RolePlay

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

I've tried combining that penchant for driven play with other character archetypes on many occasions; yet invariably, the result is a character that the community (or the Settings team sigh) seems unwilling or unable to accept.  Why?

Just for clarity, when I speak, I speak for myself, not for the settings team.

Regarding your question, is it possible that your idea of super-competitive play might be flawed? I'm not saying it is, but if *the community* as you put it, is saying that you are overly competitive at the ooc level, then maybe you might want to listen to what they are saying and consider the possibility that they might be right about this. Then again, it's entirely possible that *the community* is just wrong about it.

It's really hard to do combat based RP without running into some kind of friction. Either you run into someone overpowered, invulnerable, unrealistic, or someone who takes offense or whatever. For this reason, I now try to focus more on the story than on the combat. I can lose a fight and still tell a good story in the process. I would rather do that than win a fight and mess up the story in the process. That's just my own personal way of working though this problem.

My point is that this drive is not just a problem for combat RP -- it interferes with my RP in many other ways as well.  It turns my crafters into utter workaholics, forces victimhood on characters who are intended to be picked on, and basically renders my alts mostly unresponsive to people trying to distract them from their initial goals.

[Pierre]

Why do people like Asmo, Suno, Phenha/Fuusan, and Mishka/Jocas have no trouble laying down damage on Kaerli?  It's because they're going through the mental chess game to do so, instead of trying to OOCly bypass it.

I've tried combining that penchant for driven play with other character archetypes on many occasions; yet invariably, the result is a character that the community (or the Settings team sigh) seems unwilling or unable to accept.  Why?

And what are Mishka, Asmo, Suno, and Phenha?  Chopped liver?

If you are RP fighting with the settings team, you are doing something right.  I can't get them to even spar with me.

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

Why do people like Asmo, Suno, Phenha/Fuusan, and Mishka/Jocas have no trouble laying down damage on Kaerli?  It's because they're going through the mental chess game to do so, instead of trying to OOCly bypass it.

I've tried combining that penchant for driven play with other character archetypes on many occasions; yet invariably, the result is a character that the community (or the Settings team sigh) seems unwilling or unable to accept.  Why?

And what are Mishka, Asmo, Suno, and Phenha?  Chopped liver?

If you are RP fighting with the settings team, you are doing something right.  I can't get them to even spar with me.

They're a small minority of the playerbase, to say the least.

Also: re the Settings team not accepting my characters -- this is a problem where I'm trying to worldbuild basically too far indepth for the Settings team to want to work with me on such things.

[Cairn]

Let's move on from Kaerli's complains that we're not accepting/not playing the way He wants, and try a new topic!

Shan't beat the dead dog too long, eh?

How do we feel about reacting in unexpected manners?

[Can-ned Food]

I really wasn't sure if I wanted to broach this, and even now I'm not.

I will say this much, though:  the schism between the communal–storytellers and the game–mechanoids is ridiculously silly.  Kaerli wouldn't need to complain about unsupported playstyles if both sides embraced the other's perspectives on RP and designed PS accordingly.  They aren't as oppositional as it seems to be thought by most of the people I see posting on this message board.
I won't say how it can be done, but it can, and quite simply, really.

Oh, and that's why I role-play:  story-playing within a gameworld.  Most of the time I don't get it to a satisfying intent, but that's the dream.

Cheers.

How do we feel about reacting in unexpected manners?

That's what GMs should be ready–for.  If there isn't one, then either the game is or each player must contribute to that office.
Do you mean my personal opinion?  Well, it depends on how thoroughly designed the scenario is.  If it's done well, it can be either open or close, expandable or regulated.  If not, i.e. something happens which can't be managed in the scenario, then if you deus ex machina a response you'd better be able to explain why the eagles came.
Not all unexpected events need be something which gives a player some advantage.  They could be disasters that threaten everyone.  If you sweep those types of problems away, the players might be relieved but you run the risk of kindergartening, which gets dull.

But we're talking about games that have no GM.  In that case, it is very possible to have conflicting interests that must be resolved, and if you can't settle for an arbitrator then you exclude an entire class of players from your RP.  Is that what you want?

Completely collaborative play isn't really play as I see it.

[Cairn]

You bring up some very valid points

I was thinking more along the lines of not 'tried and true' responses.

Like someone tries to...idk...buy a character a drink. But instead of just cheerily going along with it, the character is offended and somehow it escalates into a bar fight.

Obviously this all needs to be IC, but do you see where I'm going? That all 'reactions' need not be atypical, even for a character? Someone brought it up to me that each character doesn't have just one way to react, but perhaps multiples. Do we explore those multiple ways?

[Aramara Meibi]

Our real life actions and reactions are situational, why not the characters we play? Life situations are always in flux, and they have some effect on our behavior. So, perhaps your character is feeling stressed, or is just having a crummy day, or just decided to kick their drinking habit, or maybe all three, how will this effect their reaction to an offer for a drink?

[Can-ned Food]

Ah.  Well, I honestly haven't been able to find anybody in the infrequent times that Gedundk is there, but the ones that I do are either

• Just busy or not interesting to Gedundk
• Don't seem to be involved enough to stir things about

As for that last one, I know that improv is more difficult that you'd think it would be, but still — I don't know.  Gedundk is a kran, anyway, so that makes it more difficult to open up to other people.  And here I thought playing an asexual would be so much simpler!

[Cairn]

Playing a Kran can be super hard.


Mostly because when I see a kran, they're somebody's alt who's either powerleveling, or they're standing there with no description staring at nothing, then they log off.

Not to mention, yes, it is super hard to play a Kran with all of their natural traits.

[Rigwyn]

Let's see... I want to touch on two things:

But we're talking about games that have no GM.  In that case, it is very possible to have conflicting interests that must be resolved, and if you can't settle for an arbitrator then you exclude an entire class of players from your RP.  Is that what you want?

Traditionally, the way many of us handled this decentralized play is when one player attempted to do something to another, then one who is acted upon decides if the action was successful and if so, how effective it was. The idea behind this is it eliminates the effects of god modding, but it requires honor. Without that honor, you run into problems. The most obvious problem in the case of god modding via invulnerability.

Dice can be used as an arbiter, but not everyone likes dice. I sometimes just discuss doing a die roll with the other player and go with it. Some players are more inclined to go with judgment or whatever.

The problem with using game mechanics to decide is that there's a huge disparity in stats among players - so much so that pairing players of such different stats makes no sense at all. We're talking gods and ants. Yes, you could make skill tiers but even that is hard to do fairly and that kills the fun of players randomly joining in if they notice that you are playing near them. What some of us do is to ignore stats completely and role play having some basic area of proficiency. Again, honor/trust is needed here. For a player who has an obsession with being overpowered, this does not work well.

When the majority of players play one way, and then another consistently tries to defy that system with a way that the majority of players disagree with, that player effectively excludes themselves via their choice to not adapt.


Re: Playing a Kran.

It's funny that Cairn said that playing a kran was hard. I made one or two attempts at it and found it to be rather awkward. I think the mistake that I made was playing into the strong, moronic stereotype. Also, krans look huge and powerful and like they are made of stone, but the settings and game mechanics kind of at odds with this. 

[Geoni]

Kran are only hard to play when your kran doesn't identify as male or female and you gotta use the kranouns all the time. 

One of my suggestions to making the unsociability of kran more interesting and interactive is to either force them into a situation with some sort of backstory (I've been sent here to do ___, ___ stole something from me and now I'm searching for them, my friend ___ is causing trouble and I should probably do something about it, etc). That, or take inspiration from antisocial behavioral disorders. Just partially though, since they're good natured or come from a place where they don't see the wrong in what they're doing. When you throw a certain cultural background into a melting pot like Hydlaa, there's going to be mixed reactions and it's great to focus on the bad reactions your character gets ICly, because that's where conflict grows from.

At the end of the day, with kran or any of the races for that matter, the amount you're able to do with your character comes from the amount you're able to interpret from established lore, rather than just taking it for face value and not deviating (...deviating reasonably).

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

Let's see... I want to touch on two things:

But we're talking about games that have no GM.  In that case, it is very possible to have conflicting interests that must be resolved, and if you can't settle for an arbitrator then you exclude an entire class of players from your RP.  Is that what you want?

Traditionally, the way many of us handled this decentralized play is when one player attempted to do something to another, then one who is acted upon decides if the action was successful and if so, how effective it was. The idea behind this is it eliminates the effects of god modding, but it requires honor. Without that honor, you run into problems. The most obvious problem in the case of god modding via invulnerability.

Dice can be used as an arbiter, but not everyone likes dice. I sometimes just discuss doing a die roll with the other player and go with it. Some players are more inclined to go with judgment or whatever.

The problem with using game mechanics to decide is that there's a huge disparity in stats among players - so much so that pairing players of such different stats makes no sense at all. We're talking gods and ants. Yes, you could make skill tiers but even that is hard to do fairly and that kills the fun of players randomly joining in if they notice that you are playing near them. What some of us do is to ignore stats completely and role play having some basic area of proficiency. Again, honor/trust is needed here. For a player who has an obsession with being overpowered, this does not work well.

When the majority of players play one way, and then another consistently tries to defy that system with a way that the majority of players disagree with, that player effectively excludes themselves via their choice to not adapt.


Re: Playing a Kran.

It's funny that Cairn said that playing a kran was hard. I made one or two attempts at it and found it to be rather awkward. I think the mistake that I made was playing into the strong, moronic stereotype. Also, krans look huge and powerful and like they are made of stone, but the settings and game mechanics kind of at odds with this.

To which I ask one question: is that power disparity something that is, or should be for that matter, in-character observable?

Because that seems to be the crux of our problems -- I play Kaerli as powerful as she is partly because to do otherwise would contradict her observed abilities in the game mechanics (i.e. that power disparity is observable/IC because the mechanics are the only data provider).  However, most RPers seem to ignore the magnitude of that power disparity in favor of some notion of "believability", as if said power disparity was an OOC artifact slated to go away completely as soon™ as the game is rebalanced properly (which will likely require a top-to-bottom overhaul of skills and stats, but that's a topic I've already broached in another thread).  Or in other words -- should the ability of some characters to do things like slay Ulbers in (armored) hand-to-hand be treated as a legitimate in-character capability, or something that's simply an artifact of the game?

Ignoring stats and skills altogether, of course, raises the spectre of mob interference/lack of hunting capability as a problem, as well...(while some characters are in metagame positions where they can hunt and defend themselves from aggressive mobs effectively without having highly developed stats/skills, this is by no means universal, and isn't going to be impacted positively by whatever balance changes come down the pike, because vertical balancing doesn't give you the opportunity to fix the problems that ail PS' combat system)

Kran are only hard to play when your kran doesn't identify as male or female and you gotta use the kranouns all the time. 

One of my suggestions to making the unsociability of kran more interesting and interactive is to either force them into a situation with some sort of backstory (I've been sent here to do ___, ___ stole something from me and now I'm searching for them, my friend ___ is causing trouble and I should probably do something about it, etc). That, or take inspiration from antisocial behavioral disorders. Just partially though, since they're good natured or come from a place where they don't see the wrong in what they're doing. When you throw a certain cultural background into a melting pot like Hydlaa, there's going to be mixed reactions and it's great to focus on the bad reactions your character gets ICly, because that's where conflict grows from.

At the end of the day, with kran or any of the races for that matter, the amount you're able to do with your character comes from the amount you're able to interpret from established lore, rather than just taking it for face value and not deviating (...deviating reasonably).

The lore could do with a major overhaul and restructuring -- whoever thinks that the lore of a sandbox world should be told in the form of stories should be dropped on their head a few times to reboot it.  More precisely, the PS lore, in addition to not being well-fleshed-out (which is a different story), is not designed to be referenceable...there is still far too much that is only spoken of in quests, which doesn't work for a game that really should be centered around interactions between player characters.

[Rigwyn]

To which I ask one question: is that power disparity something that is, or should be for that matter, in-character observable?

It's fine to have some disparity, but when there is too much, the game becomes unbalanced.

[Cairn]

Let's move on:

Thought: Alts kill guilds



/?

[Rigwyn]

How so? Are you talking about people metagaming with alts for a competitive or manipulative advantage or more the dilution that seems to occur when you have a guild consisting of 30 characters and 2 players?