Lore Based Role Playing: What is it and why do it

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Since the first year of CoH I have been what came to be known as a Lore Based Role Player here in our beloved games multiverse. However Then and now its not uncommon for me to be RPing at the D or inside the Midnighters club or at the Uni etc( the various social RP hangouts) and encounter someone asking me what that means.

 

At the moment since I mainly am rebuilding maybe my most iconic lore based character Bentley Berkeley I tend to use him as an example and shall try to do so here to help guide others as to the what,why, and how of it.

 

Now many players dabble in it to some extent, connecting a character to an enemy or hero group, but Lore RPing is abit more, you seek out names and basic character concepts from within the game lore, and create these characters to help become more active parts of the games world.

 

Take for example Bentley Berkeley. It was shortly after the release of issue 12, and I had long wanted to make a Dr Strange esque kind of character but hadnt ever really found the various power sets Id tried with various ATs to really work for me.

 

With all the new midnighter stuff, cimeroran content and the coming of the Psi/Ment sets to blasters I finally put together an idea.

 

I recalled an NPC from some old often ignored arcs named Bentley Berkeley. I knew he was on the founding list of midnighters, suggesting he was adept in magic and occult lore. I knew he was the only single confirmed immortal in all of coh lore. As a long time fan of immortal characters from Highlander to vampires like Nick Knight of Forever Knight this immediately appealed to me. He was also clearly not meant to be some end all be all unstoppable force which I prefer as I dont like to god mode though I do certainly enjoy  RPing as sueprmen types so its a fine line to walk and the Ol Berk was perfect since in lore he has been captured a few times and saved by young heroes.

 

So he was also well suited to acting as a mentor and teacher of lore in game something I also enjoyed then and now. Helping guide new players through the winding roads or paragon on the path to being a super hero.

 

Thus I made Bentley Berkeley, nick named Ol Berk by his students over the years( ol berk is slang for old fool for those not in the know) not as an insult but more as an affectionate play on his name and unknown age.

 

Further with the fact he is said to have fought the path of the dark and that begins in ancient cimerora I placed that as his origin. Since I had made him a psion as well as a mage( based that on an old adept character Id played in the PnP RP Alternity in its dark matter setting) I considered he might be related to the oracle perhaps a brother who had to conceal his powers since tradition only allowed for female oracles.

 

From that day till its closing I spent time almost daily on Berk, often at the club or Uni RPing with new players teaching them in character about crafting taking field trips to lead them to history badges for accolades etc.

 

On occasion there would be players who for wahtever reasons disliked my character or myself and would try to get me hit with generic name# Because they did not understand the actual rules concerning names from the game world.

 

Example I once made Jame Temblor senior. That after I reported him myself right after creation to check was indeed too close to an active dev avatar faultline aka jim temblor so wasnt allowed. It was through several dialogues with admin over the years I learned what was and was not ok.

 

Basically if it was either a very prominent NPC as in a contact you can find wandering around the game world such as contacts, or one based on an active Dev avatar it was crossing the line, if it was a name of a hostage type from an arc, or a name found in lore connected to dead heroes etc it was fair game.

 

This was how characters like Invisible Falcon, came to be. Fun fact I once crossed paths with the dev ghost falcon in game while on my Invisible Falcon. We spent a while chatting. So wish the PC I had screen shots on hadnt died some years ago.

 

Maybe my most infamous lore based character was T'Keron Valmaz, the unholy fusing of the friend of Infernal's T'Keron, and the lord of all demonkind Valmaz. A character I made in year 1 largely due to all the gods of this and lords or that underworld types that clearly did so just to try and jsutify god moding from lvl 1.

 

My concept was a Kat/SR scrapper that because Valmaz was so severely weakened by the initial fusing and rift travel he couldnt be sure how much harm he could take, so would avoid it at all cost, and a sword because his power needed to be rationed while he learned to to adapt to this new state.

 

This concept proved so perfect that often content felt designed with this character of mine in mind. from the epic/ancillary pools giving him back some access to dark or fire magics, to the addition of alternate builds so I could switch between those pools, to the addition of the Incarnate system it all felt natural for Valmaz to slowly regather his demon powers to return to his home dimension and retake his throne and put an end to the civil war among demon kind.

 

For those curious about Lore Based Role Playing I hope this rambling of mine gives you some idea of what it is about and how to go about doing it.

[ghost emoji]

This is really interesting, I had no idea this existed. I think I might try my hand at it some time, just need to find one of those minor, minor characters you've mentioned that sounds appealling enough to me.  ;D

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

a great many names exist that are not out of bounds or at least were not under the original admin, not sure fully where this private servers admin stand on some lines.

 

History plaques, named foes in missions, and even the real name of major villains all were in bounds. Another I used for most of the games life was and is again Demetrios Vasilikos. THe real name of Doc Vahz. Mine is meant to be a proto type paragon protector that crey made a DNA memory core using Doc Vahz's DNA. I consider it akin to pulling a copy of jekylls mind out of hyde and giving it a new body.

 

I recall knowing a Pen Yin, meant to be an alternate dimension version of penelope yin and know she went years with no issue. So even when it is a more public NPC your basing yours off of there was some leeway as long as you didnt try to name your toon too closely.

[Flashtoo]

One of my characters is the niece of the late John Knox (the Crimson Fist) - my headcanon for him is that he would be a psi melee user, based on what it says about him, because that neatly blends the 'fist' part of his name with the implied fortunetelling abilities mentioned in the lore about him that can be found. I don't play him because he is well established to be dead, killed in the first Rikti invasion, but Wanda (the niece)'s bio describes how that power runs in the family and she feels like she has big shoes to fill. Another facet I play up is the magic/mutation gray area - dual origin enhancements set the precedent for that being a thing; where does "genetic gift" end and "innate sorcery" begin when both mutants and magicians can use some of the same foci for their powers? Psychics in particular seem like a good place to explore that piece of worldbuilding, because a) mutant psychics are very clearly established as A Thing, and b) new-agey crystals and meditation fit neatly under the Magic origin umbrella.

[Jon]

One of the best roleplayers I have ever met plays Jack Wolfe, the respec NPC. It is top-tier stuff.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

One of my characters is the niece of the late John Knox (the Crimson Fist) - my headcanon for him is that he would be a psi melee user, based on what it says about him, because that neatly blends the 'fist' part of his name with the implied fortunetelling abilities mentioned in the lore about him that can be found. I don't play him because he is well established to be dead, killed in the first Rikti invasion, but Wanda (the niece)'s bio describes how that power runs in the family and she feels like she has big shoes to fill. Another facet I play up is the magic/mutation gray area - dual origin enhancements set the precedent for that being a thing; where does "genetic gift" end and "innate sorcery" begin when both mutants and magicians can use some of the same foci for their powers? Psychics in particular seem like a good place to explore that piece of worldbuilding, because a) mutant psychics are very clearly established as A Thing, and b) new-agey crystals and meditation fit neatly under the Magic origin umbrella.

 

Funny enough your not the first Ive seen use that bit of lore. I recall back in the old days a Fort Knox that was a invuln/fire tank meant whose civvie name was John Knox jr.

[Coyotedancer]

Back in the day, I had a ghost. Ashton Fletcher... the spirit of the young sailor you meet in the Library of Souls arc...  newly freed from his soul crystal prison, but too curious about the modern world and its heroes to move on. I had a great time with him, though I didn't get to do as much roleplaying with the character as I would have liked.

 

Ashton was an exception, though. For the most part, I've just tended to take the "other path". I make Lore-related, but not strictly Lore-based, characters. My other much-beloved rogue Oranbegans, like the Nemissary, for instance. They were Circle mages, but not the specific ones you'd run into on a mission into the lost city. I think there's more freedom to experiment and explore doing that... Although it's likely to make serious "Lore Purists" angry when you start pushing the boundaries of what the old devs wrote, even if only in relatively small ways.

 

So... there are risks. You have to know going in that someday *someone* is going to react poorly to your Oranbegan Chronomancer or your female Madness Mage because OMG!TheDevsNeverWroteThatSoItsBadWrongTerribleForYouTo!!

 

No one ever gave me the proverbial hairy eyeball over Ashton, but that's probably because he was a very minor, "throw away" NPC. Those aren't really high enough profile for anyone to have formed strong opinions about them. Sometimes obscurity, when picking a Lore character to "adopt", is your friend. XD

Edited October 23, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[OmegaX123]

One point though, "Ol' Berk" doesn't mean "old fool", it's much more rude, vulgar and mean-spirited than that. It comes from Cockney rhyming slang, and the full term is "Berkshire/Berkeley Hunt", which rhymes with a particularly unsavory C word.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

One point though, "Ol' Berk" doesn't mean "old fool", it's much more rude, vulgar and mean-spirited than that. It comes from Cockney rhyming slang, and the full term is "Berkshire/Berkeley Hunt", which rhymes with a particularly unsavory C word.

your using the low cockney meaning. I am using the high english definition which means fool or twit usually in an affectionate way.

 

Its also what berk means in D&Ds planescape setting the city Sigil, which is were I first became familiar with the phrase " That cutter is one barmy berk" which vasically translate as that Blade is one crazy fool.

[TrystanLaryssa]

While I haven't snuck any actual names out of the minor lore myself, as I enjoy making my own characters, I have more characters related deeply to the lore of the game than not. Several of them I have been worried about other RPers reacting to, as the name-dropping might feel like some sort of rep "god-moding"... for example, my CoT character was himself a dissenter back in the day, not just a defector now, and I see him as having been a prominent member of the Circle (what it meant back then) and a friend of Akarist. I wouldn't challenge anybody else who made the same claim, of course... Oranbega was a society, and I'm sure a lot of people knew Akarist... but you see my point, hopefully. So a lot of my characters are actually deeply tied to the lore, but I don't always advertise it.

 

I also have lore-based characters that are tied to an area or event... my current main who I have yet to RP was an idea I invented when power customization came out and my Dark Miasma on a different character randomly popped to orange and pink. What resulted next was (and is) my only real conceptual "incarnate" type, who is (unknowingly and unwittingly at first) tied to the Shadow Shard and the aspects of Rularuu that are trapped within. I'm not a big fan of powerful characters, and have been nervous about trying to RP one who is inherently very powerful, despite the fact that he starts out with no idea what he can do or why he can do it. (Also, running an RP Quaterfield, for example, is probably a ridiculous thing to attempt!) As for events, I managed to make an Unseelie that looks pretty convincing, and have been developing an AE arc to actually explain what they are doing hanging around Eochai, yet never being seen in Croatoa.

 

Of course, I have others that are more "faction lore" RP... like a Malta agent, a "Policebringer", a Legacy Chain member who now works with the Carnival of Light, a slew of Arachnos characters (not just VEATs), a Praetorian Resistance member (whose Primal version is, ironically, a Widow) and so forth, who are members of said faction, but not tied to any specific in-game history or NPCs. Sometimes it's easier to get into RP without having such ties at the outset, so if an idea hits you, you can run with it.

 

I have been in Pocket D for countless hours, and have seen many characters tied to other lore, other universes, or just kind of doing their own thing, but I have found CoX lore to be so rich and vast, I can't help making characters who are a part of it.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

While I haven't snuck any actual names out of the minor lore myself, as I enjoy making my own characters, I have more characters related deeply to the lore of the game than not. Several of them I have been worried about other RPers reacting to, as the name-dropping might feel like some sort of rep "god-moding"... for example, my CoT character was himself a dissenter back in the day, not just a defector now, and I see him as having been a prominent member of the Circle (what it meant back then) and a friend of Akarist. I wouldn't challenge anybody else who made the same claim, of course... Oranbega was a society, and I'm sure a lot of people knew Akarist... but you see my point, hopefully. So a lot of my characters are actually deeply tied to the lore, but I don't always advertise it.

 

I also have lore-based characters that are tied to an area or event... my current main who I have yet to RP was an idea I invented when power customization came out and my Dark Miasma on a different character randomly popped to orange and pink. What resulted next was (and is) my only real conceptual "incarnate" type, who is (unknowingly and unwittingly at first) tied to the Shadow Shard and the aspects of Rularuu that are trapped within. I'm not a big fan of powerful characters, and have been nervous about trying to RP one who is inherently very powerful, despite the fact that he starts out with no idea what he can do or why he can do it. (Also, running an RP Quaterfield, for example, is probably a ridiculous thing to attempt!) As for events, I managed to make an Unseelie that looks pretty convincing, and have been developing an AE arc to actually explain what they are doing hanging around Eochai, yet never being seen in Croatoa.

 

Of course, I have others that are more "faction lore" RP... like a Malta agent, a "Policebringer", a Legacy Chain member who now works with the Carnival of Light, a slew of Arachnos characters (not just VEATs), a Praetorian Resistance member (whose Primal version is, ironically, a Widow) and so forth, who are members of said faction, but not tied to any specific in-game history or NPCs. Sometimes it's easier to get into RP without having such ties at the outset, so if an idea hits you, you can run with it.

 

I have been in Pocket D for countless hours, and have seen many characters tied to other lore, other universes, or just kind of doing their own thing, but I have found CoX lore to be so rich and vast, I can't help making characters who are a part of it.

 

I wont deny that lore based RPing can be seen in a certain light as a form of self elevation if not actual god moding. As I pointed out with Berk it was to indeed embrace the role of an immortal, a founding member of the Midnighters, and use it as my main mentor character when teaching newer players.

 

And I certainly wont deny that is exactly in part what made me take on the mantle of T'Keron Valmaz in year one as a way to both shutdown actual god playing god moders, while not actually being a godly powerful being any longer.

 

Personally when it comes to god moding and cosmic beings I do not mind as long as it does work within the lore and doesnt just make up its own BS. Example last night I joined a group advertising as an RP mish team, and not only was the leader terrible about keeping missions flowing, wasting far too much time standing around thumb twiddling. But almost as soon as I joined started in with the "I am so powerful I could wipe out all of existence and am from some plane of existence that was wiped out by something way scarier then anything we puny mortals can imagine and she is the last of her kind and 900 years old, and unsurpassed in the arts of magic" type of RP that made me put them on ignore and leave the team.

 

As I said use lore and become part of it and Ill make an effort and work with you, add in some RL myths etc and that is all fine and dandy. I can recall someone who made themselves Ms Liberty's twin brother who carries the scabbard of excalibur. For those not in the know It was said in some legends the scabbard was what protected Arthur from harm and when his sister stole it was then able to be wounded. So this player was a class Inv/SS tank who had woven himself within lore, using historical myths, and saying mis libby has a twin brother doesnt really change the world so why not.

 

 

[TrystanLaryssa]

Yeah. I have a friend who is very much into horror as a genre, and he has such a character... the whole "servant of the power behind the Nothing" kind of deal. Infinitely powerful, planning for the end of existence, etc... but he's immortal and plays "the long game", so in the scope of any RP we do, his ultimate goal is never actually going to come into play... so he focuses on fostering chaos here and there in the here and now with his concept tucked neatly away in the back of his mind. I have no issue with this. I find that if you RP such cosmic beings in a feasible way, they don't tend to feel the need to advertise their power or their goals.

 

I am a little weirded out by characters who parade around talking about how cosmically powerful they are. My character, Lar, has to deal with his growing powers long, long before he knows what the Shadow Shard is, he joins the Midnighters like any other hero, he hasn't met the Dream Doctor ahead of time, and that impossibly creepy voice in his head, calling him "Solaaru" and whispering that he's entitled to so much more than he has... that's NOT a thing he's going to freaking tell anybody about!

 

But honestly, I don't think digging into the lore, finding some little niche character that you'd like to explore, or tying your own creation to the people who are already existing in the universe is necessarily god-moding... I just want to be sensitive to other players who might want to explore the same things. Maybe I'm worried about nothing. At any rate, I will probably try and get to know the community first with a different character, and then see where things go.

[srmalloy]

I have been in Pocket D for countless hours, and have seen many characters tied to other lore, other universes, or just kind of doing their own thing, but I have found CoX lore to be so rich and vast, I can't help making characters who are a part of it.

 

"Tied to other lore" is something that I've done with a number of my characters. It started when I saw someone say "для" in chat, leading me to fiddle with chat, discovering that it supported Unicode. The first character 'benefiting' from this was a Fire/Rad Controller named "Yadernii Ogon" ('Nuclear Fire' in Russian), who had a number of chat binds in Cyrillic. Picking character names using foreign languages led me to create other characters with Russian-based names, and I wound up concocting a loose collection of shared background relating to Soviet superheroes, villains and groups, looking up real Soviet research institutions when I needed an organization to connect to a character's origin. State-sponsored hero teams like Верховные Советы ('Supreme Soviet'), Народная Армия ('People's Army'), and Зимняя Охрана ('Winter Guard'), heroes like Красный орел ('Red Eagle') and Зимняя дева ('Winter Maiden'), the villain group Красная Угроза ('Red Menace'), the supervillain Генерал Зима ('General Winter'), and actual research facilities like Институт эволюционной физиологии и биохимии имени И.М. Сеченова. Using common references across different characters created a sort of parallel lore to Paragon City -- the US couldn't have been the only place where super-powered individuals began appearing, and gave the feeling of those characters coming from an actual place, not a bunch of independent little bubbles of backstory for each character.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On the subject of using lore of other novels, movies etc it can be a pet peeve of mine when they try to make it part of Prime Earth.

 

Take example vampires and werewolves. In our prime earth the lore makes it pretty damn clear these beings in our myths and legends are connected to the nictus, the council time travel plot etc.

 

I wont say there cant be another Earth where the classic dracula vampire and wolfman werewolf is the standard. Try to say the masquerade of vampire the masquerade rules over our version of Earth as unseen shadow masters and Ill likely put you on ignore.

[egoprovince]

I try to write a small blurb on the ID for every character I make.  Some of it like back-panel description you'd see on the action figure packaging, some of it gets revised to add extra chapters and summarize that old blurb into a single line to make room for new bits.

 

Self-writing a story on a character that never finds RP.  But I enjoy RP and I was in a brief intro with another player last night.

 

Also interested in finding a group of Kheldians who we could open a channel for in-character meetups and discussions of our squid-ness or lack thereof.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

I try to write a small blurb on the ID for every character I make.  Some of it like back-panel description you'd see on the action figure packaging, some of it gets revised to add extra chapters and summarize that old blurb into a single line to make room for new bits.

 

Self-writing a story on a character that never finds RP.  But I enjoy RP and I was in a brief intro with another player last night.

 

Also interested in finding a group of Kheldians who we could open a channel for in-character meetups and discussions of our squid-ness or lack thereof.

 

Actually one of my more original characters ofmy own naming is named Skylord and a PB, though not a PB though maybe is a PB in some way. Ive intentionally described his powers as inexplicable his birth a mystery his parents unknown. He was fostered and trained by the late Kelly Graham and was just a young man of 22 when he watched her give her life for he and other young heroes and civvies, and was held back by Alexis cole duncan when he yearned to fly to her side and share her fate.

 

Ive started an SG with him called cloud 9. Dont exacctly have an idea of the theme but could see  it being an all PB SG or at least all flying heroes SG.On everlasting feel free to look for Skylord in game if you want.