The Role Of Character In Chat RPG
by AMA on May.22, 2010, under Warcraft
Roleplaying chat is a very specific type of game, where people use a pure textual interface to engage in acts of collaborative imagination. Characters are assumed by the various participants, and stories are told through interactions that occur between those characters.
Within the chat, each person possesses a virtual avatar. There is no physical representation of this avatar, instead it is the duty of each participant to imagine themselves, and the other players, and the relative positions each one has to the other. It might be a difficult skill for people to figure out and pick up on at first, but eventually the nature of the game will take over, and it will only be about as hard as reading a book and keeping up with the characters, with relative positions taking secondary importance to the raw action of the scene which is unfolding.
During a roleplay chat session each participant is supposed to assume the role of a character. However sometimes people feel the need to step out of that character, and say something about their real life. While this is often frowned upon as “breaking the spell” it may be necessary in order to tell other players that you are going to be away from the keyboard, or to inform them that you aren’t feeling well and need to take it easy.
When stepping out of character, people are generally instructed to encase their words in what are known as ooc marks. Ooc stands for Out Of Character. The marks usually take the form of parenthesis which can then be placed around the words. (Thus this would be considered an out of character statement).
In a good roleplaying chat environment, out of character remarks will be kept to a minimum, or relegated to private messages, where they won’t interrupt the flow of the game. If you want to learn to be a responsible member of such a community, then youll have to understand the difference between in character and out of character considerations, and do your best to acknowledge the role of such factors during the course of the game.
