Halicron's Rules For Good RP (which be more like guidelines)

Lithium

@Arkandel There's a very big desire to just kneejerk against anyone telling /me/ how to roleplay /my/ characters

Really, there is no real right or wrong way, there's just opinions. I've rp'd with people who liked rapid fire two line poses, and when I rapid fired a larger pose into their poses they got distressed because it took them to long to read it.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to this hobby, or any other.

bored

Registering to violently disagree that breaking up actions into multiple poses and making simple things into six-line affairs is any sign of quality. To me, it's generally a sign of being a purple-prose loving douchenozzle and I don't see any reason to encourage this. It's good to have a sense of continuity of activity between poses, but if the only way you can pad out a pose is describing the physical process of a basic action I'm very likely capable of imagining on my own in minute detail? I think that's a sign that there's nothing interesting to actually RP about and the scene is probably dead.

I'd also quibble about metaposing. It almost certainly depends on the tone of the scene and your company, and of course the content of the actual pose, but personally as I've gotten better at RPing since my MU-infancy, I actually use more meta content than when I started. Subjective vs objective writing is hardly settled in other literary forms, after all. I can see the point of including this to warn against the 'hostile' metaposing that we're all familiar with, but otherwise I'd say its pretty unfounded as a 'best practices' sort of rule.

Otherwise I mostly agree. The tense thing is wrong on a pedantic level (there's plenty of cases in writing where you can switch tenses to actually show or refer to a necessary difference in timing), although I imagine you mean it in a more general sense.

tragedyjones

@Sunny said:

@Halicron said:

@faraday said:

But this: "A good RPer can turn a nod into a six-line pose."

Really? That I'd like to see

The question was a difficult one to answer, and it clearly vexes Bill in a way that's troubling the stout fellow. He pauses, pursing his lips, but checks himself before uttering a word. Dusky grey eyes the color of graveyard granite flicker across the street, to a gaggle of children and tolerant mothers watching like mother hens. Remembering the cigarette in his fingers he brings it to his lips and inhales, ash crackling in the silent wake of inquisition. He holds for a count and then like a smouldering dragon exudes twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils. The late winter's winds pick the ash up and carry it off and away, into the crisp sky overhead. He turns back to Denise, finally, and a tight smile crosses his face. His head dips a fractional amount-- the thinnest of concessions-- and then the smile disappears, and his cool gaze returns to unreadable speculation of passing pedestrians.

This pose would make me stab someone. It's a ton of words to say nothing, there's pretty much no content, and there is very little given for me to actually respond to. If more than a handful of these sorts of poses happened in a scene, I would not enjoy playing with the person.

The term paper approach!

saosmash

@bored I use meta a lot, but usually it's to make fun of my own characters or to add much-needed levity to a pose that would otherwise be too much sturm and drang. Esp when I am playing the lawful good paladin whose weapon of choice is the crossbow of regulatory minutiae with the a quiver full of the bolts of red tape, sometimes you gotta do something to remind people that you've got a sense of humor even if your character does not.

I also sometimes will spend more time describing a physical action, but only when I'm deliberately drawing attention to something in my character's body language that might otherwise be revealing -- I hate thought posing, but if I think my character's mood is readable, I use his physical body to betray the details for people who feel like paying attention to that kind of crap. IDK. There's no set rule of NEVER SPEND EXTRA WORDS but I share the antipathy to length for its own sake. It's not the size that counts, it's technique! And so on.

Thenomain

@Arkandel said:

How do you put that into practice, what does it mean? What do you actually do?

There is no specific right or wrong way to "play for those around you"; this is why our discussions on this heavily rely on talking about "the table", or context, or situation. Taking the second part of what I said out of context of the first part destroys both.

How do you do it? Pay attention to the rules and files the game has put forth. Pay attention to how your character operates. Pay attention to what the scene is about and who else is in it. Then formulate your response in a way you think is best for the other people.

The only thing that @Halicron says that I didn't that I think is important is "give other people something to react to". And yet this isn't always true, it's one of those rules you'd give to someone to get them into the mindset so they know why you give other people something to react to.

That is, I don't think rules (or even guidelines) of behavior are any good without known goals, and that was missing from the twenty rules.

Here, just for you, Ark, I will break all of these rules. For everyone else, go ahead and skip this. I'm doing this to yet again tell Ark that he's being contrary just to be contrary, and it's something that everyone can do and that it often misses the point. You will see me miss a lot of points, below. Yeah, I know that.

There are twenty of these. Gonna take a while.

Try to address the environment around you.

I don't think the environment needs to be important except to get the scene going. If you miss it, if you want to essentially turn the role-play into an Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk, then do so. He's a popular writer, good at what he does, and he very rarely points out the environmental context. If he can, you can too.

Agree upon the use of tense and stick to it.

This is a bugaboo that people have but you're not writing for awards. Generally people will gravitate toward a single narrative and tense. It kind of bugs me when people mix second-person and first-person, too, but this guideline is more "how to write english" and not "how to RP well". If we're going to have discussions about being able to let go bad spelling, then we can let go other elements of grammar.

That said, learning to English in a written medium is pretty important.

Try to describe your character's mood but do it without having us read your mind.

I do this a lot, so go ahead and ignore this guideline entirely. I absolutely suck at getting across the subtle details that body language and spoken inflection get, so you get mind-reading powers. I do try to make it interesting and not the horrible OOC-fueled metaposing that everyone hates. Don't OOC-metapose in the mind-reading tricks.

Try to develop some character quirks or routines.

I like this one. It's good advice that should be in a "how to make a character" post, but I said I was going to break all the rules so I'm going to break this one too.

Having a quirk or a routine does not make you a better RPer. You need to apply it in a way that other people can appreciate (positively or negatively) and react to (ditto). It's disingenuous of me to take this out of context, but Ark's implied I've oversimplified so I'm purposefully removing context.

Use props.

See #1: Aaron Sorkin.

Be descriptive.

Our hobby comes from the tabletop environment, and I can count the number of times over seven years that we were told to "be descriptive" or that the actions of the players have played into the game as a very low number of times. What we enjoy is the discussion afterwards where we imagine how it played out.

Sometimes the pressure to be Pulitzer-award-winning writers or people turn their nose up at your pose is so annoying. You don't have to be descriptive, you just have to be interesting.

Divide up your actions into small pieces.

As much as I dislike power-posers who are responding to everything in the room at once, a lot of people like this, so many that I know that I'm playing Grumpy Old Man when I complain about this. I grin and bear it because that's the context of the scene, but enough people don't do this that it's how I'm breaking this rule.

Know a little bit of what you're going to do in your next pose. Not all of it, but some of it.

This answers such a huge peeve I have, especially when @Ganymede says to "pre-pose".

Uh, I can't break this one. Someone help me out on this one.

Be proactive.

It's okay to be reactive. If someone jumps out of the dark scary woods and goes, "RAR!" then your job is to run away going "Eek!" Your job is to let them be the big bad wolf, and that means falling into a more passive role, and let me tell you this is a hell of a lot of fun.

See step 9.

No.

Get a sense of timing.

What's described with this seems boring to me. Sometimes your response to someone's gabbling on is nodding, mmhmm, and letting them babble on. This very specifically undermines rules 9 and 10.

Halicron's applying to reality in this step ("For talking, it's very easy to fall into the trap of carrying on two conversations at once, but really, who does that in real life?") undermines even this rule. In real life, a conversation is usually dominated by one person but can be interrupted mid-stream. We have no cultural training on Mus to let this happen. I know if I spit out a thought in five-second intervals I will get interrupted by someone posing by Mu Culture Rules, which are spit out as much as possible at once. But my thought of going 'thought, pause, thought, pause' would force the other player into the role of nodding and smiling and being passive until they feel like jumping in.

I think this is okay, but by these rules, I'd be wrong.

You're playing with people.

See #11: You're playing with pose robots. If I were playing with people, I could be passive, I could flex between short and long poses, I could offer cues in any way I wanted.

Know your character.

I've addressed this already in #4, but let me add a bit here. I hate games where they demand that you come up with a life history of the character, all their motivations and dreams, before getting to test these ideas.

Be time-courteous.

I'm not going to break this rule, because "be courteous" is never bad advice, but if I'm multi-mushing it's nobody else's business, but if someone asks why I'm non-responsive they're asking to change what I assumed the acceptable behavior were for the scene and I can either ask them for understanding, tighten up my pose time, or retire the scene. Why isn't critical.

Avoid powerposing.

Again, "be courteous". However, I'm being grumpy gamer so let me grump: Don't avoid it, just don't do it. But like all rules, if you have a good and trusting enough relationship with the other player it's up to you if you want to break it.

By the way, power-posing is not: I pick up your unconscious body.

Play in theme.

Huh, @Arkandel, sounds familiar doesn't it? Doesn't it?!

Plan for Consequences.

Prepare to fight against Consequences. Just as people use "Consent" as an unreasonable defense, people use "Consequences" as an unreasonable attack. People will use their OOC distaste for things you did to create an IC situation against you. I've been the victim of this, myself, and knowing how to fight against Consequences that your character is involved in is just as important.

That is, this rule is broken without the trust to go with it.

ME ME ME

Again, sound familiar, Ark?

IC is not OOC.

Utter and complete horseshit. IC is OOC. OOC is IC. You cannot, cannot disconnect the two. The expectation that we put a wall between these two concepts has caused more harm than good.

What is meant, though, is that the character is a puppet, a thing, a toy, not an extension of the player. We use the character to act out a narrative, and that bit of information is why I have any problems with most of rules 1-18. By our culture's expectation of putting your heart and soul into the poses, into the role-play, we fuck our brain over when separating character and self.

And lastly.

I think I've made a decent case that having a bunch of rules isn't enough. It can confuse the issue, it can give people too much to juggle without having a goal to work toward.

And lastly, our mutual goal is to engage in social role-play. How we do this depends primarily on the "social" aspect, since we all have a fairly common ground on what a "role" is and what "play" is, though I'm sure Ark could pull one of his famous, "nnnrrrr, weeeellll it deeepeeeeeeeeends" like someone who hates people coming to common ground.

@Halicron, I don't disagree on a lot of what you said, but I was challenged that your approach was better than mine. The only point I have a strong emotional feeling about is #19, because I have seen people use this specific wording point to attack others. Far too many times have we, as Mushers, come up with rule but not the guidance for it.

We don't tend to come to common ground on our own. We don't know what the expectations are. We also, as a hobby, do a shitty job of communicating this up front, or helping people ease into it.

The fact that I can disagree with most of those points was my goal, my own version of "nnneehhh, it depeeeeeends". I feel a little bad about it now, but I don't think I'm going to change how I pose, or what I think is important in scenes.

Lithium

@Thenomain I'm going to disagree that IC is OOC and OOC is IC, but I think we're talking context.

To me IC is In Character, not Out Of Character. So by that we play to what the character knows, what the character has experienced, what the character feels rather than we ourselves feel about the situation.

Is it possible to do this perfectly? Not likely, we're pretty much unable to have a complete disconnect between ourselves and our characters because we are writing them, but that doesn't mean we just have our characters react to everything we know OOCly with our characters.

I guess we could redefine IC/OOC separation as: Play true to the character, not yourself.

I just don't know how to word that snappily.

Thenomain

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain I'm going to disagree that IC is OOC and OOC is IC, but I think we're talking context.

And I'm going to tell you that you're wrong, and this is a lot of (but not entirely) why:

I guess we could redefine IC/OOC separation as: Play true to the character, not yourself.

Everything your character does is because of what you decide about the character. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. There is not one single aspect of the character that doesn't come from you. If your character runs from a fight, it's because that's what you want for the character. If your character stands on a table and strips, it's because that's what you want for the character.

You choose whether or not the character exists today by deciding whether or not you log in.

I think it's too late to talk about "IC/OOC Separation". It's been used too often to mean something that can't exist. For the same reason, we don't talk about "OOC Masq" anymore, because we've gone beyond the original label and thank effing god we did. Too many people using it as a weapon, too many people trying to shoehorn an idea about it based on how they expect it to be used versus how other people expect it to be used. Putting a label on a concrete thing or generally accept concept helps, but putting it on something that we want to be is just wishful thinking.

Lithium

@Thenomain said:

Everything your character does is because of what you decide about the character. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. There is not one single aspect of the character that doesn't come from you. If your character runs from a fight, it's because that's what you want for the character. If your character stands on a table and strips, it's because that's what you want for the character.
<snip>

This is false except in pure consent games.

If my character is attacked by a power that says they run, then they run, regardless of wether or not /I/ want them to run. The rules say they did and the character was not strong willed enough or resilient enough to resist the power. That has nothing to do with what I decided. I could have decided they had a max willpower and still fail the roll, they still have to abide by the reality of the characters circumstances regardless of my own personal desires.

faraday

@Thenomain said:

The fact that I can disagree with most of those points was my goal, my own version of "nnneehhh, it depeeeeeends". I feel a little bad about it now, but I don't think I'm going to change how I pose, or what I think is important in scenes.

I agree wholeheartedly but I viewed the original post as more of a guide to new players. You're experienced enough to realize that the rules (and I dislike calling them "rules" for that reason) are meant to be broken sometimes. That doesn't make them bad guidelines for someone just starting out, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Also I was a bit tongue-in-cheek earlier about the 'nods' business. If someone posed six-line nods to me with nothing else of substance in the pose all the time, I'd be irritated

Thenomain

@Lithium said:

@Thenomain said:

Everything your character does is because of what you decide about the character. Everything. Ev-er-y-thing. There is not one single aspect of the character that doesn't come from you. If your character runs from a fight, it's because that's what you want for the character. If your character stands on a table and strips, it's because that's what you want for the character.
<snip>

This is false except in pure consent games.

Nope. It's entirely true. 100%.

It's OOC that you agree to cede control to the game rules as appropriate. You agreed to it by the mere act of logging in or showing up to the table. You agreed to follow theme and setting and rules.

And when you don't want something to happen, you appeal to the other player, in an OOC manner. This is the social aspect of RPGs. This is why the table is important. This is why context is important.

My "IC==OOC==IC" statement is because there is no such thing as pure IC. The term "IC" should be used as a way to describe actions of the character vs. actions of the player, but we Mushers have, over the years, become increasingly control-freaky about it to the point where it's sometimes hard to remind people that without depending upon that OOC element of socialbility, this entire hobby is toxic. You cannot, ever, put the character before the player. Cannot for good role-play, and cannot for good mental or social health.

Incidentally, a lot of people here have realized or are realizing that this entire hobby has become toxic.

Which is good.

--

edit: I don't mean "this entire hobby is toxic" in the sense of literalism, but hyperbole. The toxic parts of this hobby are those that put the character before the players, the rules before the players, and one player before another. It all comes from you, from me, from us. There is not one element that we don't have control over, even if that element is to leave. Or to stop drawing fire from staff. Or negotiate. Or change the character so that you and those around you have more fun. Or fudge the dice so that you and those around you can have more fun. It's about us, the players, not them, the characters.

We've gotten is so ass-backwards that it takes mighty egos to keep it running that way.

Lithium

@Thenomain ... There is /still/ a separation between IC and OOC. Regardless of whether or not I willingly logged into the game, and willingly made a character, and willing RP'd that character, I am still not my character. My character may do horrible things, but I have not done those horrible things OOCly. If my character gets angry with someone, I am not angry with the other player.

That is the separation of IC and OOC, and it does exist even beyond my not being in complete control of my characters depending on what the rules of the game say.

Yes there are elements of /everything/ that are toxic. ANY social interaction has the ability to become toxic. Look at Facebook, Tindr, twitter, and everything else.

PEOPLE /can be/ toxic. The fact that there /is/ a separation from IC and OOC is what helps the hobby from /being/ so Toxic.

I literally have no idea how you can feel there is zero separation from IC and OOC.

Thenomain

@Lithium said:

I literally have no idea how you can feel there is zero separation from IC and OOC.

Then maybe you should ask me what I mean instead of telling me that I'm wrong.

I never understood how someone could admit to not understanding an argument, yet still make a conclusion about it.

Sadly, I understand why.

Lithium

@Thenomain It's not that I don't understand it. It's that I, myself, literally have no idea how you could come up with the idea that there is zero separation between our characters and ourselves.

That entire idea is silly to me because I do not share your opinion.

Thenomain

@Lithium

Well what do you want me to do about it?

Lithium

@Thenomain That's up to you. If you want to convince me that there is no separation between IC and OOC, then you'll need to explain how my examples do not apply.

Honestly, It's ok to not agree. I think you're an intelligent individual and it is kind of frustrating to me that we do not see eye to eye on this because we seem to share a lot of other opinions.

That said, I don't want you to do anything if you do not wish to continue the discussion.

Ganymede

@Thenomain said:

Know a little bit of what you're going to do in your next pose. Not all of it, but some of it.

This answers such a huge peeve I have, especially when @Ganymede says to "pre-pose".

Uh, I can't break this one. Someone help me out on this one.

I do not understand what you're getting at here. Care to rephrase?

@Lithium said:

It's that I, myself, literally have no idea how you could come up with the idea that there is zero separation between our characters and ourselves.

An illustration.

My PC, Erin, punches your PC in the face. Your PC reacts by getting angry. Your PC could have reacted by punching back, presuming that this is within the realms of how your PC would have reacted in a similar circumstance; however, you OOCly made the choice to react by getting angry.

Suppose, out of those two choices, you decide by rolling a die: even, get angry; and odd, punch back. You still decided OOCly to make the choice by die roll.

I see both of your perspectives, and don't find them as mutually-exclusive as they may seem.

Hopefully, that helps you two in your spat.

Thenomain

@Lithium

In your words, I literally cannot understand what you're trying to say or do, here. If you think that what I'm saying is an opinion, then you're not able to help fix the problem. If you want to try to understand, then you can "literally" have an idea, it's just up to you, not me, to show that you want to have an idea.

Your push-back indicates that you don't. So don't. As you say, it's okay if you don't want to participate, tho at this point I'd thank you not to associate me with your inaction.

Gany gets it.

edit for @Ganymede

You tell people to pre-pose. I see people pre-posing an entire pose which either ignores everything they weren't posing for, or shoe-horns following elements so that they end up posing independent reactions to everyone. When I warned before that bit that I was going to be wrong or pedantic to make a point, this is kind of what I meant.

That is, I know that "write your entire pose as fast as you can and fire it off without consideration to the happenings around you except for last-minute" isn't what you mean, but I found @Halicron's "pre-pose a framework, but not too much" to be the same advice, better phrased.

bored

I agree that the idea of acting like you can totally split OOC and IC is hilarious, also.

The people who pretend that there's some concept of strict 'ICness' are generally either total nutbags who get way too wrapped up in things, or assholes who use 'well it's what my character would do' as an excuse to, well, be assholes. There is no point at which the OOC entity behind the keyboard is not making decisions, so there's no such thing as pure IC.

Lithium

@Ganymede said:

@Lithium said:

It's that I, myself, literally have no idea how you could come up with the idea that there is zero separation between our characters and ourselves.

An illustration.

My PC, Erin, punches your PC in the face. Your PC reacts by getting angry. Your PC could have reacted by punching back, presuming that this is within the realms of how your PC would have reacted in a similar circumstance; however, you OOCly made the choice to react by getting angry.

Suppose, out of those two choices, you decide by rolling a die: even, get angry; and odd, punch back. You still decided OOCly to make the choice by die roll.

I see both of your perspectives, and don't find them as mutually-exclusive as they may seem.

Hopefully, that helps you two in your spat.

In response to your illustration, my characters reaction would depend on a lot of factors that were determined by the character. The character would react in ways that are in character for them not as I myself would react to that very same situation. Sometimes that is resolved by a die roll (Like in the case of werewolves in certain systems, or according to an enraged roll in Hero for example), but sometimes not.

In that respect you can say there is no separation between me and my creation because I am playing the character, but that doesn't mean I don't separate my own responses from those of the character.

I think that is why I cannot agree with @Thenomain on this issue. From what I understand his stance is that: It is all you. There is no IC choices because you (the player) are OOCly making the decision for the character, or at the very least created the character (Which was an OOC decision) to have those flaws/limitations/be that kind of character.

Fair enough.

Maybe we're just using different terms to mean slightly different things. For example, to me, the separation of IC and OOC is me not taking stuff that happens to my character personally, and me not allowing the character to react to things I OOCly know, that the character does not.

That separation from my knowledge, and my reactions, to defer to that of the character as written is what I am talking about with IC and OOC separation.

I still maintain that no matter /what/ character or NPC I am playing who does horrible things, it doesn't make me horrible because there is no separation between IC and OOC.

Ganymede

@Lithium

Again, I don't think your perspective and Theno's are necessarily incompatible. He argues that all choices are motivated by the player's creativity, understanding, and biases, which I agree with. Your argument that choosing between available options does not necessarily connote an OOC ulterior motivation, belief, or attitude is also agreeable.