[Discuss] Role Play Island.

[Lyman Stone]

Okay, a few things...

1. As Alex said, does a newspaper count as RP? I'd think it would,  
its pretty heavily IC involved and definately shapes your chartacter,  
and it gets use IC. I'd count newspaper as RP.

2. I agree, Alex, there should be discussion and conversation. My  
point was that not all RP consists of describing all your actions,  
and all your innermost thoughts.

3. About the RPing everything publicly. Its not powergaming to use  
secrecy. Here's the thing, I've had my characters' THOUGHTS used  
against them, and I've seen it happen to other people, where they RP  
their character THINKING something, and other players act accordingly  
to their thoughts, which is impossible. Because I am a sentient  
creature, I learn from mistakes, and no longer publicly RP sensitive  
info.

4. Roleplaying is not like writing a story. A story you sit down and  
plan out from the beginning, or at least have a fairly fixed idea  
where its gonna go, what its gonna be about. IMO, RPing isnt like it.  
I absolutely hate it when people sit down and plan out their RP. IMO 
(again, just my opinion, take it or leave it), you should improv it.  
You'll make more mistakes and be more realistic like that, because  
all life is improv. If we're gonna be hyper-RP-sensitive, lets all  
have flawed characters, and make them, usually, NOT think when they  
act. Lets make them be human, and live life improvisationally without  
having their players plan out their actions. When you plan it out,  
you've just done the ultimate sin of RPing: Godmoding. You've just  
set an RP in stone when you pre-plan an RP. From what it SOUNDS like 
(please, correct me if I'm wrong, but please dont hang me), you all  
want us to plan out RP stories.

5. My character doesnt show your character his thoughts, so why  
should I show YOU my character's thoughts?

6. Another way RP isnt like a story. RP has many, many authors. A  
story usually has one, sometimnes two, rarely 3, and almost never  
more than three authors. If everyone goes and writes pages and pages  
about what their character does.... we have a novel lacking a strong  
plot, lacking a central theme, lacking cohesiveness, and lacking  
strong authorial voice. Thats very bad for a novel, fine for a game.  
We dont need to RP a cohesive, consistent plot. Lets let the plot  
develop, shall we?

7. This may be fairly controversial. But I think a problem is the  
characters themselves. There are so many, for lack of a better term,  
FEI regulars. People who have been there since the dawn of time. On  
the one hand, thats good, because it means highly developed  
characters. On the other hand, its bad, because its very intimidating  
for new players, and results in what we might call obsessing over  
trivialities. RPs start to get written about obscure and, really, not  
that important topics. I want to read an RP about, say, a realm being  
overthrown. But ya know what? I could really care less about reading  
a 2 page RP about you walking through the castle gates and looking at  
the town around you and noticing, SURPRISE! THEY'RE PEASANTS! Okay,  
so this bullet mentioned two things: characters being overused, and  
people RPing about trivialities.*

*Okay, excessively RPing trivialities. A one paragraph RP about  
entering a city or something isnt overkill, but when people do  
massive RPs about little things it just becomes overkill.

So, thats my opinion, take it or leave it. I'm not trying to offend  
or anger anyone, I'm sorry if I did.