Character Woes
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@TNP said:
Since it seems a fair number of people playing on Eldritch read these boards, it's simplest to put here that I decided to drop Joseph as he's simply not working after several scenes. I've done this long enough to know when to go back to the drawing board and make a new alt.
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@HelloRaptor said:
@TNP said:
Since it seems a fair number of people playing on Eldritch read these boards, it's simplest to put here that I decided to drop Joseph as he's simply not working after several scenes. I've done this long enough to know when to go back to the drawing board and make a new alt.
/facepalms
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For me, my favorite alts have always been those that I know that when I have time to log in, I can do something that the character is interested in. This may be related to the voice, but also to the activity of the game, the availability of players I can stand, and the kinds of things I like to play out which is invariably based on the character's personality.
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So new alt has already been submitted (though not approved yet) but I already had his first scene. I knew halfway through it that he worked. Yay for me. But what is the magic formula that makes one work and another not? I know for one that Joseph's personality was more subdued. He wasn't a loner, I don't app loners, but he wasn't an outright extrovert either. I'll have to review my past characters and see if that's a common theme.
So do any of you have deal breakers in your characters?
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@TNP said:
So new alt has already been submitted (though not approved yet) but I already had his first scene. I knew halfway through it that he worked. Yay for me. But what is the magic formula that makes one work and another not? I know for one that Joseph's personality was more subdued. He wasn't a loner, I don't app loners, but he wasn't an outright extrovert either. I'll have to review my past characters and see if that's a common theme.
So do any of you have deal breakers in your characters?
I find one of the best ways to combat subdued-ness/quietness is to hang a sense of curiosity in them. Curiosity takes characters so far, because even if they're quiet and not immediately open about things, they at least have a general direction of wanting to know things -- about events, about other people, etc.
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Loner-slash-misanthropes don't work on MU*. They can work, I suppose, if you're OOC well connected and set them up in just the right way, but why burden yourself like that?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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For me it's rarely about personality type, skillset, or anything like that and more if I can find people interested in doing things. If I log in day after day and the only thing going on is Meeting, Coffee, or some variation of "Social scene where nothing happens" RP, then I'll get bored and drop the character.
Or frankly I'll just up and decide I want to try something different. I have the attention span of a gnat.
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Introvert doesn't automatically equate to subdued or shy or retiring, either (just like extrovert doesn't actually mean sunny or outgoing). It can, but all it really means is someone processes their feelings more internally than externally. I've had a lot of fun playing a handful of introverted characters, because I got to play that extra layer of them processing their own feelings and then expressing them in a way that was somewhat edited for public consumption. They were very different people with the one or two PCs they actually considered friends than they were with their co-workers/acquaintances, which to me at least was interesting.
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@Arkandel said:
Loner-slash-misanthropes don't work on MU*. They can work, I suppose, if you're OOC well connected and set them up in just the right way, but why burden yourself like that?
My favorite is when people app characters who are TOTAL LONERS and DON'T WANT TO TALK TO ANYONE and then whine about not getting good RP.
Like, man, you made your bed. You're right that they CAN work, but they require planning and a lot of proactivity from the player. Setting up built-in PC connections with players you like helps. But nothing drives me crazier than people apping misanthropic loners and then expecting everyone else to continually make a huge effort to hook them into RP.
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@Roz There's a flipside to that though. It's when people make characters and as @Cobaltasaurus brought up nothing is happening in an accessible way for them yet when they bring it up someone else goes "well, I always have scenes!" like it's necessarily the first person's fault there's no RP outside closed cliques or PrPs they weren't invited to.
Yes, some folks set themselves up for failure and screw'em. We should all be responsible for finding our own fun. But the alternative is not to be told to log on and ask on a public channel for RP because 99% of the time that just means, at best, a meet-and-greet bar scene.
Unfortunately the only real fix is to generate more plots, and as a community we're not doing very well in encouraging new Storytellers to step up and run them.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said:
Loner-slash-misanthropes don't work on MU*. They can work, I suppose, if you're OOC well connected and set them up in just the right way, but why burden yourself like that?
PC connections help a lot, though I've noticed that players can be bizarrely stubborn about making them.
Ages ago, I played a PC who was a part of a fairly large, established family on the game. This gave players insta-connections as people apped in , for better or worse. A newb apped my sibling. A sibling who'd been off-camera and not really fleshed out, but who was only a couple years younger than my PC. Who my PC would've grown up with for quite a long time, until their early teens. I page this person to work out some basic relationship stuff (how did our personalities bounce off each other, how did we get along as kids, have we kept in touch over the years, etc.). It took me like a solid 15 minutes to convince this guy we would've known each other at all and spent time together on occasion during our childhood. Like, it would have been unavoidable. When he finally had to admit it was unavoidable, he said he didn't really want to establish any sort of dynamic because he'd "been gone for a a few years and hadn't stayed in touch with the family for no particular other than not wanting to make stuff up." So I gave up and just decided my relationship with my sibling was really bland and uneventful, and that's what this person was looking for, apparently.
I had a point, but I've kind of forgotten it. We are sometimes weirdly resistant to making social connections on a game that's all about social connections, I guess, and I don't understand why.
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@Arkandel said:
@Roz There's a flipside to that though. It's when people make characters and as @Cobaltasaurus brought up nothing is happening in an accessible way for them yet when they bring it up someone else goes "well, I always have scenes!" like it's necessarily the first person's fault there's no RP outside closed cliques or PrPs they weren't invited to.
Yes, some folks set themselves up for failure and screw'em. We should all be responsible for finding our own fun. But the alternative is not to be told to log on and ask on a public channel for RP because 99% of the time that just means, at best, a meet-and-greet bar scene.
Unfortunately the only real fix is to generate more plots, and as a community we're not doing very well in encouraging new Storytellers to step up and run them.
Sure. In my personal experience, on games where I'm a player or, more often, I'm staff, the response of me and others on there is usually more helpful. I, too, would be freaking annoyed if someone was a flippant asshole about it like you describe. But I'm talking about people who even get other players on channel being like, "Hey, in addition to asking on public channels for RP, you can page me for stuff and we can figure out more specific things!" and the first player is usually more interested in continuing to whine about it.
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@Three-Eyed-Crow said:
@Arkandel said:
Loner-slash-misanthropes don't work on MU*. They can work, I suppose, if you're OOC well connected and set them up in just the right way, but why burden yourself like that?
PC connections help a lot, though I've noticed that players can be bizarrely stubborn about making them.
Ages ago, I played a PC who was a part of a fairly large, established family on the game. This gave players insta-connections as people apped in , for better or worse. A newb apped my sibling. A sibling who'd been off-camera and not really fleshed out, but who was only a couple years younger than my PC. Who my PC would've grown up with for quite a long time, until their early teens. I page this person to work out some basic relationship stuff (how did our personalities bounce off each other, how did we get along as kids, have we kept in touch over the years, etc.). It took me like a solid 15 minutes to convince this guy we would've known each other at all and spent time together on occasion during our childhood. Like, it would have been unavoidable. When he finally had to admit it was unavoidable, he said he didn't really want to establish any sort of dynamic because he'd "been gone for a a few years and hadn't stayed in touch with the family for no particular other than not wanting to make stuff up." So I gave up and just decided my relationship with my sibling was really bland and uneventful, and that's what this person was looking for, apparently.
I had a point, but I've kind of forgotten it. We are sometimes weirdly resistant to making social connections on a game that's all about social connections, I guess, and I don't understand why.
Jesus Christ that sounds annoying. Why would people even do this! PC connections are the best and make new characters so much easier! Also yes dude our siblings did hang out with each other even before yours left!
I am baffled.
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For the same reason people always tried to choose "Neutral" as their heroic inclination on a Superhero MUX.
They are very stupid.
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@Arkandel said:
@Roz There's a flipside to that though. It's when people make characters and as @Cobaltasaurus brought up nothing is happening in an accessible way for them yet when they bring it up someone else goes "well, I always have scenes!" like it's necessarily the first person's fault there's no RP outside closed cliques or PrPs they weren't invited to.
Dude, I'm not sure I said that at all. Sure that could be one of the circumstances that caused me to drop a PC.
But what I said was: "I usually drop a PC if there's nothing going on but Boring Social RP". Like what TR turned into in multiple spheres, or any spring sphere anywhere. I wasn't talking at all about introverted or extroverted characters or cliques etc.
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Speaking from the opposite side of the fence. I get super comfortable with how things are, and when someone comes barreling into my screen and accosts me with a "you have to" connection, or otherwise pressures, it can be really off-putting. I am much more in the zone when my character is in a place, and your character arrives, and our characters interact, and if a connection builds off that, fantastic, if not, I'm truthfully sorry.
But I really don't like being pressured in pages, or a job. I feel like, if I maybe made a post recently asking for a connection, that's one thing. But when people just randomly decide that there's going to be one, I get sort of lost somewhere between "You're not the boss of me," and "Get out of my business, gosh!"
I've never had a PC that I've said, "This isn't working," and left either. I've definitely found another window to be in, from time to time. My interest has wandered to a different alt. But I spend a lot of time building something I feel like I can stand for a while.
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@Roz Hahaha, I've encountered these types too, but there's another type that I find quite puzzling. When people play hyper-abrasive assholes or complete creeps.
I was playing on shadowrun a little while back and someone poses in being a really aggressive, rude asshole. Then they got bitter on +pub when characters that were better socialized just left rather than be around that. I just don't understand why anyone would choose to socialize with a character like that unless they were trapped on an island.
Is it because I work in the service industry that I have a low tolerance for characters like this? Or have I just not seen 'edgy rp' done well?
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No it is not just you.
I am the same way unless there is a compelling IC reason my character has to interact with them I tend ot avoid them. Not because I dislike the player OOC but because ICly why would my character hang around with someone unpleasant instead of someone pleasant?
Now there are times when you can connection that do mind you to the characters and I have seen edgy characters done well. But sometimes even if it means dropping out of things I have had my characters leave. -
@SG said:
@Roz Hahaha, I've encountered these types too, but there's another type that I find quite puzzling. When people play hyper-abrasive assholes or complete creeps.
I was playing on shadowrun a little while back and someone poses in being a really aggressive, rude asshole. Then they got bitter on +pub when characters that were better socialized just left rather than be around that. I just don't understand why anyone would choose to socialize with a character like that unless they were trapped on an island.
Is it because I work in the service industry that I have a low tolerance for characters like this? Or have I just not seen 'edgy rp' done well?
I think that this is usually only done well when there is a lot of OOC communication. My characters can definitely be dickish sometimes, and don't hesitate to be rude, but I try my best to be pleasant and cheerful OOC, and to let people know that the player is not the character, and vice versa, and work with them OOC on how we'd like to progress. I can often find ways of resolving the conflicts.
Usually.
Racism isn't Tinkerbell. It doesn't need you to believe in it for it to exist.
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@Derp said:
@SG said:
@Roz Hahaha, I've encountered these types too, but there's another type that I find quite puzzling. When people play hyper-abrasive assholes or complete creeps.
I was playing on shadowrun a little while back and someone poses in being a really aggressive, rude asshole. Then they got bitter on +pub when characters that were better socialized just left rather than be around that. I just don't understand why anyone would choose to socialize with a character like that unless they were trapped on an island.
Is it because I work in the service industry that I have a low tolerance for characters like this? Or have I just not seen 'edgy rp' done well?
I think that this is usually only done well when there is a lot of OOC communication. My characters can definitely be dickish sometimes, and don't hesitate to be rude, but I try my best to be pleasant and cheerful OOC, and to let people know that the player is not the character, and vice versa, and work with them OOC on how we'd like to progress. I can often find ways of resolving the conflicts.
Usually.
I totally always make that a sort of personal rule when I'm playing a character who's a total dick. I mean, I try to be nice in general OOC, but I'm a little especially nice when I'm playing a character who's mean, nasty, an asshole, etc. It helps to keep everything separate.
