Talking about ‘mediocre’ and ‘better’ RPers in any context is pretty cringe. I’ve known excellent character writers who were very forceful about their views with others.
And that’s fine - you consented to the lesson, even if you won’t necessarily take it to heart afterwards. The problem would be if you told me no and I ignored that like Bill Cosby on a night out.
Ideally, the GMs would be the ones to decide but I don’t think they will do anything ever when it comes to this game. Predatory behaviour has been a problem for more than a decade. These people are just ignored regardless of how many reports are made.
I believe it’s best to form your own opinions on such matters and act accordingly. There’s no higher power to appeal to in regards to lore breaking so it’s up to you what is acceptable.
From my experience it has been fairly mediocre rpers who try to police rp more, on any game Ive played, the best rpers Ive met havent been fussed about policing rp or OOC clout or anything like that, different experiences I guess
Yeah. I’ve been given more than a few suspensions for calling out predatory players and roleplay practices on the forums - while the people I called out were never reprimanded by in-game moderation for their behaviour.
Whereas with this, lore-breaking isn’t against the ToS. I don’t like it and I prefer to work with and within the bounds of the lore in my own roleplay. But if I tried to aggressively enforce that onto others, I wouldn’t be making the server a better place, I’d probably just be making it a more toxic and exclusionary one.
It’s just not a helpful argument to use in these discussions. The whole point is that elitism isn’t helpful or conducive to a good atmosphere.
I don’t necessarily agree with this. “Policing” is going to have a different definition or level of involvement with everyone, but the “universal” outliers of child RP or IRL racist beliefs rearing their ugly heads in RP I think are entirely valid to police.
And of course GMs can curate their own experience - if someone doesn’t personally think a character or concept fits their guild then they’ve every right to decline it.
Personally for me, the only time I’ve really tried to police RP is advising people to stay away from the Uldum crowd, but can I ultimately prevent that beyond giving that advice? Nah, not really.
And the best way to get people to respond positively to potentially learning is respectful, polite communication.
I’m bad at that sometimes.
I disagree abit, I think its helpful to point out that those insisting on their standard being policed to the point of naming and shaming arent even fantastic rpers themselves, but pretty average like most, to each their own
Positive reinforcement usually works wonders.
Nothing wrong with GMs curating their own standards, its part of being a GM and keeping a certain standard, I just dont agree with naming and shaming someone because their rp may be “lesser” (Self insert/Lore break), simply avoid them and dont recruit them?
Or recruit them and involve them. Give posetive reinforcement and feedback. And rp with them 
It’s not like these people want to be lore breaking or a r/Iamthemaincharacter character. …Well most of the time.
Generally I agree, although most of the time if I am naming or shaming it’s not to instill a sense of superiority or to view them as lesser, it’s normally because I find the concept so outlandish that it becomes a spectacle that I can’t help myself from mocking (again the vulpandragod as a prime example) or because it induces so much rage because of the harm I believe it’s doing (people gay-bashing IC or the vulpera caravan I dare not name)
I think we’re mostly talking about the egregious cases here where there’s an intentional and large deviation from the standard lore rather than somebody misunderstanding how their class is generally played.
Yeah, even better, I would suggest that path over the one I suggested, if you -can- help them improve as a rper? even better.
I get that, everyone makes mistakes, but to actually try and foster a system where we all agree to name and shame less experienced or just less quality rp’ers is insane, and disgusting tbh, pretty sure most people are so tired of that by now, think most peoples patience with such elitism has gone now
If i were roleplaying with someone and some dude DMed me saying “this rper is bad because they broke the lore” i would ignore the weirdo who DMed me over who i choose to spend my game time engaging with
obvs if someone is a predator then it’s worth knowing but if their only crime is rp some ppl don’t like then I Don’t Care
Legit, Id just think the person /w me needs to go out and “touch grass” as some of the “cooler kids” say
Edit: In the case of predators yeah sure, but with evidence ofc, people be throwing the accusation “nonce” around like its confetti
I’m definitely not above making mistakes. One of the larger ones I did when first starting out was failing to realise that the whole Ritual of Balance thing (the quest as a worgen where you get the ability to turn back to your human form) was kind of essential to their RP. I had a character who was very much lore-breaking - albeit unknowingly - and thus was a mess to fit into a guild, but I learned, did some admittedly not-so-clean retcons and managed to get a fair few good stories out of that character up to and including his death.
Those sorts of errors are fine. Everyone makes something on that level at least once and those who haven’t are either currently making one or ae lying. For me, my issues are with the deliberate changes - the Uldum crowd with the fake Turkish/Arabic language, reductive views on women and slave (e)RP as a primary example, or the noble knight characters who similarly objectify women through their RP again and again in the most literal of senses, treating female player characters as commodities - that’s the sort of thing I warn people about behind closed doors in Discord DMs, not in-game and certainly not while the person’s RPing with them. Very few things are worth actively interfering with someone elses RP while they’re midway through it.
Yeah thats different, nothing wrong with clueing up your mates/associates about dodgy types, but that didnt seem to be the be all end all of this naming and shaming thing, was stated pretty clearly it included things like self inserting/lore breaking, which imo just isnt a good enough exscuse to expose someone to God only knows how many people/opinions and potentially ruining their hobby, it reeks of “im a bully and need someone to target, also I feel if I do this it convinces people Im a super duper elite RP’er”
Edit: Brb, got some bits to pick up for the garden
I feel we need to move on from this… It’s already been established by plenty here that are against naming and shaming for ''Badrp lorebreaking/self inserts. And Herraad already explained who his main target where now. And remember his not a spokes person for anyone except him self.
Just saying so we don’t go in a loop about this. beating a very dead horse by now x) Repeating our selves.
Honestly, this whole topic has been looped so often for so long that the horse is practically glue.
(and we’re all to blame.)
There’s so much glue that we’ve actually gone and rebuilt the horse.