The 'RP' in RPG

So whatever happened to real roleplaying anyhow?

I reached a kind of breaking point this morning. Just waffling around on CoX as usual, and overheard a conversation over SGchat that nearly made me run over and beat my forehead into a wall.

Apparently Neverwinter Nights 2 is out. Or going to be out very soon. So all these chaps were running around egging everyone to get the game and play with them.

No problems there, so far.

Yes, we're talking Neverwinter Nights here, the toolset that allows you to create MODs, GM apparently, and I hear the new sequel is focusing a lot on letting you make meaningful decisions in a game and allow for something closer to true roleplaying in the single-player game (ideally, anyway.)

Still no problems there.

These guys though...Just took the cake. Min-maxers all. Oh, druids are sooo lame, they're weak. I'm a gonna be a gnome monk with dual kamis (or dunno what funky exotic asian sword), I have a arena pvp elf bard (the elf is way weak but his songs can do serious damage on others or something).

Jeez.

I don't understand these people. The rules lawyers. The ones who will crack open a book of rules and tear it apart looking for the 'best' combat advantage or whatever. The game is really a GAME, to them. It's these people who have turned the D&D ruleset into something that totally suits a computer, rather than a GM.

Imo, the original point of having different races and different class archetypes was so that you could actually ROLEPLAY being different people. But somewhere along the line it got mutated into "I'm still ME" but this guy has serious skills that can kick uber ass.

Faugh. Pah.

I don't think it's a new issue. Rules lawyers have always been with us since forever. There are people who derive more enjoyment of destroying and deconstructing and poking holes in systems than actually pretending to be someone else or tell a story.

But it seems to me that ever since the age of the computer game, there has been a shift in the mindset that more and more people are heading over to this camp.

It's no longer about books and storytelling (though there's still an RP camp, of course), but about hacks (hack and slashing and hax-exploits) that allow you to be one up over the other.

Or maybe it's just a freaking guy thing. That's been with us since the dawn of time when the Y chromosome developed.

Sigh.

One thing's for sure. I think I'm reacting to it because I want to tell stories and -be- people, but can't seem to find the correct medium for it.

Finding a real life roleplaying group and sufficient -time- to play here is on a near-impossible to achieve level, so screw that.

Finding a good group online is also time-consuming. Online games tend to just evaporate and die, or turn into long forum melodramas anyhow.

Computer games? Yea, maybe some rare singleplayer ones, if you're lucky. Maybe NWN2 will serve my purpose - but before I get it, my entire computer system urgently needs a Christmas overhaul first. The other games still suffer from a major infection of gamist Explorer/Achiever-types, while their rules systems don't really support meaningful decisions. Again, online roleplayers tend to have this thing for major angsty melodrama somehow, and there's no GM or real story to work with, just an overarcing setting backdrop and a million and one personal plotlines.

My closest hope is lurking around the indie RPG development scene looking for good narrativist/simulationist systems and then making myself sit down and try to go through them solo. (Which thanks to writer's block and the distraction of a million and one computer games isn't easy, eg. I was trying to play WH40K: Winter Assault in an attempt to finish it and then clear it off my system, and then I hear a new sequel is juuust coming out, har, so much for space saving.)

Ah well. I'm really just somewhat 'angry' (it's a bit strong a word, more like 'miffed') at myself for not finding the time to actually sit through and think about what I'm searching for. Something in my subconscious wants a story. A good story. I've been finding surcease in things like comics and good dvds, but I need a little more. I think I need a story of my or someone else's own making.

The sad thing is that I've found the perfect system for my needs. Or well, as near perfect as can get anyhow. The Mythic RPG (from RPGnow) is great for what I need done, telling logical stories.

But now I appear to be crippled by too much choice. I want to play some games in original settings that I've developed - have at least 2-3 running around in my head, but all not completed, and my shelf full of RPGs is looking at me wondering when the hell it's going to be their turn. There are still a lot of computer game settings (RoD, CoX) that all want their fair shake at it too.

I look at all the possibilities and I just up and give up and stop thinking that actually sitting down to play with myself is a good idea. Which is really sad. I can't even daydream with a 'rules' structure anymore, let alone freeform daydream.

And then something within me screams, you're losing it, the mundane work life in dreary old NORMAL SAFE Singapore is killing you slowly, where oh where has your childhood gone?

And then I panic and go, I really really HAVE to have this work and get myself a good story. Somehow. Somewhere.

Bloody subconscious wars within myself.

I want a story. I just don't know where I want it in first. :P

Hooray for the paradox of choice.