The Four Types of Roleplayers

From: George W. Harris <gharris_at_mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 13:26:10 -0400 (EDT)

>From: <Mmohrfield_at_aol.com>
>Subject: Four-fold roleplayer scheme
>
>Could someone give a quick recap of this? I never saw the original article
>that presented the four-fold scheme, and while I think I see the difference
>between a wargamer and a powergamer, I don't understand the difference between
>a roleplayer and a story teller.

        I've seen a couple of schemes that divide all roleplayers into four types, but neither one does it precisely into those four. The first, which is intended to be humorous (or humourous, depending on where you stand relative to the Atlantic Ocean), says that you have Real Men, Roleplayers, Loonies, and Munchkins, and illustrates by a long list of examples, such as

        Real Men play Uroxi Storm Khans

        Roleplayers play Orlanthi Wind Lords

        Loonies play Trickster Dragonewts with Cart familiars

        Munchkins play Illuminated Humakti Sword Vampire Scorpion Jack-O-Broos.

        The other, more serious division was introduced on the newgroup rec.games.frp.advocacy by Sarah Khan and another fellow on whose name I'm currently blocking, which discusses the Four Stances of how to play a character, which are Author, Audience, Actor and Character, where the Author stance is concerned with creating the best story, Audience is concerned with appreciation of the other players' play, Actor is concerned with presentation of what the character is doing/how the character is feeling, and Character is concerned with the character's consistent play as an integrated personality. Author and Character here would correspond with story-teller and roleplayer.

>Mark Mohrfield

- --
Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?

George W. Harris                        gharris_at_mindspring.com

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