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This will be the part of my site that
is dedicated to one of my favorite hobbies: Literary
Roleplaying.
Right. I know roleplaying
is very geeky, but hey, newsflash: I'm a geek!
Eh? Whatcho
talking about?
For all you poor souls out there who
have no idea what I’m saying, here’s a small
presentation of what literary roleplaying games are all
about:
Literary roleplaying (also called
play-by-post roleplaying or just RP-ing) is an
interactive form of writing. You find a forum online
that is to your liking (there are a hell of a lot of
genres out there). You create a character; a person from
whose point of view you see the world, and usually you
have to wait for the forum staff to approve your profile
before you can start writing on the site. Then you write
a post (a fairly normal length would be around three
paragraphs), that someone else – with another character
of course – replies to. You interact with them, creating
a story that is written very much like a book, the
writers each reacting to the other character’s actions,
responding to their comments, describing their
character’s thoughts, feelings, the situations, the
surroundings – basically creating literature.
Why?
For most players (or the good ones
anyway) it is all about improving one's writing skills,
getting to know new people, dreaming and learning. Yes,
you can learn a lot from developing characters,
societies, storylines and plots. You get to explore your
creative sides on many levels, as well as getting
feedback and ideas from others. My initial thought when
I first joined a forum for younger kids a few years
back, was that it was a nice and easy way to improve my
English vocabulary. I was very right. Looking back on my
first posts now, I can easily tell that
there has been a significant progress.
Later on, I kept doing it simply
because I found it fun and very rewarding. I have
learned much more from it than I thought I would – my
vocabulary only being a small part of it. I have learned
about people – a lot. And I have learned some graphics,
coding, web-design and a hell of a lot of other stuff
relating to online activity. I have learned a lot of
historical facts, as the games I have been active in
were often set in the past.
Bragging…
My current site opened to the public
in October 2006. It is a historical RPG, set in
England in Victorian times. I chose this setting mostly because
I love the 19th century - it fascinates me immensely - and also because I study English. The genre is
plain fiction, leaning towards drama (girly-girly), but we will be
sure to throw both comedy and thriller in there as the
storylines develop.
The forum is looking beautiful – some
of it being my work, but all the spiffy little details
and buttons are the doing of my good friend Liz. We are
allowing people to use celebrity faces for their
characters’ images, which is sort of cheesy, but also
cool, because it lets us play around with pictures and
make nice avatars and signatures for them, so people can
more easily imagine how they would look. The images are,
however, only a representation of the character, seeing
as it can sometimes be difficult to find suitable photos
and/or manipulate people into looking more Victorian.
This, however, is one of
the many fun parts of interactive online writing. Not
only can you stick images of your characters on the
site, but in the text you can also throw in
illustrations of houses, dresses, landscape and so on
(Example: In
this post and the two
following it, the players (a friend and I) mess around
with a signature. Example 2: In
this post the player
uses a picture of the dress her character is presenting
to her employer). Players sometimes share songs, videos
or lyrics with each other that they feel fit a certain
character or storyline. Combining different medias like
this and communicating with other writers as one goes
along creating the story, is a way of interactive
writing that appeals to the child in me; curious,
creative and inventive, and yet ever seeking affirmation
before daring to trust my abilities.
Some
more facts:
Interactive writing is a new and very
interesting genre that keeps changing year for year,
although this particular kind is not very well-known in
Norway yet. Norwegian sites containing interactive
poetry do exist, where poems and stories are combined
with images, animation, video, sound and text - and the
reader can influence the progress and outcome of it, or
choose between different kinds of alternatives. But
Norwegian literary roleplayers are few and far between.
Literary roleplaying as a hobby, however, is
a widespread phenomenon all over the world, and though
most sites are in English, I have met writers from all
of Scandinavia as well as Japan, Holland, Germany,
Ukraine, Belgium and
several other countries. Most players are young, many in
their teens, but their tastes vary as
much as in any other group, and thus there are forums
out there of almost every genre and setting; from drama,
horror, science fiction, fantasy and the supernatural to
roleplays based on books, tv-shows or movies
(fan-fiction),
rpgs based on the animal world, historical ones,
political or religious ones, fairy-tales and
fable-inspired ones, and so on and so on.
Linkage:
The RPG –
Directory
- This is an RPG-listing
where players can advertise their games, ask for site
support/help or just discuss stuff.
“Affections and Affectations”-
Mine and Lina's RPG. :) Yay! Go us
My own characters have been fairly
varied; men, children, women, even a few non-human ones.
I currently have only four active characters, all of
them at the same site. They are all women, mostly
because I make a point out of exploring women's
situations in the Victorian century, but also because I
find women easier to write.
Nora
- is my favorite,
and the oldest of my current characters. I have used her
for three different sites, but now I’ve re-created her
for my forum. She’s a neurotic prostitute with an
alcohol-problem, slightly pathetic, but a very fun
(although sometimes hard) person to write. She's my baby
and I love her almost as if she were real.
Charlotte Kendall -
This one is a murderess with a messy past who has
recently managed to create a life for herself and her
sister in spite of everything. Her lies threaten to
catch up with her, however, so she'll have to tell her
husband everything and hope he understands. I'm proud of
her history. I think she's an exciting personality to
explore.
Eir T. Fjelde
- is a Norwegian fisherman’s daughter who has emmigrated
to England and works with props at the theatre.
She's a warm, witty and charismatic girl with her head
in the clouds who loves to tease people and tell stories.
My favorite thing about Eir is that I can use her to
create some comic relief.
Rebecca Lindeman
- is the Countess of the
area where the game is set, meaning she’s a fairly
important person. She’s selfish, cynical and flat out
b*tchy most of the time.
It seems nobody but me really likes
this character - most of my co-players hate her. She’s not evil though, just
really superficial and bored. I
also write Rebecca's husband occasionally.
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