On RPG's in General - Lite: where and how to get your feet wet!

 After yesterday's technical problems with blogger, I had my tech specialists take a look to make sure everything was fine.

 That's why you didn't get the post yesterday - they're  competent, but very much difficult to cut a proper deal with.

It costed me three whole cans of tuna! THREE I SAY! IT'S A TRAVESTY!

 Now, I can already see you eager to get started, fidgeting and staring at your screen as you scour the post, with your mind craving to start...

 

 Hey. At least let me dream about it. It makes me feel all fuzzy inside.

 Anyway, let's not waste any more time and let's get to it, shall we?

Little premise - but important

 Now, do remember that almost all the resources I'm going to show you today are either pointing you to, or giving you the tools to, engage in an activity that more often than not requires other people.

 I know, scary.

 Some of them will require some contact online, so always keep in mind that some level of interaction with strangers might be possible. But nerds are usually a friendly bunch. We don't bite.

 Still, for all the various options, either have some friends come with you, or keep in mind that a tacit 'con' and 'pro' for each will be that you'll interact with them. So amazing friendships and dramas can still happen.

 Believe me.

 I know.

 And with that out of the way, here you'll find a lot of hints and resources for you to start down this path. I'll list pro and cons of each one, and what level of engagement is required. In the series we talked about Tabletop RPG (Dungeons and Dragons, Vampires, Shadowrun, etc) but there are a lot of possible experiences out there that can ease you into the roleplaying world with less of a daunting interaction and still giving you some of the same benefits.

Lite Experiences

 What I intend by 'Lite experiences' are akin to gateway experiences to ease you into the whole roleplaying scene.

Pros:

 These sort of experiences will probably have you start as the role of a player, with a possible growth to some minor world and event building and very easy narratives.

 Character creation will be most probably just narrative based, without any sort of statistics or number crunching to be dealt with.

 The settings will be usually well explained or easy enough to grasp to not require a lot of work to go into it.

 All interactions are usually gonna be tied to just text-chatting, adding a layer of tranquillity and anonimity to the whole ordeal.

Cons:

 

 Interaction between people will usually be short, and only a few grow to something more meaningful.

 Waiting times in some cases can be quite long.

 No guarantee of the quality of writing you'll find with this or the other person, or the sort of person you'll deal with (yes, some people are jerks. But that's why I put that little premise beforehand).

 SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCES

 

 For those of you who are into PC gaming, one of the best ways to start getting acquainted with the whole concept while going at it on your own and experience some amazing stories.

 The pros of it are that you won't have to interact with others, and you still get some of the benefits - explore a different world with its rules, generate a character you can to some extent customize and give a backstory to if you wish (or not).

 The cons, instead, are that you're going to have a very 'limited' experience. Being constricted to a specific script, you won't be able to customize your character as much as you want, but in some cases, the choices you take during dialogues will help you 'flesh out' the sort of person your character is. And that usually, they are paid experiences. 

 A couple of examples:

• Shadowrun Returns/Dragonfall/Hong Kong: I couldn't let it out. A gorgeous universe where tech and magic blend together, one of the best settings I've ever met with (and a great inspiration, too.) Based on the Tabletop RPG, these are three contained stories with very nice characters and good (even if limited) choices to figure out who your character is. Should run well on older machines as well.
• Pillars of Eternity: A more 'classic' cRPG, on the same level with Baldur's Gate and other great titles of the past that used the Dungeons and Dragons license and system, it's a good title to pickup, with an extensive lore and choices to customize your character.
• TES: Skyrim: An example of open world rpg: this means your character is plopped into a world and from there on out you can develop and do almost whatever the hell you want, among the limits of the engine. Even follow the main story, eventually. Or not.

 MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCES

 Now we're getting into the meat of it. These experiences will start putting you in contact with other people interested in roleplaying.

 The number of resources around for these sort of things is massive, so google is definitely your friend. You'll find communities roleplaying about everything (yes, even very, very lewd stuff of all kinds).

And lewd roleplaying follows suit.

 The pros are that almost all of these options are free (except one, but we'll cover it).

 

 The cons are the ones I've already listed - you won't know what people you'll be playing with, and writing and roleplaying 'quality' can vary greatly.

 It is at this point that I would suggest you get familiar with messaging/VoIP programs like Skype or Discord - they'll come extremely handy to keep in contact with the people you like, giving you the option to play again for a more continuative relation, and they'll be extremely helpful tomorrow when we'll go into full on tabletop RPG resources territory.

• Play by Forum: With the pros of being easy to enter into and giving you a lot of time to think of a reply scene, and the specific con of it usually bringing very slow pacing due to people replying 'when they can', this sort of roleplaying can be found in a lot of artsy communities (DA, FA, etc) with a simple search for 'roleplaying' and contacting members who are interested. A quick search on google can find you a lot of other communities into other established settings like say Star Trek, or Star Wars.
• Play by Chat: A term that encompasses everything between simple *does this* banter in a private message to more complex, specifically made chats and sites to support character creation and chat groups, the pros of play by chat are the same of play by forum, but along with that there's a much more speedy dialogue between the parts. Beware that the cons apply as well. You can easily find discord groups with a google search, or you can create your own little group with friends to try it out without too much of a problem! a great way to flesh out your own settings too.

  A mention aside is for MMORPG's - Stuff like Guild Wars 2, World of Warcraft, Star Wars - The Old Republic and so on.

 Some of them are free, some of them require a monthly fee, some of them require just a one time payment, but all of them tend to have a roleplaying scene of sorts. While the setting in this case is very well defined (usually following the race histories, storylines, etc of the world they're set in) you still have a lot of freedom in character creation, and can get pretty good interactions roleplaying wise.
 Another pro is that, even if you don't wanna roleplay, you still have a fun game to play in and make new friends without much of a worry about writing and so on.
 You can find a lot of amazing people, and these can turn into play by chat roleplaying partners, friends, sometimes betareaders, and even tabletop roleplaying companions. It happened with me!

 Cons are obviously the time consumption, money spent upfront, and the unsure quality of interactions, along with the sheer fact that you should make sure the game runs smoothly on your system. Choppy framerates can kill the mood.
 
 To give you an example of it, here's the RP side of Guild Wars 2 , where there are character sheets, events, and other fun and amazingly creative stuff made by players in that universe - and, like this, you can find an RP community in almost every other MMO game around!

 So, here's the resources just to 'get your feet wet'. Tomorrow, we'll get into tabletop RPG proper - and how to completely avoid the need for the physical table alltogether, thus ending this miniseries!