Role-Playing

I have a story to complete…

(Continued) Polly’s Tale

Why won’t they role-play?

Everyone is in the same real-world room. Everyone can see each other in real life. They’re in MUD, but only shallowly; they’re still connected in Reality. Everything they do in the virtual world is subject to the same peer pressure as in the real one, because they still feel like they’re their real selves. They’re constrained.

Yet I’ve played D&D. I know that people can be connected in the real world and still role-play. MUD offers even more opportunity to experiment with identity—precisely what my friends seek. So, why won’t they step over the line?

They need permission to role-play.

As MUD’s programmer and the group’s overall leader, I’m the obvious choice to give them this permission. Yet how can I do that? And how will they know what to do when I’ve given it anyway? They won’t take direction—I can’t say, “Pretend to be someone a little more tolerant than you are,” and expect them to go with it. The best I can do is to demonstrate role-playing in action.

Yet even then, there’s a strong pull back to reality. I can create a character and pretend it’s a pirate or a monk or an enthusiastically chivalrous knight, but they’ll still identify the character with me. That could be tricky, as there’s no shielding context: Pretending to be an upper-class twit is fine if you’re acting in a play, but bizarre if you do it while playing chess. Somehow, I have to show that MUD is a shielding context.

If I’m going to break the mold, I’m going to have to hit it hard. I formulate a fiendish plan.

I create a character called Polly. Polly is a secondary character I use for testing things in the game. I say that I chose the name because Polly is like a parrot. Everyone knows Polly is my debug character.

When I inherited MUD1 from Roy, it didn’t implement gender. This was entirely due to Roy’s rush to write as much of the program as possible in the short period of time available to him; he felt that gender could easily be added later, whereas things such as communication had priority ¹. As far as both Roy and I were concerned, gender was merely a linguistic issue forced on us by the English language; the only changes it meant for the virtual world concerned personal pronouns in event descriptions.

Polly may be the stereotypical name for a parrot, but it’s a female name. This gives me my excuse. I add gender. Players are asked, “By what name shall I call you?” then “What sex do you wish to be?” Naturally, I use Polly to test my new code.

So Polly is no longer a parrot. Polly is a cheerful yet feisty girl who likes helping people but gets cross if they patronize her.

If I’d added gender to MUD and not created Polly, what would have happened? The chances are, people would not have played with switched gender, afraid of the disparaging remarks about their sexuality that doing so would attract.

I run that risk, of course, but I’m confident that I’ve designed Polly well enough that no one is going to see her as a sexual object, just as an ersatz sister. I also have the advantage of not actually caring if people say I’m a transvestite behind my back.

Luckily, Polly works.

People know I’m Polly, but they also know I’m not Polly; I thereby illustrate the massive gulf it’s possible to create between player and character. As MUD’s programmer, my kudos is sufficiently strong enough that I pull it off. People think, “If Richard can have a female persona, maybe I’ll try it myself.”

They do. The gates are open, and new lands await. Players laugh and joke about having female characters, but their other characters also begin to act in smaller, more incrementally different ways. Players have a freedom that they couldn’t have in real life.

I’m ashamed, because I’ve been manipulative, but I believe that overall I did the right thing.

Besides, I’m rather fond of Polly.

Postscript

Did any of this help my friends?

To be honest, probably not—it was by then too late for most of them. It did help denerd those that followed, though.

It also set a lasting precedent: Virtual worlds are seen as acceptable shielding contexts. To this day, playing a character in a virtual world with a gender different from your own does not suggest anything about your sexuality—just your readiness to spread your wings and fly.

I’m rather proud of that.

On Being Others

I told Polly’s tale for three reasons:

• To illustrate the importance of identity exploration in virtual worlds, and the emptiness of a world without it.

• To demonstrate how something that many designers take for granted as part and parcel of virtual worlds has a real-world beginning.

• To counter the popular notion among some researchers that MUD1 was written by a couple of one-dimensional hackers whose only aim was to provide a medium for adolescent males to live out fantasies of bloodthirsty violence ¹.

Crossing gender with Polly was not done as a means unto itself: I was attempting to show what role-playing enabled, and that it was okay to indulge in; gender was just the mechanism I used to do this. The fact that researchers almost invariably write about crossing gender in virtual worlds as if it were something amazingly special is slightly off the point. It is important, but no more so than any other severe disjunction between player and character. Maintaining the impression that you’re a 90-year-old ninja elf is far more difficult than acting as if you’re the opposite gender ².

Pretending to be your non-biological sex in a virtual world has a higher profile than other forms of identity dislocation because it’s the only “physical” identity cue that players have to specify in virtual worlds. However, it’s just one of many dimensions. If virtual worlds asked players to specify a real-world race for their characters, whether instead of a fantasy race or in addition to one (a Jewish elf, a Chinese troll), then this would be high-profile too ³. As it is, almost every textual world avoids real-world race; graphical worlds use skin tones and identikit face construction to allow players to present whatever look they want, but it’s never referred to as race or ethnicity. It’s just a look, which is forced on a graphical world in the same way that language forces gender on textual worlds ⁴.

MUD1 didn’t have race, age, class, weight, or any other physical identity cues except for gender; it wouldn’t have had that either if English was up to the job. Players could have still pretended to be the opposite sex had that been the case, of course, but they wouldn’t have been forced to instantiate to either. Constraints diminish opportunity.

Playing a character of a gender opposite to your own should therefore be regarded as merely one of a number of ways that players can choose to explore their selves; it is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6, “It’s Not a Game, It’s a ….”

For the moment, however, one of the consequences of this kind of identity experimentation is of more pressing interest.

As a man, there’s nothing incompatible with having a female persona (nor vice versa): Although men can’t be women in real life (without a series of very unnerving operations, anyway), they can be women in virtual worlds. Your persona is you, in the virtual world: You can be female there, whatever your real-life gender.

When you’re starting out, though, you have to play a role. You have to decide how you think a character of the opposite sex would act, and stick with it. Your own identity can adapt toward that of your character’s, but your character’s can’t (at this stage) shift much toward your own. It’s locked in place.

This brings us to consider the nature of role-playing.

The Role-Playing Paradox

Experienced players will sometimes speak of “wearing” a character, like they might wear a mask. The freedom of revealing less of their outer selves can lead them to reveal more of their inner selves. They can, therefore, learn more about their inner selves, and change their character so it fits more comfortably. Ultimately, their inner and outer selves line up, and character becomes persona.

This is often described as role-playing. It is not. Role-playing is about assuming a role and maintaining that role. The role doesn’t change; if the character changes, it’s only for reasons that make sense for that character, not for the role-player.

An actor on a stage is playing a part. Actors might put more of themselves into a part as they come to know their character, but they can’t change the part. A theatergoer might notice a distinct difference between performances six months apart in a run, but actors and their characters remain separate. Spending every night playing a poisoner may give an actor insights into the mindset of such a person, but it’s unlikely to turn the actor into a poisoner; crucially, it most definitely won’t turn the poisoner into an actor.

Players can adapt their characters. Role-players determine not to. Role-playing is therefore a sub-class of playing. Both are paths to fulfillment, and both have the same overall goal: Being someone else in order to become a better you. Unfortunately, the term “role-playing” is widely applied to all kinds of playing in virtual worlds—it’s even incorporated into the acronym MMORPG. Properly, though, it should only be used to describe fluid-player-to-set-character play. Much confusion flows from this.

I should point out that putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is a perfectly valid way to learn more about yourself; I’m not about to disparage role-playing here. What I am about to disparage is the misunderstanding of what role-playing is, and the design paradigms this misunderstanding has promoted.

Role-players map themselves onto a character. They don’t map the character onto themselves. In so doing, they can come to an understanding of what makes their character tick, which enables them to reflect on their own attitudes, beliefs, and ways of thinking. The key is that they change, but the character doesn’t. The default for virtual worlds is for both to change. As a role-player, you can only learn about yourself as you approach a character; once you reach the character, you can learn no more from it. You have to take another role if you want to go in a different direction.

This, then, is the role-playing paradox: As a role-player, you try to become your character; however if you succeed then you’re no longer role-playing.

In other words, the journey is the point of the exercise, not what you do when you get there.

So role-playing sets up the necessary conditions for immersion, but the harder you role-play the less immersed you get: Thinking about your character as a separate entity breaks immersion. The more you think about a line to decide whether it’s right for your character, the greater the distance you put between yourself and that character. The conscious post-editing of your character’s words means the subconscious separation of you and your character.

This isn’t how players and designers of virtual worlds usually see it at all.

Soft Role-Playing

Role-playing in virtual worlds is one of those concepts that is inherited from “parent” virtual worlds without a great deal of thought as to its nature. Consequently, over the generations it has become less understood. There are honorable exceptions—particularly among TinyMUSHes—but for the most part virtual worlds have a fairly relaxed idea of what constitutes role-playing.

One of the tenets of role-playing is that role-players must have a role to play. It doesn’t matter per se whether these roles are created by individual players or they’re assigned by some referee. Players usually like to create their own characters, but in practice most settings have constraints on the roles people can play (no cowboys in the court of Louis XIV). A midway position is therefore usually adopted where a number of scenario-specific templates are provided (musicians, advisors, guards, courtiers) and players get to choose which one they want. They can customize their character further if they so wish, so long as they stay within the character’s (and scenario’s) stated parameters. There will be limits on specific roles (only one person gets to be Louis XIV) and balance issues between generic ones (guards are needed—not everyone can be a courtier). These are rarely hard to resolve, though.

Although this template scheme works for role-playing in general (historical reenactments, Murder on the Luxor Express dinner parties, theatrical productions), why does it appear in virtual worlds? In almost every virtual world, one of the major decisions players have to make when they create their characters is what class they have to be. Why is that?

Early MUDs did not have character classes. Some second age virtual words introduced them, but it wasn’t until the third age that they really took off. Character classes ¹ were absorbed from AD&D, which ultimately got them from the miniature wargames (that is, wargames using toy soldier “miniatures”) that gave rise to D&D.

In a miniature wargame, units are categorized much as they are in real life: A Napoleon-era general might think in terms of cavalry, infantry, and artillery units, each with its own particular strengths and weaknesses; a player in a miniature wargame will also look on their units this way, with perhaps special miniatures to represent major individuals on the battlefield (for example, Napoleon). If the battle were in a fantasy setting (say, the Battle of the Five Armies from The Hobbit), there might be units representing monsters (wargs, orcs) and specialist troops (elven archers, dwarven axe-wielders), plus a few for individuals (Bilbo, Gandalf, Beorn, Thorin) and wild cards (eagles). A more generic fantasy setting might have units for magic-users, fighters, holy men, and so on, their powers on the battlefield defined in terms of a quick-and-easy level rating.

Taking these characters out of the battlefield and into the dungeon, their classes and levels were already set; their abilities could be defined in terms of those classes and levels. Thus, when role-playing evolved as a concept in gaming, character classes were already there. However, role-playing meant taking on the role of an individual (as opposed to a unit comprising several individuals), not the role defined by a class.

This traces how character classes came to be a part of virtual worlds, but it doesn’t explain why.

Well, there are four reasons:

• Expectation. Virtual world designers had played AD&D. AD&D had levels and classes; virtual worlds had only levels, therefore they ought to have classes, too.

• Individuality. Players like to feel unique. If a virtual world isn’t richly featured enough for players to differentiate themselves by their deeds, give them one that enforces differentiation.

• Balance. If one playing style leads to greater success than others, most people will adopt it. By deliberately partitioning the player base such that there are several styles, each of which is dependent on the others for success, a virtual world is much more interesting. Adventuring groups form social bonds, too.

• Direction. Not everyone knows who they want to be. If you stand at a crossroads, can you decide which road to take if there are no signs? Classes provide signs.

Note that none of these have much to do with role-playing. Somewhere, players and designers alike lost sight of what it meant. Instead of class being an aspect of an individual, individuals were aspects of a class. Role-playing meant being a thief or a healer, not being Knuckles or Justina.

Thus, we have two paradigms for role-playing in virtual worlds: classless and classbound ².

I much prefer classless. Here’s why.

Let’s consider that list of reasons why classes appear in virtual worlds. The first one, expectation, is not really an issue. Nowadays if players see a virtual world with no classes when they were expecting classes, they might want to know why classes are missing—that’s okay, we can tell them. They’re not going to ignore a world through some sense of “incompletion,” though, if indeed they ever were before.

The next reason, individuality, is a consequence of a world’s lack of depth. If your world is so shallow that players can’t do different things unless you give them different tools, you need classes. Today’s virtual worlds should not be this shallow, though. Modern tabletop role-playing games use skills systems rather than classes; this build-from-pieces approach offers far greater variety than the cookie-cutting land of classbound systems.

Balance can be an issue. If there is no explicit fence keeping abilities separate, what is to stop someone from maxing out in fighting skills, magic, and healing, and becoming invincible ³? Won’t everyone end up looking and acting the same? Again, this assumes that your virtual world is so impoverished that it can only offer players one overarching goal (normally “kill things to get stuff so you can kill more things”). However, at a practical level balance is dependent on how advancement works. If it takes you the same time to become a level 20 fighter/magic-user that someone else takes to become a level 40 magic-user, you have the worst deal—they’d probably beat you easily in combat. People can still take different career paths and parties of specialists will still be formed. To stop getting maxed-out killing machines, either introduce permanent death into your virtual world or take off the level caps.

The final reason for having classes is to give players a vision of the future. They choose a destination, board a train, and know where they’re going. The same can be done with character kits, though—skill sets optimized for a particular playing style template. Chapter 5 gives a few other ways to do it. Players seeking direction want to know that fighter and magic-user are careers it’s sensible to pursue; they don’t care whether these are implemented as classes or as kits.

Okay, so a classless “role-playing” system can be tweaked to do what a classbound one can. There are a few other minor reasons for using classes, but solutions to those can be hacked together, too. This doesn’t explain why anyone would want to use a classless system, though. Classes are easy to implement. What does a classless system offer that a classbound system doesn’t?

It offers change.

People play virtual worlds to explore their identities: You pretend to be someone else in order to become a better you.

In classbound role-playing, you begin your journey of self-improvement with a definite goal in mind. If you want to be mysterious, aloof, singular, and powerful, you become a mage; if you want to be quick-witted, spirited, independent yet lovable, you become a rogue; if you want to be strong, noble, valiant, and victorious, you become a fighter. Or you pick one of the many sub-classes that make this virtual world different to the one next door.

It’s aspirational. You decide where you want to go, then you board the train and the virtual world takes you there.

But it’s a train. It runs on rails. You can’t get off. You have to start with another character and board a different train if you want to go somewhere else. There may be a branch line for “fighters who do some healing” or “thieves who thieve for good,” but they’re still lines. Between the lines is a whole continuum of experience that you can’t ever reach. You may get the occasional glimpse through the window, but you can’t ever visit it no matter how much you like the scenery.

In a classless system, you can go where you want. You may start out intending to be a fighter and have your character take a job guarding a merchant caravan. From there, you may try some minor trading yourself so you can improve your weapons and armor, but discover that you prefer the trading to the fighting so you switch to being a merchant full time. Or maybe the bandits who raid the caravan are fighting for freedom from a tyrannical ruler, so you join up with them, rising through the ranks until you find yourself a major revolutionary figure who is given the job of reconstructing the country when peace finally comes. Now if at character-creation time you’d been offered the chance to become a merchant or an aid worker, would you have taken it? No, because you wanted to be a fighter. In a classless system, you can still start off as a fighter; you can still stay a fighter, if that’s where your calling lies. However, you can also veer off and become something else if the muse takes you.

In a classbound system, you can only be what the designers determine you can be. In a classless system, you can be something that the designers haven’t even dreamed of.

It’s possible to tinker with class systems to allow some degree of lateral movement. EverQuest 2 has a funnel-like system, which doesn’t force newbies to make any major decisions as to what class they want to be. As they go up levels, however, they have to specialize more and more, until they become locked in to their chosen career. This is a great way of helping newbies settle in, and by the time they commit themselves to a single class they’re pretty sure it’s the right one. Unfortunately, it’s still only the right one of those available; it’s still only the right choice for now.

The same argument that applies to classes also can be applied to character races. Just as magic-users differ from fighters, so magic-users that are human differ from magic-users that are elves ⁴. If you take on the role of a blue-skinned, triton-waving, lizardoid fighter then you probably will find things about yourself that you wouldn’t if you didn’t, but it could well be an unsatisfactory experience. It has the same dual player/character drift that you get in classless systems, but the character is constrained; when it reaches the boundaries of what the virtual world allows, the player still wants it to move, but it can’t.

This is soft role-playing: The character can change, but not always by enough to supply the player’s needs. In hard role-playing, the character remains fixed, which sounds like it should be even worse; however, the player changes willfully, and can therefore be more systematic about challenging their attitude and behavior. After the hard role-player has wrung a role dry, they drop it and choose another; soft role-players have no such option, which can make for a frustrating time.

As a virtual world identity-exploration experience, role-playing works. Staying with one role the whole time is inherently limiting, of course, but it can be more intense. Unfortunately, hard role-play immersion is only ever ephemeral. Nevertheless, done right it can be very rewarding for players: MUSHes in particular are often entirely role-play in nature, with no one playing out-of-character (OOC). Role-playing also is

perfectly compatible with virtual worlds in which the majority of players are not role-playing; most of the time, it’s only a problem if people try to use it as a shield (“That wasn’t me who insulted your mother, it was my other character.” Yeah, right.).

That’s most of the time….

Very, very occasionally, over-enthusiastic role-playing can lead to problems—problems that provoke some of the most profound, negative emotions that players in virtual worlds ever have the misfortune to feel.