Scene-RP // VOID-STAR.NET

So there I was the other day, basking in the anti-para lulz at the Golden Tether, listening to some utterly incomprehensible roleplay at the bar, when it occurred to me that maybe it’s not enough to just be anti something after all. I mean, anyone can define themselves by what they aren’t, but it takes guts to define yourself by what you are. It was one of those thoughts. So I’m gonna start something; something all of my own, something just for Furc, something that goes hand in hand with my futile ambition to bring good writing to that cesspit of auds and occulars and pronoun avoidance. I think I’m going to call it scene-rp, and it’s going to be everything para should have been and more.

What is Scene-RP?

I’m glad you asked, anonymous self-answering question. Scene-RP is a method of freeform and semi-freeform roleplay that aims to incorporate some of the basic elements of storytelling and fiction writing. The name comes not from the fact that I like dressing up in black and listening to industrial music (though I quite do), but rather that the main focus of scene-rp is playing out (you guessed it) a series of scenes which all contain their own mini-plots. In short, scene-rp focuses on the following three things:

• Drama;
• Action; and,
• Character development.

What do these mean?

At a basic level, drama is conflict. I’m not talking that kind of high school corridor crap dramallama crap, either; I’m talking real, Shakespearian literary conflict. Drama is overcoming (or, perhaps, not) adversity; whether physical, emotional or mental. It’s defeating foes, overcoming addictions and embarking on quests. In other words, it’s a plot; a long-term plot that goes beyond two characters chatting each other up at a bar, before retiring to a private room for some furry cyber (lulz).

Action goes hand-in-hand with drama. It can be physical action, in the traditional sense of a fight or battle, or it can be more subtle, such as careful political manoeuvring or espionage. Either way, characters involved in action are doing something. If drama is the idea or the set-up, action is the result.

Finally, character development is the ultimate result of the above. Characters embark on their quest, battle their demons, and learn something at the end. Maybe they learn to do something a little better next time, maybe at the end of the day their hearts have softened… or hardened. Either way, they do not stay the same in between encounters; they grow and move on.

Scene-rp does not focus on writing a lot of text. Rather, it focuses on the quality of text produced overall, as opposed to the quantity produced in each player’s ‘turn’. Ideally, the transcript of a scene session should read like a stylized chapter in a novel; with a coherent plot and believable character reactions. It should be enjoyable to read, enjoyable to play, and enjoyable to plan.

The Predetermined Taboo

Scene-rp, unlike the majority of para, uses predetermined or semi-predetermined plots. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every inch of storyline needs to be painstakingly scripted before public ‘performance’, rather that when two or more players get together for a scene, both should have a reasonably good idea of where they wish to ‘go’. Scenes should always start with a premise, even if it is a seemingly basic one such as “two characters meet in order to plot an assassination”. Note that while “two characters meet casually in a bar” is technically a premise, it’s not really all that suitable for scene-rp unless there is some further plot development (“… and one discovers the other is her arch-nemesis’ sister”, “… and both are attacked by mysterious aggressors”).

Finding good plot hooks is not as hard as people sometimes think. A lot of the resistance to predetermined RP tends to come from self-involved players, whose ‘predetermined’ stories all continually revolve around their own characters. This is not good scene-rp. A good predetermine story involves finding plot hooks in other people’s characters and then incorporating them into your own character’s storyline in some fashion. Good characters are always written with plot hooks; that is, ‘ins’ between the character’s pre-written history and the slightly chaotic ‘real’ multi-player environment. These can be people or characters — lovers, siblings and so on — or less tangible hooks; an assassin character should have both a wake of bereaved loved ones and potential employees. Before approaching another player for RP, a scene-player should have some idea of how their character ‘hooks into’ the character she is approaching. They are not just ships passing in the night; every encounter should have some kind of substance behind it.

It should be pointed out, that while scene-rp encounters should be at least partly predetermined, part of the skill involved in this type of roleplay is the ability to adapt to a situation. Slavish devotion to the ‘script’ is not what we’re talking about here; if a scene starts with the premise of two characters ready to kill one another, and somehow in the middle of roleplay it transpires that they share a common enemy, then if that tangent sounds better to both players than the original plotline it should be followed. Remember, the main focuses of scene-rp are having fun and telling good stories. Often in the thick of that, characters will start acting with minds of their own; learn to go with the flow.

The Collaboration Rule and Innocent By-Standers

While para-rp generally works on the Furcadian ideal of the Cool and Consent Rule, scene-rp ideally goes one step further and uses what I’m going to call the Collaboration Rule. The Collaboration Rule is a mix of both Consent and Cool, and assumes that in any one scene, all involved players are working collectively towards a common goal; the telling of the current story. That is, while there may be conflict between characters, it is all consensually orchestrated between their players ‘off stage’. The main implication of the Collaboration Rule is, obviously, during combat. All players in a combat scene must either agree beforehand how the general direction the combat is going to go in (“your character beats up mine”) or agree on a set of rules to use OOC in order to fairly but slightly randomly determine IC actions (“I roll to hit you”). Fights between characters are not chances for players to prove how large their e-peens are; they are literary devices for creating drama and action.

As with all fights, this kind of play has some implications for ‘innocent by-stander’ characters if played out in public areas; scene-rpers must therefore always be prepared to either adapt their play to external intervention, or keep RP strictly private if outside intervention is unwanted. Sometimes part of the fun of an orchestrated fight is doing it in a public place to see if others will get involved (and, let’s face it, to piss off the parakids who’d rather sit about and bitch at how they never get any RP than actually involve themselves in any RP).

It should become apparent at this point that scene-rp is a slightly different form of ‘roleplaying’ than that which is usually employed at Furcadia. For all their good intentions, I’ve always felt that the ‘official’ rules of roleplaying in Furc were written by programmers for gamers. They are wholly adversarial; the focus is always on what I want to do with my character. To be perfectly honest, I do not believe these kinds of systems work in environments, like Furc, where there is not some kind of impartial arbiter (such as a GM in tabletop RPG, or the engine in a traditional (MMO)RPG), and misguided attempts to enforce adversarial systems are responsible for the vast majority of bad RPs, misunderstandings and dramallamas. Scene-rp is an attempt to provide a set of roleplay guidelines for writers; instead of an adversarial system, the focus is on what can we do with our characters. Even when deploying OOC rules to structure encounters, scene-rp should always focus on collaboration between players in order to tell a good story rather than using your character to ‘beat’ someone else. This isn’t 1996 any more; online gaming technology has caught up to the point where if you want that kind of play you can turn to Counterstrike or Guildwars.

NPCs, Downtime and Other Tricks of the Trade

Before I go, I’m going to point out that there are a few other things that are commonly frowned upon in para-rp that are not only encouraged but often essential in scene-rp. The first one is NPCs. NPCs are in this context fairly blatantly misnamed (the acronym stands for ‘non-player character’, and traditionally they are characters played by GMs or controlled by the game engine), but the concept is the same; they exist as ‘background’ characters, separate to and generally not as developed as, the ‘main’ player characters. In scene-rp, NPCs can either be played by one player or both, they may be graphically represented on screen by a sprite (ie. one player is dual-boxing both their main character and one or more NPCs) or only alluded to in conversation. Any character that has a minor or ‘walk on’ role in a story but who is still essential to the progression of the plot is an NPC. NPCs should never dominate the scenes they are in, nor become major focuses for the story (except as MacGuffins).

Downtime is another literary convention that can be used to progress a story. It is the parts of a continuous plot which are performed ‘off screen’. If, for example, a period of several weeks or even years occurs between two major ‘events’ in a story, this intervening time can be done as downtime in which both players go over roughly what their character was doing. Obviously, downtime can be filled in with other stories at a later date (the way that most spin-off novels for TV series are set ‘between’ episodes).

I think the main point here is don’t be afraid to experiment. There is no strictly ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to scene-rp, but — like writing — it is certainly possible to do it badly. As long as a story flows, is enjoyable for the participants and mildly amusing to onlookers, scene-rp has achieved it goals. All the rest — the actual mechanics of how things are done, how many lines are written, who plays what character — is merely filler.