#fetalpile

So I am a bit late to this party, but have just finished watching through a full set of VODs for the Minecraft Balloon SMP through woops' POV. I absolutely LOVED it. I saw bits and pieces about it while it was on-going but wasn't able to catch enough of it at the time to get as engrossed as I had recently after watching through the wonderfully edited videos (by JillTime) on woops' YouTube channel. Starting out with the edited videos, I was under the impression it was going to be a fun, silly large scale Minecraft SMP run with a bunch of people and a Balloon theme. As it started to go on, it started to click that this was going to run deep and hit hard. I’m going to dig much more into the plot and story beats in other posts, but I really want to highlight is the Roleplaying environment the players were put in. I had seen someone describe it like a Tabletop Roleplay system like Dungeons & Dragons, but this hits what I prefer roleplaying in more, Sandbox Video Games and Roleplay. I have spent a lot of time over a decade roleplaying through video games. The top example was a heavy roleplay in a Half-Life 2-based environment using Garry’s Mod. Sandbox games are perfect to give players an environment to properly thrive in and explore their characters and others without overt restrictions. Balloon SMP was able to do this amazingly with Minecraft. Using a wonderful basis for plot with a great end goal and deadline, and then doing amazing improvisation was amazing. It never felt manufactured or forced, and the wonderful team running it did great to let the players do what they felt was right. The best thing was the nudges and ways of pushing the players to see how they reacted instead of telling them how to react. It’s always been my experience in roleplay in general to never tell someone how to feel, but instead to give them a reason to feel a certain way. They may not react the way you expected, but you now have a change that you can work with and explore. This was a sort of ramble, but I needed to at least get this down because holy shit it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a wonderful example of video game roleplay and I am just enamored by the whole thing. I’ll definitely post more on this and my thoughts as I get them organized.

to recap: last stream I killed the spider milf and the goatse lava guy. then I came back to firelink shrine and the campfire lady was DEAD ? it's a moida mystery . and you're invite ...... woa ....

  siryl  making my DnD character...

balsa will knit you a wife. You will feed her, keep her warm, and walk around her in circles until the plague takes her.

You’re at the Party is one of my favourites and it’s fairly vivid in my head, and a pretty sad song at that. I think it’s about a sick person who is in the process of dying and the “party”’s guests are other souls getting closer and closer to them as they die. In my head it starts off in a bleak room (perhaps freely changing between a hospital room and an actual bedroom). But then as the party surrounds the protagonist, it would become very colorful and chaotic- think something kind of beetlejuice-y, kind of corpse bride-y.

picture this but a nicerAfter their awakening they are back in their house, except they are now dead and they are in the underworld hence everything is dead, dusty and misplaced.Now I think the part where “your hands grow strong, your fingers long and your face begins to change” may be about what happens to a body post-mortem, but….. I like more magic in my LD imagery so to me they’re actually becoming a creature, perhaps some kind of undead, like a vampire or something. All the other souls would look like creatures too. 

I was constantly compelled by the usage of emergent roleplay that existed throughout the Balloon SMP run. One of the most gripping moments for me was watching woops start to hear voices and then start to talk to his sword. This turned into such a big and emotional story arc through Act 2 and ended up making me cry a few times. This will have spoilers for the woops POV of the Balloon SMP. Some information was gleamed from woops talking about the SMP after the Finale and others was gleamed through his VODs.

The conclusion of Act 1 had some incredibly dire consequences to everyone involved, especially those at the center of it all. Swindy’s concept art for woops ended up leading to some great work by Shelly to take an idea from woops and breathe (literal) life into it.

The rising action of woops learning about the sword and the spirit within became so enthralling, especially during the time in the Nether where the writing and bonding was very intense. It was so natural and gripping as woops continued to be willing to learn and (as we learn) Syr begins to open up more as time continues.

The work by woops and Shelly also made sure to include an important thing that I will end up talking about a lot in posts: always having a sense of humor. There was a lot of funny little riffs and jabs throughout it, as well as great moments of not understanding the change in customs and technology between the time periods. Humor is such an important tool in helping develop characters and gave a charm to Syr while also lending levity to a rather dire reality.

Through woops and Syr, as well as development of other story arcs of Cormus, we see amazing emergent roleplay. As I understand from what has been said by woops and others, a lot of what is developed and occurs was mainly through emergent roleplay. There was a good basis of lore already developed and ready to use, but through the player’s actions and the wonderful work of the team behind it, an incredible story arc regarding Cormus was allowed to grow.

Continuing to follow woops’ arc with Syr, we get to the climax of this tale. Accompanied by Robby and ‘Gandalf’ at the burial site of Perhel, woops and Syr fought to give Perhel a true warriors death. Although the outcome wasn’t as expected, woops and Perhel both dying in the end lead to another amazing emergent moment that video game based roleplay frankly lends itself to well, the unexpected.

Usage of video game roleplay lends itself well to the unexpected, fast paced improvisation, and amazing emergent roleplay. Good background, planning, and flexibility allows players to help write the story for you. Be a participant and help guide them, collaborate, and it will only make things so much better for everyone involved. Sometimes (constantly) things will not go the way you foresaw, but letting it grow and change naturally will always make for a better story and a better time for everyone involved and watching.

Work with your players and they'll give you the world (quite literally in this case).