I think, perhaps naively, that me being completely honest and open about it should help a lot with overcoming the challenges it causes. I have enjoyed RP before and I really want to enjoy it again, yet I have been extremely afraid to even try it because of the separation issue and having people walk on eggshells because of it. I know it needs more work but I also know there is no quick fix for it and that there is a risk for it to happen regardless of the tools and guidelines I make for myself.
This is why I made this thread. I think it is better to talk openly about it rather than keep it secret. I am not afraid to admit the issues that my autism causes, especially when biggest part of it is me taking things personally when I shouldn’t. With right tools and proper guidelines I am sure I can handle it all better, and everyone has been helping tremendously on that part. The questions you and Andreleth has asked will certainly help me a lot. I need to write down notes for myself, to build those guidelines, before I am ready to dip into RP again.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with feeling bad when bad stuff happens to your character (or any other kind of shared feelings IC and OOC) because at the end of the day, our monke brain can’t control emotions and feelings that well. What we however can control is our actions. It’s important to keep repeating to yourself that you’re not your character and that the other people also aren’t their characters when such situations arise. And what I’d suggest is staying in those situations rather than leaving when they happen because it can help you get used to them (specifically when it comes to guild/organized community spaces where you know the people OOC).
Some other things I’d suggest to help with separation of yourself and character:
Make more than one character. You don’t have to put them in guilds or RP them equally, but having the chance to RP completely different person that has completely different relationship than your main can help.
Give your character different personality traits from you. They don’t have to be anything major (I am nr. 1 pun enjoyer, Syelia finds them embarassing, I don’t drink alcohol, Syelia is dwarven beer enthusiast), as long as they’re opposite of you. This way, you can have regular reminders of behavior different to yours during RP, which can help with internalizing the idea that this isn’t you.
Give them different (sometimes even wrong) beliefs from yours. Trust me, separating yourself from your character when they vehemently argue in favor of something you know is utter BS becomes pretty easy.
And, one last minor thing that could be helpful (and even if it’s not, it’s neat anyway), change the vocabulary of your character so it’s distinct and differs slightly from yours. It can be something simple such as starting sentences with “Well…”, or use of some words that you don’t tend to use (for example, instead of maybe, say mayhaps…overall, I’ve foundsome older, less used words from English very helpful in this).
Listen, I love myself a good, long, emote to read…
But alot of people think that the longer it is, the better it must be, when it usually isn’t the case. If it makes sense to emote 5 paragraphs to stab someone through the heart, or stick out your foot, make the enemy stumble and have him break his neck, then honestly; go for it, I would read it! But also realise that not everything needs a 5 paragraph emote as response…
I use the chat extender addons for those few emotes that go beyond single character limit. So you end up with whole emote + 4 words. That’s it. Seems like a dramatic cry about it for the memeful few who extend emotes for the sake of extending emotes.
I truly love it when I’m attending an event or among a group of more than five people and half the recipients post 4-paragraph long combat emotes or In-Character speeches that blot out the ones actually relevant to me.
And yes, this does happen more than once in a blue moon, hence I mentioned it in another thread with several other posters echoing the same grievance.
Edit: It’s also off-topic to an extent, hence I didn’t elaborate. Just like how the Musician addon turned every second character into a bard on the server so did Emote Splitter enable written diarrhea that makes another addon (Listener) mandatory even when it’s just eight people whacking each other with maces and swords.
If this occurs during your events with ’ more than five participants ', this sounds more like an issue you should take up with your organiser/DM who’d be able to much better moderate it.
Banning the addon would achieve nothing as has been mentioned before, people multi-paragraph emoted long before the addon was a thing all you’d achieve is seeing this ‘-’ at the end of an emote.
You understand that “Among the group” is not exclusive to events, right? Why omit that part of my comment?
As long as addons don’t exist that exacerbate egotistic and arrogant behavior, such as dropping mile long word salads in scenarios where there are multiple people using the same chat channel, I’ll simply be happier.
If you want this further discussed (with me at least, given you are directly responding to my statements) make a thread about it or take it to the one where I brought up the same topic. I won’t respond here as it’s completely unrelated to what the OP was asking.
I didn’t omit anything, this isn’t a court of law. I’m sure people can read your whole comment with a simple click or two. I merely tried to give you a pointer/advice as to what to do when you are ‘locked’ into an event as it were.
As for what to do in a situation where the emotioning ‘offenders’ aren’t in your immediate raid group or party there are two actions you could take:
You could distance yourself a little, step outside of their range and allow yourself some breathing room.
Whisper them. Say “Hey, could you tone it down a little? We are at least above five people here and I’d like to be able to participate.” - AD as far as I have experienced is pretty chill and will more often than not accommodate newcomers or those who need help.
Other helpful tips might be to enlarge your chat box and allow the stream of words to slow down at a more followable pace if you don’t look at it later on, once you are done RPing. You can just swoop it back down to normal size.
And that’s all really to say that unless they are waking you up in the middle of the night, force-reading you their 5 paragraphs of diarrhoea as you put it, I don’t see why I should be inconvenienced so you don’t have to deal with a consequence of an action that you are taking or not taking through inaction.
Some people whine for the sake of whining. The single message limits in MMOs are a pain when one wants to write out more than “sits down” lmao. I dunno what I would do without an addon that lets me ignore the limitation.
This. I am not really prone to long speeches or emotes in general, but it is nice with an addon that just lets you squeeze in a couple of extra words now and again.
Phew, what a weekend! Finally back home and able to respond here.
First off, if you want to discuss/debate about addons and their pros and cons, make another thread for it. As Hatescale put it, it’s completely unrelated to this thread and it’s derailing the topic.
Secondly:
These are all good suggestions and I’ll write them down. Perhaps I’ll make another character and add it to the growing list of alts I have. Or I’ll make use of what I have already.
I think this is the case for a lot of people on AD; and it’s not necessarily a bad thing (we’re all here to get somewhat attached to our characters & stories), but in my experience, there are some great techniques to avoid that.
What worked for me was making a very unserious, light-hearted main that’s low on ego and high on humour: it works better for the ‘eccentric wizard’ archetype than the Lightforged one, which implies a lot of drive, purpose and self-seriousness, but I am sure it can be applied to some degree to any concept.
The value of your character shouldn’t reside in whether or not they fail, and/or are universally feared/respected/adored: with rolls, with OP characters waddling about, with the random/chaotic factor of most AD encounters, your character will not always win, and they will not always be right.
The way to circumvent this is to ground your character in inmovable traits: they are immutably funny; they are educated; they are kind. And if nothing that happens can take that away from them, then nothing can take the enjoyment out of playing them.
I’ve had in mind to create another character for RP, but there’s so many options to choose from. What race they’d be, what class represents them in a way that fits, among other things. It’s difficult to not feel overwhelmed and give up before I’ve even stepped back into RP. I think I should make a list of potential RP characters, go through it and hopefully find something that sticks for a long time.
