[Discuss] Role Play Island.

[Gloria Santos]

On 9/4/06, Lyman Stone <lymanstone at alltel.net> wrote:
>
> 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.



It depends on what kind of newspaper it is.  Some newspapers are more
roleplayed than others.
And yeah, Raggy used to be an attention whore, wanting all the newspapers to
talk about her.  She's  (I'm?) miserable (bored?)  in Sandalak.  :-(


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.



Still, I don't agree with complete secrecy.  You need to give other players
clues and tools.  When someone keeps a secret, people around him/her notice
somethign weird.  When a character doesn't say anything, people normally
asume it's their player who is inactive, not the character who is planning
something against them.  I've been too innocent, and my characters have
suffered for it.  Ah, my poor little characters, having such an naive player
unaware of the people against them! :'(


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.



That has happened ot me too.  Many people ignore the "What you do not see
you do not know" rule of RP.  (And yes, that rule is in the wiki
somewhere.)  What's worse, many people ignore it purposefully, as to gain an
advantage in the game, and believe you are a fool for stating your
character's thoughts.




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.



That doesn't work, even if you wanted to.  Nothing ends up as planned in BM.



 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.



I don't think that's what FEIers want.


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



I agree that should go both ways.  It's not fair when there are consequences
to what a character thinks but does not share out loud, just because its
player decided to write it.


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.



(Postmodernism disagrees with you.  :-P)


We dont need to RP a cohesive, consistent plot. Lets let the plot
> develop, shall we?



But let's not ignore what other wrote already, nor write something that
doesn't make sense at all.


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.



See last strip of ElfOnlyInn.  It's a must read.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://news.battlemaster.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20060904/cbb708cf/attachment.htm