What is your RP strength and weakness as a Role Player?

I have strengths, but I'll leave those up to my SG mates to point out, as my view is undoubtedly skewed.

For weaknesses, there are a few that bug me regularly. The first of these is vocabulary. It's strong enough, yet I often find myself falling back on the same worn phrases when conveying something. When I'm really paying attention I do my best to avoid reusing those as much as possible. This ties into the second.

I can be inattentive. Often I'm trying to multi-task while RPing, and I will find myself using those worn phrases when I glance back at the game and rush to catch up with what's happened. On teams, I will often just stay quiet altogether, as I become more focused on combat than on what people are saying, even if they're RPing at a normal pace. Luckily, on my main character I can just write this off as his voice being preoccupied with screaming at people.

Last of the weaknesses that bug me most is my lack of confidence with combat. This extends to both text fighting and writing combat scenes in forum RP. In-game, I typically try to avoid text fighting altogether. If possible, I actually prefer regular PvP, simply because at least that way I can be certain of my ability, and know that no one will try to pull anything crazy. Of course, since I avoid it, this hasn't been a real issue. It's mainly just in forum RP that this lack of confidence prevents me from trying.

The problem with retcon is a lot of times those relationships have defined the character in many ways...Sadly I usually just end up playing different characters. Guess that could be a weakness too, I am far more inclined to play the characters with social connections than the ones without.

Lets see, Strengths... I don't really see many strengths in RP that I have, outside of maybe concepts.

Weaknesses though are many:

1) I have trouble keeping up with chat scroll. Even with the colors on people's names, I wind up missing quite a bit.

2) Typing speed. A lot fo the time I wind up typing slow, and I can't type without looking at my keyboard, which doesn't help out with #1

3) Breaking in. I have a tough time finding a reason to get involved with the conversation or when I do, Its mostly ignored.

4) Long RP. I defintiely have trouble keeping up on what my character should know. I jsut loose track of what is what, especially when I can only be in game every so often.

5) Other's RP. Being a DJ and watching all the RPers around me, I see a lot of good well thought out RP, characters that just wind up having others gravitate toward them cause of their personas, and I find it intimidating, as if I have to be able to keep things at that sort of a level around them.

I know there is more weaknesses but, those really are the big ones.

Strengths-

-Didn't think I could RP a leader type character until I tried.

-I don't mind having my characters end up on the losing end, or having bad things happen to them.

-I like to think I'm pretty versatile with my (lots and lots of) characters.

Weaknesses

-Typos, and I've noticed that the later it gets and the faster I try to type, entire words get misplaced. >.<

-Altitis.

-I can't RP a non-comedic hero for the life of me. A straight up hero type just bores me to tears.

-Can't keep up RP while playing the game. It's type or fight. I don't stop and type out paragraphs or anything, so I don't slow the pace down too much, but still.

-Not as capable of playing foreign characters as I'd like to be.

good luck D.B.B.

If she's never coming back I'd do a "lost at sea" like the original Mr. Bradey so if she ever does show up again your guy can be like "I thought you where dead? your plane went down in Peru!" or something >.>

My strength is being able to take any action against my character IC. I am immersive and if something happens to my character, even if I don't like it, it happens. (Given there is a reason. If someone randomly comes by and kills my character with a super omega fireball of death that is ignored.)

My weaknes is me having trouble intigrating characters into RP. I have trouble meeting other RPers and BEGINNING something. If they, my characters, are locked together in an RP already, I'm fine, but getting the ball rolling is very difficult for me, no matter the character.

Edit: Actually, I am going to make a thread to see if I can get advice to fix my weakness, now.

I guess my weakness is coming up with an introduction for first impressions. Often times I try to approach people where the true origin of my character may compliment or simply refrain from contradicting theirs. And sometimes that gets to be a pain in coming up with a reason as to why my character would be interacting with theirs to begin with, as means to prevent from rambling about completely useless or boring material. Catch phrases and such can only work so often if you don't use them that often, so you need to stay fresh.

When it comes to strengths I think my best comes from picking or interacting with folks whose origin's I don't conflict with. IE Super natural x super natural as opposed to Science and Super natural. Not that mixing can't work, Marvel and DC have done it all the time... mysticism with technology and such. But it's not everyday I like to get involved with a superman.

I'd say my strength is that I lucked into an iconic name early on, and can fudge a few thees and thous every now and again. Lengthy, inspiring speeches also come natural to me when I'm playing Pal or some other straight up hero.

The downside is that, for as much as I love to roleplay I'm absolutely horrible at smalltalk. It may be my personal interest factoring in, but it's hard to have my characters sit around, chatting it up when there's crime out there needing to be stopped. Building IC relationships and participating outside of set storylines get to be very difficult.

Oh another weakness, I get Brute lock on my characters (thank god I normally play Brutes, Tanks and Scrappers) so I keep chugging away at making the wape train move that I only very very rarely stop to RP. My character is there and sentient but the player is all business so I only rp outside of missions. Its not that I dont want to rp and its not that my character wouldn't say something or have some little expression to throw in its just I dont have the ability to split my focus like that.

One strength however, I have a very complex realistic turn for character creation and give all my toons some sort of hidden background quirk or agenda.

Maybe I take more of the etcha-sketch approach I'd rather play a toon I really enjoy even if it means putting them and myself through hell of grief or anger of loss for a few IC months than to lose the character entirely because the people I was rp'ing with went uber afk or turned out to be a ****** (this has happened to me numerous times) so I send the person a note if I am able explaining what my character believes to have happened I go through the rp of loss (yes sometimes its an entire group of characters) and I move on. Its what you gotta do, this is why you cant rely to heavily on relationships your toons have with another, sure some people eat a bullet if their wife or husband leave them or dies but alot more people move on with their life its just up to you how long their grieving period takes and how much they know about the incident or suffer because of it.

Well I don't give up on the characters, but I have like 27 of them...if the social group for one up and vanishes...the ones that have people to talk to push to the foreground and its hard to go break out the other and find new RP when RP is right there with a different character.

See my problem is that I'm a reserved person IRL and generally sit back and let others around me interact rather than put myself out there, but generally just sparking up conversations in pugs, or rp'ing here on the forums you can meet some really great people. Actually one role player Hollowpoint Heroism I found because I was trolling Virtue Verse and really liked his page on Shadowstormm and sent him a pm here on the boards commending his writing style, we got to talking and rp'd here on one of my old Open RP threads we then eventually decided to meet up in game. Pretty much any friendship can be formed as long as your willing even reluctantly to say Hi. I dont really have a large group of extended friends for my toons but I do have a very tight nit group of friends I hang out with booth IC and OOC from our old Virtue Vent Server. Heck Nurse White and Rose Maiden have known Flea so long Liz's little sister Pearl calls Flea "Uncle Flea" but I'm sure with all the times Eat_Me and I have taken breaks from CoX I'm sure all my friends who have remained in game have given excuses for our disappearance like "Look Wolves!"

Another unique weakness I've discovered is...ATs. I mean, my main is supposed to be pretty hefty in the arcane arts department. Not outrageous, just sort of a quiet force content to stay in the shadows. My favorite other character is a Crab Spider that's gone full-on hero, even though he started as a merc.

Sometimes I hate the fact that my mystic warrior of a long and noble lineage with powers beyond those of mortal men has to hide and play support...he's a Defender. It's hard when my simple merc trying to find a place for himself in the world can tank an entire map set for +0/x8. I get jealous.

Had the same problem when they first nerfed Invuln my tanker said "ow my pride" alot after that

Detail. I do fairly detailed backgrounds in my head, and I think I'm actually really good at dialog, but when writing I have trouble painting the picture with words. My problem is I worked in TV, I can frame a shot and supply the details in a visual sense, but putting it on paper is tough. Actor/Director..not writer. I also have emmersion trouble, I tend to play characters who react to events around them in contect to there background. That is not always the case.

Kai was built as dual pistol/gravity control for the Cape anniversary AE arc. I was totally mad jealous of my alter ego....grav/kin just isn't as cool after seeing myself hit a dude with Gravity Distortion followed by Executioner's Shot....

Strengths:

• Variation. I have little problem going from the personality of a staunch English Gentleman turned big-game hunter to the persona of a teenaged kid who feels neglected by his father. I play male and female characters, and have been told I manage both equally well.
  
• Detail on the fly. I don't start my characters of with tremendously detailed backstories, but create them as the character interacts with others. It helps not only make them more complex, in the long run, but more sympatheic (or purposely less so!) toward others.
  
• Story creation. Plot and I work well together, at least insofar as creating plots on the fly goes. Again, when writing a story, I don't come up with a solution from the get go, but rather build a little at a time, letting other players add to it in organic fashion. I'm only just now back to the game and starting to play around with AE, but where some people use AE arcs as conclusions to stories, I see it as an amazing tool for launching tales that last beyond the arc itself.

• Multitasking. I have trouble roleplaying and doing missions at the same time. Not the pauses between missions, or the ones within the mission, but the kind of roleplaying that goes on in the middle of a fight. I often miss what's being said, and my wife (who is an excellent multitasker and usually teamed with me) has to point out what escaped my attention.
• Following. I wont' go into much detail here, but let's just say I've had difficulty finding supergroups where I fit. It's probably one of the reasons my wife and I started The Zenvious Foundation all those years ago, and why, upon returning to City of Heroes a couple months before Going Rogue was released, we picked up with a supergroup we never got off the ground and are hoping to make something awesome out of it.