Charmed and Harry-Potter online free-form roleplayers

[sirogit]

This always stumped me. Why is it when ever I put the words "roleplaying" into a search engine or livejournal, a very large number of the results are about freeform roleplaying for in the settings of Charmed, Harry Potter or strrangely enough, both?

Why are these things so popular and yet, from my point of view, almost completely disconnected from the hobby in general?

Its even weirder because I've known an online-Charmed-roleplayer. He was my roommate. He was definately not at all associated with the hobby. I showed him a copy of Sorcerer and he was like "Whoah, is that like Dungeons and Dragons?" (You know they're not in the hobby when they neither abreiviate nor pronounciate the ampersand), but he called the Charmed thing "Roleplaying".

So, does someone know more about these things? Lineages/successors? Usual demographic?

[Vaxalon]

I've had a few passing encounters with FFRP.  It's almost completely its own animal; very few people who are involved with it, I've found, are at all interested in RPG's.  (yeah, yeah, Tony, FFRP *is* an RPG)  

I don't know why Charmed and Harry Potter are so popular.  Back when I had my experiences with FFRP, neither of them were around, and they tended to be generic fantasy.

[Valamir]

There've breen some threads on this in the past...even had a dedicated practitioner pop on and give the inside scoop on a couple of them.  

Check out:  Intragalactic League of Sims

There were others but that's the only one that seemed to pop up on a search for "Simming" which is what many of these folks refer to their play as.

[Librisia]

I've found that the folks who do the HP and Charmed stuff are doing FFRP, but they have no clue what tabletop gaming is about.

I started to write an article about this, actually, because I made up a character for a tabletop verison of HP that our group was running, and I wanted an online forum for the character (the tt group petered out).

I could not find anywhere to play, because my character, according to FFRP standards, is a Mary Sue.

Yes, they are their own deal.  And what they are really doing is writing interactive fanfic.  What I've seen happen with the 2 games I followed, is that the moderators want to do their thing, and they don't pay any attention to anyone who joins that isn't playing a canon caracter.  And they heavily discourage non-canon characters.  

It seems like very incestuous, cliquey play.  I welcome comments/proof to the contrary.

So, if you're interested in what I've written so far, you can go to it at http://www.livejournal.com/users/librisia/2004/10/05/

The bottom entry is the first one, so read that first.

[sirogit]

Intereasting.

After perusing a few of these sites, I've notoiced a very strong tendecy - Characters tend to have a very strong sense of very loose and vague definition, sometimes simple idealism or what would appear to be descriptions of the players themselves, mixed with a very definite and concrete list of the character's powers.

So it makes sense to say that Charmed and Harry Potter are particularly popular franchises because the nature of the settings are both A) Very escapist and B) highly supportive of characters that are "You + Powers". Charmed makes sense paticularly because of the "indeterminate genre + Soap Opera." nature of the show, which seems to follow along the general consistency of "Simming" in general.

[Brennan Taylor]

I tried my hand at a few of these back in the 1990s, and then it was all Star Trek games. I think people who play these games are attracted to strong franchises, and most of the players are hardcore fans of the chosen fictional world. There is a lot of reverence for the setting in these games, and anything established by the "official" movie/book/tv show is generally considered off-limits.

[daMoose_Neo]

And another I've observed is the use of "Roleplaying" forums to increase traffic to a site. The moderators may be interested or may just throw it up and advertise their "Uber l33t forumz were u ken play as goku n brolly n stuff" (I've personally seen a lot of DragonballZ forums that work as such).
Interestingly enough, Neo (my company) actually produced a Perl script that facilitated an organized, structured play, much like a regular RPG...and no one bit. Folks got tired of working with a regular set of rules & restrictions.
It does indeed appear that what errupts ends up being an interactive fanfic as opposed to "roleplaying" as we consider it, or at least as a Roleplaying "Game".

[Librisia]

...the nature of the settings are both A) Very escapist and B) highly supportive of characters that are "You + Powers"...

What's funny is that all of the standards for these communities actively discourage the You+powers as Mary Sueage.  Such things are highly frowned upon, despite the fact that, IMO, that's still exactly what's going on.

The one HP game I followed was actually the mods exploring elements of sexuality - they were all slash fictioners as well as playing this game.

And while I would agree that FFRPGs ARE a type of role playing game, I don't think that all FFRPGs are role playing games.  If the moderators/gms aren't experienced in table top gaming, then they don't qualify as far as I'm concerned.

[Danny_K]

I'm familiar with the term "Mary Sue" from fanfiction, but how is it used in these FFRPG's?  

And -- using Harry Potter to explore one's sexuality?  That's just a stunningly weird concept to me.

[James Holloway]

And -- using Harry Potter to explore one's sexuality?  That's just a stunningly weird concept to me.

Yeah, well, welcome to the internet.

The  idea of a character being a "Mary Sue" is probably terminologically limited to the fanfiction community, but the idea that the GM operates at character creation to preserve the uniqueness of canon characters or to maintain the balance of the community shows up in other games, particularly in very large ongoing LARPs.

In, let's say, a Werewolf LARP, you are likely to have several dozen players, who make up a "sept" or community. In order for this community to make sense, the GM will often say things in character creation like "you'd like to play an X? Well, we have a lot of X already -- how about a Y? No? A Z?" In some cases, there can only reasonably be one of X, and  X has some kind of special game advantage or other cachet. In most cases, X will be played by a close friend of the GM (I kid).

Ostensibly, this is to prevent an unreasonable, disbelief-suspension-breaking player group demography: "what, you mean we'reall the last son of a dead tribe? Well, don't that beat all." In practice, it does send a signal to some players that their characters are subsidiary. I've referred to the typical Werewolf game as "all chiefs and no Indians" elsewhere, or maybe "all rebels and no cause," but people do like to play the chiefs and rebels.

[Librisia]

After perusing a few of these sites, I've notoiced a very strong tendecy - Characters tend to have a very strong sense of very loose and vague definition, sometimes simple idealism or what would appear to be descriptions of the players themselves, mixed with a very definite and concrete list of the character's powers.

Could you explain that first part again?  "A very strong sens of very loose and vague definition" is not clear to me.  I just want to be clear, because, with your permission, I'd like to perhaps quote you in the rest of the article (when I get around to writing it).

James, I think you're right.  Unfortunately, as you saw in my essay, the clues that the mods use aren't useful when dealing with characters who were created referencing tabletop games.  So, I think a lot of tt players get the shaft, because the frames of reference for character creation are completely different.

[Danny_K]

Ostensibly, this is to prevent an unreasonable, disbelief-suspension-breaking player group demography: "what, you mean we'reall the last son of a dead tribe? Well, don't that beat all." In practice, it does send a signal to some players that their characters are subsidiary. I've referred to the typical Werewolf game as "all chiefs and no Indians" elsewhere, or maybe "all rebels and no cause," but people do like to play the chiefs and rebels.

Another way to look at this is that it's a consequence of freeform RP'ing.  If it's important to everone in the game that the game have a certain Sim feeling to it, and there's no practical way to control player's action once in the game (i.e. no system), then an easy and practical way to handle it is to disempower the players.  

In other words, you can play in a Harry Potter game, but you're only allowed to play Unnamed Griffyndor Student #23.  Or you can play a Star Wars game, but only as a mook Rebel squaddie or Stormtrooper, not as one of the glamorous guys who kicks ass and takes names.  

(An aside: my Werewolf PC's got beat down pretty regularly, but I think my play experience is different than most people's).

[b_bankhead]

I've been marveling at this form of online rp for years, ever since I began searching roleplaying in the yahoo groups section a few years agao.  There were an enormous number of Buffy tVS ones a while back, I suppose the fashion has moved on.

It just goes to show how insular the world of tabletop rpg really is, that this whole alternate form could exist largely unknown to us, like the aztec empire to europe before Columbus.

On the Yahoo online chats, I find plenty of younger players who literally are at a loss when I try to describe a tabletop rpg to them. I think a real online outreach to that crowd could be possible, but it would take a willingness to do completely different things with rpgs , things I think the normal rpg crowd would find anathema, but the Indie rpg world might profitably investigate.

[Andrew Morris]

I think a real online outreach to that crowd could be possible, but it would take a willingness to do completely different things with rpgs , things I think the normal rpg crowd would find anathema, but the Indie rpg world might profitably investigate.

Like what? Can you give some examples?

[Brendan]

sirogit, Ralph, Librisia:  You guys are aware of communities like Must Be Pop, right?  In a way, they are to the HP / Charmed FFRPs what the HP / Charmed FFRPs are to tabletops.