How to know if you're a real RP'er

• ... Your talking shoe ends up getting you killed by an upside-down frenzying Gangrel. (Happened to me once, felt the need to share).

Back on CoH topic though.

I'm not an RPer in-game. Well, that's a bit of a lie. When I play a character, I take on some of their traits. Depending on what character I'm on, I'll act slightly different. Not quite as far as getting completely in-character though.

Out of game though, I've got extensive back-stories and full biographies for all of my regularly played characters. Some of them aren't actually even written down, but I could tell you their life story if you asked. All my characters have lives that I play out in my head to get a better feel for them. Like King, I don't plan out who my characters will be. Typically, I get the urge to play a certain powerset combination, make an interesting costume, come up with a good name, and then once they're through the tutorial, I "sit down" with them and talk. Sometimes I surprise myself with the answers and they end up being a totally different character than I thought they were going to be.(When I created my Fire/Fire Blaster, I envisioned her being some army brat kid who discovered some magic artifact or something... And then she turned out to be the daughter of my Fire/Kin Controller from another dimension)

I think I might enjoy RPing in-game, but in table-top gaming I never was one to stay in character for long stints at a time and I never made it a point to differentiate because it'd be obvious IRL that I had shifted characters. I find it incredibly annoying to note when I'm talking OOC in-game and rather than annoy myself by doing so, I'd rather just not annoy other people by mixing IC and OOC.

This thread was an enjoyable read; thanks for starting it, OP.

Oh, I never said RP requires one to ruin his or her own gaming experience or play against the system, merely that it's easy to extend to to where it does. Roleplay does indeed encompass things as simple as having a magic-themed character pick missions to do with magic. It can also be argued to encompass a character who is incapable of travelling over water for fear of drowning, never being able to access Peregrine Island or Striga Isle. Or a character who can never visit a trainer for extreme arrogance and has to level up to 50 on his starting two powers.

Roleplay doesn't have to impair gameplay, and all I was really saying is that I won't let it. This doesn't mean I won't stick to concept or story where I'm given a no-downsides choice, obviously, but I have a very low tolerance for "character-appropriate" activities that ruin the gaming experience for me. And one CAN mix RP and proper gaming if both are taken in moderate amounts.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'd be worried if it worked like Murdoc's from Gorrilaz >_>



"Wassat? Who called? 'm I gonna 'ave to charge royalties? Hn-a-hn-a-hn."

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I find that people who dare to be stupid and choose to roll with it anyway end up making the most amazing stories in the long run Yeah, sure, you don't always score and a lot of the time you DO end up just looking stupid, but I find that to be an occupational hazard. After all, when I'm designing a hot pink scantly clad bunny girl inspired by a porn comic book AND I'm trying to give her a genuine, dramatic story... Well, suffice it to say there are as much hits and misses. But the result is almost always more memorable than GenericHero6546814.

The reason I take issue with "toon" isn't (just) because I'm a pedantic jerk, but rather because I choose to treat my characters as real people. Not even just as fictional characters in a book, but actual, real people that I know or am at least familiar with. Yes, obviously, they aren't real, but if I can manage to regard a fictional character that I'm writing for as a real person with real emotions and desires that I can sympathise with or at least understand, then my writing is that much better. Why I take issue with "toon" is that - in my eyes at least - it represents a profound disconnect between reality and fiction, regarding our characters as "work," rather than as "people."

A character I've created isn't a "creation" that I'm working on to me, but rather a real person that I usually respect, admire and even like. A character is a person that I can only control to the extent of the events I put them through, but not to the extent of personality. How my characters grow and change is down to their own personality and mentality, and the best I can do when writing for them is to stay true to their character, reinforce that and detail it further.

On the subject of writing stories without clear plans, I find that this is simultaneously the most organic way to write and the one with the highest workload and greatest skill requirement. This relies you to either plan an entire tree of possibilities for the future for events to pick from as they occur, or otherwise leave yourself A LOT of room to future developments to avoid writing yourself into a corner. It also takes a significant degree of "spin" to expand on previous plot points that may not have been entirely appropriate to the way the plot is shaping out, "but no, see, they actually were, but we couldn't understand it!" Either that, or you need to constantly back-track and rewrite which is... Time-consuming, to say the least.

Personally, I have an extreme dislike for stories where it seems that the plot was laid down first and every chance event occurs to serve the plot. The cocky hero's friend dies in contrived circumstances. Wait, why? Oooh, I get it! It was so the hero could learn humility! Hogwash! Eventuality should not be a slave to the plot. The plot should be a slave to eventuality.

Finally, on the subject of realistic, down-to-earth heroes: To each their own. I, personally, care very little for them. I have a realistic, down-to-earth life, I have a job, I have responsibilities. I don't need to relive my boring life in my exciting fiction. As such, I far prefer heroes and villains who exist above the mundanity of working for a pay, of hunting for food, of recovering from injury and so forth. Limited ammunition? Nanoforge with unlimited capacity. Grievous wounds? Healing factor. Long distances? Super travel powers. Death? Resurrection.

In a sense, I find it more exciting to start a story based off amazing, overpowered super powers and draw a dramatic, interesting plot ON TOP of that. Many people believe that characters like Superman are too strong and that makes them boring as nothing can hurt them, but really - it's a question of storytelling. A confrontation doesn't have to come down to Dragon Ball Z mathematics of power level subtraction, or indeed come down to who is the strongest. I find it easy to have my characters be completely overpowered, but face dramatic difficulties of an entirely different nature, such as the cursed powers, the fine line between hero and bully, the inability to be everywhere at once, relationships with non-powered individuals and so forth.

In short, I tell about the kind of life I'd like to have but know is not possible, not the kind of life I already have. I don't need to retell what's happening before my eyes, even if it's slightly tweaked. I specifically want my characters to NOT be relatable to me. That's what makes them interesting and unusual. Not a question of "what if I had super powers," so to speak. I find that this has blessed me with a whole cadre of REALLY weird characters, something I take massive pride in. Where most people's creations usually seem to come down to "man/woman in suit," mine usually constitute much more abstract constructs, such as "sentient cancerous tissue in the shape of a humanoid, running on artificial intelligence" or "ancient animal spirit awakened to bring wisdom to a blind world" or "an animate girl made of slime and electricity" or even "prehistoric insect queen seeking to colonise as many worlds as she can." Again, to each their own, but I find the most interest in the most fantastical and uncomprehensible.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

That has happened to me many times with PnP RPGs. Your RPing gets really intense when you're playing four separate characters with their own individual personalities in one campaign.

It's harder to do that here though.

That's actually a pretty good way of writing, I've found. I personally tend to not have a practical description of "who" a character is, so much as a long history of events that they've taken part in and memory of how they've felt and reacted in response. Whenever I need to decide how a character would react, I don't ask "How would character X react to situation Y?" but rather "How would someone who reacted with A to situation B react in situation C, which relates to situation B in such and such a way?" This is also an easy way to spot when you're flanderising your own characters, when you catch them reacting one way, but can remember them reacting a different way in a similar situation before.

More to point, I have been surprised by the reactions of my characters in the sense of poor planning. I've planned the resolution to a situation ahead of time, but when I put the character I wanted to resolve the situation in it, I realise that this character's precedent does not match what I want the character to do in this instance. I wanted the character to do one thing, but when it came down to it, "the character" chose to do something else. I then have the option of backtracking and swapping situation or character, or quite simply changing my plans for the future. "Changing" the character is never an option, and I have very little respect for writers who redefine their characters every time they write them into a corner, or whenever they damn please.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.