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Posted by Manda(rific) on June 28, 2010 in NERD ALERT, Ramble | 2 comments

For those of you that have been following along politely with no particular comments, quietly ignoring the fact that behind the pink stripes is a bonafied geek girl, be warned: this post is full of all sorts of nerdy things.

People often like to give me suggestions for the Vault, often slightly unaware that I’ve been doing this for ten years and, well, there’s not a lot that I either haven’t heard yet or have tried and miserably failed with. There is the occasional good idea, but for the most part, it’s kind of explored territory. Most decisions I come to are in regards to how people have behaved in the past – if, you know, for the past three years something has not been working, it’s time to change it.

And so, it is after being approached twice (twice!) in the past 24 hours about changes to my site that I feel I need to share with the world what I shared with the suggesters: There are different kinds of role playing out there, each with a different audience. Whoa! This is new and radical! Role Players are DIFFERENT? They have DIFFERENT interests?

The largest place this is evident is that, well, when you’re playing a tabletop game, like D&D, it’s all about what works and what doesn’t work and you can TRY to do things but they might not entirely be successful and you better roll the dice to attack becuase it would be metagaming to just say “I attack! It works!” These numbers and systems and regulations are what makes tabletop gaming what it is – and what sets it apart from the forums. As an additional awkward fact, most of the people interested in this sort of roleplaying are, well, dudes. There are some ladies, naturally, but I’d certainly say it’s a genre crawling with dudes. The typical “game” might look something like this:

Anyway, Roleplaying Forums are, for those of you unfamiliar with them (I’m looking at you, Tabletop Geeks.) more of… dare I use this phrase, collaborative story writing ¹. I feel dirty just saying it. Most people who role play on forums aren’t looking for the system or the combat or the EXCITING, they are looking to… write. Most of the people I encounter on forum based games are either english majors or aspiring novelists, or people who just like to write. There’s no need for stats, because lots of these adventures are pre-planned.² There are a lot of women in forum RPGs – more than half of my own game is female. There is a lot of romance-type role playing, and drama, and things like that.

That’s just it – the main reason that forum role playing has no place meshing with the tabletop world is because there’s, comparatively, so little combat – and people are not remotely as comfortable with things going awry. Forum Roleplaying is your make-a-story-web-and-outline-your-paper kind of genre. Tabletop is more… you can this, you can’t that, this does and doesn’t happen. There is no dice roll for emotional encounters, there’s no skill for “make friend jealous.” And while I love D&D and tabletop games as much as the next nerd girl, sometimes I just want some of this:

So while, you know, introducing SYSTEMS and INTERESTING THINGS to the Vault – or any forum based RPG – is great in theory… the amount of people who play in both the Tabletop World and the Forum World is surprisingly small, and the people who come over to my side quite often aren’t looking for a continuation of their Sunday night D&D group, but just a place to sit down and write.

I think that D&D, and other tabletop games, have obviously inspired the type of… I’m going to use that word again, I’m sorry, collaborative story writing that we are used to on forum games, and there’s always going to be a few purists because of that. There’s even always going to be a handful of people who like both and think that our worlds should be combined. But if I don’t jump up and down to implement something tabletop-y on my forum, it’s not out of dislike – it’s just different worlds. You wouldn’t go to a LAN party and suggest everyone build matching suburban mini-mansions on The Sims and then go drown the old people.³ Just like I wouldn’t go into a group of people just looking for a relaxing writing session and say LETS THROW NUMBERS AND COMPLICATED THINGS IN!

Will I ever impliment dice rolls and other similar things on the Vault? Perhaps. But this is not the only game, and it will not last forever⁴, and there may be another time to bring the Tabletop World and the Forum World to dinner and introduce them to one another’s parents. Just not now. Let’s let the typewriter folks enjoy their little stories and words for awhile, and the rest of us can gather up our d20s and go (attempt to) battle a tarrasque.

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1.  - I, for one, am not a huge fan of the Adventure Pre-Planning that goes on at my own site, or anyone elses. I like to roll with the punches and do other interesting things. I like unpredictability. I cannot, however, speak the same for others.

2. – I really don’t have words for how much I truly hate this phrase, but it seems to pop up often among RP Communities so I felt like it was worth mentioning. Every time I hear it, it’s not so much an empowering phrase about literary goodness, but instead reminds me that Forum Role Playing is probably closer in genus to Therapeutic Role Playing, as seen in places like psychiatric offices where people with issues try to put themselves in the other person’s shoes. Now you feel dirty too, don’t you?

3. - I have never done this. No matter how many Nazis or Zombies it is okay to shoot, it is never okay to drown a tiny pixel person by removing the pool ladder. They didn’t even have a chance. That said, I do build suburban mini-mansions on a quasi regular basis.

4. – Surprise! I have another game in the works! What’s it about? I have no idea! When will it be out? Probably 2014! Does that coincide with the end of book seven?! YES! Yes it does! IS THE VAULT CLOSING no, I wouldn’t do that to you. But good for you for reading the footnotes. Always read the footnotes.