Roleplaying is for all

[Kythag]

During a recent unfortunate NPC server \"downtime\", some creative and helpful PCs staged a roleplay in Hydlaa plaza.  Kythag, my less than intelligent character who is an exercise in the \"minmax\" concept, became involved because he is too stupid and ignorant of reality to understand he was being rude and obnoxious.  Since I was aware, I fed clues to the other roleplayers around me(I couldn\'t believe no one capitalized) that would lead them to shutting Kythag up.

With an Intelligence of 33 and a Will of 18, roleplaying him quiet would have been the most minor of tasks.  However, I was told in OOC brackets to shut up and furthermore that I had no understanding of the concept of \"rp\".  I want to say several things regarding this action:

1) It was rude and uninventive.  I fed you the clues to shut me up and you refused to utilize them.  One of the players began to roleplay it, then decided to roleplay ignoring me as a simpleton(applause).

2) I was made to feel unwelcome in this public roleplaying forum.  This is not a personal roleplaying server.  I began roleplaying with them, and I noted that others were too.  One person decided that we didn\'t have the right to roleplay.  I was highly motivated to roleplay by two very inventive people that were going to great lengths to provide something fun for us all.  Instead I became involved in an OOC bracket argument that spoiled the entire thing.

3)  An OOC bracket commentary of any kind during roleplaying always takes away from the roleplay.  By telling me to shut up in brackets was far worse than roleplaying annoyance(I was roleplaying).  Even more so, I was using my roleplaying to direct others to stop me.

4) The idea of this game that appealed to me is \"realism\" that wants us to all to \"rp\" at all times.  I haven\'t been experiencing this, so I was enthused when I saw this occurring.  I vigorously began roleplaying my character, hoping eveyone would become involved.  If this element becomes the sole right of a select few, then why would I(or any other) that are excluded feel welcome or want to continue playing?

5) I believe the authors of this game intended a true roleplaying environment without limitations.  A true environment will see talk amongst all to be \"in character\".  If you decide you don\'t like me, roleplay it.  I\'m game.  If you think my character needs to shut up, roleplay it.  This has made me decide to be in character at all times.  Respect this and roleplay it back.  Anything else is against the idea and purpose of this game.

Finally(yes I\'m longwinded), I want to apologize to those individuals who brought back this idea of true roleplaying online to me.  I had forgotten my way, and I helped participate and destroying your efforts.  I am truly sorry this occurred.  The next time you see me in this game, you will be dealing with my characters, not me.

Kythag

[Keyaz]

um.... nice! :tup:

unfortunately truem we do have a lot of people in the \'community\' who don\'t roleplay, know how to or at most want to even try.

I\'ll be honest here, I haven\'t roleplayed (other then Cha0s\' RM test) in a long long time, the feeling is... gone to want to try, no one seemingly has the energy anymore, the atmosphere stoops oyur mood and you just go \"bleh\"

if oyu have a bit of luck with good timing you can catch some excellent RP\'ers lingering about, and even some unexpected people try to RP too, just keep trying ^^

[koolerking]

I am in absolute agreeance with you as far as realism in the RP is concerned. And frankly I personally would like to see free PvP zones everywhere. And yes, I know you\'ll scream at me that there would be non stop murdering from power-leveled players, but I can explain.

For instance, you don\'t take your dog for a walk and start sinking axes into the skulls of the elderly do you? (lets hope not) why you ask? Because (remember this is speaking fom a sociopath\'s point of view) there are consequenses for these sort of things, at the very least you\'re introduced to the iron bars for life or quartered and hung as would be most likely in the current time setting of PS (And aside from that there\'s the far worse fact that it\'s frowned upon by society in most cases).

So, if a form of player-made or official police ever wormed it\'s way into the game, would it really be practical to start winging shirukens at random passerbys? And besides that there are plenty of do-gooder heros on the streets and out of work. It would also help those jobless evil-cleavers into a line of work, for instance if villianous players had taken it upon themselves to rid the world of fat merchants (Hey, RPing isn\'t all hack \'n slash) passing along highways, call upon thems that sleep on their shield to escort you. (It would also be really fun to be the highway men themselves).

So, after that thouroughly useless rant (as no one will agree with me) I think PvP zones everywhere would be fun. Just my two cents.

And yes I know this is probably the wrong thread to post this in, and I\'ll be killed and eaten by pencil-weilding devs for suggesting such an outrageous consumption of time, and be shot and stomped on by letter weilding forum-goers for what they\'d probably consider spamming, but meh.

[Draklar]

My character has around 20 Intelligence and Charisma... So he tends to be rude and generally not used to civilized life. But although people sometimes went \"...\" in response to my actions, it was never brought to the ooc bracket fight...

You sure you did everything right? Or maybe you stumbled across rp zealots? :P

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by koolerking
And yes I know this is probably the wrong thread to post this in, and I\'ll be killed and eaten by pencil-weilding devs for suggesting such an outrageous consumption of time, and be shot and stomped on by letter weilding forum-goers for what they\'d probably consider spamming, but meh.

Not if you wear a helmet :)

I think the main issue is that while free PvP zones could definitely add a lot to realism and to the game in general, the chances for abuses are just too high to ignore. Perhaps when everything else in the game is more stable - and indeed free PvP zones are something a few devs would like to see as well, though not everywhere - but right now, I think the suggestion is as far away as player housing.

[zanzibar]

Hi Kythag!  I\'m reluctant to pass judgement without knowing more about the situation in question.  I will tell you however that there are a lot of people in the planeshift community who are elitist and have their heads up their behinds.  To these individuals, it really is a \"them\" versus \"the noobs\" dynamic.  All I can tell you is to not give up too soon.  Be patient, know who you\'re dealing with, and take things into your own hands if necessary.

A lot of people here consider that evil or annoying or intrusive characters are \"noobs who know nothing about role playing\".  It\'s pretty obvious to me and many other players that such an attitude is narrow minded and innacurate.  Of course, if you truly were being a pest, you can\'t really blame people for misjudging you.  I can only offer you my sympathy and wishes for better luck in the future.

[LigH]

Originally posted by Kythag
With an Intelligence of 33 and a Will of 18, roleplaying him quiet would have been the most minor of tasks.

  To be true: I am neither a \"born roleplayer\" :baby:  nor a native english speaker (somewhat limited vocabulary, especially under pressure).

But here are several people who claim to know how to \"roleplay correctly\", so please tell me: What do you mean by \"roleplaying someone quiet\"?

In real life, we would probably drag such an annoying person away by his arms. With the limitations of this engine, there is no \"physical\" force against characters available. So if someone decides to disturb, the rest is helpless against it.

And imagine some people playing that a family member just died, or was raped, ladies crying their eyes out, everyone is seeking for a solution to rescue and to cheer up - and then a drunk comes along and molests the mourning crowd.

Let it be realistic - but this is at least rude, up to impious. At first it shows a lack of respect against a running roleplay session, in my opinion. And in such a state as mentioned, please excuse me, but I cannot divide a stubborn and rude player from an intended simple-minded and rude character in such a moment.

[Drey]

we should slap xordan for open pvp areas... i think

personally i would like to see oja road as open pvp... then start my own theives guild (or more of a \'band\') where we could ambush any unweary travelers on their way up to the market/selly area of ojaveda then it brings in the need for caravan guards, the entrance from the forest side would be my ambush point... just after they come round the corner maybe with a watchman up on the cliff then the others hiding up in the valley walls (just a personal fantasy, and my ideal character)

as far as RP goes... i can, but it can be a little embarrising. if i think about it you could say i RP at school O.o me and my firends will just be sitting around having a conversations and then just fall into talking in posh british accents and using phrases like \'jolly good\' and \'right-o\' getting us quite a few odd looks it just fun... even more fun when you pull up chairs next to some poor victim and include then in your conversation. but a little strange when you remember back to when we had a countdown until the end of compulsory drama lessons.

[Zan]

Originally posted by koolerking
So, if a form of player-made or official police ever wormed it\'s way into the game, would it really be practical to start winging shirukens at random passerbys? And besides that there are plenty of do-gooder heros on the streets and out of work. It would also help those jobless evil-cleavers into a line of work, for instance if villianous players had taken it upon themselves to rid the world of fat merchants (Hey, RPing isn\'t all hack \'n slash) passing along highways, call upon thems that sleep on their shield to escort you. (It would also be really fun to be the highway men themselves).

Your highway men have been introduced into PS already, several times probably but I can only speak for myself. I regularly play with a Kran name Tyrnal, whose job as a Vaal guard exists in protecting travellers in and around Ojaveda from monsters or villainous players. Once I have roleplayed with a friend, who took the role of criminal up, and that was quite a lot of fun. He roamed around Hydlaa harassing people and stealing things while I had to track him down and try to arrest him, if he could sneak up from behind me he was allowed to slit my throat though. In the end there was a whole mob chasing him and cheering me on when I appeared to take him into custody. We had a mock fight and in the end I managed to take him down, again with much joy from the public.
It was fun because we were friends and we were both just playing. However if I were to chase after a villain I didn\'t personally know outside of the game it would have turned into a chaos. There wouldn\'t have been any rules about who could defeat who and knowing people, both\'d claim to be the stronger one so it would end up in a duel and with our present uber weapons, combat lag and quite a few maxed out characters ... that wouldn\'t have been very RP-like. Tyrnal can strike down about any player doing 150 damage with each hand ... then again he is far from the only powerful warrior and there are many who could strike him down just as easily so in the end a duel would have came down to pure luck or who lagged the least.
So having player guards wouldn\'t work unless there were rules enforced like giving any guard an /arrest command to put people who commited a crime away. Of course something like that requires that the server keeps track of crimes or the /arrest could be easily abused ... also who can be a guard and who can\'t? In short ... many difficulties arise unless every single person that plays Planeshift is an excellent RPer. We all know that isn\'t the case and never will be the case so that is why I am against free PvP. Among good RPers I would definitely agree with you that it\'d be a good thing but in reality it couldn\'t work (yet).

Now to get back to the original post ...
I think my example above proves that it is possible to RP someone bad. My friend was harassing people, similar to what you were doing I assume. They were annoyed and calling him names but he kept the roleplay going. Of course I know you have to have some luck and have at least a few good roleplayers around for any kind of success. However I think it helps if you let at least one person in on your act in advance. Like I was playing the guard who came to arrest the criminal. As soon as I appeared on the show it became obvious that we were roleplaying and everyone jumped on the bandwagon with us. Roleplaying alone can sometimes be difficult because of the ego of individuals and suspicion against strangers. People aren\'t very trusting towards others in general so it always helps to have at least two people work together/against eachother.

Now I\'m going to stop rambling

[Kythag]

\"Roleplaying someone quiet\" means using roleplay to shut me up.  With a Will of 18, I would have easily cowtowed to someone\'s roleplay authority.  The comment about elitism may or may not have been dead on.  The person could have been being elitist or he simply might have thought I was being purposely annoying(and purposely trying to wreck a valiant effort on two players part).  Either way, my point was this: He went about it all wrong.

This is how Kythag was speaking: \"Kythag word bad, words for (name left out cause its not about the people here), Kythag sorry\".  I don\'t know about you, but I would have roleplayed some \"Kythag, word bad too much, words not for Kythag, so Kythag shut up!\".  Kyythag would have bowed his head in shame(he had already done it once) and shut up!  That was my point, the clues were there.

Furthermore, the PvP discussion should look at the \"What do you expect from an MMORPG\" thread.  My comments are there, I will not repeat them here(I\'m longwinded as it is :\\ )

Kythag

[zanzibar]

I don\'t take the stats seriously.  My character is who I decide it to be, regardless of the numbers.  I don\'t think there\'s anything wrong with that, they\'re just stats.

In one RPG I played, I gave my character the flaw of being blunt.  So I got my party into a lot of trouble because I made a point of insulting or challenging people we came into contact with.



As far as what some of the rest of you said.... it doesn\'t seem like you\'re role playing as much as you\'re putting on a performance.  To me, there\'s a big difference.

[Clayzekiel]

One of the finest arts of roleplaying is to get the conversation back on track from an OOC bracket conversation. For example if someone is shouting something on capitals and people shout back \"Take your CAPS off!!\", one could bring that back on rp aspect by saying something like \"Yes gentlemen should always take their caps off at least while inside... Or their helmets to that matter.\"

IRL conversations and even single words can spoil good roleplaying. Once I accidentally happened to use word \"player\" instead of \"person\". I was mining gold and eventually couldn\'t carry anymore, so one chunk of gold dropped down. I said to someone that he can take it, but I wasn\'t sure if that\'s possible so I said something like \"...If it\'s pickable by other players.\" Bad mistake, but even that could be corrected by saying that my character takes mining as a competition or a game, and considers other miners as players, simple as that.

It\'s hard to keep on roleplaying when there\'s others (and yourself sometimes ) leading the roleplaying out of track. Not impossible though, with a bit of imagination.

[zanzibar]

When someone calls me a player in real life, I just take it as a compliment.

[Kythag]

I agree.  OOC brackets can be useful.  I believe they should only be used when nothing else will do.  I believe resorting to brackets constitutes a failure on the part of the roleplayer, however(and note that I do accept responsiblity for my part in above situation).

Some of the people involved now dislike me I think.  That does make me sad, but there\'s nothing I can do about that. It is part of the community that some will not mesh well together.  I just think it\'s sad that it has to be that way is all.  :\\

Kythag

[Cha0s]

Kythag: I applaud you. From what I understand, you role-played an annoying character and you... annoyed people. The only thing I might have done differently would be to /tell the person who told you to shut up OOC and explain what you were doing. Once the economy balances, stats and dice rolls can be used to determine physical actions. i.e. \"/me tries to drag NAME away\" and then you do opposing rolls and add your strength stat. If your roll is higher, you succeed in dragging NAME away.