Vilageidiotx

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Any update on that artwork? I'm starting to suspect my contribution went to fueling Aaron's drug habit...

@Byrd Man

He needs that meth to bang out a 10k word post every couple of days.

How to RP certain traits

Meaning if you yourself aren't quick witted and funny, don't try to role play as someone who is quick witted or funny.

@Atrophy

Naw naw, this don't fly. People can't just RP themselves. That would be awful. It's like saying a writer can only write characters who are extensions of them. Like, holy shit, that would just all around suck.

It is true that, to RP traits that you don't have, you have to understand those traits. That does take empathy, which might make it difficult for younger people to pull it off, but that doesn't mean the effort isn't worth it. Hell, you might improve your own empathetic skills through learning how to write characters unlike yourself.

But to add to everything else you guys said: yeh, you need to go deeper than dating-profile adjectives. Words like smart, funny, charismatic, etc, have limited abilities. You have to get a feel for who your character is as a person. What they like, what they don't like, how they see the world, how they see themselves. Everything else is extensions of that.

So smart isn't enough. Are they mechanically inclined? Are they more book-smart, with the ability to remember terms and ideas? Are they good with numbers? People? Or do they have a knack for the tricks that make day-to-day life easier? Remember that most people are "Smart" with something, and that actual cognitive abilities play second fiddle to what you are smart at. Football requires a certain amount of tactical know-how and the ability to make snap decisions, but it isn't as intellectually respected as Chess which requires similar skills.

Charismatic isn't enough. Are they good public speakers like a politician? Are they good at manipulating people on an individual level like Charles Manson? Or do they just naturally exude a strong presence, like a good Shakespearean actor?

Once you've worked out these details, you have to make them count. Do not write characters as avatars of whatever action you want to do. When it is time to address their reactions, plan them based on their personalities and then move on from there. It might make your plans difficult to achieve, but it makes the journey interesting and believable.

Is WH40K just not roleplay viable?(Or perhaps am I unlucky?)

I don't know much about Warhammer, but didn't that originally start out as tabletop? I would think it would be especially open to rping. It could be that there isn't much of a WH fanbase on this forum.

Spam Non-Starvation Games - Season 2 Done

I'm calling it. @Chapatrap is going to bag this one.

JASFR: Journal for Advanced Science Fiction RolePlay

<Snipped quote by Darkmatter>

One possibility, I've experimented with and enjoyed, is just to embrace the dynamic being bemoaned here. Alot of RPers seem to be very interested in world building- and frankly, the world building ideas of most RPers are more interesting (at least to me) than reading their prose. So just give the people what they want, and a framework to do it in.

Consciously spinning an NRP as a collaborative worldbuilding exercise and encouraging people to worldbuild to their heart's content has at least two upsides: 1) it's (apparently for many people) flat out fun, and can frankly be more fun than reading IC posts about what space-queens and space-diplomats or not-zergs are doing as written by amateur authors 2) worldbuilding can lend itself to fiction set in-universe, and can be a fruitful source of real collaboration as opposed to the ridiculous pseudo-RTS dynamics that so many NRPs fall in to (and which I think is part of what is being complained about here). In my experience it can actually help the IC side of things. I know that the most creative and successful I've been at writing science fiction or fantasy scenes or short stories has been in the context of collaborative worldbuilding. My most successful experiments with this dynamic have been in fantasy settings- NRPs which were extremely healthy for months and only failed because I could no longer GM for RL reasons, but the principle holds true for scifi/space opera as well.

Just my thoughts. If the people like worldbuilding, give them worldbuilding, and try to structure the worldbuilding so as to enhance the IC rather than compete with it.

@Flagg

The caveat of this is that you end up with nothing to keep people tethered. Worldbuilding without a story is just a list of stuff. The little things on the bottom - the characters, the personalities, the underbelly of the world you have built - is the story, and all the worldbuilding around it is just window dressing. Without some sort of depth, everyone can jump ship any time they want and move all their ideas elsewhere.

It is true that prose is a helluva thing to figure out, but it is pretty rewarding in the end. I'm part of an NRP that has been going on for five years because we all took the time to work on the details. The result is that those of us who stuck it out all five years are practically married to the thing. I get why people look to make complete works because... it's beautiful when it works out.

If RPing was a cake, worldbuilding would be the icing. It's fun, it's fluffy, you don't have to slog through it. But nobody wants to eat a cake that is entirely icing. Eventually they'll get sick.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I had to resort to jacking it in the shower with imagination.

@TheEvanCat

Spam Non-Starvation Games - Season 2 Done

I had a hell of a run. As in, I actually had a run this time.

Crusader Kings II: Lord of Wales

Be Basque. Spread gender equality through cultural conversion.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I noticed it some time in December and just assumed it had always been there.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>



So it's not anime/manga? Well, there goes my interest.

@Byrd Man

It's too bad we don't have the polling feature in this forum like the MCF and Sporum had. I want to see "Who is the most kawaii PoW character" answered.