Roleplaying. What is it irt. ESO

drkfrontiers

I hear some folks mention roleplaying.

Is questing considered role playing? Or is it something else.

How does one roleplay - I'm curious.

curtisnewton

Yes

drkfrontiers

Ah then I am a roleplayer Who-hooo!

RefLiberty

Why would questing be role-playing?

First google the meaning of the word and then you can ask for advices here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/categories/fiction-roleplaying

curtisnewton

Roleplaying can be different. It has much to do with your own imagination. Its mostly in your head. You can be roleplaying even while staring at your screen. You do not have to do sth. special in the game, or press Button A.

driosketch

Role playing involves creating a backstory for your character, and then providing conditions on your gameplay. For instance, maybe your character is law abiding, so you always refuse the quest to steal in Stonefalls. Or maybe your character is ruthless, so you always pick the non-mercy choice in a quest. Maybe your character is a pure archer or frost mage, or maybe doesn't use a weapon at all, so you pick sets and skills that fit that theme. (Of course, how strictly you adhere to your RP may effect your opportunity for group play.)

There is, though, group RP. You may come accross these players on the road in walk mode, or see them in an inn talking in /say channel and describing their actions in /e the emote channel. RP players engage in basically an ad lib play. If you are interested in that, you may find a guild searching for RP in the guild search.

Aelorin

Usually roleplaying involves making a background story for your character: (For future reference, i pretend the character is a male):
- where was he born? How old?
- How did he grew up?
- What are his talents and his flaws?
- Married? Single, Children?
- What does he do for a living?
- Is he a good, neutral or bad guy?
- Hobbies?
- -....

Once you have all these things worked out, you can roleplay with others. There are different RP guilds that cater to different people, but often they do "react" with each ohter. So it could be that you will be involved in politics, betrayel,...

A first meeting with another character could go like this:
You: Hello, I noticed you are staring at me.
Me: Me? Staring at you? *ponders* No, you must be wrong, I was daydreaming.
You: Well that got me interested, what were you dreaming about?
Me: I don't want to talk about that with strangers * eyes you up and down*
You: *Laughs* Let's introduce then. I am "insert character name". Who are you?
Me: I am Aelorin, an Altmer from Summerset.
....
Let's say that I want you to heal my wounds. That does not mean that you should press X and cast Grand rejuvenation. That would mean that you would go searching for herbs, cook them, put them in a small cloth, and then tie them to my wounds. So it is all imaginary, because you can not do these things ingame.

Technically, your questing is doing errands for other people. So yes, you could roleplay that you do labor for random people you meet. But as it stands, with the war, it would be really strange to do ANY questing in enenmy territory. Unless you roleplay as a spy or something.

Roleplay is rather elitist in this game. I applied once and got refused because my English and my RP-skill was not good enough. That is a shame really, I am allways open for learning.

Hope all this makes any sense

VaranisArano

It depends on context.

At its most basic, its playing a role. Experiencing a scene through the lens of a particular character or acting as that character would act - similar to what you might see in acting or pen&paper roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.

In that sense, you can absolutely roleplay on your own as you play the game. I roleplay my way through the quests as different characters - my fairly heroic Vestige thinks and acts quite differently from my arrogant and capricious Silencer.

In MMOs, there's also group role-playing. This is typically players working together to create a story, scene, or experience. They may be in a roleplaying guild. Examples I've seen were players talking "in-character" in taverns and a large group of players holding some sort of scene in the Grahtwood embassy (while I was trying to rob the place blind for a Thieves Guild quest).

Personally, I have close friends who I play ESO and D&D with, so its very common for us to blend the two approaches. We'll quest while acting out how our characters would approach the situations and argue over decisions and turning points together just like we would in a D&D campaign.

Aigym_Hlervu

That's what I could not understand some time ago too, OP. I've even quarreled with some esteemed fellow forum members here before finally understanding what they called "role-playing" (@VaranisArano, my greetings to you, mate ). So, yes, I started to play a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, picked up a class, started doing quests, earned different titles, sticked to the lore while communicating with others regarding lore topics and while forming my attitude towards local in-game and lore events, achieved something, but still I'm not considered to be a role-player in spite of playing a role-playing game, because I don't make any backstories and I don't speak to anyone as if I was playing those backstories .

This is why I wrote that Guide to Join the Ordinators Faction in ESO - I simply wanted to find some in-game lore-wise method to become an Ordinator instead of just saying I had always been the one. This is what I personally call "role-playing" - picking up a role a game allows you to play and play it. I've met some of those role-players in Senchal tavern recently. In spite of being an Ordinator on duty, I just walked on trying not to interfere into the process which seemed very complicated to me when I saw those chat messages they wrote each other. Well, that's only my personal approach and I respect those who create those huge backstories.

Reverb

I wake up and put on corporate cosplay 5-6 days a week and roleplay as a competent, adult, professional.

SantieClaws

Khajiit is confused why you would play with rolls. Sweetrolls are for eating. Why not play with yarn instead?

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

MudcrabAttack

It's really a chance to try something new and experience what it's like living in another person's shoes. You can take the experience to whatever depth you want, whether it's just decision making in quests, sticking to a certain playstyle, creating a character backstory or even joining in with a group of RPers.

ZOS has done a decent job lately by making more of the standard playstyles somewhat viable in the game, particularly in PVE. You can have a Bosmer archer, or a berserk Nord wielding only two hander weapons, or a sneaky cat with two dual wield weapon bars for instance.

The only character I'm playing that can't cut it in the actual gameplay is my battlemage who holds a blade in one hand and launches fire magic from the other hand. It works out fine in group D&D type play, but in-game I go with a dual-wield dragonkight to get through dungeons.

Varana

It's not me who gets to change English. (Unfortunately. As a non-native speaker, I have lots of ideas about how to change English for the better. Starting with spelling. ) Language changes through common use.

Cygemai_Hlervu's example is a good one for what can be done with they now. Some people start using it that way, and it either gets adopted by others so it becomes the norm, or it doesn't. (Or it does, but only for a while. Or only among certain groups. Youth language or other social or local dialects change that way.) So yes, of course it is being evolved - by the speakers of the language, collectively. And therefore, it never hits all speakers at once. It spreads, and depending on where you live, what form of media you consume, who you talk to, it may reach you earlier or later. Or you belong to a group who consciously reject the change - various language "purists" often try to fight it, or for other ideological reasons. Whether the change becomes the norm, and in which contexts, will become clear with time.

Strider__Roshin

I find it to be weird. Tried playing DnD once. It's not my thing.

Starlock

When asked to describe roleplaying to those unfamiliar with it, I usually bring up a couple of points.

First, since most people are familiar with movies and theater, I compare it to that. Roleplaying is basically acting - you take on a role and play your part. This means you behave like a character within the story being told. Depending on the nature of the medium you are roleplaying in, there may be more or less of a script to follow. There may also be persons other than the actors. Most notably, traditional roleplaying is grounded in the vision of a "game master" who is like the director of a theater production. The game master sets the stage and the direction of the overall narrative the actors tell their stories in.

There's a second way I describe roleplaying to folks who are unfamiliar with it. Roleplaying is cooperative storytelling - you engage in telling a story as a creative exercise and social experience that is fun for everybody involved. The game master typically determines the landscape of the narrative and the general direction of it, but beyond that, it's largely open-ended cooperative storytelling.

It's important to note that roleplaying looks very different across different mediums. The gold standard of roleplaying - traditional pen-and-paper tabletop games where you sit down in person with a group of people - is something developers of video games have long sought to mimic. The ones that really aim for that benchmark are the likes of Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, Outer Worlds, and Divinity: Original Sin. Player choice and consequence is central to all true RPGs because it is central to their inspirational origins. In tabletop RPGs there are no limits on what a player can do. Programs are necessarily limited, but the best digital RPGs provide as many options for player choice as possible in addition to a robust and flexible character creation system.

As far as ESO is concerned, ESO does not attempt to be anything approaching the gold standard of RPGs. However, it excels in creating a compelling landscape within which to tell stories, including some solid narratives spun by the developers themselves. You can definitely create characters and weave stories with them through the landscape the developers have provided. That's how I spend most of my time in this game.

SirAxen

Strider__Roshin wrote: »

I find it to be weird. Tried playing DnD once. It's not my thing.

The quality of your DM makes a huge difference for a person new to D&D.

[Deleted User]

Hello everyone,

Recently we've had to remove a few posts for flaming and thread derailing, content that is against the Forum Rules. For further posts please be sure to stay on topic to avoid thread derailment.

Thank you for understanding.

FlipFlopFrog

VaranisArano wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

DBZVelena wrote: »

@Aelorin they/them are gender neutral terms that you can use when you don't know the gender of somebody. these terms can be used for single individuals or groups.

Actually, that's wrong. They/ them should only be used to describe more than one person, he/ his/ him is for a male person and her/hers/ she is for a female person. I understand that not everyone is a native English speaker, and that's fine, but this is pretty basic stuff.

Not anymore. In the last years (or so), "they" has become common as a pronoun for a singular of undetermined gender. In many cases, the border towards the plural can be blurry (when talking in a general sense), but the actual singular they is possible as well. Language evolves.

I'm sorry but you don't get to change the well-established rules of the English language just to suit you. Using "they" as a singular pronoun is considered grammatically incorrect.

Gotta love derailing threads into language nitpickery.

As a native English speaker, I am perfectly cognizant of the difference between "formal, grammatically correct English of the type I would use on a test, in a paper, or when speaking to my high school English teacher" and the perfectly understandable conventions we use when speaking and writing in less formal contexts such as conversation or forums.

Using they/them as a gender-neutral single person pronoun is an example of the latter.

I'm not derailing anything, I simply don't see the problem with Aelorin's comment. He's talking about his character which is male, so would you rather he wrote;

- where was they born? How old?
- How did they grew up?
- What are them talents and they flaws?
- Married? Single, Children?
- What does they do for a living?
- Is they a good, neutral or bad person?
- Hobbies?

See how linguistically awkward you make it when you're obviously talking about a single individual, especially if you're not a native speaker?

Gilvoth

role-playing, my description:
in eso i simply pretend that the character i built is actually me, and how i would react to a world such as eso and as if it was reality.
and then i make choices based on that characters culture.
for example: dark elves and the culture found in Morrowind single player game and how they speak and thier beliefs and traditions.
what angered me and destroyed the ability for me to roleplay in that mannor in elderscrolls online, and skyrim single player, and oblivion single player games was that they brought in real life opinions, wording, and social views and even the swearing of real life was brought into eso mmo. made roleplaying a dark elf pretty much impossible.
infact, all the games created by zenimax and bethesda AFTER Morrowind release is the complete removal of the culture allready established. oblivion SP, and skyrim SP, and elderscrolls online removed what existed in the culture of dark elves in Morrowind made role-playing impossible for me in eso mmo.
in no way was my feedback intended to be an insult, just honest feedback.

VaranisArano

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

DBZVelena wrote: »

@Aelorin they/them are gender neutral terms that you can use when you don't know the gender of somebody. these terms can be used for single individuals or groups.

Actually, that's wrong. They/ them should only be used to describe more than one person, he/ his/ him is for a male person and her/hers/ she is for a female person. I understand that not everyone is a native English speaker, and that's fine, but this is pretty basic stuff.

Not anymore. In the last years (or so), "they" has become common as a pronoun for a singular of undetermined gender. In many cases, the border towards the plural can be blurry (when talking in a general sense), but the actual singular they is possible as well. Language evolves.

I'm sorry but you don't get to change the well-established rules of the English language just to suit you. Using "they" as a singular pronoun is considered grammatically incorrect.

Gotta love derailing threads into language nitpickery.

As a native English speaker, I am perfectly cognizant of the difference between "formal, grammatically correct English of the type I would use on a test, in a paper, or when speaking to my high school English teacher" and the perfectly understandable conventions we use when speaking and writing in less formal contexts such as conversation or forums.

Using they/them as a gender-neutral single person pronoun is an example of the latter.

I'm not derailing anything, I simply don't see the problem with Aelorin's comment. He's talking about his character which is male, so would you rather he wrote;

- where was they born? How old?
- How did they grew up?
- What are them talents and they flaws?
- Married? Single, Children?
- What does they do for a living?
- Is they a good, neutral or bad person?
- Hobbies?

See how linguistically awkward you make it when you're obviously talking about a single individual, especially if you're not a native speaker?

Given that ZOS has removed a good chunk of the previous conversations about grammar, I'm going to bow out of continuing that line of discussion. Have a great day!

But for anyone interested, a general set of starting roleplaying questions, not oriented towards a specifically male character as Aelorin did, might look more like:

Where were they born? How old are they?
How did they grow up?
What are their talents and their flaws? Married? Single? Do they have children?
What do they do for a living?
Are they a good, neutral or bad person?
What are their hobbies?
(Technically its correct to nitpick that the above questions grammatically refer to a group of characters, but its also clear from context that its intended as a gender-neutral list of questions.)

The questions I tend to use as a starting point for creating a TES character are as follows:
What race are they?
In what ways are they a stereotypical example of their race? In what ways are they not?
Which archetype(s) best represent them: Warrior, Mage, and/or Thief?
How do they relate to the various Divines, Daedra or other powers?
What was their life like before the Call To Adventure that kickstarted the game's plot?
How did they end up in jail/in exile/in the execution cart/getting sacrificed/whatever the latest tutorial is?

Personally, the character's gender usually gets figured out at some point in the above list, but it may or may not have been something I had in mind from the beginning.

FlipFlopFrog

VaranisArano wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

FlipFlopFrog wrote: »

DBZVelena wrote: »

@Aelorin they/them are gender neutral terms that you can use when you don't know the gender of somebody. these terms can be used for single individuals or groups.

Actually, that's wrong. They/ them should only be used to describe more than one person, he/ his/ him is for a male person and her/hers/ she is for a female person. I understand that not everyone is a native English speaker, and that's fine, but this is pretty basic stuff.

Not anymore. In the last years (or so), "they" has become common as a pronoun for a singular of undetermined gender. In many cases, the border towards the plural can be blurry (when talking in a general sense), but the actual singular they is possible as well. Language evolves.

I'm sorry but you don't get to change the well-established rules of the English language just to suit you. Using "they" as a singular pronoun is considered grammatically incorrect.

Gotta love derailing threads into language nitpickery.

As a native English speaker, I am perfectly cognizant of the difference between "formal, grammatically correct English of the type I would use on a test, in a paper, or when speaking to my high school English teacher" and the perfectly understandable conventions we use when speaking and writing in less formal contexts such as conversation or forums.

Using they/them as a gender-neutral single person pronoun is an example of the latter.

I'm not derailing anything, I simply don't see the problem with Aelorin's comment. He's talking about his character which is male, so would you rather he wrote;

- where was they born? How old?
- How did they grew up?
- What are them talents and they flaws?
- Married? Single, Children?
- What does they do for a living?
- Is they a good, neutral or bad person?
- Hobbies?

See how linguistically awkward you make it when you're obviously talking about a single individual, especially if you're not a native speaker?

Given that ZOS has removed a good chunk of the previous conversations about grammar, I'm going to bow out of continuing that line of discussion. Have a great day!

But for anyone interested, a general set of starting roleplaying questions, not oriented towards a specifically male character as Aelorin did, might look more like:

Where were they born? How old are they?
How did they grow up?
What are their talents and their flaws? Married? Single? Do they have children?
What do they do for a living?
Are they a good, neutral or bad person?
What are their hobbies?

The questions I tend to use as a starting point for creating a TES character are as follows:
What race are they?
In what ways are they a stereotypical example of their race? In what ways are they not?
Which archetype(s) best represent them: Warrior, Mage, and/or Thief?
How do they relate to the various Divines, Daedra or other powers?
What was their life like before the Call To Adventure that kickstarted the game's plot?
How did they end up in jail/in exile/in the execution cart/getting sacrificed/whatever the latest tutorial is?

Personally, the character's gender usually gets figured out at some point in the above list, but it may or may not have been something I had in mind from the beginning.

He's already stated that his characters gender is MALE, so if we know the gender why would we then refer to him as they, them or their? Especially as he's only talking about one person....It's ludicrous...

bellatrixed

Most of the time, when people refer to roleplaying in an MMO, they don't mean just playing the game like it's a singleplayer RPG. For instance "RP guild" means you're looking for collaborative in character writing with other players, not that you take your quest choices seriously.

Both are technically forms of RP, but if you go looking for RP in any MMO, the majority will assume it means you want to actually write creatively with other players.

I highly recommend that anyone who's interested in ESO Roleplaying check out the ESO RP forum.

ian31416

What first attracted me to role playing (way back in Dungeons and Dragons), was that I could pretend to be a hero with fast reactions and superb co-ordination. Unfortunately to be really good at ESO I would actually have to HAVE fast reactions and superb co-ordination - which is why I only do the solo PvE parts of it....

Starlock

ian31416 wrote: »

What first attracted me to role playing (way back in Dungeons and Dragons), was that I could pretend to be a hero with fast reactions and superb co-ordination. Unfortunately to be really good at ESO I would actually have to HAVE fast reactions and superb co-ordination - which is why I only do the solo PvE parts of it....

Yeah, you can often tell a true RPG by the extent to which they make game outcomes dependent on player skill versus character skill. True RPGs put character skill front and center, which is why they tend to have pretty elaborate character stat systems. Success or failure is determined primarily by character skill, plus a bit of randomness. ESO barely follows this model at all. We have character skills, but their effectiveness is governed far more by player button pushing skill (or quality of internet, if we're honest) than character skill.

On the plus side, you don't need to be really good at button pushing skills to tell good stories and have fun doing RP, whether it is your own solo RP or doing things in groups.

jircris11

drkfrontiers wrote: »

I hear some folks mention roleplaying.

Is questing considered role playing? Or is it something else.

How does one roleplay - I'm curious.

Roleplay: "to assume the role of your character in their day to day activitues" some such as my self roleplay heavily, where my character is not some chosen vestige but a normal khajiit with a particular skill set. She assists others for gold and notoriety. She has her own background and personality. But there are those who simply immerse them self in the ES story and that too is a form of roleplay, you dont interact with other players on the characters personal level as the more common rper dies but your still assuming a role that is not actually you.

Linaleah

Starlock wrote: »

ian31416 wrote: »

What first attracted me to role playing (way back in Dungeons and Dragons), was that I could pretend to be a hero with fast reactions and superb co-ordination. Unfortunately to be really good at ESO I would actually have to HAVE fast reactions and superb co-ordination - which is why I only do the solo PvE parts of it....

Yeah, you can often tell a true RPG by the extent to which they make game outcomes dependent on player skill versus character skill. True RPGs put character skill front and center, which is why they tend to have pretty elaborate character stat systems. Success or failure is determined primarily by character skill, plus a bit of randomness. ESO barely follows this model at all. We have character skills, but their effectiveness is governed far more by player button pushing skill (or quality of internet, if we're honest) than character skill.

On the plus side, you don't need to be really good at button pushing skills to tell good stories and have fun doing RP, whether it is your own solo RP or doing things in groups.

to be fair. even in the most mechanical rpg - player skill still plays a role in combat. how well do you understand your archetype. how creative can you get with your ability choices, let alone how they interact with other players in your group. you get more time to think over your options, usually in a tabletop campaign vs something like ESO, but that player skill and creativity STILL comes into play.

to the original topic. personaly I role-play almost exclusively on my own. because perversely, while I can do pretty well with table top combat (it does help that you take turns and between waiting for roles and other wait, there's plenty of time to strategize), i have trouble playing non combat role in improvisational setting where you have to be quick and more elaborate with your responses. (for me personaly it ended up me being completely out of character more then once, because I couldn't come up with appropriate responses on the spot. improvisation is a skill of its own, ya'll)

and that's the thing... you can roleplay to whichever extent works best for you, as long as you are controlling a character and making choices for that character - you are performing some sort of roleplay. some purists would say, that only this type of roleplay counts as actualy roleplay in ESO. pftt on them.

whitecrow

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit is confused why you would play with rolls. Sweetrolls are for eating. Why not play with yarn instead?

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Some of us like to roll around in sweetrolls.

Sylvermynx

For a great example of role play: see any post on this forum by @SantieClaws.

I had a similar issue when I started DMing AD&D for my daughter and her friends from middle school (which used to be called jr high *shrug*). They were like, oooooo new game - how do we play? Um. Mom. What's an RPG. Oh. Really? How do you roleplay?

Lucky me, one of the guys was an actor - and a director - for the school's drama teacher. So, he jumped right in with, well - you know how people get up on stage and do Shakespeare?

It went on from there, and for several years, we had a wonderful time with these kids roleplaying in the scenarios I wrote. And then of course, real life intruded - high school, prepping for college, then doing college, military, significant others, marriage, parenthood.

*sigh* I miss that. That was back in the mid- to late-70s. When we retired (1994) and moved up here, I went looking for a tabletop group (in Utah.... where games like this have a large amount of denigration - seeing the "devil" in them....) There were a few groups - but they were made up of guys younger than my granddaughters, and they weren't exactly welcoming.

Thank the goddesses for TES and ESO!

Nomadic_Atmoran

drkfrontiers wrote: »

I hear some folks mention roleplaying.

Is questing considered role playing? Or is it something else.

How does one roleplay - I'm curious.

If this is a serious question.

No.

Roleplay is when you build a unique story for your character and then act it out through questing, interacting with the game world or with other players.

Sylvermynx

Generally, I do have backstories for my characters. I know someone who has all the characters with very lengthy backgrounds written out. I don't really go to that length in anything but the SPMR games; mmo characters are more ephemeral to me. But still I can come up with a convincing backstory for any of mine (and that's a lot - 49 at this point.... some on my first account, the rest on the second one). Many of them would be sketchy - but my mains, yeah, they're "real" to me.

Then again, I write, so it's not rocket science.