61 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
61 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: The decline of role play
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author: nek0
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tags: english, misc
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description:
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---
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In my life, I have spent ample amounts of time with role playing games. The first games I have
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ever encountered in this genre was was Square Enix's, at that time called Squaresoft,
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"Final Fantasy VIII". This game left a permanent impression and up to today I still find myself
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seriously comparing other games with it even on technical aspects.
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This doesn't mean that I view this game as the pinnacle of role playing games, but it was the first
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game, that "sucked me in". I got engaged in the story, identified myself with characters and sometimes
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even started making up stories of my own in this setting. This were things I experienced only with books
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up to this point.
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When I started studying I already had played some good role playing games, but I already missed more
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intelligent interaction with other characters in the games and I missed the opportunity the express
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myself and the character I was playing freely. Since I haven't had an internet connection for my free use
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at home, so I have never played MMORPGs, apart from a few days when I visited my brother and was allowed
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to play a little "World of Warcraft" on his account.
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At that time I got first involved with two concepts of role playing at the same time. Role play as
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propagated by MMORPGs and role play as experienced with pen & paper RPGs.
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I started playing "Guild Wars 2" with some friends at the time and we tried to play "in character" as it
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is called, but we gave up on it pretty quickly, because the surroundings did not support it. We couldn't
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indulge in our role play without being distracted by other individuals conversing on broken 1337speak out
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of the context or aggressively advertising shady markets to buy in-game currency. It was impossible to
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maintain an atmosphere under these circumstances. We kept on playing, but I gradually lost interest.
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At the same time I got to know some people looking for a new member for their pen & paper role playing
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group and they convinced me to give it a shot. All I had to lose would be some hours on an evening and I
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was willing to take the risk. So we set out to play "Opus Anima", a german role play system with an
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intriguing steampunk setting. What I encountered was something I already had wished for: I could freely
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decide my characters reactions to certain events compliant to the world he or she lived in. I had not to
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follow a predefined plot. And I could let my character express him- or herself I found fitting for the
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character in that situation and was not limited to a small number of arbitrarily chosen reactions.
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We were fortunate having an experienced game master who could easily adapt to our reactions and change
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the plot on the fly.
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We kept playing for a longer period of time, eventually we changed the world to "Shadowrun", a cyberpunk
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setting in the 2070s. Some people left the group and others joined, but in the second half of last year
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our play came to a sudden halt as the group broke up with rather unpleasant circumstances. I have not
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been able to join another group ever since, because I can't find any.
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Having enjoyed this kind of role play, I sought to pursue it further, without being limited to the people
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in my geographical surrounding. With my abilities I naturally sought to find role play on the internet
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outside of MMORPGs. Much to my surprise I found out, that role playing was relatively closely associated
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to hacker culture. I learned of play-by-email RPGs in different settings and joined one, only to find out
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that this particular game was quite dead, as well as other games played this way. I learned of MUDs,
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MUCKS, MUSHes and their denizens and set to explore them, only to find out, that most of them adapted to
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modern MMORPGs, with mostly hack and slay gameplay, and no role play even encouraged.
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So I come to the conclusion, that classical role playing, as it is played in pen & paper or those rather
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ancient forms of multiplayer RPGs is on the decline. I find it saddening, that young people seemingly
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throw their imagination out and accept what they are spoon-fed as role play. This could in the end lead
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to an even greater decline of artistic expression in the future. Mainstream art today is rarely worth a
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damn to me, but the prospect of it getting even worse is unbearable.
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