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To those who don't RP (but might)...
Krysaliss
Member Posts: 374 ✭✭✭✭
After a conversation with a few people, I wonder what might help create a better RP encouraging environment in the game. To this end, I have some questions.
- How do you define RP? What does it look like to you?
- Is there RP that makes you want to not dip your toes in (the stuff that doesn't happen behind closed doors)?
- What kind of 'events' (these can be major or minor, admin-created or player-driven) or catalysts might encourage you to respond in character?
- Is there anything the admin or other players can do to help you RP?
- Anything else relevant to keeping you from participating in roleplay or developing your character's persona?
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Comments
Roleplay is the driver of interpersonal conflict, be it combat, political, or otherwise. When I have no desire to engage in that conflict because I perceive it as a time sink which offers me no reward as a result of engaging in it, then as a result of that I have little desire to engage in something that will lead to that occurring.
I will probably get downvoted into oblivion for saying that much, but it's the frank truth of the matter when it comes to me.
Anyway. Frankly, RP for me is anything I can work on aspects of my character, I tend to make up my motivations on the go, with a general sense based on my own personal moral compass. So anything I can rail against, is great. Though i've got a hard time finding anything to rail against, partly cause there's alot of people who'd wilt under any direct opposition or as Anette stated, stop entirely because they're finding opposition (or just hit you till you die in a I'M STRONGER AND THEREFORE RIGHT mentality, in my experience this is known as 'flag up or shut up')
Can the devs do something for it? Yeah, if it's beyond player power. But we do have a -lot- of options. Can do some seriously nifty things with emotes if you're clever enough, but that's just my opinion based with experience of devs either being too busy or too apathetic to exert any effort towards pushing roleplay.
Most of my experience is in player started events/arcs/plots, but that usually results in a dwindling amount of people who can successfully suffer through building an exciting event and trying to curb the amount of people who try to take their plot/event and run away with it in a potentially dumb direction. eventually you wind up with one person everyone wants to run an event, and assume EVERY action of theirs is a event in the making when in reality they're just scratching their digital nose.
(HE-SCRATCHED-HIS-NOSE-HES-GOT-A-SUPERVIRUS-THAT-WILL-KILL-US-ALL-UNLESS-I-SAVE-THE-DAY-CAUSE-I-SAW-THE-THING)
I've contemplated bringing in one person i know who's pretty damn good at this sort of thing just to see if they can jumpstart the scene, that's all thats really needed really. an occasional jumpstart and everyone (rper and non-rper alike) just accepting not everyone is gonna do things their way and soldiering on with their direction. Even if it's dumb and wrong and all you find is opposition.
But yea, the game has a serious issue with players not being able to take a graceful loss and build from it. PK and RP alike.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
some guy: "I am going to get an undead warbear because I think it is awesome. YEAH!"
some other guy: "It says here in section blah blah blah blah that you can't because that is our arpeeeee that you can't have undead things, even though they are mechanically absolutely meaningless. I will have to shank your bear if you don't get rid of it. You should ride the axolotl. It's cute (it is though)".
If you want to do the arpees, talk to Calais. Calais does the arpees good and I don't have to break out my undead warbear (pretty sure I have at least one) even though I love Firebait the fat warhorse who brought all of the wolves to Calais' campground more.
There are a few parts to your complaint, @Swale.
First, that people get upset when folks within a thematic organization do something that doesn't suit the theme of that organization. That's 100% legit.
Second, that someone's mechanical benefit should supersede the theme of an organization. I am super meh about this. Why? If you really, really want to break the theme of an org for a mechanical benefit, maybe you are in the wrong org?
Finally, lording it over people. That happens. It's sucky. Sometimes it is for good reasons (thematic stuff is a good reason). Sometimes it is because people with titles are jerks who like to sit in positions of power so they can exert some small measure of control over others. That's frustrating. I've dealt with that many times. If it's over the top, my first response is to take them down. Usually, I can, if I can't, I typically go elsewhere.
As a player, it's important to remember that your character doesn't need to or get to win all the things. Sometimes you aren't gonna get what you want. Use that and develop your character with it.
ALL of that said, at this point, what theme is left in the cities and councils? Antioch and Kinsarmar teamed up for PK benefit. It's hard for me to care about undead bears. Maybe what we really need is less black and white in orgs so they can shift with the times (hey, @Jeremy Saunders, this is a thing I think would help a LOT with RP, but I know the folks in the Garden have concerns about pk balance here, so maybe you have thoughts).
@Aodan - One of my favorite bad guys was Dreguar, hands down. Part of the reason for this is that he seemed to take into consideration the relative PK adeptness of the person he was dealing with. He definitely RP'd with me when I was being a pest (also murdered me if I didn't run away fast enough). If someone is being a mouthy wretch that you could easily crush, feel free to RPgank. If they are being a pest that is clearly not RPing it (like just being obnoxious in tells), gank them. Non-PKers SHOULD be aware that people renown for murder are not people you wanna mouth off at. Baby Krys was just too sassy for her own good and took her deaths with grace cuz she knew dang well she earned them.
You mentioned people lording stuff like that over people. That always happens. Once you have reams of rules like that, people are always, always, always going to use those them to ream other players. It just is. Because even if you did it with the best of intentions, you're giving those people a tool that allows them to exercise power over others in a petty, unfun way, in a game that people play for fun. Sometimes those people even have good, or at the very least, sincere intentions.
I think our chars just shouldn't be afraid of an undead mount simply because it is "undead". So "undead bears are bad" is just basically an example of a really, really stupid theme. To put a finer point on it, it's the sort of thing an NPC would believe, but an Adventurer should always question. I mean, maybe if the bear decided to take me back to his true master, Silantor, I'd think twice. But I am also born and raised Antiochan, so I guess it would still just depend! Antioch actually had a great theme, which was "conquer". That is actually a very good theme. It's both broad and grandiose, rather than small and constricting.
There's pretty solid RP reason for Kinsarmarians to not be cozy with undead things roaming their streets. Extra so for anti-magick.
Player convenience and desire/mechanics really do not trump a decade of established RP just because you want it to. I realize the RP in this game is dying but that's a hill I'm comfortable to die on.
THAT SAID, that's a perfect opportunity for RP. Character A discovered an undead bear they REALLY wanna have, decides to make a case to demonstrate undead bear is perfectly safe, pushes the city to change its stance, maybe wins, maybe doesn't. Either way, doesn't just expect that because they WANT something it is going to be immediately handed to them simply because. That isn't how any of this works.
EDIT: the bit about "demons overrunning streets literally destroyed Stavenn". From a certain RP perspective, shouldn't this have caused a near total crisis within demonic?
And I -wish- we had a lore wiki. Our lore is all over the place and not well tracked. It makes me sad.
Antimagick bugs the hell out of me, and i know it's a dead horse that's been flogged into leather but with the announcement of Engineers in the work it's got me thinking: Could AM give up the last vestiges of their faith and embrace technology as the new antimagick? Either eschewing diachaim (making it a neutral force that anyone can use - which it already is) or harnessing it in a steampunkesque fashion. I want antimagick to mean literally antimagic, not just 'no no, we use PURE magick diachaim. The thing you know as magick is a perversion of the diachaim, and demonic energy even more so.' And maybe not even antimagic as in 'BURN THE WITCH' but more 'Oh neat, you can throw fireballs. I have a flamethrower.'
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I think the crisis should have been about what they've been doing wrong to allow things to go as far as they did. In previous major demonic incursions caused by Stavenn (they've done it a few times), there was always a major reaction to what went down. There was sort of...nothing.. in the wake of losing the second oldest city in the history of Aetherius.
Kinda...what?
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
I really wish the admin would consider this crap before they throw things in the game.
I didn't know that existed. I am now sad.
EDIT: It's almost always disproportionately applied to newer/lower ranking players, too, which makes me even angrier. And also just doesn't make orgs very newb friendly.
If the admin wants to hardline stance the orgs, then they need to not put general items in the game that break the themes those orgs are supposed to care about.
That's a big issue.
Edit - It isn't really that trivial when you are talking about a core aspect of the game lore. There are three sides and they are all antagonistic to each other's ideals. Undead are decidedly demonic, per game lore. Either the admin needs to release stuff with flavor that matches each side of the conflict, or crap that's neutral to the conflict, or allow more shifting allegiances within the orgs (which I am personally in favor of, because that's more organic and enjoyable for players and opens up way more RP potential. Shades of grey is where all the fun is. And the beef over the bear could be actually interesting if less peen waggling was involved)
It's even worse to then respond to criticism with "It's an artifact shut up" and attempting to shut down discussion rather than allow people to actually, y'know, roleplay. That kind of behaviour really puts people off. Instead of anyone saying "Hey, let's see what the city thinks", or "Let's do some research", the response was to threaten IC harassment and even add new city laws to make people suffer for that disagreement.
Is it any wonder people don't try to do anything meaningful when the response can be like that?
As for the undead items: Those artifacts should never have existed in such an unambiguously necromantic form in the first place, at least not available on the wheel or to all circles. Artifacts shouldn't be visibly anti-magick, magickal or demonic/undead in nature*. Almost anything else would have been fine, but undeath and zombies in particular are unambiguously bad for a wide number of IC lore reasons. I mean, IC we've had invasions of those kind of zombies and we've had undead invasions too - The zombies in particular spread virulently, and the costume is way too close to them.
*With the exception of class-specific artifacts like daeggers, of course.
Yeah, pretty much.
I get the arguments from both sides, but this is why you don't really want to open this can of worms. First it is a undead bear and then it is every other promo out there that has a possible undead theme.
You say, "My bottle is empty."
Jeremy raises an eyebrow questioningly.
Jeremy slaps you on the cheek.
There are exceptions to that. My current Kinsarmarian was raised in Stavenn and has rather loose views on the subject, but she ought to be an exception to the rule.
Edit - It is INCREDIBLY lazy that the admin released items with a clearly divisive theme. I'm pretty peeved about this, especially given every move we've tried to make in the past to shift these themes has been met with a hardline stance from the admin. That's a pretty massive mixed message and in the name of a quick buck. Extra gross.
I have no issue with thematic stuff, as long players can choose one suitable to their org (if you get that through a chest, for example, it should either automatically be the appropriate circle theme or swappable for one)
(Ring): Lartus says, "Then it exploded."
(Ring): Zsetsu says, "Everyone's playing checkers, but Theophilus is playing chess."
An item that lets a character raise zombies is a little different to a bashing area though. One is characters using necromancy in orgs that have really good reasons to oppose that, the other is unaffiliated NPCs to hunt.
But yeah, reskins are probably the answer. Make the costume raise clay golems instead, or something. Not sure how to explain the need to feed corpses to it then, though.