Roles

Roles

Blogger, follower, browser, member, admin, moderator...
What do all these have in common? They are roles; roles of people who may be involved in this very blog post.

Role. To play a role. To roleplay.

What is roleplaying? Putting yourself into an imaginary situation and enacting it as it would unfold, with you in one or several roles. Why would anyone want to do that? Well...

Roles are an important part of a person’s life. Roles can be given or taken, swapped or changed, accepted or declined. They can be linear, progressive or repetitive. Easy, hard, long, short, exciting, dull, personal, and impersonal. Think about how many roles we take on and how many there are available to us if we choose to accept them.

We’re born into the role of a baby. I’ve had some personal experience with this recently, my girlfriend and I having a daughter born in May this year. Thinking about my new father role was actually inspiration for this post (props to Lykke also for posting about Roles before I got around to it). So there’s another bunch of roles; the family of this newborn baby all gain new roles as mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunties, grandparents, great-grandparents etc...

This is the crux of the significance of roles. The family. Families are social units bound tightly together by natural necessity. Take the "Grok" family for example.

Every member of the family has a role (or many) to play. As the children in the family grow up, they gain more roles and responsibilities. This is all necessitated by the impending decline in the health of the older generations, who will later be tended to by their offspring who then take on the roles of carers and, in successful cases, eventual parents.

Now, the Grok family are what we modern technology-trapped slaves would call “cavemen”. In reality, they’re human beings in their natural state, just as we (in my opinion) should be, and in many ways still are. Today, however, we live a much less nature dependent lifestyle. We depend less on the natural environment in our daily lives, we depend much less on other people once we escape the clutches of childhood, and we certainly depend less as a society on physical ability. The society we live in depends much more on the technology it has developed for itself, although even that requires natures’ laws to function.

Indeed, we are quite removed from the Grok family, but remarkably, despite the vast lifestyle differences, people are still fixed in their roles. So fixed, in fact, that they go to huge lengths to create roles to play.

Take our beloved Entropia Universe for example. Mindark have worked for countless thousands of hours (contrary to popular belief) to bring their own vision of a Virtual Universe into virtual being, just so you and I can create our own avatar and join thousands of other people with their unique stories in the fictional virtual exodus out into space. So their role is giving us roles!

Consider that every single person in Entropia can invent and take on any role they choose, within the universe’s boundaries. Let’s look at a few examples of these people.

McCormick has gained a reputation for his funny, often satirical videos. Bambuco has taken a slightly different role of making Machanamia in Entropia and more recently collaborated with Mr Become Your Avatar himself…

NEVERDIE... Well do I need to say more?

Kimmi has created the role of the biggest chip-eater and forum skill-thread-shouter. He previously had a reputation for wearing pink.

Magam was given the title “King of the Rig” after perseveringly walking to the old Oil Rig over and over.

Mega had an outpost named after him after becoming known for being a high level Sweat Gatherer (MegaVolt Camp, south of Cape Corinth).

Various items have been named after avatars who have played certain roles in the development of the universe, such as the Star Mercury Anti Materiel Rifle, Coover’s Personal Nurse and Nicole Handbag. Other things have mention of avatars in their information such as the FAP-69 and the Proteron.

Black Hawk shot himself in the foot by posting that he didn’t want to be healed, so he gave himself the role of Healing Target for all those humourous souls who kept up with the forum.

Talking of Forums, Peter and Lykke have taken it upon themselves to create this very forum, Entropia Planets. They’ve created the system within which I am fulfilling my Blogger role. Within the same system, Tass and Razer are our Wiki genies.

These are just some of the most well-known examples. There are plenty of creative people joining up to Entropia who are inventing new roles all the time:

An art gallery featuring art from elfyne and Onciest.

Artists sell their real life art on Player Content screens. Others are interplanetary traders and freightrunners. Some provide taxi services while others rescue people stuck at outposts. Some help newbies find their feet and some offer jobs to newbies.

Fashion show after avatar graphics were updated.

Those who can, create websites for information, education or entertainment within the universe. Some people skill up in niche skills such as colouring, texturing, hair styling and vehicle repair and become necessary components of the functional universe.

Akoz performing facial surgery on a paying customer.

Some people make parties and invite whoever will come. Jamhot has been a glowing example of this with his Club 3G in Bilton Towers.

Mothership owners hire people to fill roles on their ships and thereby create their own role as captain. In the old Beacon Missions, roles had to be assigned before the final boss was killed and the timer began, so that the entire ship could be looted efficiently. In hunting teams, someone usually fills in the role of tagger, while someone with a smaller weapon might take on the finishing hits.

My society, Death Unlimited, boarding a Beacon. Each member was assigned a specific floor to loot boxes on and indispensable to the success of the mission.

Finally, my own roles in Entropia are severalfold. I am a Society Leader, which is a role in itself. The Adopt a Newbie Foundation is another role I have, to ensure the smooth running and happy introduction of newbies into Entropia. There is much more I plan to do with the ANF role as you may have seen in my latest blog post. “Healer” has been my main role since January 2010 and I aim to develop this role by staying on the cutting edge of the profession and keeping my customers guessing with different bonuses they can take advantage of. I also work as a side-project on Tailoring, which I gained interest in after seeing Fashion shows emerging, despite having no interest in fashion myself.

Perhaps you were aware of most of these roles being available in Entropia. Perhaps some of them were a little surprising to you. Until recently I have seen relatively little innovation by the general participant in Entropia, but with this I hope to shine a light, however dim, on your freedoms as an Entropian avatar.

Whatever planet you call home, whatever your skill level or financial situation, all you need is a little thought and a dash of courage and you can create your own niche and begin to build on your role.

So, why roles?

Roles are important to all of us. They give us direction, purpose and a sense of belonging. They give us an identity we can be recognised by while making us useful to others in the community, thereby making us want more to be a part of the community.

So in finishing, I pose the following questions to you, reader:

What are your roles? Did you choose or invent them yourself? Have you taken the time to reflect on your roles and how you carry them out?

Read more on the topic in Lykke’s recently started thread:

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/forums/threads/roleplaying-your-avatar.6057/

Think about your gift to create or change your own role at will.

Use it wisely.