Most of the time on this site, I tackle the subject of bringing RP out of it’s “closet” (so to speak) and making it more prevalent.  Several times, the subject of how to bring RP into raids has come up.  But what about the other way around?

Can raiding actually improve and inspire RP?

I say yes.

Why?  Well, because of Aelflaed.  And, more specifically, because of Feliche (I think this is his first spotlight on the blog, so if you’re reading, Hi Fel!).  Feliche is one of TRI’s main tanks, a massive Night Elf warrior with a penchant for getting hit in the face. Back when I was spending most of my time with Annorah as a healer, I didn’t have a lot of interaction with him ICly or OOCly – though I did get quite a protective streak for Group 2 (stupid rogues).

All that changed with Lich King – Aely and Feliche both joined the Wildfire Riders, and I changed from being a chain healing raid healer to a Holy Light spamming tank healer.  (Oh, and Feliche became Feliche and not Felite (who was female) anymore.)

Around that time, a very cool thing started to happen.

For whatever reason, Feliche is my heal target 90% of the time these days (didn’t always start that way, but has kinda become the norm now.) which works out pretty well. As with any tank-healer relationship, you get used to each other, you learn what kind of damage to expect and what kind of healing you’ll get. In Fel’s case, you learn to expect him to pull like his ass is on fire all the time – which is fine when you’re expecting it, but scary for the first few weeks!

As I got used to healing Feliche and he got used to me being “his” healer – an IC friendship started to form.

Out of that very OOC situation, Feliche and Aelflaed are now good friends – the kind of friends that banter with each other constantly and have come up with a myriad of ways to suggest letting the other one die.  But Fel also will call Aely if something bad happens and he needs patching up, because he knows she’ll put him back together and not be a jerk about it.  And if you asked her, Aely would tell you that she trusts Feliche more than just about any of the other Riders these days – because she regularly puts her life in his safekeeping (and vice versa).

It’s a lot of fun, and has some really cool RP consequences (especially when one of them ends up driving a siege engine for the other).

So I’m curious – has this kind of thing happened to other people, where raid roles bled into character interactions in a way that created RP opportunities? What dimensions of RP do you think work well in that kind of crossover, and how do they affect your characters?

*image credit pixelstar