Roleplaying an Engineer

It’s par for the course to take the race and class of your character into consideration when you’re roleplaying. After all, playing a troll shaman should be different than playing a human rogue. All races have their own unique history, and each class approaches combat differently. But while race and class are obvious influences on character development, other factors can also contribute to your choices.

Perhaps more than any other profession, engineering helps define who a character is, from the gear they wear to the items they use to the mounts they choose to ride. And unlike most professions, the items created through engineering are flashy, loud, and designed to attract attention, even when they’re working properly. And when your creations explode in your face, it’s a sure bet that everyone around you is going to notice. Given the rich variety of items you can create while engineering, why not use some of them to further develop your roleplaying character?

The Basics: Engineering 101 Everyone knows engineers create things like mechano-hogs, dynamite, and guns, but what most don’t realize is that engineering is a complex and multi-faceted profession ripe for plunder when it comes to roleplaying. So the first questions you should ask yourself when bellying up to your first RP session are:

• Why is your character an engineer?
• What type of engineer are you?

Certain races have a cultural inclination toward engineering. In the technocratic society of modern Gnomes nearly every family has an engineer or two, and most Gnomes have a passing understanding of mechanics. Among the Tauren, however, engineers are a rarity. Take one look around Mulgore and you’ll see a society which thrives on keeping in touch with the earth. There aren’t any whirring gears or steam engines hidden somewhere among all of the natural hide buildings and wind-powered grain mills in Thunder Bluff, and most Tauren you meet are more likely to have taken up skinning or herbalism than engineering. It might be easy to work engineering into your character’s magical upbringing as a Blood Elf, but harder to incorporate into the reclusive, naturalistic, druidic life you’ve probably led as a Night Elf.

Whatever your race, the very fact that you’re an engineer can help add spice and flavor to your back story. Are you a hunter who took up engineering for the excellent firearms and ranged weapon scopes? Are you a mage, shadow priest or warlock tinkerer who wanted to make the perfect spell-casting goggles? Are you a non-healing class who wanted a chance to resurrect your allies? Does your character dream of exploring the skyways of Outland and Northrend in her very own flying machine? How do your relatives/friends/significant others view your character’s profession? Do they accept you as an engineer, label you a black sheep, or actively disagree with your choices? Whatever your approach, as a profession engineering can have a significant impact on your character’s identity, her goals and plans, and where she’s headed.

Gnomish Engineering or Goblin Engineering? Most non-engineers don’t know the difference between Gnomish and Goblin engineering, so at some point in your roleplaying career you’ll have to explain the difference between the two, and why your character chose the specialization they did. The shorthand differences are: Gnomish engineering modifies the engineer or and manipulates the reality around her, and Goblin engineering blows stuff up.

Extra points if you’re a Gnome specializing in Goblin engineering – the cultural wars between Goblins and Gnomes are intense, deeply-rooted, sometimes bloody affairs, and most Gnomes wouldn’t be caught dead learning Goblin engineering. You could open up a rich furrow for character development by making such an unusual choice.

Creating Your Technical Vocabulary. If you like inventing weird terms and creating unusual-sounding inventions on the fly, take the plunge and try augmenting your roleplaying with descriptions of being an engineer. What happens when you place that Exploding Sheep down on the battlefield? What strange mechanical objects linger in the recesses of your character’s backpack? What obscure tomes does she read during her off hours? Nearly everyone who roleplays uses custom-made emotes to describe the actions their character is taking, and as an engineer, you can certainly do the same.

If you’re less comfortable creating plausible-sounding explanations for your engineering abilities on the fly, try watching an episode or two of any sci-fi TV show. How do the characters describe what happens to their time machine/stargate/spaceship when it gets damaged? What passes for standard technology on the show? Get a sense of how these shows use techno-babble, and then create a list of terms you like. Keep the list near your computer, and add to it as you continue exploring your character.

Inventing Your Own Projects. Even if you never have an in-game item to show for it, creating your own unique projects for your character to work on is a great way to define who they are. Is your engineer working on a super cannon? A time machine? A better mousetrap? As time passes, determine what progress your character is making on their project. What mishaps have they had? How have they redefined their goals?

Since traditional WoW roleplaying avoids discussion of character levels, at some point everyone has to find some way of explaining to their friends that they are now more powerful at level 71 than they were at level 67. Personalized engineering projects are a great way to do this. The more levels your character gains, the more progress they make on their special machine. You may have just completed the basic motor on your Noggenfogger Elixir Vending Machine and Personal Hairdresser when you were level 10, but now, at level 50 you’ve finished the Automatic Hair Curlers and fine-tuned the motors on the Beverage Shaking System.

Roleplaying Through Technical Difficulties. Perhaps one of the greatest things about role-playing an engineer is that your character can even come up with a reason behind lag and getting disconnected from your server. For the Scribe down the street or the Tailor next door, technical problems can’t be explained in RP terms. But for you – that rolling restart was your engineer resetting the button to her Quantum Mega Flux Cannon. And that nasty bout of lag right before Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep was the unfortunate result of your Tranquil Mechanical Yeti chewing on the wires of your Automatic Evil-Detecting Capacitor Engine with built-in Planar Rendering Machine.

Been away for awhile and have to explain an absence to your guild mates? No problem! Your engineer was testing the Multiple-Phase Portal on her Inter-Realm Gyroscopic Transportation Device, but the Transverse Ethereal Cobalt Couplings fell off, leaving her stuck in the Twisting Nether for a few days. Fortunately, she remembered to pack an extra Arclight Spanner and some spare Fel Iron Bolts, so she was able to patch up the Turbo-Powered Arcane Battery Pack and make her way back home.