In the Moment

I’m actually really excited to write this one—I’ve wanted to ever since I released the last one, and now I have the time to do it. So here we go: Roleplay in the moment.

As I was writing about Roleplay Perspectives and searching for a good objective way to explain it, it occurred to me that, from my experience, the actual fun part of Roleplay is, and I think should be, each post. In its most unrefined form, RP usually shows up as present-tense, which makes a good deal of sense, though most people do past-tense because it’s more familiar and perhaps professional. What’s important, though, is that RP naturally tends to gravitate toward the present-tense, because the interest is very much involved with the present and less so of simply recounting a story.

Ever read someone else’s RP, after it’s been finished? Ever noticed it’s actually really boring to look back on, and you wouldn’t want to read it unless you had to? Exceptions exist, but for the most part this really stands. Does it mean that the RP was just as boring to read at the time as it is for you now? Not necessarily.

It seems clear, then, that the fun part about roleplaying is the next moment that lies ahead. You’re very much interested in the next breath of the character, if you’re truly engaged. What are they going to do? Will things go well for them? If you’re meta-gaming the life out of an RP, then you might not have that uncertainty, but with it things become a lot more fun. For this reason, things like focusing on roleplay perspective actually do make the RP more interesting, because it’s focused on the immediate tense. A character’s ignorance or their flaws or their triumphs are so much greater in the small battles than the large, because you’re focused on that post by post, not really the macro sense.

I feel like this is a pretty believable concept, even if you didn’t notice or think about it in this way, so what’s the application—what does this mean for our roleplay?

In the last few articles I’ve mentioned a lot about making the distinction between RP and, say, fanfiction, but I felt like I was always missing some sort of catalyst to explain it, and I think I’ve found it. While fanfiction (and most forms of fiction) focuses on the macro elements, the arc of the plot, or even individual scenes, it’s still very much centered on the culmination and the finale that the plot arc makes. Eventually the character hits a climax, accomplishes something, and it’s hopefully really cool. Most of the buildup to that point is really just to draw immersion and present the point in a way that seems dramatic. This is wonderful, but it can officially take a step down and let Roleplay be its own beast.

I’ve noticed a trend among the roleplay approach, initially in myself and then really in everyone around me. Everyone seems to plan their roleplay like that. They come up with a cool thing to do with their character, and they set about making it happen. They’re excited about the climax, the plot arc, but ultimately, they realize that for it to work that way they’re going to need some build up. They plan a bunch of threads, or maybe just a couple, and they set to work. They should hopefully lead their hero to the goal, with all the little scenes that would be cool to happen along the way. This can happen both on large and small scales—a dozen threads, or just one scene that’s planned.

What you quickly realize, though, is that things seem really… stale, especially after a few posts or worse, an entire thread of it. It feels a lot more like you’re suffering through it just to get to the “good part” at the end, and ultimately it turns into a chore, like a lot of roleplay. Rather than focusing on that huge goal, people really should be focusing on that immediate tense.

Instantly, roleplay becomes way more satisfying now that you’re focused on the immediate tense. What matters are the nuances of the characters, the potential where this could go, what your character is feeling right at this second, and you find yourself immersed and engaged in an incredible way. Rather than thinking about, “How am I going to write 20 posts on riding my horse across the countryside” you’re more concerned maybe about being afraid of the dark, looking forward apprehensively, considering turning back, or being grumpy because you don’t really like traveling.

If you’re only interested in completing a story arc, then you should really consider just writing typical fiction, not simply fiction with a roleplaying character and a partner.

Looking back on my roleplaying failures and how many different plot arcs I’ve fallen out of, almost every single one could be related to having this big goal in the future and really only focusing on that. This ties in with why I’ve found such a profound interest with characters that are much simpler, because they cater far less to this heroic mentality, where our goal is to go dramatically change the world. Instead, it’s much more inclined to be focused on a man’s day to day battles, his moment by moment, not necessarily conquering a huge challenge one brick at a time.

Ever notice that some of your favorite RPing memories are the ones that really took a shape of its own, unexpected and unprecedented, usually? The ones that took on their own life and went somewhere you never really anticipated—those are the ones I remember. Those are the ones I fell in love with and make me want to keep roleplaying. But how can that happen if we’re so stringently focused on achieving some macro goal, even if it’s just at the end of a scene or roleplaying thread?

So I would challenge you to consider your goals and motivations when you begin to roleplay through a scene. Consider how you’re going to do it, and what you want to happen by doing it that way. Hold your plans loosely and set your character out in a direction and see what happens. It’s good to have goals long term in roleplay, but what’s important is the path that you take to get there. Having the memory of the experience is much more enjoyable than holding up an accolade that says you did it.

Besides, if you focus more on RPing in the moment, you’ll probably find yourself finishing a lot more content, in reality, even if it ends perhaps a bit different than you planned.

Try this with your characters too, though. Rather than just creating a bunch of incredible stuff that happened to them over their life, why not just start fresh? It’s kind of uncommon for someone to have ten major life-changing events by the time they’re twenty, so maybe just stick with one and roleplay the rest? It’s a lot more fun to make that journey rather than just copping out and saying it happened already.

So live a little! Or rather, let your character live a little, on their own, without you constantly prodding them in one direction. Often we’re already in worlds spoken for, so you don’t need to spend the time exploring the world itself, but rather the character, and what they’re doing in that world.