Is roleplaying multiple characters in an RPG LARPing?

[shihonage]

My point is that this is a futile exercise that it won’t pay off for psychological reasons. It’s convoluted, artificial and too much gamey to make you immerse in the different characters.

That's very subjective. It may be true for you and others, but for me and others this type of play pays big dividends of fun. There's a reason I keep doing it in every party CRPG since Icewind Dale.

Of course it is subjective. And of course it is more fun for you. Because there are storyfags and mechanic-fags (sometimes referred to as combatfags). I'm a storyfag. Lurker King might be one too.

 

[Dorateen]

I, of course, am pro-creation of multiple characters, as was the structure of the earliest computer role-playing games drawn from the crucible of pen-and-paper. And I personally use this method in order to further the ongoing adventures of such table-top birthed characters. If some players want to use the customizable party to assemble the most optimal team built for combat or other mechanics-related function, that's fantastic. What we don't need are more single character special snowflakes, prefabricated writer's avatars. Dungeon Masters and software developers alike need to keep their damn hands off the player's characters.

 

[Zombra]

We're covering a lot of ground in this thread!

I want to be immersed into the gameworld, and these characters have to be either completely mine, or completely the game's.

If there has to be control, I would want it to be INDIRECT, such as ability to yell orders to them from my "main", and they may comply, or may go off and do what they want, because they're remaining in consistent alignment with their archetype, i.e. brazen action hero who does stupid shit to endanger the party, or a timid doctor who cowers from battles behind some rock.

Due to the nature of a CRPG, the characters who are portrayed as being autonomous, have their own agency. We, and the game, pretend they're sentient.

The moment I am allowed to take on-demand full control of these, and make them do something different from what they were doing before my intrusion, they get lobotomized, the 4th wall has a big new gaping hole in it, as the game instantly trades lessened immersion for improved combat strategy mechanics. Thus making it less of an RPG, in my eyes, and more of a strategy/combat game.

Just wanted to weigh in on this bit and agree. I prefer it when the lines between PCs and NPCs are clean and unsmudged. Recent Bioware games are a good example. It's weird when I take control of Alistair in Dragon Age. I'd much rather just play my main character and have the NPCs do their automated NPC-like things than try to portray someone else's characters as my own, even in a straightforward wargamey format. I was very disappointed when Dead State dropped their vision of AI allies and their difficult personality-based behaviors, and changed to a full party control system. I consider this kind of thing to be less of a "role-playing game" than either a chosen one game or a true party game. I can't RP as Alistair or Morrigan. Let them follow me around, yes, let them talk about their hangups, let them act on their priorities; but don't let me step into their shoes.

Hey, look at Dragon's Dogma as a great counterexample. I have full control of my PC, but I'm traveling with a team of AI sidekicks who learn and adapt, and change their behavior based on how I play, but I have no control over their moment-to-moment behavior aside from a few vague commands like, "Help me, you idiot!" or "Go! Go! Go!" When I'm not getting my ass kicked it's great fun to watch how they behave.

As I said before (and I am doing quite a bit of repeating here already), I would be okay with a game where you control all the fully realized characters all the time, but it would be a time-wasting chore. In practice, it's simply not viable, and it is much better to stick with one character per human, be it via offloading other characters to co-op functionality, or just having single-player with one character, which brings us back full-circle to why I prefer this option.

There's definitely room for the form to grow, but games like W2 and TOEE have had parties of "completely mine" PCs and pulled them off very enjoyably. IWD was a long time ago but even that was great. Now that we are getting some true party RPGs again, I would hate for the form to revert exclusively to the "Chosen One PC with NPC spear carriers" idiom - as fun as that can be.

 

[shihonage]

I, of course, am pro-creation of multiple characters, as was the structure of the earliest computer role-playing games drawn from the crucible of pen-and-paper. And I personally use this method in order to further the ongoing adventures of such table-top birthed characters. If some players want to use the customizable party to assemble the most optimal team built for combat or other mechanics-related function, that's fantastic. What we don't need are more single character special snowflakes, prefabricated writer's avatars. Dungeon Masters and software developers alike need to keep their damn hands off the player's characters.

A single character RPG does not mean this character is prefabricated. Fallouts did pretty well with giving you freedom to be what you want to be.

In the end, it's a matter of the game's style, and whether it benefits the game as a whole to have a well-fleshed out prefabricated character (such as in case of Planescape: Torment).

 

[Dorateen]

I, of course, am pro-creation of multiple characters, as was the structure of the earliest computer role-playing games drawn from the crucible of pen-and-paper. And I personally use this method in order to further the ongoing adventures of such table-top birthed characters. If some players want to use the customizable party to assemble the most optimal team built for combat or other mechanics-related function, that's fantastic. What we don't need are more single character special snowflakes, prefabricated writer's avatars. Dungeon Masters and software developers alike need to keep their damn hands off the player's characters.

A single character RPG does not mean this character is prefabricated. Fallouts did pretty well with giving you freedom to be what you want to be.

Didn't say it does, but I listed it is something we need less of. But the truth is, controlling a single character in video games has its heritage in the arcade and console. Where as taking control of a party comes from pen and paper roots. I know which is more monocled.

And once you go down the route of the predefined protagonist, you've left the realm of role-playing and more toward interactive fiction.

 

[Blowhard]

I think eliminating the necessity for LARPing is the ultimate goal of a good CRPG. Imagination is only necessary in the same way it is necessary for a child to imagine a stick as a sword. It's a means to an end. You are, after all, playing a role-playing game. The whole function is to put you in another world and have you act like another person or persons.

The problem arises in that computers are not flexible enough to provide what needs to be essentially a 100% functional simulation of the real world in order for true role playing to take place. A human being can provide this as game master, but not a computer, at present.

So no, there is nothing wrong with LARPing, per se. Now, my definition may be different from yours. Obviously I am not going full scale dress-up and writing IRL journals for my characters, but I am thinking how to act in a way which would make sense and does not rely on meta-knowledge. This is not done for shits or because I'm a childlike sperg, but for the very utilitarian purpose that I have no desire to add another countless game under my belt of meaningless achievements as having been utterly conquered, exploited, 100%'d, and powergamed the ever living soul out of. Assuming a role is very practical in that it prevents killing the fun of the game. Like any game, I think CRPGs demand the player's cooperation to enter their world, suspend disbelief, and make concessions about your own desires. Obviously, you can simply tip someone's king over from the start at a game of Chess, no? Why not? It's there, isn't it? I have hands, do I not? Wow, are you going to ask me to LARP like I don't have hands? This isn't a King, you piece of shit, this is a little piece of plastic, and I can topple that motherfucker. Now what? Oh yeah, pick it back. Man, this isn't very fun. Better go back to street fighting that actually rewards real world behavior. Fucking LARPing spergs.

But more in line with my point, LARPing actually starts to develop organically in very very good CRPGs where it ends up being beneficial to the player to act in a consistent manner within the framework of the game's universe. See Age of Decadence. This is a game that wants you to treat its world with logic and care. In this way, LARPing in a good CRPG is a completely different thing than LARPing in a bad CRPG. In a good CRPG like Age of Decadence, you end up playing a role organically, because the world makes sense and rewards realistic behavior. In a bad CRPG like Skyrim, you end up LARPing because the world is essentially a bland sandbox bereft of notable interaction or consequence, where imagination is literally necessary to create some sort of carrot on a stick to keep you holding W toward the horizon.

 

[Telengard]

Whelp, since the Gold Box, Dark Eye, Krondor, and the Paragon games are all no longer of "any consequence", I guess we can all fold up tent and let the Biotards claim the stage once and for all. shihonage hath spoken.

 

[shihonage]

But more in line with my point, LARPing actually starts to develop organically in very very good CRPGs where it ends up being beneficial to the player to act in a consistent manner within the framework of the game's universe. See Age of Decadence. This is a game that wants you to treat its world with logic and care. In this way, LARPing in a good CRPG is a completely different thing than LARPing in a bad CRPG. In a good CRPG like Age of Decadence, you end up playing a role organically, because the world makes sense and rewards realistic behavior. In a bad CRPG like Skyrim, you end up LARPing because the world is essentially a bland sandbox bereft of notable interaction or consequence, where imagination is literally necessary to create some sort of carrot on a stick to keep you holding W toward the horizon.

In your post you continuously confuse and interchange LARPing with immersion and role-playing. LARPing is a dysfunctional form of role-playing.

In P&P setting, the LARPer would be the annoying guy who keeps trying to tell the DM that he's a dwarf while the game is about space travel and he rolled a technician. He'll talk like a dwarf and refuse to attempt to reach the control panel, because his stats say he's tall, and he can't let a dwarf succeed at height-demanding tasks.

A LARPer is forced to comply to existing world rules, therefore he has to twist his worldview and mess with the gameworld to try and keep a barebones illusion of it his fantasy being validated by the gameworld.

In your chess example, a LARPer may decide that his King has claustrophobia, walk him out in the beginning of the game, and get checkmated. Though chess is really not an RPG, so using it as an example is not particularly relevant.

I believe that the most common cause of LARPing in CRPGs is the gameworld's inability to maintain cohesion in reaction to a variety of possible player choices, and/or not even providing the choices the player is looking for. The more the game world and mechanics fall apart, the more it is likely to be LARPed. Hence, Bethesda fans.

 

[Blowhard]

But more in line with my point, LARPing actually starts to develop organically in very very good CRPGs where it ends up being beneficial to the player to act in a consistent manner within the framework of the game's universe. See Age of Decadence. This is a game that wants you to treat its world with logic and care. In this way, LARPing in a good CRPG is a completely different thing than LARPing in a bad CRPG. In a good CRPG like Age of Decadence, you end up playing a role organically, because the world makes sense and rewards realistic behavior. In a bad CRPG like Skyrim, you end up LARPing because the world is essentially a bland sandbox bereft of notable interaction or consequence, where imagination is literally necessary to create some sort of carrot on a stick to keep you holding W toward the horizon.

In your post you continuously confuse and interchange LARPing with immersion and role-playing. LARPing is a dysfunctional form of role-playing.

In P&P setting, the LARPer would be the annoying guy who keeps trying to tell the DM that he's a dwarf while the game is about space travel and he rolled a technician. He'll talk like a dwarf and refuse to attempt to reach the control panel, because his stats say he's tall, and he can't let a dwarf succeed at height-demanding tasks.

A LARPer is forced to comply to existing world rules, therefore he has to twist his worldview and mess with the gameworld to try and keep a barebones illusion of it his fantasy being validated by the gameworld.

In your chess example, a LARPer may decide that his King has claustrophobia, walk him out in the beginning of the game, and get checkmated. Though chess is really not an RPG, so using it as an example is not particularly relevant.

I believe that the most common cause of LARPing in CRPGs is the gameworld's inability to maintain cohesion in reaction to a variety of possible player choices, and/or not even providing the choices the player is looking for. The more the game world and mechanics fall apart, the more it is likely to be LARPed. Hence, Bethesda fans.

A lot of what you say is right. The technical definition of LARPing is what you said. If this were anywhere else on the internet, you would have my total agreement. But keep in mind we are posting on RPGCodex, a place where people regularly confuse anything that isn't charting out your character development for three weeks in advance to become a mechanical, glitch-abusing, omnipotent impartial and insatiable sociopathic demi-god of shiny things and XP at minute three "LARPing"

 

[Excidium II]

Somebody probably already said it but if the game recognizes your choices it's not LARPing. It doesn't matter if it's for one character or several.

 

[Zombra]

The technical definition of LARPing is what you said.

Well .... no. The original, literal definition is "Live Action Role-Playing", i.e. dressing up and running around in the woods. This is why I got confused when I first started seeing the term on the Codex. The Codex definition may be consistent within the Codex, but it's entirely spurious.

I agree with the sentiment of the rest of your post though.

 

[Fowyr]

That's why I said "of relevance".

I suspected as much, but "of relevance" has two meanings, where in second "of relevance" = "worthy".

It was pretty obvious to me that that the context wasn't about blobbers where all your characters are invisible and occupy the same spacial position, being hardly more than an avatar-labeled series of sub-menues for your character's abilities, but actual games where you have full control, including positional, of your party members.
FULLY REALIZED, not partially realized, not abstracted, party member implementation.

Some isometric games used "one creature is the party" approach too, switching to represent full party only in combat. Dark Sun, for example. Or tile graphic games like Aethra. Still, indeed it's not "fully realized" as you put it.

The blobber character abstraction mechanics are just a control panel of abilities, and ability to lose a character, thus losing some of your abilities, like you would a heatsink or a cannon in Mechwarrior, for instance, is a gameplay-enriching concept.

I beg to differ. Look at some storyfag's heaven games like BaK. Is your party usually three-headed beast? Hell yes. Does it make Gorath just "warrior #2"? Hell no.

The moment I am allowed to take on-demand full control of these, and make them do something different from what they were doing before my intrusion, they get lobotomized, the 4th wall has a big new gaping hole in it, as the game instantly trades lessened immersion for improved combat strategy mechanics. Thus making it less of an RPG, in my eyes, and more of a strategy/combat game.

 

[Ellef]

The moment I am allowed to take on-demand full control of these, and make them do something different from what they were doing before my intrusion, they get lobotomized, the 4th wall has a big new gaping hole in it, as the game instantly trades lessened immersion for improved combat strategy mechanics. Thus making it less of an RPG, in my eyes, and more of a strategy/combat game.

What the fuck

 

[Excommunicator]

Some people seem to have a poor grasp of RPG fundamentals.

shihonage is quite right in everything he has said in this thread.

The game must mechanically support your roleplaying decisions for them to be genuine and not virtual LARPing.

My one character interested in drugs and biology will ask all the questions about drugs and biology. My outdoorsman/leader asks all the questions about geography and enemy factions, and so forth

Yep, that is LARPing. Any roleplaying there is in your head only.

You are certainly LARPing Zombra. As it is, you are pretending that the game cares who asks which questions when it does not. If your individual party members had these skills and the game let you ask questions that checked their skill/levels with each reply then it would be a genuine roleplaying interaction.

A party based game should should filter the player input through a single character proxy. This fact is often diluted when party members cannot act on their own and the player must control all of those characters but this is a flaw not a strength. There is no mechanical reactivity taking place in the party if the party members do not have personalities of their own that are mechanically interacting with one another.

Are we splitting hairs now? Nearly every CRPG (of relevance) which lets you control multiple characters, has an AI controlling other characters when you are not directly controlling them.

lolwut

Since shihonage isn't interested in making a well-defined, informed argument, let me make it for him.

Let's generalize the concept of roleplaying. Roleplaying, for our purposes, is a process in which one develops and guides some entity through various challenges. The key word being "entity". That entity can be a single character, a group of characters, a city, even an entire country. Playing Civilization is like roleplaying a nation. See this thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/strategy-games-are-better-rpgs-than-rpgs.60439/

By generalising it you're destroying the definition. It is not roleplaying in the purest sense if we're simulating a group or a country or a nation unless it occurs through a limited perspective. See my response to that thread.

And what he's not saying, but I'll say for him, is that if you play Wasteland 2 while roleplaying each individual character, you're engaging in a sort of act of schizophrenia, where you need to pretend that each character is a separate consciousness, despite the fact that your brain is capable of coordinating them perfectly. One could claim that in the process of playing in such a way, a player would introduce various inefficiencies that he has no real reason to commit. For example, when controlling a group that contains a thief and a fighter, he'd use the thief to loot all dead enemies because "that's what my thief would do", even if the fighter is closer to their bodies. And that makes it an invalid "LARPy" mode of play, etc.

He said it just fine. It would be practically impossible to act consistently assuming the roles of multiple characters at once without mechanical support, but it also invalidates the whole concept of reactivity as the heart of the entertainment value of an RPG. This is the equivalent of playing poker with yourself as multiple players. There won't be consistency and the entertainment value of doing so is extremely limited.

RE: LARPing

The confusion here is that shihonage's original examples of LARPing used entirely imaginary game mechanics (picking flowers, inspecting toilets, etc), whereas Zombra's mode of play uses real gameplay, but his choice of which characters to use to do it is sometimes arbitrary. Asking somebody about something is a real thing that you can do in the game, but it doesn't usually matter who asks, barring skill checks. That's the LARPy aspect of it, but obviously it's not as big a deal as making up gameplay objectives whole cloth.

"LARPy" gameplay can also be a way for the player to more easily process a game's complexity. To use my previous example, a player might pick up things with his party's Thief, even if the Fighter is closer to the loot, because it makes inventory management easier to organize.

Inventory management is a mechanic. That's not LARPing to make decisions based on those mechanics. However there's nothing thiefy about that, it's mere pack mule behaviour. The game should probably be penalising you for carrying so much on a thief who is supposed to be light weight and unconstrained by heavy equipment.

Somebody probably already said it but if the game recognizes your choices it's not LARPing. It doesn't matter if it's for one character or several.

It does matter, but controlling more than one character is often forgiven or overlooked if the broader mechanics are strong enough. But this doesn't mean it's ideal. When you really take this "recognising of actions" premise to the lowest level, the conclusion is that by having direct input in more than one character at once you're preventing the game from being fully reactive to those actions.

The technical definition of LARPing is what you said.

Well .... no. The original, literal definition is "Live Action Role-Playing", i.e. dressing up and running around in the woods. This is why I got confused when I first started seeing the term on the Codex. The Codex definition may be consistent within the Codex, but it's entirely spurious.

It's the same thing. In a CRPG it's virtual LARPing (in the sense that it's in a virtual context). In both instances you're making shit up on a whim with no real regard for consistency or reactivity.

A large part of the problem comes from people wishing an rpg did something (LARPers wish the game would react to a paladin who performed evil deeds) but don't want to accept that the game won't recognise it so they try to pretend ("I will not do evil even if there are no consequences for it") because that's the minimum they need to enjoy the experience. In that sense the game is letting the player down by not simulating it, but the player has to be honest and accept that their LARPing is not recognised by the game, it's in their head. You're projecting it onto the game and that's all there is to it.

 

[Metro]

If you pretend to be your fucking characters in a game then... yeah... you're a dirty E-Larper.

 

[Courtier]

Can somebody please tell me why all of you demented fucks keep calling roleplaying ''LARPING'', when that means people dressing up in real life? What is live-action about pausing a videogame to fill out a biography or choose a dialogue option? I've seen nerds on Taiwanese fingerpainting board threads get laughed out of the thread for using this retarded ''slur''.

 

[hivemind]

Can somebody please tell me why all of you demented fucks keep calling roleplaying ''LARPING'', when that means people dressing up in real life? What is live-action about pausing a videogame to fill out a biography or choose a dialogue option? I've seen nerds on Taiwanese fingerpainting board threads get laughed out of the thread for using this retarded ''slur''.

hardcore combatfag credentials require you to make fun of people who roleplay in roleplaying games

 

[Angthoron]

LARPing is much more hardcore than tabletop as a LARPer endures hardships in the wilderness and actually swings their +1 sword at an actual enemy instead of sitting on their ass eating pepperoni pizza.

Spoiler

 

[hivemind]

Can somebody please tell me why all of you demented fucks keep calling roleplaying ''LARPING'', when that means people dressing up in real life? What is live-action about pausing a videogame to fill out a biography or choose a dialogue option? I've seen nerds on Taiwanese fingerpainting board threads get laughed out of the thread for using this retarded ''slur''.

on a less shitposty note it's summed up almost perfectly right on the first page

As used on Codex in in regard to a certain type of CRPG players: a LARPer is a person whose mental picture of what's happened thus far in the game, is only barely supported on very peripheral level by the actual gameworld.

LARPers attempt to make sense out of nonsense. They will make up missions which do not exist in the game, cover up for broken C&C, terrible writing, incoherent world and missing mechanics with a variety of excuses.

For example, a LARPer goes to Skyrim, becomes a god, and then every NPC still talks down to him like to a peasant. LARPers reaction will be to ascribe to his character the power to erase memory in others. 10/10. it's not a design flaw, he saw nothing.

If the CRPG in question has toilets, the LARPer could for example be "roleplaying" a toilet repairman who seeks out toilets everywhere around the world, despite the fact that the game has no toilet repair mechanic.

Now, if the game actually had the toilet repair mechanic, with some meaningful consequence, such as XP or some kind of state-changes in the world, this person would no longer be classified as a LARPer.

Due to nonsensical nature of Bethesda's barren worlds, their broken mechanics and boring quests, many LARPers are actually Bethesda fans. This trained behavior of denial allows them to hide in self-invented stories, which evade the truths about poor reactivity and broken mechanics that glare at them from all sides.

I'm sure there's a more compact way to describe it, but there it is.

 

[moraes]

Because larpers are dirty people in real life, as are people who engage in mental gymnastics and autistic behavior so his "main character who is afraid of spiders" refuses to advance the main quest because it involves killing some, we call them all larpers. AFAIK there is no other reason for the use of this term.

My point is precisely that, since LARPing is taking an interest in something that the game doesn't recognise, then you can stretch the definition to include someone who picks a class not because of the (actual) gameplay difference, but because he doesn't like warriors / rogues and doesn't want to play as one, even in the event of a game where both these classes would be objectively superior.

You are conflating LARPING and refusal to powergame. In your example, it does not really matter why the player chooses a particular class, what matters is that his choice is reflected in gameplay mechanics. OTOH, a player who chooses to roleplay an arachnophobe and is forced by the game to fight giant spiders will create some kind of coping narrative in his head to explain why the game forces his character to face those creatures.

 

[FeelTheRads]

hardcore combatfag credentials require you to make fun of people who roleplay in roleplaying games

derpmind being derpmind as always.

Here's some roleplaying for you:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Roleplaying

Enjoy.

 

[Snorkack]

By most of those weak-ass Larping definitions in this thread, doing an ironman playthru of a game that doesn't support intrinsic ironman mode would be flawless larping as well.

 

[Courtier]

So it's just somebody that's bad at roleplaying, who refuses to take the actual game into account while jerking themselves off. Might as well call them ''That Guy''. Any normal person who roleplays a character in a game would do so within reasonable limitations - it would make no sense for example to play a character in Fallout 1 that's a tribal from China, or to roll a Wizardry party full of pacifists.

 

[moraes]

Any normal person who roleplays a character in a game would do so within reasonable limitations - it would make no sense for example to play a character in Fallout 1 that's a tribal from China, or to roll a Wizardry party full of pacifists.

Larpers are not normal persons. Just read that Oblivion:Roleplaying link, ffs:

• Use your map only when you are sheltered. If it is raining or snowing, your map could get soaked and most likely ruined.

 

[Metro]

I play RPG's because I enjoy their core mechanics: questing, leveling, (hopefully) multiple quest resolutions, combat (be it turn based or real time), exploration, etc. If you play RPG's to roleplay you're a dirty dirty E-Larper. "Normal" people don't roleplay in video games.

They aren't roleplaying games so someone can escape in E-Larp fantasy emotionally. They're roleplaying games because the game play is designed around you fighting, progressing, negotiating, etc. as a particular character build/set of character builds.

An E-Larper doesn't even need an RPG to roleplay, they could roleplay in an FPS or platformer.