performing feats in RP

[Aramara Meibi]

Well since every action solved by the engine implies a random chance of success, I find funny to use narrative RP actions. But the narative solving / dice solving is an old and long debate among roleplayers...
So what do you do if someone you don't know do something not supported by the engine? You say 'nah, i don't want to play with you' and turn away?

that happened to me just the other day, was hunting down someone in the sewers, and when i finally confronted them, the character said, "No I don't want to do this today." and vanished (read, logged off). I wasn't necessarily planning on using game mechanics to attack him, which is what I suspect he expected. An RPd confrontation would have been more balanced in his favor.

I know I'm not the only one here interested in building and taking part in narrative, who gives every action their characters make a reason, and tries to make the experience of the other players as entertaining as possible.

"CharA hits CharB on foot for 22.78 damage"
is just not as entertaining as
"CharA spots CharB across the plaza. His hatred for the despicable con boils up inside, but years of training and self control help to keep his outer appearances calm. He knocks an arrow in his bow, takes steady aim and lets one fly.
CharB walks through the plaza without much care, watching the birds take rest on Laanx's statue. A shrill whistling through the air catches his attention and he turns his head just in time to see the arrow sailing at him. He tries to jump out of the way, but miscalculates and the arrow strikes through boot and foot. He falls hard to the pavement, rendered unable to walk."

which one tells the better story? but if CharA is really only lvl 5 ranged, he shouldn't have been able to make that shot and CharB would have happily walked away. It's about balancing the two sides. Why even have training and levels if they are disregarded in RP (REMEMBER FOLKS RP IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE FOCUS OF THIS GAME)? this is was just a suggestion to incorporate skill levels so that players know how to determine if characters are successful or not in their actions. Determining your own success is Godmodding, on this I think we can all agree, so you let the other players be the judge. Stating your skill and stat levels helps them make a more sound judgement.

In my own personal style of RP, good storytelling is always the biggest factor in making such judgements. I realize mostly everyone has their own style and preferences, and RP is easiest when its done with players who share your preferences, but then you get stuck RPing within the same circles, and this can be a big turn off for new players. If we had a kind of agreed upon Universal Form of RP, it would remove much of the barrier between older and newer players, between the RPers and PLers, dwarves and elves living together in harmony.... now who doesn't want that?

[miomo]

I think it is a good idea in general to allow others to see your stats. To that end, I've adjusted my privacy settings for Miomai in MyPlane to allow everyone to view them. This way people can see my character's abilities beforehand and make their own judgements about how successful I am.

[Tzarhunt]

I don't think we could make a convention out of your system because it takes all the protagonists to have the same conception of what has a chance to succeed or not. The reason it works in a few tabletop RPG is you have the GM as an arbiter of every player's character action, which we can't decently ask in PS.

[verden]

Tzarhunt just nailed it. This conversation has been had many times here, and it keeps returning to that single point. Planeshift is a game that encourages players to act in character, it is not a roleplaying game.

[miomo]

I guess we have different definitions of role playing. This has been the best place I have been to engage in real-time free-form role playing.

[Tzarhunt]

Well 'role playing' has a large rake, if you consider it means 'playing a role'.
I think the point was PS is far from a state-of-the-art RPG.

[miomo]

Yes, you're probably right. I have no idea what "state of the art" in role playing games is. Many of us play what might be best described as collaborative, interactive story telling. I personally don't care if my character's goals are met; she'll just change them to suit. Instead, what interests me is making a good story. I think, taken from that perspective, we can add in the character abilities to help direct where the story will go.

On any given topic, you can often find n+1 opinions out of a sample of n people.  So it's no different with people's ideas of how the specific stats support their actions. Ultimately it comes to compromise, and negotiation. As we learn about each other's role playing style and abilities we can dynamically adjust our own form of playing to match and complement the other's. This is just another tool in our arsenal of RPing tricks to help us get there. I'm sure those who frequently RP together wouldn't need this; they would be quite familiar with each other's capabilities already.

[novacadian]

I realize mostly everyone has their own style and preferences, and RP is easiest when its done with players who share your preferences, but then you get stuck RPing within the same circles, and this can be a big turn off for new players.

Or a big turn off to old players, like myself. It is my feeling that my expressed preference of RPing as outlined in my OOC tab has removed me from many circles of which you imply, Aramara.

My rule of thumb has been to try to accommodate the style of RP of the player which is being asked by me to RP. Conversely, if they wish to RP with me then accommodation is expected for my RP preferences.

My feeling is that rather than my RP being accommodated it is simply not desired by most circles. My meaning is the interactive RPing which could lead to something like a sword fight; not the typical dialogue RP that one may find in a tavern or through chance encounters on the map.

My RP has become a very solitary thing on PS, with character development through back story development and character modifications via the game mechanics, as well as imagined visits to my character's off map home settlement. In other words back and forward moving story lines from my own imagination with the motive to understand and shape the character better. That could (and perhaps should) be developed through PS Style RP; should there be a circle which would welcome it; yet has not turned out to be the case in my experience. No blame is intended. These thoughts are given only to show that the different approaches to RP on PS can be a big turn off to more than just new players.

- Nova

[Aiwendil]

"If one wants a particular style of play then play it! Bemoaning on the forums will only drive new players away. Reading much of the forum before entering the game made me think that the time had passed for real Role Playing here. That assumption could not have been more wrong from my perspective."¹
"Perhaps one thing that bitter oldbies have seemed to miss/fogotten is that players are here with the intent to be testers. My feeling is that the the Main Chat has been pretty much debugged. Once my Warrior-Priestess has been fully developed as a Warrior my intention is to create an alt to do the same with the Magic Mechanics. My hope is that will be useful to game development as well as entertaining me at the same time; as it has so far. This has been done with and without other characters' interaction with my character; nor without me forcing my style of play down anyone's throat."²
"It seems to me that those which have stolen the term RP here on PS (or now off of it as the case may be) are those that had, at one time, no game mechanics or rpg like Game Masters and played a game that we used to call as childern... 'tend'. The term, of course, derived from the term pretend. Those were great times as a child; as, no doubt, they were great times chasing around the map looking for crystals. Yet we all must grow up and move on sometimes.... that is if our childhood has not left us too bitter to do so. We are like stars in motion... nothing remains the same. And so it is up to the current PS Community to bring to the game what we want it to be.
The dev team does enough to allow that potential. If one cannot find what they are looking for then continue the search. If they find it, then welcome home."³
"The different RP Combat Styles exist, likely, for two reasons. The first is simply the preference of the individual players. The second is that PvP came along later in game development and prior to that all RP combat was done is straight storyline by my understanding.⁴
"Perhaps my views are tempered by being a programmer; as yours are tempered by that of a player. There would be no game here, for players like me at least, without the hard dedication of the dev team. To the whiners there would still be chat rooms and irc where they would spin their web of make believe. Because PS has left that style, or is leaving it, behind has made them incredibly bitter in my estimation."⁵

Aiwendil

[novacadian]

@Aiwendil : Glad to see my posts are getting some reading; however your point went over my head. Unless, perhaps, your are implying that it was those very quotes which lead to my exclusion from certain RP circles?

- Nova

[Aramara Meibi]

Many of us play what might be best described as collaborative, interactive story telling.

this is exactly how I describe Planeshift to people who haven't heard of it (which is everybody).