What would I need to do in order to play a mute character?

This might seem like a silly question, but hear me out.

For a while now, I've been developing a character I really like. She's called Stardiver, and she looks a little something like this (and is slowly becoming one of my most-posted costumes ). The driving force behind her creation was making something "very weird and unusual." Her look, I think, achieves that. Her story kind of does, as well: She's an ancient automaton from the beginning of time who dives into the hearts of stars to absorb energy and forge the materials she needs.

Her personality and character, however, haven't been as easy to work with. One easy way to make her feel more alien and outwardly weird has been to simply not give her any means of speaking or communication, short of nodding her head. She has no mouth, she has no vocal apparatus, she has never had the need to communicate with another living being until now. I'm writing a proto-story for her now, which kind of hinges on her inability to speak hampering her ability to integrate herself with the hero society on Earth, leading to her being treated as an outcast by most as she develops a fondness for the company of others.

The problem, however, comes from the fact that so much of the game's newer content has my character speak. Now, you'd think that "can speak" is an obvious trait of any playable character, but this kind of isn't always the case. It assumes every character can speak ENGLISH, has or can mimic a human voice (something my alien swarm queen shouldn't be able to do - she communicates in insect clicks, but that's besides the point) and actually has the desire to speak in full sentences. I've toyed with the concept for quite a while, but always ended up inventing some way for my characters to speak normally at the end of the day.

With Stardiver, I don't want to do that. Come hell or high water, Stardiver WILL NOT speak. Ever. So here's my question - what would I have to do to make this make sense? Which contacts would I need to choose? Is there any way I can re-interpret dialogue trees to account for her not being able to speak? I mean, it's pretty obvious that a game very much CAN play out with a mute protagonist. Gordon Freeman has managed four games without saying a single word so far. I guess my question is what do I need to do in THIS game to replicate Gordon's success?

Quote:

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.

stick to tip missions....

I would use the ; to emote what I was trying to say by useing desciptions, genstures and so on.

If you play with a constant group it could be also noises she makes, sound effects, and or a combinations of things that are bolded, or cap locked to gesture of emote different levels of frustration...joy, sadness or WTF type things.

If you plan on seriously role playing this it would work the issue will be in arcs where you need to speak with people and make responces, which may break the level of depth you put into it.

Depending on her power sets she could be telepathic or an empath which would allow for communication either mentally by convaying emotions as opposed to actual words.

If using sonics, vibrations can also be used to describe things.

Pheremones could emit (as insects do) feelings, emotions, and fear, more geared to survival.

Again, where it breaks is the actual game text however if you need to pretend to speak to somone maybe the suggestions I made above are valid options to overcome this.

Apart from using a Crowbar or Gravity? ;P

Well, I'd say avoid the Twinshot and Dr. Graves arcs like the plague, but I know you already planned to do that for at least one of them. Essentially, if the dialogue options matter that much to you that you want to avoid the ones that can't be handwaved as simple hand motions like yes, no, I don't know, where to, that sort of thing, you just need to avoid Praetorian content and the first couple of new arcs introduced with i21.

Most of the content before Going Rogue gives a fairly good vague response from your side that could easily be achieved by a nod, a wave, a point, that sort of thing. The Tip and Morality missions, at least the ones put in first, are fairly good about that too. I haven't had a chance to do them recently.

It's a shame you're not going villain, or else I'd say Stardiver and the Radio would get along nicely- One side of the conversation can't say a word, and the other side doesn't shut up.

mime

Get used to using emotes when interacting with other ppl.../wave for greetings.../growl or /flex when going into battle you get the picture.

Interesting concept good luck...

Also AE might be your best bet, you could your character specific arcs to advance her storyline. That way her inability to speak english could be explained and quite possibly her learning to communicate could be a side story.

I have a mute character (Silent Knight). He uses American Sign language. Basically as somebody else said I use the ;emote bit. I also tied it to one of the actual hand moving emotes so there was a visual tie to the statement.
At the end of the day this is an MMO and a character has to find a way to interact with others whether "in character" (as in RP) or "out of character". That is unless you are going to solo this character's entire career.

You're either going to have to skip a LOT of content or bite the bullet and RP things in your head different from the game, like I do while playing Fallout 3/New Vegas. When I take a bad hit from a nearby rocket explosion in game it's just 'fast travel to home, find my Doctor Bags, and sleep for 8 hours to restore lost HP' while in my head my current follower lifts me up with my arm over their shoulder and helps me back to my home/base, patches me up/resets bones/tends to other medical treatments, and I spend time recovering while the follower does the daily chores of getting food/water for me.

While I certainly could have my character do full days of Wait/Sleep/Wait/Sleep for the time it'd take to heal up that way naturally, I don't really see the point of going that far to stay within character to the RPing in my head.

And RPing things differently wouldn't be a bad thing, unless you're really wanting to go through the trouble of street sweeping a lot, because a lot of contacts have even just accepting a mission or turning in a mission make mention 'Explain what's going on' which would be difficult to near-impossible to do without some kind of medium of communication, even if just basic handsigns, sign language, or emoting.

The only thing I can think of for things to skip would have to be just going through each and every contact listen on the Paragonwiki and finding anything that has your character talking or explaining events.

I think I can say with some confidence that there will be very little content you can do if it has to make sense from the point of view of a being incapable of communication outside of, perhaps, sign language or writing notes.

Maybe there's a contact or two that are psychic. There's always Psimon Omega but he's redside and only in the 30-34 range. You're going to have to keep the whole lack of communication thing to backstory, player interactions and tabletop RPGs.

Had a character like this from day one, a cosmic being called Beyond (on the Infinity server, of course...).

She (well it is energy in a shape vaguely resembling a human female) only communicates in emotions because she empathic and also has no vocal apparatus (or aural apparatus) and doesn't understand English anyway.

So on a mission, she might acknowledge a spotted boss or AV with:
(alarm)

Ask for a heal with
(fear)

Ask for a Clear Mind effect with
(static)

Say "yes" with
(excitement)

or "no" with
(concern)

Based on what I interpret her as understanding from the emotions expressed.

Of course, there are always those who will RP some sort of magical translator/telepathy, but what are you gonna do?

I avoid teaming with her unless the team is made up of RP'ers.

In the case of ingame dialogue, I am happy to handwave things my character "says" as things the hearer thinks the character means, up to a point.

When that fails, I am perfectly happy with deciding communications have broken down and abandoning that arc/mission.

Similarly, if she really needs to finish an arc, there is always the 'Complete this mission' function if I just want to hand wave "she got through it somehow, probably in a messy fashion involving a gross display of cosmic power'.

Hope this helps!

In our SG there's a character that has the mainframe announce her logging on, acknowledges radio chatter with a beeping noise, and just uses /em custom emotes.

Though she is also ADHD and tends to randomly wander off at the first sight of a butterfly.

Perhaps you could make a boatload of macros for common things like yes, no, etc.
You also might want to do something like Dillo does, using a bind...

/bind ; "*translate. Convert and send through telepathy*...$$startchat"

or

/bind enter "*sending mental translation*...$$show chat$$startchat"

Keep the macros in a seperate tray above insps (use the 4X3) so they can be clicked quickly. Just something to think bout.

What thing you can do, that a supergroup member did with an alt of theirs...white on white chat bubbles.

My husband plays a character who doesn't speak at all, and has something like four trays just of emotes for keywords and actions. Watching this character in action is downright disturbing, the way he plays him. Kukurbitos is infamous for walking around behind other people, imitating their body language, occasionally doing what you first THINK are random emotes until you realize whose conversation he's following.

He's creeped out a lot of folks - I'll have to get John onto this thread so he can explain a bit more of how he does it.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

There is too much I want to reply to for MultiQuote to handle, so I'll just have to phrase my post in the form of a post

One thing I want to make clear is I don't really have an issue with communicating with other PLAYERS. I don't really do much RP personally as I'm both not very good at coming up with interesting in-character interactions on the fly and I don't like not having control of all actors. I've always seen communicating with other players as just that - one player chatting with another player while they play a game in the same way as two people watching a movie would.

As such, my mute character doesn't really hamper my ability as a player to chat with other players. That doesn't mean I won't use emotes to add Stardiver a bit of personal flair and, who knows? Maybe that will be my first real foray into RP. It depends on how much fun I have with the whole experience. I'm pretty good about remembering at least 3/4 of all emotes by heart, so I shouldn't need to do complex binds, and there's always the fallback of thought bubbles for everything else. I already wrote a story about Stardiver (which I can repost here if anyone cares) where I did a fairly good job at having her communicate without actually speaking a word, so I know it's possible.

My real, pressing concerns (aside from not having Titanic Weapons with which to make her) is how Stardiver will communicate with contacts based on how their reactions are written and how she'll handle dialogue trees.

The former isn't actually that problematic. So long as the briefing doesn't actually feature dialogue, like "OK, so where do you need me to go?" as the mission accept text, this should be easily doable. If I go to a mission and find an unexpected Moment masquerading as a Rikti and then Crimson says "Wait, you met Moment in there?" that's really not that hard to explain. I either brought back a piece of his costume, his arrest warrant or Crimson simply checked with the PPD to figure out who got arrested. I don't remember them all off-hand, but I'm pretty sure every story arc made prior to I17 and Dean McArthur should be plainly easy to work with and reinterpret as the character never saying anything.

The latter is a considerably bigger problem. Every dialogue tree I'm aware of expects actual dialogue, and none of them feature a "say nothing" option. Dealing with these will be extremely hard, to the point where I'm probably going to want to skip them if I can. I'll have to figure out what to do with the Ramiel arc to unlock Incarnate status, but I'm thinking "put a bucket over my head and bang on it with a spoon" might be my only option.

There's also a very important follow-up question: If my character is so reclusive, why is she even working with contacts at all? Well, for one, because I can't play the game otherwise, since almost no story arc in the game is ever self-initiated. Secondly, you have to understand that despite being ancient, Stardiver is still largely like a child - as she has never had the opportunity to communicate with anyone her entire life, she never learned how to do it, and eventually began to stray from personal contact which made her feel awkward and uncomfortable. As her character develops and she makes friends here on Earth, she will open up ever so slightly and accept the need to work with others. At the same time, her shyness will never wane and actually getting her to so much as even acknowledge your presence beyond the immediately relevant matters will still be like pulling teeth, figuratively speaking.

Essentially, she's someone who's learned that she is more or less required to work with other people, but really, really, REALLY doesn't want to, and so she does what she can to keep contact with people she hasn't known for years to a minimum. Her friends more or less understand what she's saying just from simple nods and gestures through the magic of "because I said so," and it's only strangers that I have to worry about having her communicate with.

I realise that this isn't an ideal concept for a character in this particular game, and I don't fault the game for it. On the flip side, though, I consider it a challenge. It's something brand new for me that I haven't done, and I'm all about trying new concepts and expanding my own horizons. If I can pull it off - and I think I can - this should be a very exciting adventure.

Quote:

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.

This is one of those things where the best option is probably to recognize that the game is not going to reflect exactly what is going on in your imagination. If you aren't willing to make that compromise, then it will be a frustrating road trying to play this character.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow I realise that this isn't an ideal concept for a character in this particular game, and I don't fault the game for it.

I'm pleased by the fact that you "don't fault the game" for not supporting something like this. Most players, when they come up with an eccentric concept, rage about how "limiting" the game is. Personally, I am of the opinion that creativity is great, but that you can't expect someone else's product, like an MMO, to support your original ideas as well as your own, original work would. Yes, sometimes that means you have to bend your concept or even ignore something the game tells you. I've been told in the AE forum that my attitude is "stupid" and "oppressive" and that I should "just shut up," so prepare for the thread to devolve into a flamewar ... sorry about that, Samuel_Tow.

My 46 Night Widower 'Tyranny of Silence' is mute due to an accident in his youth; because he's in Arachnos AND a Night Widower, he can communicate telepathically ::with dual colons to denote the psychic speech itself.:: When he is unable to use his speech he either uses a large paint marker to write on nearby surfaces or takes out his iPhone and types out what he needs to say and/or text messages those he needs to talk to.

Sam;

The character trait "mute" only makes any sense from the perspective of RP with other players.

Treating missions as anything other than a kind of game mechanic is about like making an explanation for power proliferation that says that there were really and truly no radiation blasters in the world until a mad scientist turned on his plot device and messed with the nexus of all powers. It's an explanation of something that didn't need explaining and whose "explanation" was a complete facepalm. ("A Mad Scientist did it" is the new "A Wizard did it".)


Mission givers are a game mechanic. You don't need to treat them as anything other than that. Ignore the dialog trees. Assume that your character has a minimum ability to nod ("affirmative") or shake her head ("negative") and let it go at that. The game putting dialog on the screen doesn't have to mean that your character is literally speaking that dialog. My characters say "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever" quite frequently when the game has them saying things like "How horrible! Let's teach those miscreants to respect life and the law!"

In truth, the character you've described would not work with mission NPC's, at all. She might go to the trouble of interacting with a detective once in order to get hold of a police scanner. In fact, I'd see that as her first priority, as it seems that she wants to be a hero and the police scanner would let her do that while honoring her "phobia". That and tip missions.

If you were being 100% true to her character, it's unlikely that she would interact with any contact who wasn't something odd or inanimate like TV or Slot Machine. I could see her maybe doing missions in the PvP zones, where it's pretty much just "Go do this, yes? Yes. Good."


***EDIT***

Just to show that (as this thread seems to show) that the concept of "mute" is more popular than you might expect, I'll relate my own experience with it. When insect wings became relatively common at Wentworth's, I made an insect character and seeded him with enough inf to purchase and make the wings. I imagined him to be a cricket or grasshopper that had been accidentally incorporated into a witch's spell and turned into a humanoid, man-sized bug. I left his intelligence level undefined but his defining trait was that he did not speak English. He just said "Chrrrp!" to everything.

When it came to missions, I just hand-waved the dialog and assumed that my bug just said what he always said, "Chrrrp!"

Other players actually seemed to get a kick out of it. I had expected to get some strange looks and certainly some "LOL RP'er!" but it was generally pretty easily accepted. The really funny thing - Through complete serendipity, someone else had started an Orkin Man at almost the exact same time. (Orkin is a business in the USA that is a pest prevention company. Bugs supposedly fear the Orkin Man. The player who created that hero had managed to do a recognizable version of the real Orkin Man uniform.)

Orkin Man was continually advertising his services, while Chrrp was "Chrrrp!"ing to broadcast and we had some really funny exchanges about how intelligent insects were exempt from Orkin services. Ha ha!