Consider placing your character into difficult circumstances more often

Argent Dawn
405

Hey, I’m still floating here, enjoying Umay and Face’s constructive discussion. - I play a Farstrider who’s a bit of a wimp on Horde-side. He always imagined himself climbing the ranks, and so did his family, but he can barely defend himself in a fight, so he was relegated to Eversong’s conservation and has been stuck there on the fringes ever since. I mostly perform research in the woods, heal people’s mounts/animals, and provide comedic relief on him to other people’s characters - despite the fact he has a background of self-harm and uncertainty and bloodthistle addiction that stems from his “failings” in life.

That’s one of 'em, I’ve got a couple others who’re soft targets.

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406

But then we would never have met the delight that was Ruby Red-Toes friend.

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Well, I was talking about real life, as opposed to a DM’d event, when I said:

as real life tends to lack handy things like narrators and DM’s! Hence my reference to “you” rather than “your character”!

But that’s not a character. A fascinating caricature, certainly, perhaps (and likely) an entertaining personality, but not a character to my (admittedly subjective) set of criteria. I could be wrong! But it sounds like he was defined by one over-whelming obsession, which was designed and intended for the entertainment for other characters. I said of such a character

And I think that likely stands. He doesn’t sound like a deep or complex, challenging or surprising person. He isn’t, as they say, three-dimensional.

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408

None of what you say here matters.

That is all.
Save yourself the time, effort and bainsapace…

You’re welcome.

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409

If you catch me on my hunky blood elven antiquarian, feel free to approach. I’m a pretty fantastic roleplayer.

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410

I won’t blame you for not taking my word when I randomly say ‘trust me bro, he was totally believable’. So you don’t have to take my word and instead look at my work on AA: warning, this 1/4s unfinished background does not in any way touch on recent issues, but instead seeks to bring what might seem like a depthless maniac to a level of an immersive elf in WoW—over the 100-or-so odd worth of pages. Beyond that I guess you can look at some super old stories for context to his depth of thought and judge however you feel like.

/node/161813, for ease of convenience (oh no my linking powers have faded…)
edit: (damn that profile is old woah)

ultra edit: or you could one day end up RPing with me [on him], but that’s unlikely as I’ve lost interest after some 6 or so years

I find going into detail of RL matters kinda off-putting on a game forum, so here’s something harmless: I’ve been mountain-climbing for a long time, but one time I pushed myself too far. While I do very well with heat, dehydration is a very terrible weakness of mine :dagger: :sweat:

It was an unpleasant hike when my friends noticed a trail of sludge involving acidic contents. Yeah, I puked. They helped me get to shade and get proper access to water (we were not planning to hike for so long, so young and foolish as we were, none of us brought any provisions) and that is while I was on the bare minimum of motor function, aka breathe and blink.

My ultra-old first PC once broke and a dude of a dude’s dude friend offered to help fix it—an offer to which I agreed to, seeing as it was a piece of junk so having it get stolen wasn’t a big deal to me at the time. Got it back working and smashed some WC3 afterwards, which was cool (in case you explicitly want stories about total strangers).

I’m sure I could come up with other stories from my adventures of being a (censored word, use your imagination), but RL should stay IRL.

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411

To be fair, Umay is right in that the premise you outlined for Valethion didn’t really give much of an idea of his personality. His goals and motivation, and the way you wrote it, suggests that he probably does have one that feels interesting and multi-dimensional, but it’s not self-evident in what you wrote. We just have to surmise from what you have said.

Cool concept though.

Also I’ve read your AA profile in the past because I’m a big dweeb who browses that site pretty much every day, and I liked it, although I did get the impression he was intended more as a character who is the villain of someone else’s story. But that’s not a bad thing.

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Oh yeah to be sure, which is my bad and thus

But can you truly summarise a person’s identity, personality, and morality on a forum without going overboard?

I don’t think so, and that’s my approach to RP as a general rule. If I can really summarise someone’s complexity, thought, and approach on everything that makes them who they are (without losing many of their characteristics, or quirks, weaknesses, etc) I tend not to think too highly of it.

redpill: He began as a replacement NPC for the kinda old antagonistic/extremist Suncrown Covenant. Guilds do as guilds do and end up changing leaders, I took on the name and continued the plot as I saw fit. He began with a big fetish for purity in Quel’Thalas as your most 1-dimensional mage characters do, but through many encounters with foul (IC lol) individuals, he changed.

In fact, he changed so much that he became the exact thing he ultimately disagreed with in the first place, developing a lot of complex relations with characters around him (such as Idrethil, one of the most memorable people I’ve RPed with—took a full, like, 13 months for the two to become from worst enemies to ‘you’re kinda ok I guess’), betraying some, lying to others, losing friends, and going from a man who saw the world as a place to be protected into one to be cleansed. It’s also a self-experiment of me trying to imagine something genuinely unimaginable and see how such a massively ancient entity could see the world after millennia.

It’s noteworthy to note that I involved a lot of whazzy magic/Divination, so real lunacy/insanity, despair, and redemption & fall from grace play massive homage to…

It gets very Eldar at that stage but I got a thing for Warhammer despite not really playing it (but don’t tell anyone I drew inspiration from another universe for a WoW character). But see? As I said, a real character just can’t be described over a few paragraphs. I’m not even getting started on the emotional complexity, this is just RP backstory.

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Idrethil is a gem, yeah. Goodbye Halcyon days of two blood elven warlocks antagonising each other for their own respective amusement.

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414

I was on the verge of making her RP a warlock again :thinking: So close, yet so far…

415

Aggravating Selenthiena was a priceless joy that I shall ever cherish for so long as I remember AD.

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Ok, so, actually, I think you make a good point, but, in fairness, I would say that needing a new gaming rig is probably not the most compelling or riveting subject material for RP or fiction in general, and… in the first case, while it was friends that helped you, I’d say that’s a good example of when strangers might be prompted to help somebody else - although putting your character in physical jeopardy on purpose might ring false, and be somewhat hard to engineer.

I feel like we’ve gone somewhat beyond the parameters of what’s realistic and achievable in RP, what’s usual in ordinary, everyday life, and what makes for compelling fiction, though, which was sort of where I was coming from - and is also tricky to line up, aha.

So, something like a small task or errand is definitely something a stranger might help with, or, to translate your example - advice over a piece of engineering - it’s not something that really causes tension.

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as someone who actively engaged with valethion, he was totally believable

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418

Well yeah that’s because I’m a human on Earth and not a space invading orc on Azeroth. Problems aplenty in our fictional work that don’t involve mundane circumstances—being a peasant was never my line of argument. You can be a hero and have problems, like my hero paladin when he had the need for a ship.

I think it was realistic in RP to expect such interactions from people (since, like, I used to get them but not so much today) but due to many factors which we could list and debate all day, that is no longer the case. I want to think that these things are not outside of what’s achievable in RP even with strangers, but people have to work in order to create such an environment.

So it boils back down to my original point: sure we can claim our game rights all we like, but in the end we’re just going to run out of people to RP with. Might seem extreme and it probably is, but it captures the crux of the issue; ignore every argument and you’ll run out of arguments. The bad way.

ok now we just need the others who I know are reading to also post and save me from trying to explain valethion’s megamind complexities thanks :heart:

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Hm? Oh, no, you’ve got this. :coffee:

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I think the issue here is that even though strangers can help you with things like health issues (when they find you puking on a mountain trail/streets of Stormwind) or material issues (friend of a friend of a friend helping you with new gaming rig/new farming equipment), they aren´t going to help you with personal problems, because you won´t share those with them in the first place.

The best and most believable characters IMO are those that behave like actual people, even though they are 25000 years old space goat. And maybe outside of few extremely outgoing people, nobody will share their problems with random stranger they started conversation with on the street. In fact, they will often keep their problems secret even from their friends and all they will pick up is clues that something is wrong with their buddy.

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421

What you describe here is called a ‘purple/green people syndrome’ aka rping all unique races like as of they were humans… While ignoring their racial uniqueness. Something which is rather common in SW rp and goes against being a good rper imho

422

Ditto.

I don’t mind people playing for the social aspect of it- Social RP can be equally interesting and fun- But you’re responsible for making the changes you like in the game.

I’ve been part of plenty of “active” and conflict seeking RP sessions that involved both interaction and/or combat, and many of them have been super boring because the motifs several characters often portray are incredibly inconsistent with their character’s narrative, or they have no consistency behind their actions. Accountability, too.

I’ve spent the last few weeks antagonizing and plotting away with this tauren character here on almost daily basis- This has created a lot of tension and (potentially) dangerous situations I’ve had him walk in to- Which have all turned out into really cool RP. But equally, not all might share that view with me. Nor is everyone able to do that, or have the energy for it.

But equally, I 100% agree with Faceslinger. This community is a cesspit of people with mental health issues, weak self-esteem, aimless in their social and life plans, or outright nihilistic in their interactions- And to be fair, it’d not be fair for me to say that that’s unreasonable, considering most of the people playing here are young adults- I was like (and probably am, to a degree) that myself.

But it is a very tiring environment and a community to trudge into- Which is why I always look upon the individual as the salvation, which is yourself. What can -you- do differently to make your experience better?

Are you sick and tired of the bad/uninteresting RP with friends you’ve known for several years? Bring it up to them, or leave. Step into the unknown and find something better.
Are you feeling like you have no purposeful goals/narratives to pursue in the game/your life? Start looking for them. Take responsibility (Make events, initiate RP, be the change you want to see).

Expecting the community to change is most likely going to wind up bad for you and you will only continue wallowing in your spitefulness and loathing.

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423

God, just need the ICD commission to finish making ICD-11 so I can get my gaming disorder diagnosis and professional help to quit my subscription :frowning:

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This is my take on it as well- The danger with the idea that you know a person 100% is that you then don’t need to engage in a conversation with them. Why bother, since you already know where they’re coming from?

The problem with rationality is that it tends to fall in love with it’s own machinations- Which I say ironically.

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