(Others) throwing in the towel

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

I am posting here because I am sick and tired of other RPers giving up on me and my characters (and making their characters do the same.)  The higher-level (character design/development) aspects of RP have never came particularly naturally to me, and I've had lots of conversations with lots of people that have helped me to get where I am now in that regard.  But I've started to notice a trend...even if I'm trying to step outside the box as it will and RP something different, I have to pull teeth to get others to participate, or simply won't get any interest whatsoever.  Worse yet, I feel like other players simply make their characters fold up on me in combat RP much of the time, and its to the point now where some players refuse to speak with me at all!

Where is the investment and effort from others into their character's behavior (especially in combat)? Why are people giving up on me?  Throwing in the towel doesn't help me do anything better!

[cdmoreland]

Kaerli, don't let them get to you. Waesed doesn't seem to fit in with many of the role players so I just go on. You will find your place. Maybe the next new player will take to you.

[Qter]

True Kaerli, cdmoreland is right. Maybe I'm not an expert, but I definitely think you are working hard in your character, and you should stick to it.  Just ignore them, and keep doing what you love. 

Hugs Qter

[Volki]

Do you have an example? Like, logs of a combat roleplay in which this has happened? So we can better understand what you mean.

I've never had issues with combat. But I'm pretty used to other characters giving up on mine. As in, they will ask about her past, she will give a snippy answer, and that's the end of that. But Sarras likes it that way. And I am more interested in plot development than character development. Many of my favorite characters from television or books never had their own personal histories. In spite of this, their actions and behaviors made them more interesting than any of the other characters. It's not the mystery that does it, though. It's the unpredictability.

As a roleplayer to another roleplayer, I'll give you this advice, Kaerli. Never let anyone else truly understand your character. That is for you alone. Be consistent, but don't be predictable. Never let your character stay in one place too long. Never set in stone the behavior or opinions of your character. You need to be fluid and allow other characters to impact yours.

This is all my opinion. Feel free to reject it. I've never had much of a problem with your character, probably because I see that she is not as predictable and unchanging as her words make her seem. There are many, many worse roleplayers out there... They have no idea how bad they are. The fact that you are looking for help is good.

[LigH]

Remember, there are characters nastier than their players.

[Volki]

Remember, there are characters nastier than their players.

And the other way around. 

[Lumi]

...even if I'm trying to step outside the box as it will and RP something different

You mean like going on improvisation?

Big tread you opened there Kaerli. I never RP-ed before joining PS and i must say that i don't really know for sure what is RP-ing.
Tho i don't understand how we can actually plane in advance how your char will be in a few, along his/her "development". Isn't PS a giant improvising party, based on our char background, or is it a already a written novel (so predictable) that we are playing day by day ?
A bit off topic tho, sorry about that.

Maybe you should try to RP with "new" people, some you aint used to RP with and that will open new challenges ?

[Rigwyn]

Kaerli,

Here's my advice. Decide for yourself if this is useful to you or not.

1. Shift your perspective from being the player of a character to being a co-writer of the larger, evolving story. You are not Kaerli, you are a writer who tells how HOW things have happened to Kaerli. While you make her decisions for her, FATE determines what actually happens to her.

2. Completely abandon the idea of stats, make a character with a personality, and make decisions based on that personality - even if those decisions make you cringe.

3. If you get into a fight, flip a coin when deciding if an action succeeds or fails. Again, no stats, this is writing, not math class.

4. When your character fails at something, make it as artful and awesome as possible.

5. When it eventually happens, make  your character's death, her transition through the death realm, her decision to resurface, and her return to the dome count. These portions of her story are equally important. They are golden opportunities for you to show us who and what your character is. When you look at it this way, death does not matter. To live or die means as much as turning left or right.

6. If you decide to take this advice, then make a new character and DON'T TELL ANYONE THAT IT IS YOUR CHARACTER. You will need a clean slate so that people's memories and perceptions of your past play does not get applied to your new character.

To a player, success is the goal, and failure is to be avoided at all costs. This works fine in competitive games, but it sucks in role play.

To a writer, failure and success are of minor importance. The HOW of it is what matters. This attitude is highly compatible with role play.

Good luck

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

Kaerli,

Here's my advice. Decide for yourself if this is useful to you or not.

1. Shift your perspective from being the player of a character to being a co-writer of the larger, evolving story. You are not Kaerli, you are a writer who tells how HOW things have happened to Kaerli. While you make her decisions for her, FATE determines what actually happens to her.


2. Completely abandon the idea of stats, make a character with a personality, and make decisions based on that personality - even if those decisions make you cringe.

3. If you get into a fight, flip a coin when deciding if an action succeeds or fails. Again, no stats, this is writing, not math class.

4. When your character fails at something, make it as artful and awesome as possible.

5. When it eventually happens, make  your character's death, her transition through the death realm, her decision to resurface, and her return to the dome count. These portions of her story are equally important. They are golden opportunities for you to show us who and what your character is. When you look at it this way, death does not matter. To live or die means as much as turning left or right.

6. If you decide to take this advice, then make a new character and DON'T TELL ANYONE THAT IT IS YOUR CHARACTER. You will need a clean slate so that people's memories and perceptions of your past play does not get applied to your new character.

To a player, success is the goal, and failure is to be avoided at all costs. This works fine in competitive games, but it sucks in role play.

To a writer, failure and success are of minor importance. The HOW of it is what matters. This attitude is highly compatible with role play.

Good luck

Its not useless, Rigwyn, but how it works is not at all clear.

1.  This is two parts.
a)  I can't co-write when people aren't willing to give me an idea of what the story they want is, not without basically stomping on their story with my own.  I've bluntly asked people to brief me when coming into the middle of a story and they simply flatly refuse to do so.

b)  I guess the whole 'making room for fate' issue is a can of worms if you aren't someone who takes kindly to predestination OOCly....(i.e. the whole notion basically comes off as a means of social control to me IRL)

2.  The traits and personalities I come up with for characters seem to be weird/not fully coherent?  I'm going to have to talk with some folks on that.

3.  Abandoning stats is one thing: the 'flip a coin' approach is way off the mark though.  I actually did some research into studies done on human error rates, and a 1 in 20 to 1 in 100 range is most appropriate for a character skilled at a given task, from what I can tell, unless the task requires high-level cognitive synthesis, which puts it closer to 1 in 10.

4. Hrm.  I don't really know what you mean by that...

5. What do you do when your character's personality basically says 'what's so different about the DR?' and basically ICly trivializes death?  Is that just a toxic personality trait

6. Considering I can't RP often during the times that most other RPers are on these days, what should I do to get this new alt into the 'fabric of RP' so to speak?

and a postscript: don't get me started on how.  You're talking about someone who can be quite prone to burying others in detail to the point where they walk away because they'd see rather the plot progress than go through an incredibly detailed whatever-scene or get queried for 15minutes because they tried to handwave something.  I write from the details on up, in other words.

[Raxuss]

I don't agree with any of what Rigwyn said but the following quote:

To a player, success is the goal, and failure is to be avoided at all costs. This works fine in competitive games, but it sucks in role play.

To a writer, failure and success are of minor importance. The HOW of it is what matters. This attitude is highly compatible with role play.

This is the best advice I've read so far. If you take anything from this thread, Kaerli, take those two points I quoted from Rigwyn.

Everything else is personal style and stuff. For example, number 4 is false. I have effectively made quite the anti-climatic failure mean as much as the huge, uber-failures. Killing some really important guy with a stray bolt, for example. Dead instantly, not Boromir style. Completely changed an RP I was playing that was not here, with just two sentences. Not everything needs to be artistic and 'omg awesome'.


Take this advice and adapt it to your own styles. Make sacrifices, but also recognize where your style belongs. It's not that you're RPing wrong; it's that your not RPing the way others in Planeshift like to RP.



Like those tavern people who like smooshy-sappy-feel-good time every second I happen to be around them. Fun for them, maddening to see, let alone attempt to RP like.

[Rigwyn]

@Raxuss

What I said was specific to Kaerli and is based on past experience. It does not apply to everyone in general. For example, I personally dislike coin flipping and dice and rarely do it. In Kaerli's case, it might be good to experiment with given his particular playing style. It might be helpful, it might not.

@Kaerli

We've had this discussion a hundred times before ad nauseam. Not just you and me, but you and countless other players. Out of all the things that I and everyone else has suggested at your request, I can only say try things and see what works for you. Keep what works and discard the rest. If people run from you like the plague, then either they are doing so because of your reputation, or you are doing something that they don't particularly enjoy.

Good luck.

[Phantomboy86]

Is that just a toxic personality trait

Yes, incredibly so. Everything else is however you want to put 'try until it works' except that. Getting murdered still hurts a helluva lot and the Death realm, though not conveyed well, is supposed to be a pretty hellish place. It also rips out some of your life force. What can probably be amounted to taking cycles off your life. Besides some hardcore Dakkruists, who may even have a way to enter the Realm without actually committing suicide, nobody has a viable reason to find the Realm anything less than 'absolutely to be avoided' outside legitimate insanity. Most living creatures are hardwired not to die.

[Volki]

At Kaerli and Rigwyn regarding human error... I think flipping a coin or using math to determine the success of an action is inappropriate. Probabilities are better used to determine outcomes that are affected by variables we cannot be completely aware of. If you tell me to kick a target, I am going to hit it 100% of the time.

It would be okay to roll the dice for a character that had no skill, since there is some uncertainty. It would be okay to roll the dice for two evenly-skilled players in battle, as human error might be the only thing determining the winner. I think that a character's (roleplayed) skills and the player's ingenuity are the most important factors in a fight, and that all the players involved should be intelligent enough to agree on the outcome.

Giving other players a chance to outmaneuver your character is usually appreciated. Allow your character to make mistakes. I don't mean missing a target, especially if you're skilled at whatever. Something more human, like tripping due to exhaustion. There has to be a reason for error. Give the other player a chance to exploit it. Probabilities are boring.

I can't co-write when people aren't willing to give me an idea of what the story they want is, not without basically stomping on their story with my own.  I've bluntly asked people to brief me when coming into the middle of a story and they simply flatly refuse to do so.

Don't ask people what's going on when you walk into the middle of an ongoing roleplay. Do it once ICly (never OOCly, unless you can't tell what's going on presently), but don't ask again, or other characters will become annoyed with yours. If you need to know what's happening, wait for a lull or ask someone on the sidelines. If you've absolutely got to know, then have your character shake another for answers. Slap someone if you have to. But don't be a broken record and ask the same questions over and over.

And no good roleplayer complains when a story doesn't go the way they want. That makes it interesting.

[tman]

This seemed relevant.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling
#19:Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.

The more skilled character doesn't always have to win the fight.  And it doesn't have to be a mistake on his or her part.  You're allowed to use "coincidences" to put your character at a disadvantage (or on even footing) to make things more interesting.

But trying to use coincidence to your advantage is godmodding.

[Rigwyn]

Good point. I watched "The People Under the Stairs" once again and noticed how in the introduction, the narrator discussed an archetype called "The Fool". In the story, the main character or protagonist, who was aptly named "Fool" would literally walk into dangerous situations. As seen in the card below, even the Fool's dog sees the danger and is trying to alert him, but he ignores the warning as he approaches the cliff. He has nowhere to go, because even if he turns back, he'll be burnt by the sun. At least, that's the way the author interpreted this. What is admirable about this archetype is how it puts the viewer on the edge of their seat. You sit there suspensefully watching, wanting to warn the fool that they are about to get hurt. As a player, we sometimes have to let our characters walk into trouble like this fool and become vulnerable. It does not mean that we have to play foolishly, but rather, there are times when like the dog, we know things that our character does not. We must hold back and allow our character to suffer from that lack of knowledge.