What is Roleplaying?

So, your telling me, that when your in the middle of a huge battle, you take the time to spell each word correctly, ect? That's crazy talk. Out of battle, I obvisiously talk like I should.
Now, about me being lonely with my toon, that is so wrong. I have a ton of friends on the game who are are always wanting to team with me. Plus, people I don't know always wanting to team with me. I understand that correct grammer is a huge part of roleplaying, and when I am in battle, using shorter vised words fills my cup of tea so that I can continue with battling like I should.

I know, just letting the forum world know what we are talking about!

Please stop calling me a peep. Kthanxbuhby

Fast typists for the win.

*chuckles* Well, when you do get your Spelling Nazi created, hit me up. My global is @Shikratia

... I read all this and was kind of saddened. I have met a few people interested in RP, but text spoke, as people learn to type that way and it is a hard habit to break. I tell them if they are interested to clean up their words a bit, first, but don't hide from them. If they want to RP, and truly do, be supportive. Explain things and maybe you'll add a new one to the ranks, even one that might be very good later on.

Don't snuff out people for just text-writing, at first. If they seem interested in whatever, explain and try to get them to break the habit first, and write properly, then maybe explain character development, and such. I admit, I may be biased versus people who speak that way, at first, but if they seem cool, why reject them because of a different dialect (As it might well become, sadly, in my opinion.)

Either way, I don't think being an *** about things is the way to make people feel welcome. tell them it's unacceptable, do constructive criticism, not just criticism of their character for their writing. Yes, yes, I may mispell things, typo, and may not capitilize well (Mainly because of I getting a new 'flat' keyboard and pressing the shift and holding it down for more than a second is new to me...), but I do not have my RP deminish because of it, least no one has ever told me I am a bad RPer, nor a bad teacher...

Try your best to be accepting and open. If you hate people typing that way, and they seem to want to be better at it, or heck, even if they DON'T seem to want to be better, be kind and make a suggestion, don't just go 'you talk like a noob, now boot!' and kick them or whatever.

With love,
Me! <3

P.S.

my Definition of Rp is 'Playing through another person's, whether real or imaginary, view.' It means that you take on their personality, and try to see through their eyes. What are their ideals? Do you see that? Can you play it out? How do they act in situation X or Y? Can you do that? Can you resist playing yourself while wearing the skin of another? It's fun to try and get the perspective of another, even if it is an imaginary person you thought up. Sure, you may home some of you in it, but try resisting making it you instead of that person, and see how things play out. ;p

Are you British, Bright Shadow? I heard that being called a b***h is like the US' c**t, and vise versa. Is it true? I always wondered because someone told me that once, a British(lol) foriegn exchange student. I thought he was lying. So just asking.

I forgive spelling in RP. I just don't see it as indicative of quality or lack of it, unless the problem is extreme. As long as I can interpret the dialog, I go with it. This is a useful tact for me, because it allows for easier roleplay when the person you are gaming with uses English as a second language.

I don't forgive lack of mutual respect. So when someone gently asks, to have a word spelled correctly, or gently reminds me of something I got wrong, I am happy to adjust to their wishes. However, when the criticism is used as a device to claim superiority, or worse, just snob others, then I can't forgive the lack of mutual respect. Without mutual respect, there is facility to RP at all.

Somewhere along the way, good RP is about compromise and team work. This is why I believe it is a valuable and useful hobby. To tell a good collaborative story you must give and you must take. It's a hobby that rewards generous hearts and those who are keen to share ideas and thoughts with others. It's also why I believe many role players tend to be extremely tolerant and patient, because I believe both ingredients are necessary for RP to thrive. I believe tolerance includes adjusting to those who can't master the English language as well as others. Lord knows, my own writing style, requires a little patience. So I try to be tolerant of others too.

It's good threads like this come up from time to time. Although, I find I share the same thoughts over and over again, as each thread comes up, I always enjoy the dialog. Any discussion about our mutual hobby is useful to me. If it does nothing, it reminds me the hobby still thrives, and since RP is very near and dear to me, this makes me smile.

I'm British and I can say with authority that over here "C**t" is still by far the most grievous insult to inflict on someone.

Sigh.

I despair that the modern view of the British Man has deviated from the bowler-hatted gentleman of yesteryear to the skinheaded proto-nazi of today.

I know that I, for one, don't use That Word very often at ALL, even though I generally swear like a sailor. Its the one word that's still taboo (and therefore powerful) to me.

I'm also one who doesn't get hung up about proper spelling and diction. As even I have some trouble spelling some of the bigger words my characters often use. Decent grammar helps, though.

The main issue I seem to run into with roleplaying, however, is really just finding something interesting and heroic/villainous to talk about -- a problem usually localized in Pocket D. I know we're all people behind the avatars, and it's natural to rely on small talk... But I find my personal world kind of up-side-down when confronting aspects socialization.

Personally, when I'm at the bar of a restaurant, I don't go up to strangers and forcibly try to start a conversation. And strangers don't do the same to me... So it's alien for me to, as an avatar, go up to another avatar and strike up an interesting conversation. And when the conversation actually happens, it's usually Seinfeldian: conversation about nothing.

Now with that said, my major strength comes in terms of how intimately familiar I am with my main character. I know just about everything about him. What he's done, where he came from, his motivations, etc. It's to the point where I've actually freaked a couple of people out who attempted to stump my knowledge of my own character. So I can regale instances and interesting stories to woo the other player -- but I always end up feeling that the interaction is one-sided and very me-centric, even though I try to engage the other, only to have them come up with nothing in return. I don't like being that selfish, but to keep the conversation going, I usually find myself the one responsible for saying something interesting, and ultimately coming back to something about my character.

Roleplaying in a place like Pocket D is kind of difficult in my opinion. There are a lot of people just hanging out, only there to really observe and watch a story unfold rather than being a part of one. I've seen only a mere handful of RPers taking the initiative to engage in provocative topics.

Example:

I remember some kind of "dream demon" manifested to protect humanity, and a sentient robot sent to protect humanity, have a very thought-provoking debate on what action would best benefit humanity -- two very distinct forms of thought with ultimately the same goals. Blew my mind. It was that conversation that affirmed my paying $15 monthly for this game.

Example 2:

An agent from "God" working red-side only saw things in black-and-white. Good or evil. She took things at face value, refusing to see anything deep. She engaged demon characters and whatnot, again, having provocative discussions off people's true nature.

Those kinds of interaction are too-far diamonds in the rough. Most of the time, I see mostly SG cliques in the D, RPing amongst themselves. And even then, a lot of their "RP" is just a lot of obnoxious vulgarities. I don't mean to single out any particular SG, but I've seen quite a number of the Abandoned Warehouse in there, cursing up a storm between each other. I suppose I don't get it...

At any rate, I still continue to try and participate and bring my character into light. Although lately, I've gone back to one of my red-side characters I created when CoV was born. And I've begun doing simple RPing in every team I've been in thus far. It started becoming infectious, and everyone else started falling into character...

I know some people say that RPing extensively on teams may be a ticket to annoying the others, but so far, it's led to nothing more than tight-nit groups who become genuinely disappointed when someone needs to bow out.

I don't frequent the 'D', but it seems to have a lot of focus on social RP.

Social RP, tends to promote "fun" RP, that is light, witty and not far from an actual experience at a real tavern. In fact, Social RP is frequently festive, and often revolves around drinking, dancing and gossip.

It's a perfectly viable form of RP. My only issue with Social Roleplayers, is when they try to stifle any kind of conflict, or dramatic situation, because it will upset the pleasant aspect of Social RP. I've even read posts, on Virtue that went out of there way to hate characters that dare to have "problems" or even want to create any kind of situation to solve. In other words, to actually develop some story (all stories need some kind of conflict), rather than just chat, be nice, win friends and party.

The key here, again, is just tolerance. If you want to drink virtually (perhaps for real in unison) and dance, and listen to the Cape, and laugh and have fun, this is all wonderful stuff. Go for it.

It is okay however, to use the D (or any space) to map out other kinds of RP than this though. It doesn't have to be the D of course, but since this is a rare cross-faction space, it can be a convenient location to use. I once delivered a motion to censure an entire country (fictitious of course), directly from the UN to a character at the D. And the boos and cat calls I got privately for doing this were pretty astonishing. It just happened to be an easy place both a villain and hero to interact this way, so we used a small part of the D to stage the event. Why hate on that? I mean seriously, just why?

Roleplaying comes in different shades, styles and preferences. You sound like you want to dig deep into character interaction beyond "nice costume, do you like to party" and into "I hear the Rikti have an entire squadron hiding in the asteroid belt, but nobody believes me" (or whatever, that's a pretty lame example, but you get the idea).

To get to that, you often have to forge a connection to a group, and to do that, you have to troll the SG forum and our SG threads here on this forum, to find an RP group that interests you. You often, won't find that kind of thing in a social RP setting.

Hope that helps, and hope I got your general concern understood correctly.