These are my free form notes from the Seminar in Tampere on Playing Roles:
Sveinsdottir: Just a Game? Production and consumption of content by role-players in Star Wars Galaxies
Her character could have been lvl one - her abilities did not matter at all for the roleplaying. Everything enacted, emote played instread of using the game system.
...so player driven, gamist perspective ignored.
From my notes when reading the paper:
Surprising that conflict was avoided so much. Used NPCs as bad guys. Did not use the conflicts designed into the game world.
(did the revamp have any effect on the rp:ing?)
Very group/community focussed play. Drama vs Socializing.
Most interesing with the paper to me is the focus on how important the narrative is for the community: almosed used as a tool for keeping together (the thing of creating a mutual view on the world, merging and developing subjective views)
Discussion:
Craig: a nice example of players using a ga-me world as arena for roleplaying.
Svein: they dont mix gamist and role play at all. Come together to roleplay. When asked why swg is used: can have own cities. Good custimization possibiliites.
//i would add that they have an emotesystem that is very good for rping as well.
Red t-shirt: common to separate from game world. The less of the game there is, the beter it is for roleplaying. Good in swg to make cities.
Harviainen: sounds like a new role playing game that is superimposed on swg, just using swg as a platform for another game.
Annika: isnt that very common, use a game as a playground.
//hmm how make the world support it instead
staffan: no support for guildleading/game mastering
Montola: customizability important, but not so good that one either.
Martin E: Neverwinter nights have exellent game mastering stuff, anyone looked at that
Heliö: yes.
I asked about the fact that they aviod conflict,
Sveinsdottir: yes, a lot of the players are also roleplayers offline and when asked about differences they say that the fact when playing real life, ppl cant leave the room without explaingin, but an online player can just log off. Important to keep the community.
I commented that the narrative seem like a tool for the community, and she said that yes, it is common that the story coordinators desgnes the stories to strenghten the commity does individal things for individual characters to bring them in.
