Consider placing your character into difficult circumstances more often

Argent Dawn
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I agree that having a character share personal problems/issues doesn’t necessarily entail a more spectacular concept. Otherwise essentially you’re suggesting that for a character to be wholesome they MUST have a particular personality trait (openness) or otherwise somehow share their problems in a way that isn’t part of their personality (no idea, have their friends tell you? Sounds like a lot of work).

There are ways to make characters feel more wholesome, even in terms of fragility, without necessarily making it about the problem itself. Rather about indicating that such a thing possibly exists/is the case.

For example, when conversing with people when you’re getting to know them, you don’t learn of their particular preferences/dislikes/fears through then candidly just giving them to you. More often than not this information is punctuated in other conversations as a matter of reference/comparison. Ie. You find out your friend doesn’t like seafood, not because they tell you upon meeting “my name is joe and I hate seafood”, rather when prompted “Hey, fancy grabbing a bite later?” they reply “Sure thing. So long as crab or fish isn’t on the menu!”.

It’s this kind of element that is what makes people whole and deviates them from their “simple” contexts as far as we see them. You can observe a crowd and see say twenty “Young, male, English speaking, looks professional” but that’s just an archetype. It tells you some possibilities, sure. It’s this additional “fluff” that takes them from a forgettable category to a distinct individual that warrants specific attention and memory.

WoW characters can (not always) be in sort supply of this. I find there’s a tendency to always have their personality/life explained around or in the direction of something, rather than simply what it is. Few character have religious beliefs if they’re not a priest, paladin, druid or shaman for example. Politics is rarely a conversation except for determining who is a rebel or a loyalist. Fears and weaknesses become known in the situation in which they specifically apply, rather than as a general thing others may know in advance and thus can plan around in a particular situation.

This may be possibly because making up your character’s stance and ideas on so much takes lots of time, so that it’s quite natural for people to determine their character responses/feelings “as they’re needed” aside from a few core ones (which are usually quite generic like “being brave”) and thusly they feel very performative in nature. Whilst this means the RP situation itself works (and nothing to say it can’t work well) it can make it difficult to establish what someone’s character is actually like on a more fundamental level regarding forging friendships, oppositions etc.

I’m not advocating for everyone to know everything about anyone else at all. I just think there’s a lack of using a character’s traits to “hook” people. It’s either unknown, or it comes up in exactly the specific form to which it is relevant. This means it lacks all means of intrigue because you either know nothing of the story or the entirety of it.

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Big yikes from me, chief

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427

I don’t mean to sound rude, I really don’t.

But you either live in a country where isolating yourself is a good idea, or you’re really young. None of these concern me, but I can tell you that it’s entirely cultural—not just ‘super outgoing people’.

I’ve had many scenarios where I ended up randomly chatting with people, discussing things you supposedly don’t discuss. I bring up country because I’ve also spent some time in the UK and random socialisation, at least in the south, is quite the tabboo and I’m viewed as rude.

You’re coming from the right place, but you should expand your views and understanding. Realistically there are many kinds of cultures and sociaties, and many, many more personalities.

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Nani in ten letters

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But all the other races are people. I mean, if we assume that all the races of Warcraft share the same pool of emotions and feelings, if we assume that their consciousness and thoughts work in the same way, composing ideas through language and images - in what way are elves not just purple people, and orcs not just green people?

That’s a bit of a pretentious way of approaching it - I guess what I’m saying is, are you saying that there is something fundamentally alien about the architecture of an elvish mind that means that they don’t experience thoughts and feelings comparable to a human’s, such as joy, sorrow, anger and regret? It seems similar to me to those people who play, Night Elves as though the dignity of the Kaldorei is a biological fact, something written into their DNA, and utterly unassailable.

I don’t mean to be pedantic or facetious, but this is an argument I’ve seen time and again which makes very little sense to me. Every race in Warcraft, to some degree or other, is both an invention of a human mind and inspired by a real-world equivalent. The orcs are loosely modelled on primitive hunter-gathered societies and the Mongolian Horde, the elves are idealised humans, or humans+, the Forsaken work well as an allegory for the maimed, the crippled or the traumatised, a nation of lepers.

Surely the starting point of any character - the basecode, the blueprint - is human, and then the fantasy is layered on top, such as the society, culture, and history of the individual races? Surely one asks oneself the question - how does an ordinary human respond to eternal life? How does this change them? - to the effect that you might have, for example - and indeed, do have - arrogant and ignorant imperialists in the night elves, who, frozen in time at the prime of their youth, have the utter conviction in their own opinions and beliefs, and cleave the world neatly into black and white, like most late-teens/ twenty-year olds of my acquaintance.

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430

Oversharing is a pretty universal concept in the West, from what I’ve seen.

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Idk, you say that like you roleplayed/interacted with the majority of the entire RP community, that being more than 50%, Boush. Maybe you have, idk, but I find it kinda weird to put every single person into one bin. Game is a hobby, after all, and whilst not everyone understands that - doesn’t really mean its an every single person :man_shrugging:

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I could be wrong. People categorize & discriminate groups based on competence on a daily basis- To their fault or credit.

I’ll take that risk.

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There are very big fundamental differences, yes.

Unrelated to the above, case and point.

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I am on phone, so just short reply:
You are absolutely right, I forgot customs are different in the West. If I did oversharing here in East, people would look at me like I was crazy (and I wouldn’t blame them, even though I am pretty outgoing, I would never talk about my problems with, let’s say people from high school I met on the street while going from work).

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Yeah, pretty much.

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Which are by your own admission unable to be realised - you are but human, after all, and it is “genuinely” unimaginable. Everything you try to imagine will be mediated through your own experiences, through analogy and allegory. How does a long-lived elf view a human? As a human might view a dog - simple, and undeveloped. It’s still going to be related back to something recognisably human.

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To be honest there’s some great evidence to be had especially for the spatial argument that faceslinger is bringing up-

Humans are limited in their spatial time awareness by the number of years they live- Which is somewhere around 80 on average in western countries (?)

Yes, we can comprehend things like archeological facts like “ok this happened x many years ago”, but it is one thing to imagine a few hundred or a thousand years back, and a completely another thing to think back 10 000 years back.

I find it a fascinating idea on trying to imagine how such a time view would appear to a being that lives consciously for +10 000 years- How do they view relationships, experiences and alike? How does their memory function compared to us?

I think a few fantasy franchises have attempted this, but especially in the cases like Tolkien, the thousands of years old elves who are (sometimes) painted to be attempted to be “inhuman” in their reason and logic, simply come off as being “distant.” Or, that is, rather, how we understand it.

Well that’s the argument, isn’t it? Can human imagine something fundamentally un-human/unnatural to us? Or is our brain capacity limited to, as you say, “familiar concepts”. Can we ever truly grasp things like infinity, or even just long time distances.

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443

I would say oversharing is not universally western. I live in the UK and to be fair outside of your family groups/close friends it’s seen as quite improper to impose your problems onto other people (unless it’s an emergency). This goes for time spent in the north and south (though north is a bit more generally hospital, so long as they see you as “one of them” or similar to them).

In many places in the UK people don’t even know who their neighbours are anyway more beyond physical recognition. You’re seen as eccentric/weird/after something/drunk if you spark up random conversations with people at bus stops or on trains. I mean, god forbid you sit next to someone on a train who you don’t know if there’s a space available elsewhere (it’s generally accepted that in that situation, you do not sit next to someone else).

We’re friendly enough, but there is a particular way of doing things, and the “Hi! Happy to Meet you! OMG I LOVE your hair!” and oversharing is generally seen as a American-like behaviour/mindset here and although the conception on Americans is mixed within the country, generally their openness is seen as more of a quaint novelty/quirk than a particular strength of their character. Some would go as far as to say it makes them buffoonish, crude and lacking refinement or awareness of other people’s personal space (the average American conception of personal space is probably about a fifth of the size of what the average brit thinks is appropriate personal space). You came blame Victorian-era puritan etiquette culture for how fixated we are with “how things should be done”.

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As Atahalni says,

You’re right at the crux of it; it is a concept that’s inhuman, so we can’t define what a right approach towards it is. We can, however, look at work created by better people, that has been criticised by other professionals, and see what might be viewed as good work of fiction (because again, that’s what RP is—bunch of fanfiction).

And how well perceived a concept is, is definitely subjective. You might think that the older you grow, the more funny-go-lucky you become. I might think that you reach a stage where physical interests no longer apply to you—thus my character’s motivation for immortality and transcendence.

Could a human come up with that? Yeah, duh, a human already came up with that—I did, and many others before me. But the crux of it is: if I’m trying to write something inhuman then I don’t think that making it as human as possible is going to cut it. Do you?

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Sorry, to clarify - what I meant by “oversharing” being a universal concept was that in UK, the U.S., and most of Europe (from what I’ve seen), over-sharing is considered impolite or embarrassing - I totally agree that disclosing problems of a personal nature to people outside of your friends and family is considered not the done thing, as that person has no reason or obligation to care about you.

And coming from the North, I can also say that, generally speaking, while people like to have a good moan, and might discuss personal problems like hospital visits and bereavements, I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are vulnerable or truly open when they do it. They rarely express emotions about the situation, they don’t break down and cry, they don’t ask for help, they just state it as an annoyance or aggravation - I’d say this prevents it from being over-sharing because people in the North are very careful to avoid burdening other people with the problem, very careful to appear tough and coping. There’s no expectation of a response other than agreement -

"The N.H.S is an absolute bloody disgrace, I tell thee! It’s like with our Karen - " etc. It’s more an aggression of anger than genuine distress.

446

So is breaking down and creating a scene the only way for someone to appear real when sharing an issue? How about the very very similar example the OP himself made, such as

A real character has problems. I don’t believe that you need others to solve your problems—in my previous posts I specifically made mention that, while having a character whose problems can only be solved by others is not bad, it’s not always ideal either (but that doesn’t make them unrealistic, just like a character that is very well-off and has very few problems is not unrealistic).

But a person has issues. Small, big—something. My extremely well-off Nightborne is a step away from my gritty RP, in the sense that he has nothing to worry about. So he finds things to be worried about, because that’s just what happens. When you solve a problem, your mind jumps to the next one. He doesn’t care about sickness. He barely cares about the war. He cares about what that orc just commented on the illustrious shape of his ears. It’s a problem. He’s going to solve it, or he’s going to let the problem boil.

This is again subject to personality (so we loop around), but everyone will have a short-term goal which can affect their attitude, mood, and character progression. In the end, a problem doesn’t need to be world-spanning and life-changing. But this entire discussion began out of, basically, players who don’t RP to make stories about social characters but instead RP to socialise through their characters.

Does this not ring agreeable?

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447

The example O.P gave was for people to create problems that other people can help with. I literally just said that when people express problems in the context they’re not looking for help or anything much more than sympathy or shared indignation, which doesn’t meet the O.P’s requirement that characters create tension for other characters and play victims that need help/ rescue. At no point did I mention anything about anyone being “real”. At this point, what are you objecting against, and who do you think youre arguing with?

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Things you’ve said, as indicated by my quotes. I’m confused, do you not understand the context of what I’ve written?

Hardly an argument, either. At this stage we’ve agreed and I’m discussing things people bring up—like with Atahalni, and Dorlas.

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I thought this thread was going to die the other day; seems like I was wrong.

Someone please tell me a funny joke, I’m sad.