The roleplay group here on the site has a long and illustrious history with tons of great content and a whole slew of dedicated hosts over the year. Thank you to current host, Legion, for penning this retrospective
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The foundation of the Role Play group is strongly rooted in the passionate efforts of those who wanted a place for all to come celebrate their characters. Role Play's place in our second home is only due to those continued passionate efforts, and for our 5th birthday, I thought it would be fun to look at how the concept of role-play has evolved over the years, with a standout feature or two marking each year.
Role Playing Background Question List
An absolute staple of the group, Vix's list of background questions has been one of the most sought after resources for people who want to create a strong and believable background for their characters. It's official post date is lost to time, but it's such a timeless piece that it acts as the wild card for the purposes of this retrospective. Its influence is simply too widespread  and profound to not have it’s own pedestal at the top.
2012
Religion and Role Playing? or Separation of Church and Character?
This thread was started by Kyrielle, and it addresses one of the most fundamental aspects of role-playing in the Elder Scrolls. Religion is still a fertile ground for inspiration, and the Role Play group started off strong by diving into questions that are still pertinent to character creation today. Questions like:
Are your characters religious? Â If so, who/what do they worship? How does their being a Dragonborn, if they are, relate to their beliefs?
If your character is an atheist, what do they think of religious people? What happens when they encounter a Daedric Prince? Do they believe what they see?
Religion and worship are timeless topics as this thread and many others have shown, raking in replies even two years later.
2013
A Traveler's Backpack
Very quickly, role-playing evolved its focus into immersion and making our in-game experiences more realistic. A Traveler’s Backpack is one of the best example of this, giving people rules to play by to make their games more engaging. Rules are separated by category and include things like:
Carry only one set of armor and one shield (Heavy or Light) at a time.
Always carry two sets of clothes.
Never carry more than 50 arrows.
You can carry up to ten potions of restore effects.
Always carry three "drinks" (Milk, Mead, Wine, etc).
Only one fur of any animal.
Up to 40 Lockpicks and you can't do lockpicking without a shiv.
This is also an excellent guide to anyone who may be playing without mods, and shows just how much maneuverability players have in the vanilla game.
Character: The Ceya-Tar
Role Play acted as the hub for the first ever Character Set Piece, a series of content focused on one character that reached into the breadth of all groups on the site. With its roots in Character Building, Henson’s Ceya-Tar expanded into an associated Lore article, Art Symposium, and short story. This character set piece truly demonstrated the power of the Role Play group by showing just how much life our characters have in them. A revival of the character set piece is just around the corner, but this was the first.
2014
Role Playing Guide: The Thief
It is no exaggeration to say that this guide revolutionized the way thieves are played in Skyrim. Not only does it gracefully fix the player-centred-economy by limiting looting, impulsive pilfering, and carry weight, but forces players to devise new strategies to dungeon clearing. In the Gabe Miniaci’s words: remember, your objective is not to wipe out everyone in a given location; it’s to walk away with all the loot. Hardly a beggar thief, this guide approaches the thief from a perspective of class and deliberate action.
Looting every body you come across for a handful of Septims? Hardly worth your time. Taking equipped apparel off of people? A little weird when you think about it, but also wildly impractical. What thief would want to try to fit a set of steel armor in his necessarily small and concealable loot bag? Due to its popularity, Gabe also made an equally excellent follow-up to this guide:Â Role Playing Guide: The Assassin.
2015
A Guide to Immersive Role Playing
A wealth of content sprung up during 2015, and these two threads best embodied the constant evolution of role-playing, chosen for their impact on how we experience our game and the ways in which we can truly live in the shoes of our characters.
Idesto’s guide on immersive role-playing steps it up even further by turning the game music and subtitles off, forbidding fast travel, and randomizing character appearance. More than that, the guide introduces ways to change your environment to further enhance role-play, such as opening windows and turning on fans to simulate Skyrim’s cold climate, or making the most of a thunderstorm by turning off all the lights and venturing through the Soul Cairn.
Role Playing Group/Lore Group Collaboration: Interviews
Featured: Charon Al-Rihad
Phil’s character interviews brought role-players a new way to experience their characters by having people step into their character's shoes and truly become absorbed in the experience. One of the stated goals of the character interviews was to really get people’s characters thinking. More than just a list of questions that can be answered in a few words, people were challenged with thought provoking questions that forced them to dig deep into the psyche of their characters.
Finally, I wanted to hear from Henson who was active in the Role Play group in its very early days. In addition to the first character set piece, Henson also made the first character Profile which blazed the trail for what has become the main attraction of the group.Â
Well, my short time as an RP host was super fun but like all my other hosting jobs, I wish I could do more! I made so many builds that I thought it would be a way to get away from the numbers and perks we restrict ourselves to. People seem to really get into them and flesh out a character more in depth than the mechanics of a character build.
The RP group has always been a place for members to share their own characters in such a way that it isn't burdened by specific rules or game mechanics. They COULD be part of the Thalmor, they COULD be a non-dragonborn, they COULD be a member of a faction not found in Skyrim.
From the RP group, a lot of the live roleplaying came about and I was fortunate enough to help Todd (then Emer) and Narmis to start looking into chat and combat rules. Quite fun to play out situations in which you are a Ka Po' Tun who makes a part-time peace with a Tsaesci.
I wish I could remember more about the RP group in the beginning or at least when I joined the site in early-ish 2012. Being a role player has always extended my own gameplay immensely and I don't think I would still be playing Skyrim if it weren't for the countless RP ideas people put forth into the group.
And there you have it. A big thank you to Henson for the interview and to everyone else that continues to make Role Play a great group. Even despite how much we’ve seen the Role Play group evolve, we’ve hardly plumbed its depths. With all the character possibilities, scenarios, and interpretations of lore in the seemingly timeless game of Skyrim, Role Play is just hitting its stride, and it’s taking thunderous steps.
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