The Paradox Experiment, Issue One

As promised earlier, I present one of the new features for Frontier's Horizon!

Knowing I had a pretty open afternoon coming up today, I decided this afternoon would be the launch point for an experiment and feature I had wanted to run here on the blog. That experiment concerned role-playing and story creation on an MMO (multi-player online) environment.

As mentioned in my previous post, the Virtue server is known as the unofficial role-playing server for the game City of Heroes. I wanted to put that to the test. Was collaboration and role-playing that rampant on the server? I've been a longtime veteran of the server and had some idea of just how much went on. However, I wanted to try it out with a new character, totally fresh, and utterly in-character the whole time. How long would it take to find RP and could you move forward in the game and up in levels staying completely in character the whole time?

The Rules

1.) Stay in character the entire time. Any out of character game jargon were to be taken as if the person had ACTUALLY SPOKEN the words. The idea was to literally plop a character down in Paragon City with little back history and little understanding of what things would be like. On top of that, the character was to not be a hero before hand. He would wander into the city and the rest would be left to chance and to my own interpretation in-character. The full idea was to be a fully experienced RP'er playing a complete and utter newbie to the City.

2.) Keep an eye on the clock and note times to record how long it took for things to occur.

3.) To not overly fish for RP or to force scenes. Let the other players, within reason, control the scene with their own ideas and input.

4.) I would roll a die to randomly determine what powers the character would have. From this, I would work towards a personality and an outfit.

The Character

I needed a character that was fresh faced and that matched the idea of the "young hero." The original idea was to keep sexual gender out of it by designing an android type character. For this particular experiment, I opted not to do it since I did not want people to feel alienated by a non-human character. I wanted other players to feel comfortable around the character with no sense of alienation. I decided, for this run, on a young man, around 18 or 19 in age. His clothes would be simple and comfortable looking, pants, jacket and shirt. No fancy costume, not yet. No bright colors either.

His hair would be white due to the experiences he had been through with his abilities. Experiences that he would not remember at first. I also thought that the white hair would be a nice symbol of his purity and goodness. (But, thats just me. *lol*)

As stated, the character creation process was entirely random. The City of Heroes character building process is a thing of beauty all by itself since it gives the player an immense number of combinations of powers, origins, and outfits. In City of Heroes terms, I rolled a Natural Illusion/Kinetics Controller. What this means is that my hero's abilities came from within himself. They were not mutations or originated with technology but instead natural abilities and talent. He would have the ability to cause illusions on the bad guys as well as manipulate kinetic energy to help himself and his teammates. In the game, a Controller is one that tends to hold villains in place, stun them, and to "lock down" enemies instead of going in and brawling them.

I decided that he would not really know where his powers came from but instead were just extensions of his will, of what he wanted. I figured the other stuff could get filled in later or possibly by other players. Again, I wanted it to be collaborative.

The name was incredibly important and after a long grueling process which I won't go into now, I decided on Ren Paradox. Ren was short for Renaissance (A favorite name of mine for close reading fans will remember) and Paradox... well it would link to the character's story.

Character's Story

A good beginning mystery should be simple. I wanted something that would plop Ren right smack in the middle of Atlas Park with little other strings attached. I decided that it would be as easy as getting off a bus...

When someone would click to read his bio, this is what would come up...

1/19/2008, Noon, The Redhound bus pulled up to the steps of the Atlas Park City Hall. The only disembarking passenger was a white haired young man carrying a backpack and a look of confusion about him.

The other twist I decided to add was that Ren would have only one solid memory. He would remember waking up on the bus just as it pulled into Paragon City and finding a typewritten piece of paper in his hand that said, "When you awaken, see Miss Susan Davies." This would key into the first thing a Natural hero is told upon logging in for the first time which is.... you guessed it... "See Susan Davies."

I had a few ideas as to how he got onto the bus but nothing would be set in stone. Again, I wanted to see what would, if anything, come up.

With great excitement, I hit the button which would send me into Paragon City. Within minutes, Ren was standing at the steps to Atlas Park City Hall and I posted a quick emote about how he had just stepped off the bus.

What happened over the next five hours is the reason this post is labeled Issue One. There was just too much to tell so I had to make it a series!

~To Be Continued~


Click Here to Read onward to Issue 2