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.