I also think it would be a good idea for people to put up where they got their art from or whether or not it belongs to them, etcetera. Just a thought.
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Those who don’t do that are terrible person. (Unless you did it yourself.)
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I even put a source for my own art…
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I’ll mention as a preface that I can’t really tell if this guide is meant to be serious. All in all much of the points put forward in a more valid manner (I.E: lacking the fallacious words meant to affirm your points (E.G. “Litteraly nobody”, “What’s wrong with you”, “The ONLY time…”)) fall short as soon as you try to apply them to more well-developed characters, or simply characters that initially started off with a lot of background work.
Besides that, a lot of the things you’ve mentioned are pretty much common sense (no plagiarism, explicit OOC info) or entirely stylistic choices. If you limit your profile to what the fields are titled you are frankly missing out. That, or you fall prey to your own semantics. @Mion. Your profile, for example, has the title field filled as “Co-Pilot - Engineer -” (at least, when I last saw your profile). Those are not titles, unless people call your character “The Engineer” or “The Co-Pilot”, which I sincerely doubt. These are your occupations, so by your reasoning they have no place in the Full Title field.
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I disagree. A titel can be Mr., Ms. Mrs., Dr., Lord, Lady. It can also be a job title. Semantics.
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Well, no. I spent a good ten-fifteen minutes of my time writing up a forum topic for the benefit of other people not to be taken seriously?
If you take my wording too literally and didn’t comprehend my use of hyperbole, then that’s not really my problem. I’m not attacking people, and I’m not telling people what they should and shouldn’t do as I have outlined numerous times through this thread and even in one of my opening sections.
I’m not sure if you’ve really gotten the point either. This isn’t about character development or writing, it’s a talk about neat profile presentation.
Mion has one or two job titles, and this contradicts anything I’ve said, where?
If I have offended you, I’m not going to apologise.
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and I’m not telling people what they should and shouldn’t do as I have outlined numerous times through this thread and even in one of my opening sections.
That’s fair. However, you present all your information as fact, and saying something is your opinion doesn’t mean it’s not open to criticism.
This isn’t about character development or writing, it’s a talk about neat profile presentation.
And I’m saying that the reasoning in your guide when it comes to what you should and shouldn’t put in your profile deters people who might have a lot of valid information to put in their profile, which you would deem unnecessary.
Beyond that, the reasoning in your guide for many of your points is summarily very shallow, based largely on presenting personal taste as widely accepted fact.
and this contradicts anything I’ve said, where?
I don’t know what you mean by this. It’s one of the fallacies in your guide amongst others. I can give others if you want.
If I have offended you, I’m not going to apologise.
This is a strange and weirdly personal thing to post. Taking a leaf from your own wording:
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Sorry. I’m just not in the mood to repeat myself today! I will be entirely blunt here and tell you that I’m not being a prat in responding like this, as it seems clear to me that I need to be quite blatant based on this discourse.
If you bother to look through any of this thread, you’ll notice that it’s generated a lot of talk about how people feel about various things that I’ve mentioned. It may just be possible, based on the discourse thus far, that a less cluttered profile which is inherently designed to attract people towards each other for role-play may prove more effective if certain superfluous elements are not in place.
While I’m responding to this quote, I could easily say that your presentation of the following; ‘for many of your points is summarily very shallow’, is something that you’re trying to enforce as a fact. Thanks to the power of common sense, I just automatically receive this as an opinion.
I’m now slowly becoming convinced that I’ve been baited.
You come off as quite confrontational, defensive and snobby. If you look through some of the posts in this thread, I’m very receptive to feed back and I’ll be editing the guide in due course to reflect this.
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Dogman’s Guide: The Fewer The Better… Only Write Things That Aren’t Already Visible On Your In Game Character…
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That’s It…
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Again taking a leaf from your book:
While I’m responding to this quote, I could easily say that your presentation of the following; ‘for many of your points is summarily very shallow’, is something that you’re trying to enforce as a fact.
I am doing this. I try to only ever argue points I firmly believe to be fact.
I’m now slowly becoming convinced that I’ve been baited.
You come off as quite confrontational, defensive and snobby.
I think you’re seeing my posts as something they’re not. I suggest taking a more open approach to what I’m writing here - I get the impression you’re viewing this as a personal attack. If it is because I used your profile as an example earlier, then I will offer my assurances that wasn’t intended to be the case (=
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Adding my two cents here…
I personally am a fan of more concise profiles. A well-written profile IMO is one that is written succinctly. There’s no unnecessary fluff, the writing isn’t nauseatingly flowery. No (over)abusage of thesaurus, without making the profile seem like it was written by a beginner.
At the same time, it’s okay to not write well, especially if English is not your first language. I echo that one should be very receptive to constructive criticism. Becoming incredibly defensive when a mistake is pointed out will lead to no improvement in the profile, or any wish to engage with the person in RP.
Furthermore, nothing pains me more than seeing the At Glances abused. Someone before argued that ‘it can be a first glance, but that does not depend on how quickly you read!!’ - which I find silly. Perhaps I’m wrong, but doesn’t TRP say that you should use it for short & sweet descriptions as well? IMO, the At Glances should mean both the things you see on the character, and that you can get the information from a glance IRL as well.
Even worse, when someone writes entire essays in each of the Glances, and then, in the About section, it refers you to the Glances. Nothing angers me more than this. ESPECIALLY if you have a different addon from TRP, all you will see is the referral, nothing else about the character. And if you miss out on a glance, they blame it on you, and start the age-old debate about which addon is better. Be more mindful of other people in the game!
TL;DR - keep it short and sweet, especially the Glances if you’re a TRP user. Prose is fine if you’re writing a novel, but a character profile is not one.
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In all honesty after carefully reviewing your initial response; this is literally everything I took from it:
- Individual is presuming this post isn’t serious.
- Individual has perceived use of hyperbole as fallacious.
- Misunderstanding regarding what the topic is about. It’s not about character development or writing, it’s about profile construction.
- Automatic assumption that many people, especially inexperienced role-players perceive all of these opinions as common sense.
- Assumption that I’m missing out on anything, when I’ve even said that I myself, am frequently guilty of doing many of the things I myself find distasteful.
- A point regarding the use of job titles on of my character’s title sections when all I’ve said on the matter is that you probably don’t need a hundred and one titles or to present yourself as a jack of all trades to be worth role-playing with.
That’s literally all you gave me to work with.
Like, you never once said what you like to see in a profile, what you don’t like to see in a profile, what might be advantageous or disadvantageous to include, etcetera.
There’s nothing there that’s necessarily constructive. All I’ve really taken from it is to be more literal and use less personality to avoid what are quite frankly, in my opinion, unusual misunderstandings.
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Well of course if you only take the first half of the statement it looks shallow, you just removed the explanation.
Look at one of the points you cropped:
If the whole point is shallow, why not quote the whole point, rather than the start of a sentence?
And even if a point is shallow, that doesn’t make it wrong.
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Individual has perceived use of hyperbole as fallacious
Your hyperbole is still a tool used to affirm something is or isn’t, which contradicts your stance that anything you write can’t be criticized for being wrong or right.
Misunderstanding regarding what the topic is about. It’s not about character development or writing, it’s about profile construction.
I responded to this in my second post: The reasoning behind your points falls short when a character may have more to put somewhere than the average joe for a valid reason, which isn’t all too uncommon.
A point regarding the use of job titles on of my character’s title sections when all I’ve said on the matter is that you probably don’t need a hundred and one titles or to present yourself as a jack of all trades to be worth role-playing with.
In your “things you probably shouldn’t do” section, you maintain the belief that what you put in your profile fields such as first glances and titles should adhere to what the field’s name indicates. That is what I meant with -
Personally, my belief is that fields like race, title, and first glances can be used for anything you feel fits the style and structure of your profile. I myself, for example, like to put “Gilnean” rather than “Human” as a race, and I put a somewhat prosy classification of my character in the full title field.
Well of course if you only take the first half of the statement it looks shallow, you just removed the explanation.
I wasn’t making the point that her points were shallow with those quotes, I was affirming that she was presenting her information as fact. “Litteraly nobody needs to see this information, or even cares for that matter.” is still shallow reasoning, however, were I to quote the full thing, and the claim that the additional information section is there to ‘sprinkle on a bit of colour’ can easily be contradicted with “no it isn’t” if you believe otherwise, and the argument would be as grounded as Mion’s.
And even if a point is shallow, that doesn’t make it wrong.
It’s still something negative that can be improved upon.
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You yourself in one breath have made the claim that I am presenting my points as objective fact when I have clearly said that everything I have stated is slightly exaggerated and open to interpretation.
So knowing that they’re designed as opinions that have no basis in actual fact, how on earth can they be correct or incorrect? You can’t insist that someone’s personal tastes are wrong because then all you’re doing is claiming that your opinion is an objective fact.
I don’t know which specific part of the original post you’re referring to here so I’m not sure how to address it. We’re not talking about characters, again, we’re talking about the creation of a profile and how it can be utilised efficiently to attract role-play, and we’re all exchanging opinions on that.
Ah, thank you for clearing that up. As people and myself have stated before, this is a matter of personal taste and I would argue that it generally makes for a neater, concise and easier read if things are where the add-on outlines.
What argument are you even referring to?
If you wish to dismiss anything I’ve said as being ‘shallow’ and ‘negative’ then that’s down to you. Different strokes, for different folks.
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Well if you think something needs further explaination you could ask them why they think it, rather than just dismissing it outright because it’s shallow. Unless you think the whole post is shallow, then you are really just asking for a much longer post.
I also think that you missed the point of the entire post if you think that these fairly simple concepts need more explaination. Mion clearly thinks that “Less is more.” They might have more thoughts on each point but think that adding them would reduce the appeal of the guide. I think a long winded description of why long wind descriptions are bad would be a bit ironic.
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You yourself in one breath have made the claim that I am presenting my points as objective fact when I have clearly said that everything I have stated is slightly exaggerated and open to interpretation.
So knowing that they’re designed as opinions that have no basis in actual fact, how on earth can they be correct or incorrect? You can’t insist that someone’s personal tastes are wrong because then all you’re doing is claiming that your opinion is an objective fact.
You can argue about someone’s personal tastes when they’re put forward to guide other people. But that’d be the argument of what attracts more people, what looks better, etc. whereas the argument about the usage of hyperbole comes down to the fallacious word usage in something you seem to have intended as putting forward your own preference, rather than “This is wrong, nobody does that/wants that.”
I don’t know which specific part of the original post you’re referring to here so I’m not sure how to address it. We’re not talking about characters, again, we’re talking about the creation of a profile and how it can be utilised efficiently to attract role-play, and we’re all exchanging opinions on that.
I quoted the post/part below. My point is that the points you’ve put forward to assemble a good character profile won’t all apply to characters that are developed to the point they may have multiple distinctive features on their appearance, they may have multiple important titles, etc.
Ah, thank you for clearing that up. As people and myself have stated before, this is a matter of personal taste and I would argue that it generally makes for a neater, concise and easier read if things are where the add-on outlines.
Yes. However, I believe a profile can remain concise even if you put different things on different places. I’ll try to post my own profile as an example of something concise that doesn’t conform to the addon’s editor outlines, though I’m not certain how linking works on the new forums.
i.gyazo (dot) com/bb0ee644e8f18404a3e588d674ee3502 (dot) png
What argument are you even referring to?
The example I presented in that very paragraph - arguing “the additional information section is there to sprinkle on a bit of colour” with “no it’s not.”, and saying that these arguments have equal grounding in fact (none at all).
Hardly. Shallow argumentation leaves the impression that you have little behind your points in the first place. As an alternative, they could add collapsing blocks to their posts for additional information on creating good profiles, if they have any.
Example
Like this!
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That is basically what’s been going on in this entire thread.
Of course I’m putting forth my own preference, but as I’ve stated time and time again, my preferences are not the unspoken word of god, numerous times.
You can very clearly and concisely present that a character has a lot of important titles and unique appearance features without having them cluttered all over the place, imo.
I can’t get this to work at the moment, but I’ll let you know if I do, or if I see you running around in-game and pop a peek.
Well, yeah. That’s just my opinion and it’s not an uncommon one.
This is intended to be an approachable and light read. I had no intention of spending a large amount of time going into great specific detail per point for what I consider to be relatively common opinions expressed by quite a few role-players already. This wasn’t designed to be ‘if your profile is like this, it’s wrong, you’re wrong, go home, you’re drunk/etc’.
If you’re saying that I’ve expressed my views in a very shallow manner, I find that acceptable. If you’re saying that my views are entirely shallow, then, in my mind that’s a pretty big assumption to make.
–
Hold on. I got the link to work.
Yeah I’m not a huge fan of that approach. I’d rather find out that your character is a waste of skin through role-play. It’s not a complete turn off for me and once more, it’s preference. If that’s what you like, power to you.
My emphasis was more on this variety;
Cog Master - Kung Fu Expert - Archmage - Grey Warden - Absolute Bastard Lord - Merchant of the Grand Imperial Bell - Master Assassin of the League of Shadows - Gingerbread Baker - Kite Crafter - Barrel Rider - Mother of Six - Pregnant, etc.
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Wouldn’t you have to find any title through roleplay, though? Even if one is a simple knight, you would still have to guess if you weren’t to find it out through RP.
The only problem I have with Elyza’s profile is the colour, it is slightly hard to read - dark purple on a slightly lighter purple background. But it’s not as bad as some people whose name is illegible even on nicely contrasting background.
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