@surreality said in Well, this sums up why I RP:
Having my character turned into something they're not -- something that I have no interest in playing, and that I am not portraying IC -- by others? Nope.
The only person who should decide what role you play is you. I am happy to take on the villain mantle at times but I decide when I do so. If someone tries to cast you as something you never intended to play, screw that.
@Kestrel One point on Lovecraft and other long dead writers: They're dead. With a living author -- like Rowlings -- you can ask yourself, do I want to give money to this asshole? With an author who's long dead, though, the point is moot. The only person who suffers from 'canceling' them is, well, anyone with an interest.
As a hobby historian I'm very wary of attempts to clean up history. Kipling wrote beautiful India stories -- doesn't change the fact he was an imperialistic git. Lovecraft was a horrible racist but his universe is still fascinating. The writings of long dead writers tell two stories -- that which they intended to tell, and on the meta level, the story of the writer and the ethics of the period they lived in.
For modern writers it's a little different. I'm inclined to say that Rowlings being a horrible person doesn't make her books horrible (though I'll admit they never appealed to me much, but they didn't before she was outed either). It's okay to love them. The question to ask oneself is whether one wants to financially support this person -- and for some the answer will be, yes, because I love the books more than I care about the author's views. I'm inclined to say that either take is alright because where one draws the line is always a very personal thing, and mob mentality rarely leads to good places. Personally I'd never buy a thing she wrote, but I'm not going to condemn others for doing so.
For me, the hardest part was finding a game where I felt welcome. I have a few challenges to deal with before I feel that there's room for me in a game.
One is a learning disability; due to chronic pain my capacity for taking in new information is limited -- I can swallow down only so many game commands, setting lore, and background information in one sitting. Games with miles and miles of old history that you are expected to read up on and know before daring to join a conversation -- not happening. If your setting deviates that much from the canon universe, whatever that is, it's not accessible to new people.
Games with complex custom settings and stories that require lots of lore learning before playing are out (looking at a lot of novel or movie setting games here), as are games that require you to learn a ttrpg system (looking at the various WoD games here for sure).
Social anxiety is another. Games where you have to pretty get on your knees and beg in order for older players to notice slash recognise you are out. MU*s are social games -- don't make newbies exist in their own vaccuum for days if you want them to stay. At the very least return IC greetings.
I don't expect roleplay to get handed to me on a platter when I enter a game, but I have had the same experience many times when deciding that I can do this, yes I can -- you get a character through the app process and finally get on the grid, and no one responds to you. You walk into rooms and try to join a conversation and get flat out ignored. You see people who are somehow marked 'helpers' or 'newbie friendly' and send them a whisper or a page -- and get no response. After a few hours of that, I'm out. I'm not going to stay where I am obviously not wanted.
And obviously, the community needs to be tolerable. I've seen some pretty horrific things out there, although the MMO games tend to be a lot worse than the MU*s.
In the end I gave up on MU*s and MMOs alike. I got dragged back in this fall by @JinShei whom I used to play with elsewhere when she was opening her new Discworld themed mush. I am grateful for that because it's a setting I know very well, Ares is ridiculously easy to learn and use, and since I was there from the start, I don't need to bang on doors to get the older players to acknowledge me (though I make a point out of trying to greet guests and newcomers the way I've often wished someone would greet me on a new game).
Amazingly, it looks like my tale of woe got a happy ending.
@Arkandel Part of the solution to the problem of lacking or lazy official storytellers is to tell the story yourself, too. I am currently running a major plotline based off my character's background for five people. I didn't consult with the game admins first because nothing in it will change the official game lore or world -- only the characters who are in it.
I mean, as long as you play by the setting's internal rules, there's no reason to sit and wait for someone to give action to you. Dole it out yourself instead.
@Kestrel Better to burn out than to fade away!
#oldmoviequotesftw
@Kestrel said in Gap between RP fantasy and RP reality:
I don't think we play on the same games, but I would 100% want to meet this character. And then find some way to blackmail him for all the information he's gathered, because this seems like the perfect character to have some kind of mindfuckery with.
I am only on Ankh-Morpork MUSH, indeed; I only really have headspace for one fictional universe besides the two of my own that I write in. But if you ever for some reason decide you're bored enough to visit, come do your worst. Getting blackmailed to kingdom come sounds like a nice twist to the balance -- I'm usually the one with the delusions of Moriartyness, and getting taken down a peg can be just as fun roleplaying as having a scheme unfold prettily.
@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:
...cancel culture had made modern authors afraid to write content that wasn't cute, fuzzy bunnies.
Challenge accepted.
No, really. It's just a pity that the publishing houses don't feel the same way because believe me, at least here in Denmark, they worry about it. The big industry publishers play it ridiculously safe, to the point where some of them will only publish translations of guaranteed success English language bestsellers.
Not that I'm going to let that stop me from writing what I want, though.
@Killer-Klown There's a term for this, I just can't remember what it is. It's pretty common -- we adapt the speed and style to match that of the person we're playing with. I know I certainly do it -- when I am with one person we swap 500 word poses and take longer writing them, while with another, it's rapid-fire shortposes, bam bam bam. Either works, as long as everyone's on the same page.
I tend to find that the kind of background stuff that ever gets made relevant IC is that which requires others to respond to your actions.
Stating that you're a career criminal doesn't interest anyone unless you've got a price on your head -- literally tattooed on your forehead so they can claim with confidence that yes, their character has actually heard about it before you told them.
Getting caught doing something criminal, on the other hand, forces them to react. Open a scene with being somewhere you shouldn't, possess something you shouldn't have, ask questions about people you shouldn't -- as you say, filling in the actual details when they come up IC.
It's probably one of the more common discrepancies -- what people write on their background contra what they actually bring into the game.
One might argue that what you did was give yourself a master class in literary editing. 
@mietze That particular kind of player who's written a mile long background and can talk about his characters' past achievements for six hours, yet can't string together three minutes' worth of interest for the similar work anyone else has done. Because everything is about him, and he is so intelligent and powerful that actually, you should just hand him the victory trophy for solving the plot by existing and go home now.
Yep, I've met him. And GM'd for him, which is even worse.
Not all characters are going to click, obviously, but I at least try very hard to give my own characters a reason to be interested in everyone, to an extent.
The character I primarily play at this time brokers information; he'll listen to you whether he personally finds you interesting or not because there is no way to tell whether you'll suddenly mention something that he does want to know about, or say something that may prove useful a month from now. This gives me an excuse to go anywhere and insert myself into any constellation of social class, occupation, and species -- just curious, happened to walk past, paying close attention while pretending to be just the next guy at the bar counter.
It works. It also lets me determine whether other players have an active interest in playing at a pace I am compatible with. I am fine with slow pose scenes where it may be hours between poses if that's what I've agreed to do with someone, typically in another time zone. I am not okay with waiting 40 minutes on grid only to be told 'skip me had to go afk bbl'. Yes, that happened. Yes, I make a note when it happens, to not bother with that person again in a real-time context.
@Auspice Or back when I played on MUDs... Editing out thousands of pages of combat spam because RP happened via remote while mindlessly grinding things.
@Auspice Ares rocks, and this is indeed one of the reasons why. I recall editing pages of pages of prompts and game code out of logs by hand and yes, I'll cede that that might be one reason to only bother with the important bits.
@gryphter said in Gap between RP fantasy and RP reality:
Usually for me it's something like 'this character has lots of meaningful relationships and connections, I bet I can find all sorts of important and interesting stuff to do.' Then I hit the ground and can't find RP outside of a bar. To be fair I'm not super masterful at taking the initiative and reaching out, so I'll own my half (whole?) of it.
I have invented character concepts I loved only to have the actual character flail and go down like a brick shithouse once I put it on the grid. Characters who for some reason just couldn't shake the inertia and had no reason to go out there and make stuff happen. When that happens, I retire them fast and try something else. Because yes, to get action you need to be willing to start action. It's very much a give and take affair, and entirely too many players in my 35 years of games -- on and offline -- just sit there, expecting you to do all the work of entertaining them and providing nothing in return.
That said, you have to meet people first. Going to a bar and doing so is the beginning of something -- not the end. But that something won't happen unless you get into touch with others and manage to catch their attention. So it's also on the other people present to not be exclusive, to allow new faces to join into the conversation.
@Kestrel And learn.
Someone drops a three paragraph bomb of beauty on me I am going to take that sucker apart and see what makes it so gorgeous. I'm going to stare at it until it burns itself into my brain, allowing me to return the favour.
Nobody's perfect. But some mush writers do stuff with words that's pure magic.
@Ghost said in Well, this sums up why I RP:
Sidebar: I was always really disappointed by just how many scenes never got logged or posted. I have been of the opinion that if it happens in-game, then it should happen on-camera. I dont care if it's TS or two characters complaining about a third.
I am of the firm opinion that almost everything should be posted and then readers can decide for themselves what parts they want to read. I'll contend that at least some games prefer to keep a PG13 website, and that should be respected. Apart from that, though, let me decide what parts of the story I want to read (unless you're really boring, that's probably going to be all of it because like @Ghost, I read logs while taking a break).
@mietze This, pretty much. I don't mush to read perfect prose. I mush to hang out with other people who like words and storytelling. And I judge their behaviour not on the quality of their prose but on how they treat other human beings -- if I want perfect prose I've got a book shelf.
@Kestrel Actually, it sounds to me like we play much in the same style. Down to the point where I am currently doing the man rumoured to have murdered his wife bit too -- and he's an assassin too, just to stick with your list.
I'm not good with fluff. Sure, there needs to be little victories and happy scenes too, but I am prone to thinking that nothing kills a character as quickly as obtaining a happy ending. Domestic bliss roleplay is dull. Settling in to live happily everafter is dull. We tell stories about people who rise up and overcome -- or fail to. Not about Martha's meatball recipe.
@Auspice said in Well, this sums up why I RP:
I never edit my poses (unless I'm STing and then they get a pass for clarity).
I do sometimes if I am writing a long pose for a scene I'm doing at snails' pace with someone on the other side of the planet where we write maybe 500-1000 words in turns. Then I have the time and can be bothered to get the words down just right.
In regular posing where I am playing in real time I only go back to fix things if the meaning is decidedly unclear. Maybe a blatant, glaring typo. "We ate him" is, after all, not the same as "we hate him".
@faraday I think that attempting to judge the quality of mush writing is a dangerous path, to be honest. We roleplay for the entertainz, after all -- not to meet critical acclaim. I try my best to write concisely and use all muh wordz but I am very well aware that I flounder into purple prose, I use the same verb twice in one pose, I make all the mistakes. I do in my first drafts too, but there I have the luxury of going back and editing. Mush poses don't have the structural support to survive a meeting with a literary editor.
That's one of the places where mush writing and novel writing differ dramatically. One aims for instant gratification in the here and now and to hell with a typo or a repeated verb. The other aims for perfection and goes through five edits to get there. In the end, the novel will have the better prose (one should hope!).
The only kind of judgement that's really fair to pass on mush prose is whether it was entertaining to write and to read, which is a very personal thing. I monitor some characters' scenes like a hawk because they do really interesting stuff; their prose may not pass the Hemingway test but hot damn, they can tell a story.
@Auspice True, the book was released in what, 1990? It probably was snail mail at that.
Now that's the kind of dedication I need my RP partners to show in slow pose scenes. XD