A known roleplaying game on Roblox, Welcome to the Town of Robloxia.
Not to be confused with Role-Playing (subforum).
Roleplaying is the act of assuming the role of any entity (a creature or object) and applying its behavior to a fictional situation with other players. As a genre, roleplaying games have become increasingly popular with the releases of various titles, including Robloxaville, Star Wars Awakening (which has since been shut down and replaced with a remake, Star Wars: First Order), After The Flash, Clone Wars Role Play, and Kingdom Life. In general, developers of roleplaying games place a greater emphasis on landscapes, user interfaces, and how a player interacts with the environment. For instance, while a sword in a combat place may cause damage to a player's health, a sword in a roleplaying game may not deal out any player damage; the damage (if applicable) is roleplayed out by the character. Scenarios may be predetermined, or players may be given a scene with more freedom in what can be acted out.
With the fast-nature of Roblox's chat, roleplaying requires players to think and act fast to keep up; responses to action may occur within seconds, which allows the roleplay to progress very rapidly. This differs from roleplaying on the forums, where players might be given minutes or hours to plan out and implement a response.
Conflicts
Roleplaying can often be halted or broken by a number of factors, including lack of detailed environment pieces, unfinished or later-conflicting character development, or a player's misuse of grammatically correct messaging. There is also compatibility with certain styles of roleplay taken on by different people. The people with happy stories usually do not like to roleplay with people with sad and mysterious stories.
Godmodding
Godmodding refers to the action of a player giving their character an elevated level of control and power not normally allowed in a typical session. Many rules have been given against godmodding, which is not confined to a limited set.
- In most cases, a player cannot jump into a roleplay conversation without expectation and doing so may break the session, or another player will try to divert the perpetrator.
- A player is not allowed to kill another player instantaneously, and many games have the option to toggle health. For example, a player can say (His/her health decreases from the tackle), but they cannot say (He/She dies because he/she has a heart attack).
- A player says they are immortal and cannot die (Person1 hits Person2 with an axe and slashes off Person2's head) (Person2 is headless and still alive and is immortal). This can be unfair to Person1 and may cause arguing.
- The player's character is able to regenerate a missing limb or body part. (Person1 slashes Person2's left arm off.) (Person2 regrows his/her left arm back).
- Player's character (depending on game and roleplay) finds a weapon in the middle of nowhere as well as without warning and picks it up or summons a weapon for their use in combat and battle (depending on the roleplay; if it is a fantasy roleplay, summoning weapons would be allowed, but doing so in a war-genre roleplay is considered godmodding since the player cannot magically summon themselves a shotgun while in combat).
- In-country or nation roleplays ('build a mini country' games where players build and roleplay as countries on a map of the world), example of godmodding would be for example, (Brazil and Argentina head to war with each other, Argentina sends a fair amount of 4 navy ships while Brazil sends out 500 navy ships, which is godmodding) Another example would be, (Brazil nukes Argentina thus ending the war after blowing up Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires, which is godmodding since nuking a country to end a war is a bit idiotic, extreme and causes an abrupt end. In some cases nuclear weapons in nation roleplays are banned, depending on the game).
- A player kills another character without permission, especially during a fight. (Person2 gets killed instantly by Person1 in 1 punch).
- A player uses an attack on the other person, and it doesn't affect that person. (Person2 uses magic against Person1, but Person1 takes no effect)
Online dating
Online dating, compared to roleplaying, has many different aspects that separate the terms sparingly. Online dating in Roblox is the act of looking for a romantic partner in the game, while roleplaying a romance is Roleplaying as a character romantically involved with another character in a storyline, either someone else's character or one not in the current roleplay. A couple engaging in online dating will be formally in a relationship through the internet, using communication mediums such as Roblox and/or Skype (Discord may be used as well) and, depending on the player's preferences, would depict inappropriate actions not typically seen in a normal roleplay session (commonly referred to as ERP, or erotic RP, not mutually exclusive to online daters but still a ToS violation regardless). Online daters (or ODers) are heavily criticized and hated among the Roblox community and are also a violation of the Roblox Terms of Service.
Go-Getting
A "Go-Getter" is a roleplayer who prefers to do their roleplaying alone, or in very small groups hinting limited to no contact with larger groups/factions. It is not generally a problem in the roleplaying sense, however, story and plot points can become broken and mislead, resulting in various discussions and breaking the roleplay session.
Frame-catcher
A "Frame-catcher" is a roleplayer who doesn't want others to be the same as them. This usually happens in roleplay games with morphs of characters. When a frame-catcher sees someone with the same character, they confront them and say that they are fake, a problem with it is that it can disrupt a roleplay, this is generally only a problem in roleplays with already set canon characters of a series or franchise, making it an easy to avoid issue.
An example of it can be this:
- Roleplayer 1: HEY! I'M MARIO YOU FAKER!
- Roleplayer 2: NO I'M MARIO! YOU'RE THE FAKER!
- Roleplayer 1: SHUT UP! I'M REAL!
Roleplaying Actions
A roleplay conversation can also include these actions:
- Roleplayer 1: "Hand me a water bottle please."
- Roleplayer 2: *Gives water bottle*
- Roleplayer 1: (Not that bottle, the other one.)
- Roleplayer 1: "What kind of bread should I get?"
- Roleplayer 2: *Hands out whole wheat bread*
- Roleplayer 1: (No, the white bread).
It is uncommon to insert quotations for characters to speak, however, players can see them typically in people who use correct grammar more often. The * (asterisk) symbol (pressing the shift key for the number 8 on the keyboard) is put around a sentence to indicate action by words. For example, if a player was to pick up an object from a table, the player would simply type '*picks up item off table*'. Parentheses are placed around sentences that go outside of the roleplay session and talk generally about what may be going on inside or outside of the session. The parentheses can be used to remind participating roleplayers of any situation that can be outside of the actual roleplaying, such as the interference of a roleplaying session by a player, and if a roleplayer would want to go out of the roleplaying session for any reasons in real life, such as to work on any homework, go to school, has to go to work, having fun with family, or to go to sleep.
Actions or dialogue can be shown in a variety of ways, actions may be done with dashes or asterisks, or sometimes just nothing at all.
Mr./Ms. Can Do All
A Mr. Can Do All's RP name.
These types of roleplayers usually have long RP names. They can usually do anything in their RP names.
Cosplayers
A player cosplaying as Connor from the console game Detroit: Become Human. "The android sent by CyberLife" is also a meme on the internet.
Cosplaying is dressing as a character from popular media outside of Roblox, such as from a video game, movie, or TV show. Some people do cosplay on Roblox, and they may act like the character they are cosplaying (this is sometimes referred to as LARPing, or live action roleplaying). This often the case in actual roleplaying games, especially those based on the franchise said character is from.
Gang Culture on Roblox
There has always been a very underground gangster theme present on Roblox, unlike typical roleplays, there are normally these things:
On most RP games if the player gets a gun, they could only kill cops or robbers depending on the team, if not, they would have to use roleplay. However, in this type, anyone can get guns and can kill anyone they want.
There are normally resident gangs on there, some people may get property in the game for their group normally by paying Robux or being in good standing.
Random killing is more prevalent in these types. Random killing would be killing someone with no reason at all other than "I saw them and I want to kill them." These are a big hindrance to these games and the biggest con.
An example of these games would be "Merrick, San Roblo" or "Realistic RP/New Bloxton".
Criticism
Users such as XiaoXiaoMan have stated in numerous videos that roleplaying and Roblox don't mix and that they don't work out at all.
Some criticize roleplaying games on Roblox due to the general perception that these roleplays are often of very low quality (often referred to as fail RP or FRP), mostly stemming from the younger demographic of Roblox players who often tend to be inexperienced at roleplaying, making mistakes such as godmodding, metagaming (using bios or other out of character elements to gain an advantage within the RP context), and, in games that have weaponry and/or a combat system, random attacking. Another issue of roleplay stems from RP trolls, who often seek other players' RPs solely for the purpose of being disruptive.
There has also been some criticism in Roblox that ODers, or online daters, would frequently go to these types of places, particularly that and supposedly find a person to virtually date. See Online Dating above for more information. This criticism is mostly prevalent in roleplaying games based in school or town/city settings.
Notable roleplay games
The following are pages discussing some notable roleplay games, like MeepCity .