How do you RP Dungeons/Trials?

[Charity322]

I'm just getting to the part in the Main Plot where I need to go into Sastasha and I'd like to find a way to RP it. Are there any groups that do Dungeons/Trials in character?

[Tomoe'li Gozen]

Hello! 

 

I have never role-played in a dungeon or trial before but I would be willing to give it a shot! 

 

My name in game is Leonard Honorblood, message me anytime. I also have a guild mate who could be interested in this adventure as well

[Kilieit]

Hi I wrote a lot and I'm bad at making it seem like I'm not giving concrete instructions so to set the tone for the post: these are intended as tips from my own personal experience, not You Must Do It This Way Or You Are Wrong! I hope it helps a little.

 

I have an alternative universe where I RP my character as one of two Warriors of Light, along with my levelling partner. Usually, to be honest, we do the dungeon itself OOC - there's a time limit on how long you can spend in the instance (90 minutes), during which you have to both complete the instance and whatever roleplay you wanted to do. If you don't do it fast enough, the game kicks you out, and you don't get quest credit.

 

And... to be sadly honest... dungeon combat itself isn't very immersive. You have to stop typing all the time to hit things, or else you become overwhelmed by the real-time game mechanics and die. Especially if one of the people roleplaying is tanking or healing. And then the combat is over, and you can't roleplay your character as having done anything extra-cool or true to themselves in it.

 

What we usually did was we would complete the dungeon, watching all the cinematics as we went (there's usually 1 at the very beginning and 1 just before the final boss), then afterwards - once we were done and out - talk about how our characters had acted and what sort of state they would be in after what just happened. Then we'd decide which scenes from the dungeon were most interesting to RP, and do them in text format.

 

The most important (and potentially problematic) part there is the watch all the cinematics part. Most pick-up groups found via the Duty Finder will expect people to skip the cinematics, and although it's impossible for them to run ahead of someone watching the cinematic at the start of the dungeon, they could still drop the group - and the last thing you want is to be locked out of the last boss room because they ran ahead of you there.

 

But if you're RPing it, then you don't want to skip the cinematics, either - the one time I did skip a cinematic because I felt it was taking too long, it turned out to feature my favourite character and a major plot twist... so you might want to find a light party's worth of RPers to go in with just so you know the group won't charge ahead of you while you watch them.

 

 

So - to avoid spoilers, gonna make up a dungeon - let's say you go to follow the Evil River. Your character used to live by a river, so you know this dungeon is going to be interesting to them. You run the dungeon OOC, but you pay attention to the enemies' behaviour, screenshotting things you think might be interesting or that your character might react notably to, and you record NPC dialogue in the Event tab of your chat log.

 

Once you've completed the dungeon, you tell your RP partner that you think it would be really interesting to roleplay the part where Big Monster unexpectedly leapt out of the water when they thought they were safe; so you explain how your character would have reacted, your partner writes some dialogue of how their character would react to that, and you go on with the scene like so. Once you've done this for all the parts of the dungeon you think might have been interesting (which - trust me - will usually take longer than 90 minutes...), then you go to roleplaying your characters after they get out of the dungeon.

 

 

One more thing to bear in mind - I'm assuming you're new to the game, and that this is your first play-through of the main scenario quests, so if that's not the case then feel free to disregard this. Especially the later dungeons, most of the plot that gets you there or even the fact you survive at all is indicative of your player-character's status as the world's Chosen One. This is why the RP I do with my levelling partner is set in an alternative universe; I'm not comfortable RPing my character in public as The One Singular Chosen Hero when it's just as important for anyone else in the room to have fun and feel their character is important as it is for me.

 

You'll definitely see what I mean once you get further into the plot yourself, so I won't explain too much; but I would advise caution about going into the Quicksand and saying "ah yes, I've just conquered [mid-to-high-level dungeon]" until you have seen enough of the plotline to know whether that's something that an average adventurer would actually have a hope of accomplishing.

 

Lastly, pay attention to the NPCs and their dialogue immediately outside the dungeons. That's an interesting sub-plot in and of itself that demonstrates the power level of the "average" adventurer next to The Warrior Of Light, even at low levels, quite well.

 

 

P.S. ...most of my characters have affiliations with the Adventurers' Guild, so they could potentially be assigned to do something like this. My main's in-game name is Aghurlal Qar'akimusun, so you'll have best luck contacting me there, but you can have the services of any of these characters of mine if you need someone to fill a spot in the group, and/or RP Sastasha/Tam-Tara/Copperbell with. I have at least one tank, one healer, and one DPS in the mix, so I can fill whatever role you have left as long as I'm free at the time.

[Chidori]

We do a lot of this in my Free company. It is best to have a full party or run them unsynced otherwise, might be a little odd for the rest of your party.

 

We don't RP the main quest, so more often than not we use them for our own purpose. The FC is a hunting lodge and around the time we start to prep for the Festival of the Hunt (Our server wide event we hold so often.) we start to run things like Brayflox or Hullbreaker, in search of marks for that festival. Or other times we might be clearing something out for a job.

[ZoktaiKhor]

Leveling alts by doing rp dungeons is a great way to take some of the grind off we do rp inbetween fights ^^

 

-forgot to mention HOW -

 

maybe investiagting what kind of ruins you get sneaking into a base of your enimies or on a extermantion misisons doing acts inbetwene fights or after every boss.

[Virella]

I think it is a great idea you're trying to find people together for this.

 

However, don't be that RPing derp who is RPing while the other people in your group just want to get over with doing the dungeon

 

... I'd be pretty pissed if I got people RPing in my dungeons when I didn't sign up for it :l

[Caspar]

I've done this for an event before. However, due to the dungeon timer, it is important to keep things succinct and try to avoid dawdling on RP that could be done outside the dungeon. I was basically just called upon to play a villain in the dungeon so I did very little RP with my actual character. RP during actual combat may be difficult unless you're outrageously comfortable with your role, or have macro'd stuff ahead of time, lol.

[Charity322]

I don't want to spoil people's dungeon experiences if they didn't want to RP, so yeah I would be making sure that I had a full group that wanted to do it. Personally, I hate rushing through dungeons. You don't get to explore or experience it at all; it's all run, kill, run ahead of me because I took more than .2 seconds to look at the loot list, run, kill, log out before I can even give a player commendation. DX When I did the first Garlean trial it was 90% over before I'd even finished logging in. I healed one person and it was over and everyone was gone.

 

I know there isn't time to do any heavy duty RP while in the dungeon because of the time limit, but all I'm looking for is being able to react to the dungeon/mission IC (and sometimes to be able to pretend that I don't know exactly what to do to get through it and to be able to find it out IC).

 

I have done the main quest with another char, so I do know that for later dungeons, e.g. the Garlean stuff, it would be hard to explain why you were doing it, but most of them seem amenable to coming up with some reason other than the main quest reason why you have to go in there.

 

Thanks for the responses. I might see if I can set something up.

[Chidori]

If you need a reason or a team, that is something I may be able to help with. While we are primarily a hunting crew. Many would be willing to take the odd job or two.

[ckingch]

What I do is if I end up RPing in a dungeon, the dungeon itself is simply an environment placeholder and the RP in question is it's own thing and not exactly what the in game represents. Though, like others, I don't do it unless I am in a group of friends. However, there have been plenty of times where I have been solo queued or queued with a friend and we'd be in a dungeon, and communicate ICly in one of our IC LS as we are going through the dungeon, so we are still RPing, but not among the dungeon party. It can be a bit tricky, though. Gotta try and get those posts in while in between groups of mobs and whatnot.

[Charity322]

Late response is really late as I've been insanely busy in RL lately, but I'm going to try and set up a thread to get people together who are interested in this, so if anyone still is it's here. http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=16450

[Kodie]

Unsync dungeon runs have been great for rping.

[Caspar]

Unsync dungeon runs have been great for rping.

It's definitely helpful. I'd love for us to be able to remove the time limit too, but there's obvious problems with that from a server structure and instance standpoint. Granted I wonder how server intense that actually would be. It'd probably never be allowed just because having a time limit is important for encouraging the group to finish promptly, but in fully arranged groups I wonder they would be more open to the idea.