Sunday, October 3, 2010

A peek into my world...

So I know I've briefly mentioned before that I've been actively involved in countless text-based roleplaying game websites. I wanted you guys to take a peek at this online phenomenon, especially those of you who are interested in roleplaying or even just writing. There are millions of these sites out there, and I'm not talking about World of Warcraft or Evony or those kinds of things. I'm talking purely text. Story writing, but in the form of a game of sorts. You create your own character, throw them into this world on the site. They range from all kinds of movie/book/tv/game-based sites to original ones that people just make up themselves. Normally you flesh out your character with an application process where you lay down his/her history, quirks, habits and personality. A team of site administrators will accept your character or ask for a few more details, and then you're free to play!

It's like acting, but improvised and in text-form. You get to come up with these scenarios for your character to be plunged into and then whoever you choose to play with throws their character's reaction in. You respond in turn (usually in no less than 600 words on most advanced literate RP sites), and the madness begins. For example, the other day a character's dog got loose on the streets of Wonderland, the fictional town where one of the sites I currently RP takes place. My character, the motorcycle-driving, James Dean wanna-be, is just going about his business when this dog runs out in front of him. He swerves to miss the dog and wrecks. Then the other character comes over reacts... It goes on until both players either get bored or decide that subplot is finished. Most sites like this have an umbrella plot that all players work under, this one is Disney-based (yeah I'm lame), where every person in the town has a different Disney "spirit." So basically to create a character you pick a Disney character and model your person after them to an extent. I currently play Kovu the lion, The Mad Hatter, and Jock the dog on that site.

If I've bored you to tears, I'm sorry. But if you're interested, Caution 2.0 is a site that acts as a data base where RPers can advertise their sites and find other ones to join. MANY of these are sci-fi based. For example, here's one based on Transformers. Resident Evil. X-men..... There's pretty much anything you can think of.

Also if you notice, many of the creators of these sites have a lot of talent in the graphics and coding field. Some of them are pretty incredible just to look at. Some of the best writers I've read have been on sites like these. Sorry for the novel of a post I just made.... I get too excited sometimes.

2 comments:

Drew said...

Wow, I didn't realize there were so many of these out there. Even a Disney one! That's awesome. That doesn't make you lame. Who doesn't love Disney?

Mark Penner said...

I really like the idea of text based RP. I have a friend back in my hometown who has been running one in a world she created for 6 years. I think I will post my own nerdy pastime as a separate blog-post.