The Play in Roleplay

“Something need doing?”

Those 3 words might seem random to you, but to me they represent an entirely imagined concept. In Warcraft 3, when you selected your first unit playing as Orcs, the Peon, out of the random responses,  my favorite of which was this line. Why? Because in one simple three word line, delivered in a cookie monster meets naive but disgruntled laborer voice, it gave the feel of an inspired character.

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And that in itself is inspiring. The above image shows a post to the forms of a fantasy roleplay server I played on, where you might meet someone playing a character inspired in part by our Peon example; Or perhaps a different, full-of-themselves Drow who’s mostly racist against Orcs, stereotyping all of them to be similar to the aforementioned Peon. The point is: in order to play, we must let ourselves be inspired, and order to create play we must create the inspirational. Take the website Storium for example – A complete convergence of D&D meets new-age online collaboration, this site has allowed the laws of play to be made malleable for any participant or creative. And yes, there’s enjoyment to be had in the creation of lengthy texts.

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So then lets explore for a moment, these two images posted. If willing, I encourage you to read through them, then tell me what your inferred impression of the character I created, “Reyn Sylvar” is?

 

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