RP Confessions

Maybe we are, you hinted at me not disgarding an avenue of fun due to a few bad experiences. While my main gripe with emote-fighting isn't the bad experiences of opponents, but the fact that emote jousting of the actual fight is and remains boring even with people with whom you see eye to eye.

I feel like I'm at a point where if people find my half-orc lulzy I'm just like "k". Not in a 'fack teh haterz im bes rp' way, just - "if you find 'half orc illusioning his skin brown to not get headshotted' still too headshotty then that's coo' I have alts anyways". It's...nice? I mean it's less shit to worry about in scening with randoms.

Sometimes I'm tempted to Rp poly shenanigans because "player of other half of pairing is afk and I would like to rp my main in pairing stuff more" buut "man how much judged points would i get there" (contradicting the above I guess whoops) + "eh my interest isn't that big". I feel like the dialogue options would be fun though? like idk "yay lets go on a date all 3 of us and confuse the waitress with the set-up"

DM'd events are a bit of a bugbear of mine.

I don't think they're a great way of roleplaying, but I instigated them in the Marauders years and years ago back on the Venture Co. and still run them for the Blood Wolves now.
On the one hand I like them because they do help prevent the sort of RP where it's one person hogging the limelight and saving the universe while everyone else is just an onlooker. They kinda force everyone to get involved and give everyone the chance of doing something great and doing something bad - they are a good equaliser! They also pose more of a challenge than fighting NPCs - how many NPCs are genuinely a challenge for a group of max level toons to kill?

On the other hand... They're slow, the randomness of the /roll function is annoying and this all bugs me no end. But, I can think of no other way to get a large group of roleplayers together to take part in a coherent plot that involves fighting and the risk of loss.

Honestly, if a genuinely better way was presented I'd jump on it and hump it.

Oh and to counter something someone mentioned earlier in the thread about the lack of challenge in a DM'd event - that's up to the DM. The DM can and should include a risk of failure in the event they're running.
Here in the Blood Wolf Clan we've lost a fair few of our own events!

In previous guilds I've been in, sometimes /roll number helped (Like /roll 70, it'll do a result within 70 instead of 100) make shit...Less random. Or "roll above a certain number". Had an event with a high wind dragging people and people having to roll over certain amounts depending on if they were superheavy or gnome-sized, I think it helped.

Holyshit though avoid giving folk 'ic levels' in their roll numbers, you'll always have that one 20-something(years old ic) that insists on being 'ic level 420' or whatever and it becomes a pain to keep track of and make sure no one's trying to be a raid boss.

Not sure how to help with the other aspects you find slow but maybe that helps on the /rolls point?

Grim wrote:
Honestly, if a genuinely better way was presented I'd jump on it and hump it.

I agree with a lot of the points you made during your post, Grim -- insofar as I also view a lot of DMed events as largely unsatisfactory, whenever they boil down to a poor man's D&D fighting invisible monsters and raid-markers. But that also, the in-game mobs can prove generally unsatisfactory to interact, particularly in low-level zones.

My approach has been to treat roll-emotes not as the meat and potatoes of the event, but as the savoury dip on the side. OotRB events are generally pretty varied, with a lot of rituals, hunting and cultural events in addition to just plain fighting stuff, but when it comes down to that, we mix in in-game spells and attacks with descriptive raid-warnings, secondary objectives and occasional environmental rolls (think more Indiana Jones booby-traps and coin-flips than actual enemies).

The end result means an event-style that is considerably more free-roaming and initiative driven, with the DM (if we even have one) interjecting wherever necessary instead of leading groups by the hand from encounter to encounter -- somewhat more like a sandbox within a certain specified zone than a strict linear progression from A to B. The events are also remarkably more efficient, with more time spent actually RPing than waiting around for people to type their three-paragraph awesome attacks -- which in turn means everyone has a bit of energy left to socialise around the campfire when all is said and done at the end of the night.

That's not obviously going to be everyone's cup of tea, but everyone is looking for different things in an RP event. The formula I've outlined may not be as OOCly 'challenging' as a dice-based system, but I personally think it's more 'satisfying' for the individual agency of each RPer involved.

I really hate DM events. But sometimes it's the only RP available. If an event is to happen, I like it to happen.

Like the time me and Tyrellius organised our guilds to go head to head. The only planning was "u be here son, we gon' fight," and heck it was one of the most fun RP sessions I've had in years. Things happened and everyone involved had fun. There was a natural flow and not a forced one and the RP wrapped itself up.

Ps: Robin Drake <3

After such horrible conflicts and major damage to both sides. Me and Arabella can now often be seen hand-in-hand skipping through rose fields.

I used to conform to other people's expectations of how a character should be written.

I've not followed that school of thought for years now and I've had a blast ever since.

Also I find it really sad how people will "unconsciously", quoted for emphasis on bullshit, change their in-character opinion towards another character based on their dislike of the player. So, before battlenet became a thing, I'd make new characters and purposefully roleplay with people who would bully, begrudge, or otherwise attempt to alienate me from the RP scene. As a little experiment. I gauged the way they played their character around mine before they knew who I was; and then again when I dropped it into conversation that I was someone they knew.

The most extreme case being someone who was incredibly flirtatious and downright horndoggy around a female character of mine turned bitter, icy, and cruel after the revelation within the space of an emote without any sign of provocation.

About five years later and only two people ever made the connection between those alts and me as a player! It's a shame that battlenet stops me from doing that these days.

To be fair, sometimes it's totally ic for your character to interact with someone but you know the player behind them is someone you don't want to go near let alone play dollies with.

Having a character go from "I wanna bone you" to "no i haet you" just...sounds weird and salty as hell though. Idk I just have mines quietly steer away/float off in disinterest. No super derailment needed.

Oh. I've done that.

on occasions outright done a /ignore and walked off.

I won't RP with someone I have particular problems with, especially if its forced by subterfuge.

(but I also entirely get what Arenfel means)

I have too many people on my battlenet to even -notice- who has who alt anymore. So I just normally have people IC instead. Mind, I don't have people I dislike on Battle.

Sometimes I make an effort to RP with people who openly dislike me as much as possible to irritate them.

I dont hate any other RPers save one or two. Tho there are a lot that disappoint me really. Still as it is the majority that do this I cant get mad or ignore everyone, plus you can have a good time with Bad RPers if you just avoid fighting or w/e or go into it with the understanding it wont be great.

@Arenfel, I dont understand why you would have people in your real ID like that, just drop them from it. That said I really have noticed how IC can go OOC as I have played chars who are gregarious or sweet and played some real cocks ic. My advise is as I say, just accept that most RPers are not at a great standard and try to make it work despite that, you can always ignore them if you decide it isnt worth it.

I'll Rp with anyone but I avoid any sort of romantic/love/flirty RP as much as possible. I just find it uncomfortable for some reason, I have since day one of RP. That's why i'm usually neverwasthedicklessshadow or unboneable brigs.

Just for clarity: I wasn't "trying" to seduce the other character. The toon I was playing was a cougar, and very exaggerated in her mannerisms. I don't really do romantic entanglement in roleplay. Most of my characters tend to have some barrier in the way anywho.

@nope: Agree to disagree. Defias has a very close-knit and toxic atmosphere to it, not unlike Argent Dawn (it has its flaws too), but the smaller concentrated groups tend to homogenize over their dislike of a particular person. And younger, newer members, can often mirror that distaste for a player without having ever interacted with them to feel like one of the pack. This makes it very unfortunate for some players who tend to never have a good time because they've been vilified for their one-on-one disagreements, and have their role-play affected as a result.

The obvious exception is when a harasser or an abuser of the player tries to make contact through roleplay. Don't give them any quarter.

@Krogon: Yeah but you have a p short temper dude.

@Lexgrad: I don't! Though because everyone is just one degree of separation from another, it's childishly easy to find out who is playing what character by asking around on battlenet.

@Brigs: I could bone brigs.

I was more using examples of people like Ephitos. But I do have a short fuse, yes.

*puts lit match next to the fuse*

Sometimes I make characters who -look- dodgey and evil, but has the kindest heart ever, just to judge the reactions of the 'good guys' around. It was an eye opener when the so called good people were nasty as hell IC to the char, because he was obvious a homeless man, despite him being very very polite.

Lannael Ven'Renn wrote:Sometimes I make characters who -look- dodgey and evil, but has the kindest heart ever, just to judge the reactions of the 'good guys' around. It was an eye opener when the so called good people were nasty as hell IC to the char, because he was obvious a homeless man, despite him being very very polite.

I'm stealing this idea.

Goblins & Trolls are my favourite races to role-play but I somehow always end up playing Human or Draenei.

I want to scream at people who spend all their RP time in Stormwind.

Swan Emperor Arenfel wrote:
@nope: Agree to disagree. Defias has a very close-knit and toxic atmosphere to it, not unlike Argent Dawn (it has its flaws too), but the smaller concentrated groups tend to homogenize over their dislike of a particular person. And younger, newer members, can often mirror that distaste for a player without having ever interacted with them to feel like one of the pack. This makes it very unfortunate for some players who tend to never have a good time because they've been vilified for their one-on-one disagreements, and have their role-play affected as a result.

The obvious exception is when a harasser or an abuser of the player tries to make contact through roleplay. Don't give them any quarter.

Yeah but if someone is avoiding you for a 'petty' reason then you probably don't want to interact with them anyways?  I mean, it's a social activity, I'm generally not gonna knowingly play a game with someone I dislike because it feels uncomfy and there's no point, even if it's something smaller than "dude is a creeper, bail".  Sometimes a persons' just made enough of a prat of theirselves that I don't wanna bother.  Peoples' "meh will put up with x because non-asshole population is pretty low"/"ofuckno abandon rp" may vary I guess.

Not that being shunned doesn't suck and people need to address that.  I'm just not sure how without saying "no you are obliged to play with bob".

other confession: I find people can get elitist as fuck at times regarding people that can't spell, even if there's ESL or disability behind it, to the point that they kind of forget they're people.  When I've stopped being 'lol dis typo is distracting' and actually paid attention to what they were saying without being condescending in my head ("d'aww x cant spell poor x they trying so hrd i will automatically assume they are a kid") I've found folk are generally nice.  Like I'll still giggle at spelling errors but I'm trying not to handwave Rp opportunities or infantilize them based on it.

I mean I was yapping in /g once and folk went on about having goats and shit near their house, that's fuckn cool imo even if I think goats are evil satan machines that try to headbutt you to death.

Lannael Ven'Renn wrote:Sometimes I make characters who -look- dodgey and evil, but has the kindest heart ever, just to judge the reactions of the 'good guys' around. It was an eye opener when the so called good people were nasty as hell IC to the char, because he was obvious a homeless man, despite him being very very polite.

nooo now i want to throw luverne at them so he can be nice

Its weird, I know exactly what you mean Arenfel, when I was roleplaying Djego in Vanilla - he'd get ignored, shoe'd told off OOCly by A lot of people that were "big" in the then RP scene, because he is a narcisstic optimistic dude with a pink tabard that tries to pick up girls badly.  He "wasn't serious RP" he was a "loller" etc. Until I did a couple of - "hey, let me jump on my alt, he's perfect for this event" and show up as djego, and suddenly they would RP with me - Like what's that all about? The character isn't changed, he's still as silly and stupid, and still a horrid.

Heck in the beginning I made that character just to show to see how the "big dudes" Rped with weird characters they didn't know. In the time where people had no trouble RPing with Hayes a known quantity.

That sort of elitism, just fucking irks me. Give people you don't know the benefit of the doubt.

So basically people can show bias and judge even when they should be openminded? truly they are just people and i've found that this is a lesser problem in general.

What annoys me the most in RP (and i do this myself, and i piss myself off too XD) is that people treat RP, especially confrontational RP, as something to "win" and then they throw the bucket to the wall when they don't win. I am not just talking about good vs evil type thing though it is very common there.

A long time ago when i began really RPing Damon i went into the mindset of going in to every conflict and fight with the intention to lose, and if a possibility came about to make a draw or cause a bit of damage so much the bonus! If i ended up in jail or lose my tongue then fine.

No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes but alas, this should be about creating a world which we can all tell a story or have fun.

And Amy, Djego? lol, wouldnt rp with that shite if you paid me lol

Often when I played and wanted an alt in a guild I applied without mentioning who I was. I even applied to Orcs of the Red Blade on a fresh forum account without mentioning it was me after having my former orc and main killed for story reasons.
I kept it up for some two-three weeks. (With more and more obvious alt jumps in chat)

Fortesgue, on that "win" mentality. For me that's the problem with non-moderated role play and people wanting to play the hero and thus follow the tropes with it. Even when playing someone who isn't a hero.