Iconic roleplaying style -- how to find non-roleplaying roleplayers

I'm over on Virtue, and for the last couple of months I've been trying hard to get a pulp-themed blueside SG off the ground... without much success. The idea is to use a style of roleplaying which fits the iconic feel of the old pulps, where there all the characters "reset" to their classic state between adventures. There are no continuing storylines; each adventure is self-contained, and while the characters acknowledge that they know each other, there's not usually any specific references to what has occured in the past. James Bond movies and Star Trek episodes (original series) can be viewed in any order without confusion because they use this same iconic styling. The pulp characters I'm trying to get people to emulate -- Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, The Shadow, Phantomas, Doc Savage, et al. -- work the same way, where they have larger-than-life personalities which never really change. They're iconic.

The problem, however, is that the people who call themselves "roleplayers" on Virtue seem to have become amateur thespians with furrowed brows, standing around in the D and muttering, "What's my motivation?" The idea of iconic-style roleplaying not only doesn't interest them, they find it actively offensive -- as I've found out to my chagrin after repeatedly getting flamed out of their RP channels.

After asking around a bit, the only suggestion I've heard for finding people interested in pulp-style iconic roleplay is to post on the fora. And I'm not even sure into which forum I would put something like this. I'm open to suggestions. I'm not open to accusations that "ur RP sux," because I've already heard every possible variation, thanks.

Every possible variation?

There was a poster named PoisonPen
Who wanted both Ladies and Men
Who without any doubt
Would most eagerly shout
"Yes RP without consequence! Amen!"

But followers he did not quickly gather
Quite the opposite others would rather
And although he should quit
Fault PoisonPen won't admit
He'll try his best persnickety blather

Putting "Roleplayers" in quotes is offensive
And the problems with your post are extensive
I'd like to say why
I'm afraid I won't try
Your tone makes me quite apprehensive

So for this argument I'll just get to the Crux
(This rhyming draws only so many Yuks)
Our world is persistent
So I must be insistent
Sorry mate it seems "ur RP sux"

The tone of your comment has haunted
Each convo with Virtue's much-vaunted
Roleplaying crowd
Who sneer aloud
That what they don't like is unwanted.

For responding in rhyme I give reverence
But you missed the point of my reference
You cannot blame others
For having a druthers
When it come to their RPing preference

The amateur thespian auteur
Can do whatev' revs up his motor
But I get irate
When swarmed with a spate
Of closeminded bile-spitting hauteur.

I'm staying out of the rhyming debate , but I just wanted to say these two things:
1) There is nothing wrong with the style of role-play that you want to have and I really hope you can find it. I do not believe that you are the only person who would enjoy that.
I understand what you're saying and I don't think it is even all that extreme.

2) A few comments seem to be looking down your nose at others. This may be a result of poor experiences and possibly even attacks against you and your efforts... However, by including that tone in your post here, you send that negative message to others who have not had anything to do with your prior bad experiences.


Anyway, I think I like a nice mix of both styles. I like strong iconic characters that are not sent this way and that at every twist and turn of plot (and enjoy having most sessions be just that... those iconic characters doing their thing), I also like the occasional splash of greater implications.

I'm certainly not telling anyone how to get up to fun though.

I'm afraid that I'm not around enough currently, nor on a regular schedule, to be of much help. However, I wish you success in getting the fun you seek.

Also, I would say this is absolutely the place to post about it.
It may not happen quickly, but hopefully some like-minded folk will gather!

Well since Electric-Knight ruined EVERYTHING, I suppose I should reply more reasonably. The ideas one that I can see people having fun with especially as it'd mean you don't have to worry about continuity and being "Left behind" However people don't particularly like proselyting on their channels for obvious reasons! This is the right place to try gather people, however coming in immediately with an aggressive tone did you no favours. Your approach was, essentially, "You all suck, I don't. Come RP with me" which is only a step up from the "I will hunt you down and kill your family if you don't RP with me" method of getting people on board to your cause.

That doesn't work by the way.

Uh... or so I've been told. They'll never find the bodies anyway and you all can't prove a thing.

Didn't really get any aggression from the OP's post, more that his suggestions were jumped up and down upon and flamed, simply because it was different to how things 'are done'.

Which is fairly common in MMO communities to be honest.

"How about we fight the boss on the blue carpet not the red one?"

"OMG you ******* noob, you gotta fight 'im on the red carpet every0one does l2p nub!" etc etc

We do exist out there.

I have actually just launched an SG on Pinnacle with a similar sort of feel to it. The "lore" of the SG remains the same, and thus the characters in the SG all come from a very similar place/origin. Outside of that, it is an action-RP style group. We respond to what we are doing in the game, on the missions, rather than relationships and "why."

And don't get me wrong, I am actually an actor by trade, but I prefer to keep my roles to my real life, and just live the super-hero-action-scene while I am in the game.

For me at least, I really see no point in roleplaying if there's never any character progression. I see that as one of the most important parts of my roleplay and without it I'd never gain any kind of attachment to my characters. It seems to be a pretty common opinion too.

So, although I wish the OP all the best with his endeavour and hope that he gets enough respondants to get something going, I won't be taking part.

BTW, loved the rhyming responses at the start!

I'm not trying to be aggressive, I'm just annoyed that every single time I've tried explaining what I'm looking for to people who call themselves "roleplayers," one or more people have taken high offence and told me that, variously, it's not real roleplaying (whatever that is), that it's stupid, that I'm lying, and so on. I've become gun-shy about even mentioning it, since I'm now getting a rap for being a troll for making what people regard as outrageous requests for people to contact me who share my desire for iconic roleplaying.

(And I put "roleplayers" in quotes not because I'm trying to imply they're not, but because that's the specific term they use to identify themselves.)

Anyway, it's good to know that I'm not actually the only person who enjoys a sort of Golden Age roleplaying experience. I get the feeling that a lot of the people who take personal offence at the idea of iconic roleplaying are young and grew up with the 90s Dark Age era comics, the X-Men soap opera stuff. I think they don't realize that when a deconstruction of a genre becomes the norm, it's no longer a deconstruction and becomes the new structuralist orthodoxy.

^ You'd be wrong then. I'm 42 in a couple of weeks and from my experience with comics back in the 70's and 80's (mostly Spider-Man and X-Men), there WAS character progression even then. Characters did not stay in a static bubble, at least not the ones I enjoyed.

IMO, there's little point in roleplaying if you're not going to get any kind of character progression from it. That's what roleplaying is, playing a role.

Oh, and no matter how you reason it away, putting roleplayers in quotes like that IS going to irritate people, so kindly stop it.

Ah, Roleplaying Theory at its finest.

I'm going to take a stab at first elabourating on some points, but without putting my own personal slant on things (though I may define some terms), and then giving my own thoughts and feelings on the matter. Please note, I'm starting this at 9.00am local time, and I am at work, so it may take me a while.

The most fundamental point worth mentioning is that the OP is attempting to emulate what I will term "self-contained episodic storytelling", wherein the events of a single "adventure" have effectively zero impact on the characters involved, and the world "resets" at the start of each adventure.

This particular device is well-known to many people, though it has become far less common today than it was a few decades ago. This does not in any way detract from its use as a storytelling device - to take the single most iconic character of the superhero genre (open to debate), you could confidently predict that no matter what happened to Lois Lane and Clark Kent/Superman in the Golden Age, by the next story, they would be back to being friendly, Lois would be adventuresome and clueless regarding Superman's secret identity, and Clark would be wearing a hat. Nor would the previous adventure's events even be referenced.

Each adventure tells a story of its own, with the characters automatically reverting to a base state of existence in between.

I am a fan of this kind of storytelling in certain media - comic books and cartoons spring to mind.

Now for my personal feelings on this method of storytelling in the context of Roleplaying (not even touching on CoH for the moment).

It is a perfectly reasonable, feasible idea. It requires a bit more groundwork than simply creating a character and a plot, because everyone that's involved must also buy into the idea that character progression is effectively zero when the next adventure rolls around. Not only this, but it requires that everyone define the base-line level of their character, and it will take a certain amount of work to maintain the resets consistently.

And therein lies the problem, in a single word: work.

I do not personally have any problem with the idea in theory, but from a practical standpoint "re-setting" the campaign at the end of every adventure would be hard to do (but not impossible).

The hardest part, though, is that, unlike acting (which is nowhere near the same thing as roleplaying, even though the actor is playing a role), the characters are designed and created by the person playing them. It's quite rare for the author of a play, television series, or movie to also take on one of the starring roles. In fact, for the purposes of this discussion, plays and movies don't count (except for the rare extended movie franchise such as Lethal Weapon or the Star Wars saga), but television series' are a perfect comparison, and I'm not aware of any examples where the author also holds one of the starring roles (bit-parts, certainly, but not one of the main characters that is always in the show).

Roleplayers, on the other hand, create their own characters, decide on their personalities and traits, and play them. Many would find it almost nonsensical to effectively force them to avoid character growth. To have selective memories.

In practical terms, one way I thought of to make it effective would be to actually agree to delete and reroll the characters after every adventure, or stop XP once everyone has reached a pre-agreed level (before which the "campaign" hasn't begun, and sets up the background for the characters, in which their "baseline" is developed).

The problem, ultimately, comes back to "my character, my devlopment". The shared-storytelling experience that is allowed by a persistent world lends itself to continued character development more than it does to what the OP has termed "iconic" representation of characters, but it is not, by any means, impossible.

Don't know what to tell you PoisonPen, I have a hard enough time getting those I RP with to go along with "BrandX doesn't age"

For what it's worth, I don't think the OP's post was that aggressive, just frustrated at having his ideas dissed.

What you're proposing though, namely resetting characters every time a story or arc ends is certainly a style of RP but it's not one I've come across in over five years of RP in CoX. I'm sure there may be people out there who do it and I hope you find them. I just think that no character progression would be a dealbreaker for a lot of the roleplayers I know.

The problem with most "iconic" roleplaying in online games is that it frequently consists solely of "Hulk smash!"-type utterances, making sexist jokes or just acting like a jerk and then claiming that it is "roleplaying."

The OP's idea of episodic roleplaying where nothing ever really changes is pretty much gone from modern comics, book publishing (with multiple sequels and spinoffs), television dramas, movies -- everything except perhaps TV sitcoms.

It's only natural that players in CoH emulate this broad trend in entertainment, that of greater and longer-term immersion.

But I understand the OP's lament: I joined an ongoing RP group a few years ago. The people were very nice, very inviting, very friendly, but it just didn't work out. It's not that I felt excluded, I felt that I was intruding. They had their ongoing thing and I didn't have any hook into that, so it didn't stick. No one's fault, that's just how life is.

For roleplaying to be anything more than repeating cliches while busting heads, there have to be some ongoing roles and some direction. If all the OP wants is episodic head-busting and battle cries, the game already provides that -- no need to start a special group to do it.

But if you want the company of people who enjoy roleplaying you'll have to make a few accommodations to their desires. The only people who have everything the way they want it all the time are hermits.

A lot of people are bringing up "resetting", but I think you're missing a bigger point.
The stories and adventures that the characters would go through would likely not contain the types of things that would require resetting.

Instead of viewing the proposal as RPing within a bubble, think of it more as what some may term light RP. Not in the amount of staying In-Character, but in the degree of personal twists and turns within the sessions' events.
It's really not that far-fetched.