One Dwarf, One Elf, and One Woman

The other evening the kids helped me create three new characters in Lord of the Rings Online. If you're a parent and a gamer, you understand how there are things you can do when the kids are awake and things you can't do. For example, playing healer on a difficult dungeon run is out. Designing alt characters or crafting items or posting auctions is possible. My son leans towards characters with brightly colored mohawks and odd facial tattoos (uh oh) but my daughter is a good helper. At six she has a knack for designing a good-looking toon.

We created a dwarf champion, an elf loremaster, and a human minstrel. The original plan was to make a dwarf minstrel and a human captain, but I felt the dwarf racial abilities were more suited for champion then minstrel. I played the dwarf champion through the first few levels in the newb zone. I shouldn't rush to make a decision after playing a class for 3 levels, but the champion's game play didn't interest me. The human minstrel, however, has me hook, line, and sinker.

The one problem with my human minstrel is that the character is a female. My daughter wanted me to create a woman character, and what dad can say no to their little girl... so Elisawyn was born. This wouldn't be a problem except for two reasons: 1) this is an MMO and 2) I may join a light RP kinship.

I tried roleplaying a female character in D&D for a few sessions. Difficult and a bit weird. Pretending to be a bard in Middle Earth will be hard enough. My minstrel is only level 6, so rerolling her as a male wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand I've known guys in WOW that played female toons and it wasn't much of an issue. Plus roleplaying online is different than roleplaying while sitting across the table. What do you think?

LotRO Prep - Roleplay and Servers

I'm on the fence about roleplaying in Lord of the Rings Online. The inner geek in me wants to develop and explore the story of a character in Middle Earth. The casual gamer in me wants to enjoy the game without troubling about being in character or out of character.

When I was a youngster I roleplayed in a few different gaming groups. One D&D group was heavy on the roleplaying, another D&D group was mixed light roleplaying and hack-n-slash, and the Car Wars group was all about the game mechanics and blowing up stuff. My characters ranged from pious clerics to drunken hooligans.

More recently I played Neverwinter Nights. I loved the community created mods. I joined a few RP groups online, but had a mixed bag kind of experience. Adventuring was fun, but the features to support roleplay felt clunky when compared to the flexibility of roleplaying in person.

I never roleplayed in World of Warcraft. Well. Not true. I'd drop into character for a moment or two. But more for a spot of humor than anything else. WOW doesn't feel like a RP game to me. Maybe if I ever went back, I'd give it shot for something different.

Since I'm not sure about roleplaying in LotRO, I'll put it on the back burner until I feel comfortable with the game. No point rushing it. RP will happen when it happens. I should, however, roll my toons on a RP server, so I can RP some time in the future.

According to the official LotRO Lorebook:

Although all servers are technically considered roleplay (RP) servers, Landroval has been long-considered as the "unofficial" roleplay server, so a larger proportion of actual roleplayers and even RP-oriented guilds can be found on Landroval.

So. There we have it. The only RP server. Simple decision then. I will create my characters on the Landroval server.

I hope the name "Harry Balz" is available. That was the name of my barbarian character when I was 14-years-old. Obviously joking.

Quick links to the LotRO prep series:
LotRO Prep - Intro
LotRO Prep - Race and Class Combos