Let's Talk Roleplay Inception

[Nicolas King]

With Rowan's Hogwarts Roleplay Society experiment and Pheeb's ongoing D&D RP I thought we could talk about this trend (?).

Is anybody else planning to follow along in these RPs? Join Pheeb's (it still has unclaimed cards!)? Have a muggle-born or half-blood character that might be familiar with D&D? Have a character that would totally be into roleplaying?

Just scanning the roleplays, myself, I'm certainly impressed - cramming all the pressure of typing responses for your character and then dungeon mastering is next-level. I've seen some forum-based-RPGs which use dicerolls (lots of dice rolling codes available for ZetaBoards, too - and, really, this is what Quidditch is for us) - but never a play-by-post RPG like HNZ which has its characters then depending on dice-rolls for the games they play!

It really seems like a lot of hard work but I'm excited to see it work out, it really could be fun. One thought I've had, though, is that the RPs might need to be short (like old-school-week) to encourage the rapidity of posting and the focus on the next-level-deep of roleplaying ongoing in the threads.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

I'm still really surprised by Phoebe's thread tbh - Jasmine & I have been planning ours for a year & I had no idea she had anything in the works.

I've been DMing IRL for a while now and I don't really think the experience will be too different on the site, in character IC responses will just have a bit of added in character OOC response wrapped around them. (Which is exactly why Jasmine and I have been so keen on doing this, we wanted to play with the meta fun of it all, as well as spend the time thinking about what kinds of D&D characters our HNZ characters would build/what kind of story Ainsley would DM)

I've spent a while figuring out how we're going to resolve things without spending 5 replies back-and-forth rolling dice (and yes, short replies is an integral part of it, there was never gonna be any way for this to work with essay length posts, and our previous IC game threads like the truth or dare have reverted to short posts naturally so it seemed obvious) and trying to simplify the game so that it'll flow well and be fun to both play and read if you aren't that familiar with D&D.

We had talked quite a bit about maybe doing a second thread if other people were interested in playing, but now that Phoebe's got her game going I don't know if that would be necessary. (I had also vaguely thought that if our game was successful I'd have Ainsley maybe try to start a club in actual site canon but now that Phoebe's got a canon game going I don't know if that would be stepping on her toes and/or if that would be oversaturation for people who don't really care ) I didn't want our thread to be open because I DM for quite a large group IRL and too many people can get immensely distracting and make it impossible to get anything done, but I knew other people might be interested and I've always had a second thread in the back of my mind. (Zoe would run it and it would be chaotic...)

Anyway if anyone wants to talk about D&D I'm always around it is my Favourite Game and I love DMing a lot

 

[Professor Geovanna Adler-Cade]

I originally had an idea for a character a few months ago who loved video games, and expanding on that since tech is slightly more difficult to come by at Hogwarts, I thought she could also be into roleplaying. I have some friends IRL that play regularly too, although honestly I've never actually played myself, only observed games and seem some amusing memes :3 That being said I do love fantasy, and I thought it would be fun to try to roleplay with a roleplayer >>

I think for me the main difference with Maggie's version is that while I wanted it to be recognisable as a D&D game (With the cards and choices I've added in for aesthetical effect ;r) I've tried to keep it really really simple, and focus more on how my character reacts to playing a roleplay game, rather than the details of the choices she makes in it. Honestly if you've never played D&D before but your character might enjoy it I welcome you to try it with Maggie because I think it will be quite light hearted. Also thanks Nick for the idea about OSW play style - I think that would be a good idea, especially with six people around the table!

Additionally, I don't think it would be stepping on toes for there to be an official RP club, as while Maggie loves the game, I think she would be more suited to trying to encourage participation in a variety of games that maybe haven't been seen on a forum before (as far as I'm aware..), rather than solely focusing on D&D in particular. I definitely think it's interesting to see two versions come along at once though, and I suppose we're just finding out what works.

:

 

[Katherine Alicastell]

I'm just super excited to see this being a thing. Sammy and I are really into D&D and had the idea to have an IC game a few IC years ago, and I made a PD to try and gauge interest in it. Unfortunately I never decided on the right way I wanted to run it, and nothing ever came of it, so I'm really glad that these have been posted and worked out, while not being too similar so we can see what details here and there work and what don't.
I particularly like Phoebe using a preset amount of characters in the open topic, so that we don't end up with fifteen people trying to join with a character (Though it does currently have spaces that need to be filled, people ) while at the same time, it's really interesting to see Rowans group come up with their own characters and backstories. Characters creating characters is fun to see
I'm so pumped to see how the topics play out, and what topics we might end up with in future
​

 

[Nicolas King]

since tech is slightly more difficult to come by at Hogwarts

And quite impossible to work inside Hogwarts.

 

[Hayley Elridge]

It’s really cool to see so many people interested in this, and to see Phoebe running her game so differently to how Rowan and I planned it. Honestly for us this started as a silly conversation (probably after playing D&D IRL together) about what D&D characters our HNZ characters would play, and the whole thing evolved from there. I can definitely see how having pre-written character sheets would be easier if you weren’t planning to play with specific people like we are; in fact, I’ve been in one-off games for the local RP society that used that method. On the other hand, we’ve had an enormous amount of fun thinking about how our fourteen-year-old wizards would create characters.

Also I do have a character I'm planning who would absolutely be a DM, but I’m not sure if I want to make that canon or not because I haven’t had any experience DMing myself yet (though I definitely want to). That kid is several IC years away anyway, so we’ll see.

 

[Samuel Phillips]

Which is exactly why Jasmine and I have been so keen on doing this, we wanted to play with the meta fun of it all, as well as spend the time thinking about what kinds of D&D characters our HNZ characters would build

I really don't know anything about D&D other than what Rowan has mentioned to me, but I do love the meta/inception aspect of our rp characters creating characters and rping with each other and I am really glad that it has been brought to the site somehow.

Rowan helped me create a D&D character for one of my characters today so I am able to take part in the rp society thread and it's all super exciting! It was surprisingly easy for me to choose some of the traits or whatever, that my character would have chosen and also difficult in places. Regardless of how much I think I know my character, it did sort of give me a new insight to the way they would think and what kind of things would inspire their decisions. Inception and more character development? yes please!

I'm into the idea of the game itself as well as the rp possibilities that could take place outside of D&D games, too (if Rowan's game becomes a proper canon thing rather than an experiment). I really love the idea that the characters participating in the games would talk about their own characters in the same way I'm sure every member of hnz talks about their characters to each other, and everyone generally nerding out about rping in the same way we all do as well!