It’s the End of the World as We Know It
Bricu becomes king of Stormwind in Cataclysm
The changes we’re facing in Cataclysm might be just as dramatic–but not as absurd–as the picture above. If you’re one of the lucky RPers who has a pre-planned Epic Story to fill in during this Lull, you may not feel the same tedium that a number of your peers are experiencing. Personally, I think trying to plan an epic in a post-Arthas world, with the number of weeks before pre-Cata content starts, is far too difficult to accomplish. I also think that it’s unnecessary. RP doesn’t have to be epic to be successful.
Pen and Paper RPGS refer to the gap between major events/chapters as “Downtime.” This is where one would tell their GM that their character would be, “training, going to dinner parties and maybe buy a house.” Depending on the level of complexity of the downtime-event, one would either assume that it happens, make a few dice rolls to see how it happens OR RP it out. While it is safe to assume that Blizz is going to give us some hint as to how much time passes between content releases, WoW RPers cannot just say, “X happens to Y player.” We need to RP during our downtime.
Downtime will give RPers a perfect opportunity to prepare for the Cataclysm. Rogues and Ne’er-do-Wells may use this time to begin to craft persona’s, disguises and insinuate themselves in the right social circles. Gnomes–especially those who will be rerolling as priests–may find that their arcane research is taking a more spiritual bent, especially given the success of the Crusade. Dwarven artists might find that their mediums–stone, paint, their painting subjects–are whispering to them. Trolls, who listen to their Loa’s, may find that other spirits are beginning to clamor for their attention. Certain Tauren may be listening more to An’She than to the Earthmother. A Human warrior may start hunting in Elwynn forest, only to find that they prefer Archery to swordplay (and maybe they find a wounded wolf cub…) RPing these interactions can set the stage for your character’s transition in Cataclysm.
Dinner Parties, Pub Crawls and other small events that we discussed (however briefly) yesterday can occur during one’s regular RP time. Take the opportunity to hear how other characters have addressed the end of the Lich King. Downtime is another great opportunity to find, meet and develop RP relationships with new RPers.
Last, but not least, this Downtime is a great opportunity to develop your character’s “homefront.” Given the lack of new content, is your Paladin patrolling Westfall? Is your priest working with those traumatized by the Horrors of Icecrown Citadel? Maybe said Priest is trying “experimental therapies” by leading parties into the Citadel to help their patients heal. Maybe your Mage is finally going to open that school they’ve been dreaming of–so RP night can become Arcane 101 Lecture night.
Downtime is an essential part of any RP session. While traditional RPGs let us breeze through it, in WoW we have the opportunity to set up and explore this aspect in more detail. Personally, I think this is the time to explore some of the upcoming changes in a positive manner…
…of course, some of the changes will be more dramatic. More on that later.
How are you dealing with the Downtime? Fill us in!
Filed in ABV,Character Development,Lore,RP,Screen Shots,World of Warcraft 11 Comments so far
Itanya Blade on 12 Aug 2010 at 1:06 pm #
Actually, we’re just coming out of a lull. Arthas has been dead for a while and most of the Order has been stuck on the front and in Dalaran for over a month working on clean up. They’re bored and grouchy.
Now is the perfect time for us to actually ramp up some tension. We’re currently working on a storyline where Keltyr and Dorri have to reap the consequences of their actions over the past year.
Bricu on 12 Aug 2010 at 1:49 pm #
I love it!
So Pill, has this been planned or is it being planned? Fill us in on how the wonky blood elves (not to be confused with Wonky Night Elves) are goign to get their comeuppance!
Corise on 12 Aug 2010 at 2:02 pm #
The Boomstick Gang is actually in the midst of some intense and exciting stuff. As far as I’m concerned, a lull is an excellent time for high-impact RP storylines, because there’s less distraction/competition from actual content.
There is a degree of challenge in sustaining the momentum when we don’t yet have a release date for Cataclysm… there are already plots in motion (some of them rather long-running already) that need to be drawn out over the next few months and will ideally hit their climax shortly before Cataclysm launches, so that the repercussions (of which there will be many, some involving dwarf shammies!) can be played out in the expansion. I’m hoping that we’ll get some pre-Cata in-game events, as in previous expansions, to give us a little indicator of when we ought to bring things to a head.
Semi-related tangent: one of the most satisfying things about the current Boomstick RP is that it has been building on events that have already taken place, sometimes years in the past, and often without any deliberate intent to set anything up. When things comes together this naturally and beautifully, planning RP hardly seems like planning at all.
Of course, all this is not to say that we don’t have our share of “downtime” RP — the little character moments, the pub nights, etc. But that’s par for the course for me, anyway. I’d say probably 80% of my RP is the “little stuff,” because it makes the other 20% more meaningful.
Bricu on 12 Aug 2010 at 4:18 pm #
Hey Corise!
How much of this RP that the Sticks are doing is planned? I got that feeling, especially from Mugs’ event, that the planning occurred a while ago.
If one has planned to run an epic event during a content Lull, I think that’s a brilliant idea. I still believe that if one has not planned the event, then trying to plan, organize and accomplish it during a lull can be extremely problematic.
Corise on 12 Aug 2010 at 9:34 pm #
…You can plan RP? What is this madness of which you speak?
In all seriousness… the basic idea for the Shadowmoon Valley caravan was planned out in advance, and all credit goes to Mugs for that; the specific details were worked out much closer to the event. Various assorted plotlines have also been vaguely developed prior to the lull, mostly in the sense of “wouldn’t it be cool if…?”. But honestly? Our best storylines tend to develop through spontaneous in-game events. The Shadowmoon Valley part of the plot has pretty much played out at this point, but individual players/characters are continuing various plots that have grown out of that one, and these are not really “planned out” in the slightest.
Many of us are big believers in doing as little planning as possible – improv RP. We rarely have more than the vaguest of outcomes in mind for our storylines, because it’s much more fun for us to take an idea and run with it, and see how other people contribute and change it in unexpected ways. To me, that is the essence of improv RP, and the magic of it.
The downside, of course, is the occasional plotline that fails to live up to its potential. But a) that really doesn’t happen to us all that often, b) it happens to planned-out RP too, and c) every success more than makes up for a failure. And if a plotline fails to come to a grand conclusion, there’s always the opportunity to pick it up again in the future. In fact, this is happening right now with a few unresolved issues from last year’s Dark Iron conflict.
Would many of our plots fit neatly on the traditional narrative structure of exposition-conflict-rising action-climax-falling action-denouement? Possibly not. Are there plenty of elements introduced that never get resolved and remain loose ends? Yes, much like in real life. But is what we do incredibly fun and creatively fulfilling? Heck yes, and that’s why we do it!
Bricu on 13 Aug 2010 at 4:06 pm #
Most of our events are “semi-structured” in that we have 1) Antagonists who have 2) agendas. We’ve tried to schedule events to occur on days when people are available, to give people a chance to RP.
When we plan an RP event, we create the problem that the players must solve. If the players figure it out–fantastic. If not, they suffer the consequences. If someone wants to take a thread and run with it, we whole heartedly encourage it.
I’m not sure I’ve seen an improv RP style event. There is a lot of improve on Pub night–and these threads can go anywhere to a full on event to a dead end–but nothing like the Maggie Maunt even we worked out a earlier this year.
Would you be willing to show WTTRP what a typical Boomstick Improv RP night looks like?
Corise on 13 Aug 2010 at 10:13 pm #
First and foremost, let me draw a distinction between “planning” and “coordinating.” Planning, to me, implies a good deal of pre-work and set-up before the actual RP, and from your posts, I assume that you are also referring to preparations done in advance. A planner (or group of people planning together) would be taking on the GM role, so to speak, establishing NPCs and scenarios and working out the problems for the characters to solve. We do very little of that in the Boomsticks. Now, we do some coordinating while the actual RP is happening, for sure – we check in with each other OOC to make sure that our ideas aren’t going to conflict, and to see who’s available to do what when. But very little is established beforehand.
I wonder if perhaps I wasn’t clear enough that what I’m talking about are not “improv RP nights.” We have those, too, for certain; Pub Night is a time-honored tradition, and it has often been a jumping off point for larger-scale RP, or a staging ground for significant moments in an ongoing plotline. But what I’m talking about are the sustained storylines, often spanning weeks or months, that arise out of spontaneous RP and are developed almost exclusively on the spur of the moment.
A fairly recent example would be the Boomstick Gang’s conflict with the Dark Iron dwarves (which I believe a few of the WFRs were involved in). That entire RP event grew out of Corise logging off in BRD one night during Brewfest; when I logged back on, her tabard was not properly displaying due to a bug. Hom and I decided (in about, oh, five minutes) that the Dark Irons had stolen it while Corise was passed out drunk. Well, why would the Dark Irons want a Boomstick tabard? To infiltrate the ranks. The call goes out: “Hey, anyone want to play a Dark Iron gnomebot?” Treeni volunteered to fill that role, and we left it entirely up to her what she chose to do with it, with no expectation of what that might be. And what she chose to do with it was throw a bomb at Homrend – which killed him. And… no one noticed for so long that Hom’s player decided, again on the spur of the moment, that Homrend could not be resurrected by usual methods.
What followed was more than a month of exhilarating, unplanned, utterly chaotic fun that benefited from dozens of highly creative individuals putting their own spin on a totally open-ended scenario. Nothing was planned out in advance. When the need arose for specific antagonists, we made them up. If someone chose, say, to investigate Shadowforge City, we’d decide together what they might have found. If someone wanted to be attacked by Dark Iron assassins, they’d go ahead and write up what happened. If someone had a possible solution for bringing Homrend back to life, we’d let them try it and figure out from there what effect it would have. (Which meant that poor Homrend was, at one point, mistakenly raised as a mindless ghoul, affectionately nicknamed Zombrend. And his spirit ended up in a Troll hell dimension.)
We definitely had some coordinated RP events, in the sense that yes, we scheduled certain events to happen at certain times. But the scenarios themselves were rarely anything other than open-ended, and plenty of our events happened spur of the moment because a number of Boomsticks happened to be online at the same time, and someone decided, “Hey, let’s have the Dark Irons attack us in Stormwind RIGHT NOW!” Cue explosions and spontaneous RP awesomeness.
Even Mugrir’s Shadowmoon Valley event was pretty loosely planned out. The rough idea was one that Mugs had months ago, and we definitely scheduled days for the caravan to be moving and whatnot, but the details of what would actually be happening on those nights was left very open-ended. And the stories that have arisen out of the Shadowmoon Valley RP are entirely uncharted territory… I don’t think the players or the characters quite know what is going to happen between now and Cataclysm.
Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough… point is, I think we approach RP from the opposite angle, compared to what you talk about. You talk about creating problems for the players to solve, and assigning consequences or successes depending on PC choices; our players generally create their own problems and solutions, and success or failure (and the consequences thereof) is usually left up to the individuals involved.
Corise on 13 Aug 2010 at 10:16 pm #
(And I do apologize for the length of that response, and the fact that it’s a pretty significant tangent from the original topic!)
Bricu on 14 Aug 2010 at 9:12 am #
Okay, the Boomstick/Dark Iron event you just describe is amazing. I remember how moving Homrend’s death was. Mugs came to the Pig–and the Riders were all a flutter.
We do more coordinating in our RP than planning, but think your right–we tend to approach it from a GM standpoint. We work with, and encourage, the participants to give us antagonists, plot points, events and results; however, in the end, the people organizing the story tend to get the final say.
As for it being tangential, that is not a bother. The Boomstick style of RP sounds flexible enough to pull off an epic event during the lull. If only someone would elaborate on what the Boomstick style is.
Ian, Homrend's Player on 14 Aug 2010 at 12:02 pm #
I think the best way to describe the Boomstick style of RP is “pick up and go”. When someone in the Boomsticks has an idea, it tends to get put into play in-character immediately, rather than after out-of-character discussion about how that idea will turn into a story.
An example: Homrend’s player thinks, “I’m bored. There’s nothing going on. What could I have happen right now?”
Homrend says into an in-character channel where there are guild members and friends, “Huh, that’s strange. Jes’ dug up some sort o’ weird box. Any o’ yeh free t’ come take a look at it?”
Guild members and friends say, “Sure, okay, be right there.”
And without discussing anything out-of-character, everyone who chooses to get involved comes together and can make up what the box holds, where it comes from, how it’s going to doom the world, etc*. The idea gets picked up, and people run with it. Homrend’s player never says, “No, that’s not what’s in the box” because he has no pre-determined plot or GM-ish investment in it — whatever someone contributes will automatically be more interesting than the blank canvas.
This style relies on players/characters willing to go along with anything. It helps that a lot of the Boomsticks are engineers or gnomes, which tends to make them curious by default. It also helps that the Boomsticks are rarely working together outside of RP events — we’re all off doing our own thing in scattered parts of the game world, so it’s perfectly reasonable for something to pop up that no one else sees coming.
Hope this helps to give a sense of our RP style; if not, I’m happy to discuss it more. And to bring it back to your original topic of RPing through the lulls, I’ll paraphrase Raymond Chandler: When in a lull, have a dwarf come through the door with a gun in his hand.
Cheers!
*weird box turned out to be an Earthen board game (a hybrid of chess and Mouse Trap). No worlds have been doomed by it to date.
Corise on 14 Aug 2010 at 12:34 pm #
“No worlds have been doomed by it to date.”
…That we KNOW of. Dun dun DUN!