LF a more serious RP crowd

I have been playing City of X off and on for several years, and Im looking for some like minded roleplayers who actually roleplay out the discovery and learning of their powers...and dont just spam showing off moves all the time.
I am really interested in the development of character personalities as they struggle with how they have changed and become what they are. Im not looking for roleplay involving know-it-alls....showoffs...or overt public displays of power.

I am also mainly looking for people who devote most of their time to the story of one character...and not altoholics. Altoholism seems to only divert creative energy equally between the mass amounts of characters in a player's character bank, and thus I find less substance in most characters I meet.

I would be interested in something like this too. Always try and find one of these, but by the time I do, it may be too late.

Have you tried an Arachnos VG yet? Most of them tend to be sane.

I find this thread relevant to my interests....

I generally focus my attention on one or two characterss. Like it was mentioned, it is too hard for me to RP a lot of characters and in the end, all the characters end up suffering with shallow, meaningless stories. So I decided years ago, I'd stick with just a couple at most.

I too am somewhat disappointed with the status of Virtue RP. I know players really like bases, guild halls and such but they really do end up segregating the population. Oddly I actually agree with the big MMO developers and their reasons why they don't want to implement player housing; they want everyone out in the world.

I'm up for something like this but my biggest hurdle is game time. I play really late. Fortunately I have managed to find a few people who play during my playtimes but I'm always looking to expand my roleplay beyond our little group.

I only play two characters, a L50 blaster and a L27 tanker. My global is @spectral hunter so if anyone wants to group up and develop some serious RP, feel free to contact me.

I gave up long ago on trying to join serious learning about powers rp groups. Because every last one of them has one type who is there at all times. In fact I suspect the player lives at their keyboard.

"My dad left my mom when I was only five, but not until he set fire to all my friends and kicked my puppy. Then my mom and I lived in a cardboard box. She made me make toast in the morning by cooking moldy bread over a candle. If it burned it she beat me with a piece of pipe. If I didn't burn it then she beat me with a golf club to remind me never to burn it.

The first time I kissed a girl spines shot out of my body and impaled her. She died in my arms. The same thing happened to the next 10 girls I kissed too.

Every time I armor up I feel the pain of every person in Paragon who has ever died screaming in agony. Then I get a drink"

In other words the emoier than thou type. I want to play with somebody who says "Oh wow. Look at this. I just managed to make a bird out of ice." not "Look, I just made a heart of ice. A heart as cold and dead as that of my father Satan, prince of darkness."

I myself have been a virtue native for a long long time. and still to this day preach keep the game in game and dont care much for forums but things have been evolving so much of late in our game I figure its time for me to as well.

RP and its many styles have long been a subject of debate and even contention on Virtue.Some are anal about the need to put OOC before every non rp statement while many are quick enough to just be able to figure if a statement or comment is meant to be rp or not.

There are those who only do thier thing with thier SG or static group and yet feel the need to chat in local in rp hang outs to force thier silly emo BS on others who in turn are forced to put them on ignore so they can enjoy public chat for what its for random story driven rp with new faces.

There are also just so many different views about things like god moding, whether or not builds,IO sets, and level should be taken into account during RP. I dont exclude god moding if a build is worthy of it as well as a well written concept.Age of a character also should be taken into account and I have little problem if someone takes an old shelved 1st year dusts it off, gets a name change and becomes something up there in status concept. I saw someone in this thread for example mention thier demon prince. As someone who knows the original lord of demons lore based rp toon on virtue who is over 7 years old and insanely well built Id call anyone with a younger toon claiming such status to be a god moder while him I call a real epic icon of our server.

If you know T'Keron Valmaz you know what I am talking about.

He is what is called a lore based RPer and so am I. We use COX lore to create concepts and often as a source for names to try adn be as much a part of the world we play in as the npc contacts and citizens. We feel that in this way we avoid going to far into the realm of godmoding as there is nothing wrong with aspiring to the same lvl as statesman in conceptual power. Taking on roles and personas who often deserve to be more then a hostage in a single story arc. or maybe even just a name in some clue that still earns a whole page of info in a place like paragon wiki.

My character who bears the same name as I use here in the forums for example demetrios vasilikos is taken from doc vahz's true identity. The concept is crey while trying to capture doc vahz for his knowledge managed to aquire a dna sample.

They they created a memory core and put it in the most advanced paragon protector body they had created at the time. Unforseen events lead to the mind developing to a fully aware pre madness state. Now seeing himself as something of the real demtrios freed from the mad monster that he had become, he works to help those victimized by the vahz while helping crey protect the earth from the threat of meta's like statesman.

I'm not sure if this is some kind of underground secret since GR came out... But there seems to be quite a few more RPers in Grandville than normal. Actually RPing, not doing LRSF's.

PLAYERS LEAVING POCKET D FOR RP? NO WAY.

Grandville brosephs. Turning into a great RP setting, filled with multiple levels of exploration (Have you guys seen the tunnels under the city, with NPC chokepoints? Amazing) and superior places for deal-making, VG meeting, and hell, I feel more comfortable ERPing in Grandville nowadays compared to Pocket D or Arena.

Just saying.

Wall of text forthcoming. This is just my opinion: it may or may not make sense, and you're free to continue playing how you always have been.

1. I end up finding that most power-spammers I encounter (AKA, the ones who think area-Speed Boost and area-shielding are helpful for people doing essentially nothing) aren't even roleplayers. RPers that do do that are either fighters (which are usually part of RP I don't care much for), generally doing it once or twice to "harmlessly" bug their friends (which is shrugged off/countered by the victim in global channels), or, well, maybe it's part of power discovery RP (after all, AoE powers that don't require a specific target are the only ones that can be activated outside of combat).
General rule of thumb for this? If it really bothers you that much, move away.

2. When I hear "development" RP, the first thing I'm going to think of is a teen group, which (from what I'm aware of) has its own connotations to some players. If the character's adult, chances are that he isn't just getting powers but has been at it a while before "registry". He/she can still be developed, sure, but it'll end up being less about powers (while still important!) and more about personality.
It's good that you know what you want, but I'm not sure that limiting yourself to one strict facet of RP will benefit you. (Unless you tried other kinds of stories before.)

3. I'll go and mention that an altoholic can put substantial effort and seriousness into developing characters. I'm guilty of a huge alt roster of concept/RP characters, myself, but there's a handful that I push myself to work on, to get them right and to make them great characters. I will concede to the OP that it's harder to do, but it can be done.

4. SGs do not always RP in base. There are groups that do attempt to have large-scale open RP outside with many members, but sometimes these sessions are rare. Even individual members can just RP without the confines of their group.
I'm in AP with characters all the time, even. Some people come up to me, other times I go and seek out RP chances on my own. It's a give/take.

5. I do not like red-side. I cannot play villians well. So I have no further comments about the state of VRP.

6. Emo RP? If you don't like it and it's near you, just silently move away.

7. Godmodding? If I'm given sufficient warning in advance and I am able to agree to certian actions, I don't mind it. If someone just comes up to me and goes you are already dead (which can be either horrible powergaming or a non-RPer trying to mock actual RP, really), then forget it.

8. Lore-based RPer. I remember being on one of my characters talking OOCly to one of these, once.
Yeah, I like the idea of developing the backstory of certian NPCs, but for a grand majority of us, that NPC exists for the sole purpose of radio bulletin fodder. And it'd be silly for a hero to run into the person that the police just told you to rescue from the Lost/Circle/Fifth/whatever.
Then there's the fact that certian "serious" RPers will look at something like Demetrios' LBRP character (which is based off of a Signature Villian by his own statement) and simply dismiss it like they would a character that has the story of being Statesman's clone or Ghost Widow's love child... a judgement I'd be guilty of (EDIT: quietly) passing on some characters.

(Which reminds me, there seems to be an increasing number of toons out there explicitly based on cards from Magic the Gathering as of late. A tangent but still (very slightly) relevant to that last point.)

Agreed with most of the above, with the caveat that most of my heavy RP is Redside. Don't know why, maybe I'm just a bad person.
Just a few things I'd like to add.

1. Angst, by itself, is not necessarily bad. Quite the contrary, it comes with the territory and the genre. Wangst, on the other hand is just annoying. So you have trouble fitting into normal society because by some genetic quirk you have scaly skin and the ability to cause spines loaded with deadly neurotoxin to burst from your body, but you still set out to do good and defend those who would unjustly fear you. That's good angst. Oh woe is you, you have such a tortured existence, all your loves and your parents are dead, the cops are hunting you because they're prejudiced against your awesome mutant powers and you will never trust again...That's Wangst. Don't do that.

2. My main Redside toon is completely without angst despite a backstory that would seem to produce it in spades. Tortured victim of an inhumane experiment with crippling amnesia and horrific scarring...And he considers it a good trade. Now he can control minds and take whatever he desires. That's probably because he is completely and utterly evil and insane, though. In this case the lack of angst is played up as being downright scary. A normal person would see something very wrong with their existence under such circumstances, even if they decided to make the most of it. He...Does not.

3. I'm going to agree with the above statement that RP focusing on learning about powers and abilities is really only suitable for younger, more inexperienced characters. I'm not going to write it off out of hand, because, like in X-Men it does pop up a lot in the comic books. Just don't expect any of my characters to really get into it, except if for some reason they find themselves in a mentor position. That being said...

4. Teenage characters...I'm rather leery about, but they're tolerable as long as they're done right. If it's obviously a Mary Sue avatar, just expect me to make my excuses and leave. No hard feelings. However, I am increasingly put off by the number of child toons that are running around. Simply put...It's just damned creepy.

5. On a lighter note, Ham. Ham is fun. You've got to be able to chew the scenery a bit to properly play somebody who wants to put on tights and save (or destroy) the world. I don't care how serious you think your concept is, a bit of overacting is always a great way to have fun and blow off steam.

Pocket D has srz RP

As someone that (originally) was a heavy RP'er, I noticed that when it came time to do stuff with VG members it was hard to RP your story when you're forced to RP someone elses. I'm not saying that taking part in another persons story isn't fun. The part that's not fun is when someone logs in and immediately you have to put aside whatever you are doing in order to let this person play out his story, regardless of your own. I never was able to develop the original story of the Arachnos Commander because, being the leader of the group, I had to sit (for hours and hours) helping others develop theirs.

When I first started the Arachnos Elite, the story of the group was simple: a highly trained group of Arachnos operatives that did the work of Lord Recluse.

Little by little, new members would integrate themselves into the groups story and after some time they'd try to make the group about their own characters rather than about helping others play the their own story or play the groups story.

One guy, who shall remain nameless, came into the group and seemed okay. A week later, he told eveyone that he was the son of Lord Recluse. People in the group explained to him what "cannon" was. He was mad because no matter what other said, "Lord Recluse is my father."

We'd run RP teams and during some heavy fights, he'd back off and let everyone else fight. "Sorry, I'm too valuable to my dad. I can't die."

After that happened, people flipped out and told him that if he didn't smarten up he'd get kicked. So he changed his story. A few more weeks later, "I am the clone of Lord Recluse. You shall bow before me." He would then tell people he was going to take the group away from me because I was just "an arachnos commander" and that he was the supreme overlord of the Rogue Isles.

*kick*

Now, I'm one that tries to go by cannon as much as the normal hardcore player, but when someone does something like this, it makes life hell when trying to run a group one way, take care of issues like that, try and calm down the other members and try to find some sanity to make playing fun.

I've yet to run into players that don't want to be the "end all or end alls." I'm not saying that your characters shouldn't be important to you. just don't make is so that everyone has to find your characters important. I know that when I play, I'm playing how I like. I'm just not forcing the way I play down on you.

When I see players RP'ing that they are gods, sons/daughters of gods, reincarnated gods, etc. I know that I'm not going to have any fun because it's no longer about your character and more about getting wrapped up in some diluted reality where I'm supposed to believe "/em punches you so hard you think you are dying" is really happening to my character.

I like to RP, but not when it's "Bang! I shot you!" "No you didn't, I had a shield up." "But I used magic bullets and they passed through."

Didn't mean this to be a rant. Just that we're all looking for likeminded RP'ers, but in the end it's hard to actually find just that.

On the subject of "Pocket D is srz RP", I can not take a dance club as a serious place to do anything. It's a dance club. You hang out, unwind, and relax there. That's the kind of RP I'd expect to see and would be fine with. But I see so often epic battles of heroes vs. villains, literal gods god moding everywhere, constant ERP, and general jack ***** that feel the need to be better than you and cause a conflict. That's, like, the opposite place to unwind, kick back, and have fun. Then there's the whole "Lore says we can't fight here, but we do it anyway!" bit. If you wanna battle, take it to the ruins of RWZ or the arena terminals.

I used to use the D as a hangout spot for months and rarely did I ever see general hang out RP. So that's why I avoid it, at least.