Any help for a roleplayer?

[Choray]

So, I ordered FFXI and it should be here sooner or later (hopefully). This seems to me like a game that has a lot of RP potential, which is also part of why I bought the game, although the main reason is probably that the job system makes this FF fan squee. I tried searching a bit around both here and other places, but there seemed to be very, very little RP-related, and what little I found was old.

I'd really like to find something decent right away, rather than settle on a random server and level a bit, only to find that it's pretty much the worst choice for a roleplayer. I've done that all too many times. Replies to old questions of the same nature kept saying that there's little RP going on and that the choice of server didn't really matter, but I thought it was worth a try anyway.

Would anyone recommend any particular server for a roleplayer? Any RP linkshells that wouldn't mind a complete newbie? I'd love a group that doesn't take itself too seriously, but in an IC sense. That is, I don't like the most hardcore kind usually, but from what I've experienced, "light" RP guilds tend to not even roleplay most of the time. I guess I'm looking for a middle ground that roleplays, but isn't too heavy on the drama. It's a long shot, but who knows, I might get lucky.

The RP aside, any other tips of any kind are welcome too. ^^'

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

None of the servers serve a specific purpose (excluding Atomos, S-E's personal test-server), and really, most of the RPing done is mostly passive. There do exist some active RP Linkshells, however. And it's not like any of us are against RP specifically, anyway: you won't usually find somebody who chastises you for it, and if you do, you can pretty much tell them off and mind their own business.

One piece of advice though: while RPing in and of itself isn't looked down upon, Altana help you if you make a "RP Macro," or lines of flavor that you activate just by pushing a button to indicate an action, which is mostly useless considering said action is likely to be announced by the game itself anyway. It obviously get repetitive and annoying fast, and nobody really likes that.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

One piece of advice though: while RPing in and of itself isn't looked down upon, Altana help you if you make a "RP Macro," or lines of flavor that you activate just by pushing a button to indicate an action, which is mostly useless considering said action is likely to be announced by the game itself anyway. It obviously get repetitive and annoying fast, and nobody really likes that.

I wholeheartedly agree. Imagine a white mage in your party thats job is to cure and during an hour long exp party that whm is going to use cure A LOT. Then imagine that every single time the whm cures you see:

Through Altana's power you're healed!


10 seconds later:

Through Altana's power you're healed!


20 seconds after that:

Through Altana's power you're healed!


15 seconds...

Through Altana's power you're healed!

And through all that spam you are trying to communicate with your party. Oh and let's add the need for some people to put the most annoying <call>s in their macros too. Some people wear headsets so they don't disturb others around them with their game. Hearing <call> (which is like a drill sargents whistle being blown directly in your ear) in macros over and over again is enough to give anyone a headache and make them a liiiiiiiiiittle bit crabby! LOL

[Choray]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

Well, to be quite honest, I never saw how that is RP in the first place. All it does is make you look like a poorly designed NPC.

There was an add-on for WoW that let you lower the percentages of activating things like that, and pick from different phrases. I should know, I looked it up for a rogue in my guild who insisted on using them. For Sinister Strike. Anyone who has played WoW should have a general idea of how often a rogue uses Sinister Strike.

Anyway, what do you mean with "active" and "passive" RP? Meeting up in town for events and such versus just being IC while doing other things?

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

I wholeheartedly agree. Imagine a white mage in your party thats job is to cure and during an hour long exp party that whm is going to use cure A LOT. Then imagine that every single time the whm cures you see:

Lord give me strength!

Disgaea fans, amirite or amirite? -.-b

[Choray]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

Might as well add that if I can't find a decent RP LS, I'd be happy to join a regular one with fairly mature people in it. Preferably people who write in somewhat full sentences and don't take themselves or the game all too seriously. So, if anyone feels like housing a newbie, that would be absolutely sweet. I can't stand to play an MMO without a guild.

[Prons]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

I never see any role playing in this game and frankly I'd imagine it's hard to role play because it's hard to find a reason to go to the desert and randomly kill monsters for a week storywise na mean?

[Telera]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

It's not hard to role-play in XI at all. Of course, this coming from a lit-rper, who prefers to build stories (even if they buck canon a bit) around my characters, not rp stupid things like exp parties.

When we used to rp (used, most of the group quit) we would set aside an entire night for it, and follow our rough idea we had in mind, also adlibbing as we went. It was probably the most fun I'd had in the game period. Added loads to my enjoyment.

Anyway, there isn't much rp to be found. You'd be better off finding a RP linkshell or making your own and finding people with a similar interest. If my dork of a boyfriend hadn't quit and refused to come back, he, our buddy, and myself would have carried on our RP story for ages.

Tel is a sad panda.

[Raydeus]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

Any help for a roleplayer?

Didn't you get the memo? The Grand Duke Kam'lanaut forbid any kind of Roleplaying activities in Vana'diel, that includes (but is not restricted to) the areas of Quon, Mindartia, Kuzotz, Elshimo, Aht Urgan and the past Vana'diel.

I hope this helped a bit.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

The Grand Duke Kam'lanaut forbid any kind of Roleplaying activities in Vana'diel, that includes (but is not restricted to) . . . past Vana'diel.

That's some power. o_O;

[Kyleet]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

In my experience, RP Linkshells don't stay together. They break up or end up going social. I've had to start my character's "Story" over so many times that I just sort of gave up on the whole idea eventually. And when the next RP ls came along I passed it up. And as I understand it, they are mostly social now too.

Have been on 3 RP Linkshells on Kujata (all of which broke up) and I've even tried making characters on other servers where I saw some linkshells that claimed to be longstanding RP LS only to find out they were in the process of breaking up or had already broken up or were more social than RP. What's ironic is that our linkshell is made up of rpers, we've all been in an RP LS at one point or have played true rp games in the past (MUDs and forums and such). At one point I had hoped to turn our little group into one that RPs events on occasion, but it just really hasn't happened.

[Illuen]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

I was in a RP linkshell until very recently (when your LS leader heads to law school and the rest of the sackholders head to college too, any ls is liable to asplode) and it really depends on a dedicated group. Our shell usually had about 5-7 members who could be counted on to reliably come to scheduled events, and a handful of others who would come erratically, or stop coming after a few weeks. Not fun if they beg and beg you to weave them into the middle of the LS plot. Without them, you have sucky plot.

If you are still interested in RPing, come to Siren. I could round up some of my old shell's RPers and give it another attempt, and if they're not interested, I still have a super active reg. LS =)

[Lunaryn]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

I note that when we started (late 2005) Midgardsormr had a reputation for being RP-friendly (as opposed to some servers where RPers were often harassed). Nowadays we're a pretty small server which has its advantages and disadvantages...

I'm the shellholder on an RPLS that is probably a bit on the serious side of what you mentioned, though it grew into that rather than starting that way. Ultimately, we're at a point where we have a core group of 3 dedicated players that most stuff involves, and a few people we know who will occasionally join in a scene as needed or just be willing to help out in missions without being bothered by the extra time taken to RP between major events. We'd certainly be interested in more opportunities for casual RP within our continuity, but our core stuff might be difficult to get in on (as it is, we've had to break our tradition of 1:1 time correspondence to deal with how extremely long it's been taking to deal with some missions and story scenes).

We tend to incorporate a lot of gameplay factors into the continuity (e.g. Job Change really exists as a special capability of Moogles, Home Points exist as a barrier against casual dying w/o Raise (the specific ways they can be bypassed has been a plot point)), which can be jarring to some players who assume a large amount of gameplay and story segregation would be called for. We also roleplay out the missions, with some adjustments and timeline coordination (National missions for ranks 1-5 are considered recurring events, in that they've happened at least twice with a couple years between them; Windy 6-10 and RotZ both happened a few years ago; Bastok 6-10 is going on roughly nowish (not fixed yet); San d'Oria 6-10 will happen when certain characters are ready; Parts of CoP happened a few years ago, but much of it is still to happen; ToAU is also ongoing-ish; WotG obviously happened some time ago, and frankly, time travel being involved actually makes things way easier since the timeline management was already getting to be a mess :p ).

Obviously, it's a pretty major undertaking from our end, and one that's met with mixed success, but one that is pretty important to us. It does, however, mean that we tend to have the potential to be involved RPwise in almost any element in the game that actually allows enough down-time to do the actual RP. We'd certainly be interested in more opportunities to work with people interested in or tolerant of RP, especially for missions where a lot of manpower may need to be mustered.

Edit: On the bit about going social, I'll note that in part due to how small a group we've been, we basically ended up developing a social LS as a superset of the RPLS, since the social LS we originally belonged to fell apart, and a good number of those we kept in contact with after that point were not RPers. The actual RP linkshell in-game is rarely used due to everyone mostly being on the social LS side, but we reference the RP linkshell as an in-game point (Kumei got it to keep in touch with people, but mostly Kamiel has been giving out the pearls), and switch to it if the social LS chatter becomes disruptive.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

The only real issue with RP in the community is RPing when no one else is. Knew a guy in my LS that would RP all the time even when nobody else was. He struck people as annoying as hell.

Admittedly, its hard to get into RP in FFXI because the lore of the game is pretty much exclusive to FFXI and no other game, so its hard to jump right in and start RPing for many and many never start. There are no Mithras, Galkas, Tarutaru or Elvaan in other FF games, so our only point of reference is the storyline itself.

Once you do get into the story, you start to know who the bad RPers are, because they'll RP against the setting.

• Elvaan are either snotty, self-righteous. chivalrous or devout.
• Tarus ususally speak in a sing-song kind of way, speak in rhyme or have various familar accents. They range from cowardly to mischevious to pompus.
• Windurst Mithra are feline and also decendents of pirates, rolling your Rs is the norm, they're also rather aggressive when it comes to battle. They love to trash talk
• Some Galka are very passionate while others remain calm and collected, since they self-reincarnate, they've seen a lot of things and they come off a little more mature than thier brutish exteriors may lead you to believe.
• Humes are humans, you can approach them any way you like

[Choray]

Re: Any help for a roleplayer?

Ah, yes... Gotta love the wanna-be-special crowd who figure they'll be interesting by going against every standard of their race. Changing a couple of aspects around can be nice, but as a WoW roleplayer I've seen all too many cheerleader night elves and hippie trolls.

I'm the shellholder on an RPLS that is probably a bit on the serious side of what you mentioned, though it grew into that rather than starting that way. Ultimately, we're at a point where we have a core group of 3 dedicated players that most stuff involves, and a few people we know who will occasionally join in a scene as needed or just be willing to help out in missions without being bothered by the extra time taken to RP between major events.

Serious in what way? I don't mind being IC most of the time, I'd really prefer to do that for a change. What I mean by "serious" is when things get too drama-heavy and people forget about being an ordinary person in a fantastic world. I love drama and epic storylines, but only in certain doses. I enjoy going for a walk with some friends just as much.

We tend to incorporate a lot of gameplay factors into the continuity (e.g. Job Change really exists as a special capability of Moogles, Home Points exist as a barrier against casual dying w/o Raise (the specific ways they can be bypassed has been a plot point)), which can be jarring to some players who assume a large amount of gameplay and story segregation would be called for. We also roleplay out the missions, with some adjustments and timeline coordination.

That would definitely be a welcome change from WoW. I was pretty tired of having to switch to "OOC mode" every time I did anything else but RP, since it made very little sense for my character to be in most of the locations or do the things I was doing then. I may be the one at fault for making a somewhat inflexible character, but still. Rather that than making an "adventurer who travels the world" for the sake of having a reason to be anywhere and do anything.


Now, if the game could just randomly appear somewhere next to me, that would be great... Damned EU and no D2D. >.<

Do you think the mailman will find it creepy if I wait outside and stare at him every morning?