vehicle would use a radio to communicate where they might be needed, and inform their comrades about what they were doing, partly to reduce the risk of friendly fire. Keeping in mind that in this gamemode there are no friendly indicators, so you need to identify friendlies manually.
When the vehicle arrives at the firefight the commander of the vehicle might direct the turret gunner to fire at certain targets or suppress a certain position. The hostile infantry would act as though they were in fear of being hit by this suppressive fire.
The gunner might stop firing at some point to prevent the turret from overheating, even if there wasn't an overheating mechanic in the game. Acting like this is done to help add some immersive realism to the gameplay.
One of the hostile soldiers is wounded, their rifle isn't in their hands, and they don't have friendlies nearby. One of the Humvee crew exits the vehicle to take this soldier as a prisoner. The soldier being captured doesn't resist, as they're in fear for their life and simply want medical attention.
With the prisoner onboard the Humvee, they start driving back to their base and radio the situation. Arriving at base they involve the military police and medic characters in taking care of the prisoner. The prisoner can try to communicate through any potential language barrier, make gestures towards their wounds, show of any insignia to show if they were an officer or an enlisted soldier.
The medics and military police players enjoy this opportunity to roleplay, and they happily engage themselves in it, until it runs its course and the prisoner is eventually released on something like a prisoner exchange program or just exchanged for "supplies" so they can rejoin their comrades.
Rather than hostile soldier dying like they did in the deathmatch roleplay scenario, in the theatrical roleplay scenario they survived and were involved in interactive roleplay. The commander of the Humvee crew writes a field report about the incident and notes the conduct of the crew.
The report can be used in reference on a forum for promotion applications/recommendations, and can also be used for officers to engage the enlisted soldiers with training roleplay if their conduct was subpar. There are a lot of rules governing what's allowed in such scenarios for serious roleplay servers like this.
Theatrical servers sometimes employ the shoot-to-miss rule to encourage the roleplay over deathmatching.
If the Humvee was destroyed then a theatrical roleplayer might see it as a roleplay prop and just spawn another one later on to use it as a tool to help tell character stories.
Self-interest character roleplay:
This is another way to approach roleplay in a Garry's Mod gamemode like WW3RP. Here the players involved still stick to the rules that govern what's allowed in serious roleplay, and they do involve themselves in roleplay, but they don't necessarily do it in a theatrical manner, and often the combat side of roleplay is closer to deathmatch roleplay.
As before, the driver of the Humvee may put together a crew and drive out to the battle, but they might not communicate with their comrades to the same extent. The gunner fires wildly at anything that moves. The passenger dismounts and runs into the battle, never to be seen again.
They might try to take a prisoner if the opportunity arises, but the prisoner is not complying. Instead, the prisoner stalls the roleplay, and it seems their player would rather just die than be captured. Reluctantly they agree to be captured, and eventually get into the Humvee.
They drive back to base and for a moment they get shot at by friendly small arms fire, but nobody's really bothered by this. At base they throw the prisoner into a cell and they're neglected for hours because its nobodys job to entertain the prisoner with constant roleplay. The players from the Humvee want to go out and get into another firefight.
The prisoner player now wishes they'd died instead, and vows to never be captured again. Impatiently the Humvee crew demand promotions because they'd managed to kill an enemy and drag one back to base, and would use this promotion to lift the permission requirement to take the Humvee out again, so they can keep fighting more often.
Technically nobody broke a rule in this scenario, although there may have been in-character regulations that were broken like the breakdown of communication leading to an incident of friendly fire. None of the characters get punished because none of them cared that much about realism
There could have been more roleplay to gain from the scenario, but if the players enjoyed the scenario then that's all that actually mattered.
If the Humvee was destroyed then the self-interest style might not include spawning another, because in this simulated war you're only working with what you've got. Spawning a new Humvee would be unfair to the opposite side that kept their Humvee safe. This adds a genuine layer of strategy where you might want to capitalize on the opportunity to destroy enemy vehicles because doing so has genuine consequences in the simulated war.
Conclusion:
Different servers have different cultures, and like-minded players tend to stick with their own kind. A theatrical roleplayer joining a deathmatch server might enjoy the deathmatching, but they still want an experience that's more stimulating than that.
The theatrical roleplayer then joins a culturally theatrical server and liked it more, so that's the one they end up playing more often.
At some point the theatrical roleplayer tries a self-interest roleplay server and decides they prefer the theatrical server better where there's more roleplay going on.
A self-interest roleplayer might enjoy all of the servers, although some of the theatrical roleplayers wished he wasn't so bloodthirsty.
A deathmatch roleplayer might not initially understand serious roleplay when joining for the first time, but could grow to enjoy it. If they don't engage with the serious roleplay then they will end up being in breach of the rules and likely get kicked from the server.
Self-interest roleplay might be considered as "lite-roleplay" in this case, while theatrical roleplay could be considered as "serious-roleplay" and the deathmatch-roleplay as simply "deathmatching." The problem with these definitions are that they change from community to community, and things aren't black and white enough to really stick labels to everything. Someone acting in self-interest might not offer much serious roleplay to another player, but they still engage with serious roleplay at times.
The only real use of this guide is to point to it and say "this is what I mean when I refer to theatrical roleplay." This can be important because WW3RP is a balance between deathmatching and roleplay, which can't compete solely on a deathmatch basis against other FPS games that have better framerates and faster respawn times, so there has to be some roleplay structure to WW3RP, and that can achieved through some theatrical roleplay.
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