The Paradox Experiment, Issue Three

(This continues an ongoing series of articles about an experiment in MMO role-playing and collaborative storytelling.)

Their names were Terry Killganon and Zgon. Terry looked like a cowboy with a dragonfly on his shirt and Zgon appeared to be a spaceman... or an alien. The third was dressed in black armor and named Archus Condrum. Led for the most part by Terry, who had caught the scent of some good RP, began to interview Ren about his situation. As the details began to emerge, left in Paragon, no memories, odd note, one of the comments from the three men was, "Kid, someone wants you here in the city bad and you better figure out what for before it kicks you."

This was followed by someone else saying, "If I were you, I'd get the @#$@ out of here and forget about this city. You're being set-up."

Archus responded with, "I bet he's a spy from the Isles." (The Isles being the location of the sister game, City of Villains. The Rogue Isles and Paragon City don't like each other much.)

Having a blast, I played along and took each of their suggestions in-stride. My creativity was whirring. Could Ren by a spy? Possibly. A plant from the evil Arachnos to infiltrate the hero city? Was he being set-up by some other nefarious group? Could be. I liked Terry's comment the most for it left a little more room for manuevering the story.

We moved our conversation inside City Hall and while there they instructed me to speak with Hero Corps more and to keep my head low. It was during this time that Archus said something about needing more blood. I had Ren emote in distaste as Archus' emoted drinking a vial of blood. Ren summed up his feelings by looking at Archus and saying, "You're creepy."

This was followed up by the three men informing Ren of vampires, monsters, and other "freaks" around the city. Ren took it all in and nodded. The small group broke up as Terry left to attend to patrol issues. Though I was not able to get any help with the mission against the Skulls, I was able to hand the mission off to Terry who agreed to "look into it." Then, once again, Ren was left alone.

For the next forty minutes or so, I moved around City Hall looking for interaction. At one point, I tried to get some interaction out of a high level hero from a renowned role playing supergroup. To my disappointment, I was completely ignored. I figured Ren was pretty tired by now and plopped him on the steps of the City Hall where he was completely ignored by the numerous folks running to and fro. I had the thought, once again, that the experiment may be over. And, once again, just as I was about to call it quits, another character approached Ren.

Her name was Riskque and she emoted a small smile Ren's direction. I emoted Ren looking back and nodding, even added in a "Hey." Thus, a small conversation started and was only interrupted once by a large werewolf who came up to ask us how his outfit looked. I allowed Ren to be rather stunned by that one. When Riskque mentioned it was a slow day, Ren said, "Not for me. I've been called a spy, met a vampire, and mistaken by a detective as some sort of crimefighter. Did I mention I don't have any memories of how I got here? Oh.. yeah... and I just talked to a werewolf."

Riskque eventually left Ren alone to his thoughts sitting there on the steps. I had decided that since, game-wise, I STILL had the mission to defeat some Skulls, Davies has assigned him another mission to test him. I was going to try and find help again. Standing up, I went again to the area underneath Titan's statue.

I approached one character, a female who was a very high level, and did what was now becoming the trademark, "Excuse me.. I need some help." I was ignored. Turning away from Ren, she took off in a sprint away from City Hall. I had Ren shake his head, dejected and ready to give up. And then... I hit platinum.

The hero, coming from a short distance away, ran over to Ren right after I posted my emote. He was high level and his outfit screamed Golden Age Comic era. His name was Blinding Gauntlet. He asked Ren if he needed some help. Delighted, I began by having Ren tell him that there had been a mistake and that he kept getting these assignments from Miss Davies. The conversation went back and forth with Ren feeling increasingly comfortable but still hesitant to discuss his abilities and powers. Blinding Guantlet played the more experienced hero beautifully. "Miss Davies must believe in you and your abilities to give you such an assignment."

He assured Ren he would be alright, told him of the hospital teleporters and the healing technology. He instructed Ren to ask for help from other hero's his security level, to work together. In all of that he let fly with some great quotes including, "Being a hero is not about who's got the strongest powers, but rather, who's got the most determination to protect those in need."

What Blinding Gauntlet could not see on his end of the game was me leaning back in my chair and applauding. Boom. There it was. The Speech. The big classical hero speech that the young hero needs to get his spine and to start his heroic life three and a half hours into the experiment. I was so happy I stood up and replenished my cup of coffee and grabbed a handful of cookies!

Blinding Gauntlet had to run shortly afterwards, heading off to a meeting of his supergroup, but, his speech and RP had helped Ren to move forwards. I got a private OOC chat message from him that said he was intrigued and wanted to continue a story with Ren. Without giving any information regarding the experiment away, I responded that was perfect and I would give him some more information later. Meanwhile, Ren realized he needed to at least TRY to take on the Skulls. I saw Riskque of to the side and headed Ren over. She agreed to help him take on the Skulls and after some fun RP, they were both off to the mission.

I'd run this mission dozens of time with other characters since its the first mission for the Natural origin story arc. This might have been the most fun of all of them. The mission ran smoothly and in one instance both characters were in a tight spot, fighting hard to stay up in a swarm of Skulls. I decided Ren would keep his cool and not freak out. I also decided that at that moment Ren would realize, in-character, he could do this hero thing.
In the end, the Skulls were defeated, the abducted citizens were saved, and Ren has been notified of a security level change. (He had leveled during the misison.) I did not mark the time exactly but it was roughly 4 and a half hours into the experiment. Whew! Progress had been made. Indeed, slow progress in a game where if you don't RP you gain that level within fifteen minutes. But, it was progress and a story was beginning to emerge! Ren and Riskque headed back to City Hall.

With my timer just under 5 hours (which was all I had given myself that afternoon), I completed the first phase of the experiment with Ren going to speak to Miss Liberty. In-game, characters have to do this in order to "train" and gain their next set of powers and abilities. Its a static interaction but it was a good way to end an experiment that I considered a great success.

To wrap things up completely, I ran Ren back to the office of Susan Davies where I logged off. Its where he will be when I log back on and, for now, I think its a good way to end this phase of his story. Because of the success of the day, I'll be posting more episodes of his story. The Experiment is far from over.

Epilogue

I had asked several questions before going into this experiment. Below are the two stated questions and my reflections on them.

1.)Was collaboration and role-playing that rampant on Virtue?

I would have to say, at this point, yes. I had minor RP within fifteen minutes. However, to really test this I will need to do another experiment on another server or two with a different character. In my experiences, though, to have such responses within such a short amount of time was truly a good sign.

In order for role-play and interaction to be effective, I needed to initiate it almost every single time. Passive interaction with remotes such as "Ren sits and quietly watches the heroes come and go," will not get you very far. Even at times when I did initiate an RP conversation it went nowhere. Oddly enough this happened more with the higher level characters I tried to interact with and Blinding Gauntlet was the only exception.

2.)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 answer at this point -- A long time! Most players jump into game and either hit the streets looking for mobs (NPC bad guys positioned around the city for you to apprehend) or they do what is called a sewer run. Sewer runs are teams of heroes running through the Paragon sewer system hitting big mobs of bad guys. With a good team, level increases are fast and furious. In my experience, you can get a character to 8th or 10th level easily within the same amount of time I played Ren.

Given the nature of Ren's appearance in Paragon this kept him from an initial sewer run. It could have happened differently but it did not. Instead, he became a bit of a slow burn as far as levels. I believe that this was a trade-off for laying an excellent character foundation.

That's all for now. I hope that you found the experiment a success, entertaining, and possibly grabbed a few ideas along the way for your own play style.

I'm sure other things will come up as I continue the experiment. Stay tuned for more in the near future!

Click here to read Issue Two