Wul­fare leaned back in his chair, peer­ing out from under his hood to observe the crowds packed into The Pranc­ing Pony. It amazed even him, a reg­u­lar patron, how a local event could sum­mon so many towns­folk to one
place for dis­cus­sion and col­lec­tive condolence.

He was not from the lands sur­round­ing Bree-Town. Indeed his mus­cu­lar frame, con­fi­dent pose and fairer skin betrayed his iden­tity as a well trav­elled adven­turer from the plains of Rohan. How­ever, despite this he could not help but feel a sense of duty to help out these folk when he over­heard snip­pets of
con­ver­sa­tion about press­ing matters.

“A word in yer ear stranger.” A grav­elly voice mur­mured from across the table at which Wul­fare was sat. “Word on the street ‘as it that last night was only the first strike. Some mad­man out­side is ravin’ about two bits of a key, down in that…tha-”,

“Great Bar­row.” Wul­fare inter­rupted, a wry grin on his face. “Leave it to me.”

Does this sound famil­iar? Per­haps it reminds you of a pas­sage from a novel you may have read, or a piece of lore pro­vided by the in-game quests and NPC chat­ter. Well this is in fact just one exam­ple of how Role Play­ing can begin
in Lord of the Rings Online. My first ever (and cur­rently only suc­cess­ful) group to Great Bar­row, the game’s first dun­geon, began when my Cap­tain Wul­fare was approached by some­one in Bree. They had four guildies ready for
GB and only needed a healer and ran­dom to get going. It just so hap­pened that my girl­friend (who plays a Min­strel called Esyllt) and I were also look­ing for a group to the dun­geon and we teamed up.

The funny thing was…the whole thing was done in char­ac­ter. Well…mostly. The other four were all part of the same role play­ing kin­ship and all were very help­ful and expe­ri­enced. There was no walk­ing involved, or tak­ing an
“RP break” after every fight to con­tem­plate the nature of the uni­verse etc. We tore through the place with only a bit of trou­ble with the Ter­ri­ble Twins, all out of char­ac­ter chat (and there was a lot of it) kept to the fel­low­ship chan­nel and no prob­lems in gen­eral. After­ward we mapped back to The Pranc­ing Pony, a sort of hub for role play on our server. We had a few drinks, some music, and then went our sep­a­rate ways.

At the time Esyllt and I were both brand new to the server and to the game itself. These role play­ers were in no way hard­core. They didn’t kick us, or even men­tion it after a slip of the tongue in /s (yes, it was a pro­fan­ity). The whole expe­ri­ence served as a gen­tle and extremely immers­ing intro­duc­tion to the mechan­ics of group­ing in the game, amongst other things.

Now RP is often seen in a neg­a­tive light by many in the MMO com­mu­nity. Some see it as a load of ‘thees’ and ‘thous’, an activ­ity that gets noth­ing done, involves copi­ous amounts of walk­ing, and makes you feel like a geek. I’m here to tell you that this is…well not entirely false, but…well…mostly. Whilst there are some hard­core role play­ers who do feel
it nec­es­sary to force their ideas of what is ‘proper’ on every­one and give RP a bad name, most are just nor­mal play­ers who want to play the game. If they can do that by con­nect­ing and empathis­ing with their avatars at the same time then so be it. If not, and it is often the way that you can’t find RP even on an RP ded­i­cated sever, they just carry on play­ing no harm no foul.

Lotro is a fan­tas­tic game for RP for sev­eral rea­sons. I will be writ­ing about them in depth in future arti­cles but for now I will high­light some in bul­let point form:

• Tolkien’s world, char­ac­ters and lore are so deep and multi faceted that an MMO based within and around them is a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to explore avenues the nov­els did not.
• Tur­bine very kindly included OOC (out of char­ac­ter) chan­nels in the game, as well as a Role Play­ing Flag (/rp on) that adds ‘Role­play­ing’ to your character’s tool tip for every­one to see. This allows role play­ers, and even the many who don’t but are inter­ested in it, to see who to inter­act with if they want a lit­tle bit of /s and /emote banter.
• Lotro’s com­mu­nity is the best I have ever had the plea­sure of play­ing with in any game, MMO or not. The game seems to attract a very mature, fun lov­ing and open minded crowd who are both great at the game and at com­mu­ni­cat­ing too.
• The Epic Quest Line in par­tic­u­lar, and many of the other quests, are engross­ing and sur­pris­ingly well writ­ten. This con­nec­tion with what hap­pens in the game world makes you feel more like a hero who makes a dif­fer­ence in
  Mid­dle Earth, rather than just some ran­dom toon you rolled to farm and grind your evenings away.

These are just a few exam­ples of why and how role play blos­soms in Lotro. Oth­ers, such as titles, houses, cos­tumes, sur­names, themed kin­ships and events add even more icing to this deli­cious cake. The game suc­ceeds on so many lev­els for casual play­ers like myself as well as those who want to explore and com­plete every­thing. There’s a place for every­one, and role play­ers are no exception.

The great­est appeal for me is the solid game play and vari­ety of deep fea­tures that don’t involve right click­ing a mob and doing the ‘one two, a one two three!’ dance. Role Play­ing is a hobby I have always been into and it is a plea­sure to bring it to Lotro with me. But it remains just that…a hobby. It’s fun and reward­ing but never con­sumes the game play expe­ri­ence for me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of RP in Mid­dle Earth. It is an hon­our to be given the chance to write with Tony for this great blog and I hope that my posts remain as con­sis­tent and as inter­est­ing as his. In future I will be writ­ing more about role play in the game as well as expe­ri­ences I have had as a Euro­pean player and other assorted top­ics. I play a few dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters on the only RP Eng­lish Code­mas­ters server, Lau­re­lin, and would be happy to answer any ques­tions or requests peo­ple might have. Enjoy!

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