SWU Open House Recap
This past Wednesday, I had the honor of hosting Stormwind University’s first ever RP event. The premise was to introduce folks to RP in-game and to help people express their characters. Most that showed up (and there were anywhere between 10-12 as the night went on) had never RP’d before or had only done it sparingly, be it in WoW or another medium. This event was designed to be a low-key learning experience and to answer questions that might crop up. And there were questions aplenty which I’ll recap here for the sake of posterity and a one-stop shop to point folks to for future reference.
As folks began meandering to the predetermined meeting location in Stormwind’s Mage District, I began tossing raid invites. Almost immediately, I began chatting OOC, both to tell people what to expect as well as show them how to chat in OOC. “((This is the designation for OOC chat. The double parenthesis denote Out of Character chat. If you wish to be In Character, just remove the annotation before & after the text.))”
Here are a few other basic RP guidelines covered that night:
- Your character doesn’t know another person’s name unless you’re introduced to them. They don’t have their name/guild floating above their heads. It’s all about immersion.
- Be very careful not to confuse IC and OOC interactions. A prank made ICly should not be held accountable out of character. If this becomes a concern, discuss such interactions before they happen OOCly with the other person involved. This will save a lot of butthurt later.
- Long, involved background stories do not need to be developed before you first start RPing your character. Let it flesh out over time. The most important thing to come up with for your character when they begin interacting with others is a personality. Stick with it over their life and this too will help develop their history.
- Many, many established RPers give their characters accents. (I’m looking at you, Aely!) For the new RPer, this can prove a little daunting trying to understand it in a written format. That’s ok! If you come across something you don’t understand, read it aloud just like it’s written. This will help immensely. Alternatively, it’s ok to whisper that player OOCly and ask what they’ve just said in plain English.
Overall, it was a smashing success and I believe everyone had a good time. I know lots of people express interest in trying out the roleplaying side of the game, but fear doing so because of some internal hesitation. Feel free to use the comments to ask questions that remain unanswered or to let me know what’s causing that hesitation. And remember, the ultimate goal of RP is to just have fun.
Get to the Choppa!
Call in the Cavalry
Make It Count
The Plagueworks (10 player)
The Crimson Hall (10 player)
Even though I missed it, I love you so much for covering the “names and guilds are not floating above everyone’s head” angle. It drives me nuts when I IC walk up to a new character and they start calling me by first name. Gah.
It can make it a little confusing with emotes (instead of /me walks over to Cynwise I had to use /me walks over to the nearby group) but that’s why you try to do intros quickly, just like you would in real life.
Nicknames are another sticky point. Trying to remember if I was introduced to Aely with her whole name or just as Aely…you can always whisper the player to ask!
Emoting a character’s name is one thing. Such as /e approaches Fallah and holds his hand out. “Nice to meet you.” It doesn’t indicate that he knows Fallah, only that he’s approaching her.
As for Aely, Arrens refers to her as Madam Aely all the time…because unless I have her targeted and %t her name, I’ll never spell it right. *sheepish grin*
Wednesday was my first time at RPing and at first I wasn’t sure what to say or do. By Arrens providing a brief summary as to what the objective of the night was going to be I began to have a better understanding of what to say and do. I didn’t know about the whole introduce yourself to other characters so I kind of missed that point and just started talking. Now that I know that I will be better prepared the next time I find myself in an RP setting.
Thank you Arrens for the introduction, I really enjoyed it and hope to find myself in an RP setting again.
Mallara
Um…you’re welcome…honey…
(Yes, that’s my wife, folks. Who is being awfully formal with me for reasons that I don’t understand, but am completely unnerved by…)
(She’s doing it to keep you off balance, of course.)
I came by on a lark and missed most of the instructions, but it was a really great introduction to WoW roleplaying. Thanks!
It was great to have you there, Cyn. And I hope to see the…good…Ambassador back for more.
I had a lot of fun, wow, RPing is definitely a different way to play the game. I tried to do my homework and learn more about night elves before I jumped in with Fiyerro. What do you do when other people’s perception of a race doesn’t match your own?
I hope we have another Stormwind RP event soon, it was fun.