Huge thanks to Kats and Faerran for the stream! I missed it live, but just finished watching the VOD.
Does it even exist? Do you think Wurm would benefit from more of it? I've responded in character to anyone wandering through or near my deed, and I've yet to have a negative reaction. Occasionally a bit of light roleplay springs up from the interaction, which is grand! Wurm looks like a perfect, immersive platform for roleplay, and I've been surprised by how little I've seen, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there. Wurm is vast.
Do you play Wurm IC = "in character"? I've been trying to. It doesn't seem like the goal of most of my neighbouring deeds, but I'm excited to visit places like The Limping Troll and The Kingdom, and any other RP hotspots that may pop up.
How often do you see other people roleplaying? Rarely, unless I've initiated it. But I haven't traveled very far afield.
Would you like to try, but just never do because you don't see others roleplaying? Seeing it more in the wild would certainly help me remain in character more often, but that's just a matter of figuring out where the community is, if the community is.
Do you think we've been seeing more RP after Steam launch and if so, why do you think that is? I've only started playing Wurm since the Steam launch, so I couldn't say.
What things do you think the dev team could do, to promote roleplay more in Wurm? More emotes? More animations? More outfits? See below.
Do you think we should have a section in the forums dedicated to roleplaying? So RP:ers could find each other, agree on events, RP hotspots etc? Yes! There seems to be a little used in-character forum, but a general out-of-character roleplay-focused subforum would be excellent for arranging events, or finding/cataloguing roleplayers or hotspots.
Should we have an optional RP chat tab that could be turned on and off from profile settings? (much like the new international help channel) I don't see why not. In the stream, you brought up the distance of Local and how that can discourage RP, and obviously, that fellow who wasn't having any of Saph or Faerran's nonsense kept seeing you talking to at least Raylanie, if not Achaicus as well, since it was all within the massive Local range. A smaller, perhaps optional "Proximity" range could be pretty rad! I wouldn't feel like I was talking to all of my Local-range neighbours whenever I said hello to someone passing through my deed.
Should we have an optional voice chat system that could be used for roleplay? I'm not sure what server costs might be, and I wouldn't personally use it. But if enough people would, then I don't see any reason not to consider it. Monitoring voice channels for abuse can be a bit nightmarish, but if we have an easy and effective mute function, perhaps?
Should we have an optional [RP] tag in our names, to make it easier for roleplayers to recognize each other? RP tags are useful if you aren't feeling up to the possibility of rejection, or to rally community. It's a small change that is entirely opt-in and has worked well in other games in the past, going all the way back to at least Everquest. Even UO had visible guild tags and titles that occasionally stood in for roleplay tags back in the day.
Should we have an optional panel, where we could write our backstories + other info for other roleplayers to read, similar to the RP addons you can get for WoW? Goodness, yes. Surely we don't all look like the generic young, fit Wurmians that the models make us out to be, despite the tonnes of dirt we haul around. Profiles have been used since at least Ultima Online, and are a great way to give a little more information about your character, leave RP hooks, or for the non-roleplayers, advertise services you are willing and able to provide to the community without needing to spam an advertisement message. Again, it's an opt-in function that can be used in many different ways, RP or no.
I really like the IRC functionality that already exists in-game for pubs, theatres, festival tents... really, any small, noisy location that you wouldn't want to spam Local for eighty tiles all around. Hang a sign on the door that says "/join TheLimpingTroll IRC for proximity chat!", and keep the noise pollution down for neighbouring deeds.
The topic of clothing came up, and while generating new models is expensive, a vanity slot system could be a short term, small investment value add to help us look the way we want, not the way we need to based on the game reality of armour being necessary when out and about. More models and animations are great, of course, but if new cosmetic clothing options exist without changing the core reality of the mechanics, why wear them instead of armour, as Faerran noted? Weight-free vanity slots, as in LOTRO (I think?) are a great option. Maybe a wardrobe for clothing storage, either a built object in a house or shifting clothing into "hammer-space" so that outfits can be built, saved, and swapped easily as needed?
I know mods are always an iffy prospect for an MMO, and introduces security concerns, but Kats has already highlighted a WoW roleplay profile mod above. The Secret World/Secret World Legends has some brilliant ones, including friend lists that you can add notes on, a /who type system that only shows people with the mod (letting roleplayers know who else is a roleplayer, and where they are. Not entirely applicable to Wurm, of course), a profile mod... Finding safe ways to outsource some modding functionality to the community could let us fill gaps on our own, if the desire and talent exists. Not that these sorts of things need to be mods, if the dev team decides something is worth the resources. They could all be welcome changes to help foster the growth of a roleplay community in Wurm.
Thanks for the lengthy discussion on the topic, Kats and Faerran. Stay awesome, and I'll need to buy you both pints once The Limping Troll opens its doors!
