Where are all the Role Players?

UGotBenched91

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Jeremy

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Try going to Riften (it's in The Rift oddly enough). A lot of RPers tend to hang out there - though technically we're all "role playing" when we play a RPG game.

Vevvev

ESO housing has allowed a lot of RP guilds to construct their own scenes and write their own stories without the intrusion of other players. Open World RP is still a thing but the vast majority of these guilds have their own RP hubs which is why you don't see them all that often in the open world unless they're hosting an event.

Lysette

In my mind there is as well not just one way to role play, but so many different kind of it. I've seen groups basically doing it like in a stage play - acting basically. Role play in my mind is something totally different than acting - it is dynamic and it is not just a theater play, but dynamic in the world, unscripted and unplanned and includes as well exploration and doing quests. But that doesn't seem to be what these people have in mind when they think of role play - so be careful with the term role play - different people have different ideas of what that actually is and in- or excludes.

bellatrixed

I suggest you check out ESO RP if you're interested in roleplaying. It's a community just for ESO RPers across all platforms. Because of how the game works and the overabundance of trolls, most RP events tend to be scheduled in advance or take place within dedicated RP guilds.

Lysette wrote: »

In my mind there is as well not just one way to role play, but so many different kind of it. I've seen groups basically doing it like in a stage play - acting basically. Role play in my mind is something totally different than acting - it is dynamic and it is not just a theater play, but dynamic in the world, unscripted and unplanned and includes as well exploration and doing quests. But that doesn't seem to be what these people have in mind when they think of role play - so be careful with the term role play - different people have different ideas of what that actually is and in- or excludes.

Roleplay in MMOs has traditionally always meant that you're doing an additional activity outside playing the game. It's only in the last few months I've seen a rash of people on this forum saying roleplaying is picking quest options and using certain gear--which is playing the game like an RPG, yes, but RPGs are still different from text-based roleplaying.

Roleplay has always had an "acting" or improv component since it dates back to tabletop pen and paper games like D&D. So roleplaying in an MMO is basically playing a tabletop game using the MMO as the "stage".

Lysette

bellatrixed wrote: »

I suggest you check out ESO RP if you're interested in roleplaying. It's a community just for ESO RPers across all platforms. Because of how the game works and the overabundance of trolls, most RP events tend to be scheduled in advance or take place within dedicated RP guilds.

Lysette wrote: »

In my mind there is as well not just one way to role play, but so many different kind of it. I've seen groups basically doing it like in a stage play - acting basically. Role play in my mind is something totally different than acting - it is dynamic and it is not just a theater play, but dynamic in the world, unscripted and unplanned and includes as well exploration and doing quests. But that doesn't seem to be what these people have in mind when they think of role play - so be careful with the term role play - different people have different ideas of what that actually is and in- or excludes.

Roleplay in MMOs has traditionally always meant that you're doing an additional activity outside playing the game. It's only in the last few months I've seen a rash of people on this forum saying roleplaying is picking quest options and using certain gear--which is playing the game like an RPG, yes, but RPGs are still different from text-based roleplaying.

Roleplay has always had an "acting" or improv component since it dates back to tabletop pen and paper games like D&D. So roleplaying in an MMO is basically playing a tabletop game using the MMO as the "stage".

In pen & paper characters were out in the world, explored and tried to achieve certain tasks - they were not just standing around doing a stage play .- so how it currently is, that has nothing in common with pen & paper - pen & paper had that as well, but not only that, it included a story and an adventure with fights and puzzles and monsters and things to overcome. To me what I have seen in ESO by accident what calls itself role play is just a shadow of what role play once was.

I don't say with it that it would be wrong - but it might not be what everyone expects with the term role play.

Kiralyn2000

Lysette wrote: »

In pen & paper characters were out in the world, explored and tried to achieve certain tasks - they were not just standing around doing a stage play .- so how it currently is, that has nothing in common with pen & paper - pen & paper had that as well, but not only that, it included a story and an adventure with fights and puzzles and monsters and things to overcome. To me what I have seen in ESO by accident what calls itself role play is just a shadow of what role play once was..

Of course, in tabletop, you have the options provided by a GM and not being stuck with scripted responses/etc. (Our tabletop D&D group has gone entire sessions just talking to people & hashing out plans). Pretty much every time I've seen people talking about doing "RP" in MMOs (WoW, Neverwinter, STO, Secret World, etc), it's been the standard emote-and-talking "acting" thing. Given that the usual questing & killing part of MMOs has about as much 'roleplaying' in it as a Diablo game (virtually none at all).

Thinking about it in IRL terms, MMO RP has a lot in common with LARPing.


(tl;dr - MMORPG and ARPG games may have "RPG" in their names, but there isn't actually a lot of roleplaying in the actual gameplay. Picking skills & assigning loot isn't roleplay. It's rollplay.)


edit: and I say this as someone who's terrible at 'rp', and is much more of a rollplayer. /shrug

SolidusPrime

There are guilds specifically dedicated to it. I found mine using zone chat, but check out the guild finder. I haven't used it yet but maybe there is a filter for RP.

Lysette

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

In pen & paper characters were out in the world, explored and tried to achieve certain tasks - they were not just standing around doing a stage play .- so how it currently is, that has nothing in common with pen & paper - pen & paper had that as well, but not only that, it included a story and an adventure with fights and puzzles and monsters and things to overcome. To me what I have seen in ESO by accident what calls itself role play is just a shadow of what role play once was..

Of course, in tabletop, you have the options provided by a GM and not being stuck with scripted responses/etc. (Our tabletop D&D group has gone entire sessions just talking to people & hashing out plans). Pretty much every time I've seen people talking about doing "RP" in MMOs (WoW, Neverwinter, STO, Secret World, etc), it's been the standard emote-and-talking "acting" thing. Given that the usual questing & killing part of MMOs has about as much 'roleplaying' in it as a Diablo game (virtually none at all).

Thinking about it in IRL terms, MMO RP has a lot in common with LARPing.


(tl;dr - MMORPG and ARPG games may have "RPG" in their names, but there isn't actually a lot of roleplaying in the actual gameplay. Picking skills & assigning loot isn't roleplay. It's rollplay.)


edit: and I say this as someone who's terrible at 'rp', and is much more of a rollplayer. /shrug

D&D has changed so much with AD&D - I have the old hardcover D&D book and it included as well rules for complete societies, how nations interact with each other, rule for mass warfare and stuff which is no longer present in the AD&D book series. But all of this was always about action, adventure, warfare, monsters - and this element seems to be missing by rp groups in ESO - I heard one even saying "we don't care about skills and levels" - so what are they role playing then - are they just cosplayers with some poetic text performed with ESO as their stage backdrop?-

Arunei

Jeremy wrote: »

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Try going to Riften (it's in The Rift oddly enough). A lot of RPers tend to hang out there - though technically we're all "role playing" when we play a RPG game.

I think Riften has pretty much died as a hub, everyone moved over to Fell's Run and now that seems to be the main get-together spot. Unless people have started going to Riften again, which is possible. I stopped going there over a year ago when stuff just got way too crazy for me to bother with, so I have no idea how 'popular' it is these days.

As for OP, it's rare you'll encounter open-world RP outside of a hub, and even for hubs it can be hard to find an instance that RPers are in. Instancing makes it very hard to run across RP, as it's a crapshoot whether you'll load into the instance that people are in, and there's no way to control what instance you're in aside from porting to someone in an instance different from yours. Most of us either RP in player homes or use /group chat when out in the world, since it cuts down on the number of trolls we have to deal with.

If you're interested in learning about RP or finding someone to RP with I'd be more than happy to help out, and that goes for anyone else who's looking as well. I don't go to the big hubs these days because of all the drama and crazy things that tend to happen at them, so pretty much all the people I RP with are friends of mine I've already known for a while.

zergbase_ESO

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Moved to housing due to ZoS ignoring greifing for most part. But what others have said it has all moved there. ESO-RP should have a discord less they're using dinosaur of Enjin still.

opaj

In the last six months, I've run into roleplayers out in the world four times on PC-NA.

Once I was the unintentional initiator, waiting for a world boss to spawn in Northern Elsweyr. I made a quip in-character (I sometimes try to talk in-character even when I'm not RPing), and I got a response. It turned out the other two players were adventure-RPing, and they took their RP out of group chat to include me.

Then I bumped into a group at the tavern in Fell's Run, so I dropped my quest and RPed there for the evening.

A few weeks ago, I overheard an RP exchange in one of the alleyways in Senchal. Sadly, I couldn't actually find them, so I didn't end up jumping in.

And just last week, I saw a gathering of people obviously RPing in Woodhearth--they all had lore-friendly names, had physically arranged themselves like they were listening to a speaker, and a few of them were emoting. However, I think they were using group chat, as they went about their in-character business quite wordlessly.

This doesn't seem like much, but this is more roleplay out in the wild than I've seen since I dropped my RP phasing guild about four years ago. It makes me wonder if there's some kind of RP renaissance going on in ESO--not that I'd know, since I've long since run out of energy to be active on the RP scene, sadly.

bellatrixed

zergbase_ESO wrote: »

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Moved to housing due to ZoS ignoring greifing for most part. But what others have said it has all moved there. ESO-RP should have a discord less they're using dinosaur of Enjin still.

ESO-RP does have a Discord, linked off their Enjin.

Enjin still has its uses for things like profiles and stories. I know I like using both Discord and Enjin for my RP guild since they have totally different functions. Sometimes it's nicer to browse a forum than to have everything in spammy chat channels.

zergbase_ESO

bellatrixed wrote: »

zergbase_ESO wrote: »

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Moved to housing due to ZoS ignoring greifing for most part. But what others have said it has all moved there. ESO-RP should have a discord less they're using dinosaur of Enjin still.

ESO-RP does have a Discord, linked off their Enjin.

Enjin still has its uses for things like profiles and stories. I know I like using both Discord and Enjin for my RP guild since they have totally different functions. Sometimes it's nicer to browse a forum than to have everything in spammy chat channels.

I haven't touched Enjin forever. I rather go thru a neat discord than waste time on a forum. As well majority of people tend to use discord more than a forum to start with. ><;;

Ithilis

We got a RP guild on PC EU.
Like mentioned above we use lot of player houses and group chat to avoid harassment.

Good Discords are ESO-RP (open for everyone) or Stormhaven RP (you need a member to vouch for you)

General hubs for roleplaying are taverns in the Rift and Nimalten in Riften and taverns in Wayrest and in Koeglin village in Stormhaven.

We sometimes rp in emote and say-chat and sometimes random people jump in. That is great fun!

ZaroktheImmortal

I actually haven't seen any out there but they had an article interviewing some

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57639

ZaroktheImmortal

Jeremy wrote: »

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, every so often I see a guild advertise that it is a RP guild. Other than that I’ve never actually ran into people actually role playing. Do the guilds just do it in guild chat or are there certain areas they go to to RP?

Try going to Riften (it's in The Rift oddly enough). A lot of RPers tend to hang out there - though technically we're all "role playing" when we play a RPG game.

I mean by that same thing we could argue all games are roleplaying as you're playing a character but I think there's somewhat more to roleplay than that.

kaisernick

Lysette wrote: »

In my mind there is as well not just one way to role play, but so many different kind of it. I've seen groups basically doing it like in a stage play - acting basically. Role play in my mind is something totally different than acting - it is dynamic and it is not just a theater play, but dynamic in the world, unscripted and unplanned and includes as well exploration and doing quests. But that doesn't seem to be what these people have in mind when they think of role play - so be careful with the term role play - different people have different ideas of what that actually is and in- or excludes.

Most rp guilds can and do have battles in their roleplay but they dont do it with real npc's or often event in overland because someone will likly come rushing in not knowing what going off and engage it so a lot of guilds will fight imaganary monsters often in created enviroments in players homes (a guild i am in used a player created caverns) we will often use overland for investigation and traveling so you wont see us fighting anything in overland because of players griefing and the said npc issue.