jams your gun with my mind
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Yea a lot of the time people donât want to communicate their expectations. I guess some folks feel like as soon as they talk to others about how to make a fun, engaging round of RP, it breaks some sort of imaginary barrier?
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This paired with people wanting spontaneity and ânatural story progressionâ while failing to realise that their immersion has gotten so fragile that the slightest thing that doesnât fit their narrative (some OOC planning, other peopleâs characters that they deem subpar, etc etc) ruins their session is an increasing problem.
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These are probably also the same people who âNever plan their rpâ and instead just would have you wait until you by chance run into each other ( read: Until His/Her Royal Highness deems you worthy of their time).
I personally believe that while keeping things as much IC as possible is cool, the fact that you are still doing this to have fun and that this is still a coĂśperative hobby simply does require some OOC communication at times.
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Dismantles ur gun mid fight in melee like a john woo movie.
is crucial in any roleplaying of conflict and if your counterpart refuses to communicate, /e disengages from the situation epicly
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I would go as far as to say that itâs crucial for nearly every type of roleplay more than just conflict. People focus on being âorganicâ all the time as if recognising that they are meant to be roleplaying with people instead of roleplaying at people is something to be entirely avoided, and Iâd be willing to wager itâs the cause of a good chunk of Argent Dawn drama to this day.
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âOrganicallyâ grown RP is often full of worms.
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I want my RP GMOâd and vaccinated.
I donât think thereâs anything inherently wrong with âorganicâ RP (i.e. roleplay thatâs purely improvised and without any out of character communication) and the people who prefer it arenât wrong either, itâs just⌠not for me.
On a personal level, having an OOC conversation before committing to RP with someone I donât know or trust already is important. On a very practical level, setting aside a wariness of online weirdos, I donât want my time or theirs to be wasted due to an incompatibility in what weâre looking to get out of our hobby time.
If someoneâs main shtick is getting into fights or pants, theyâre not going to get anything out of engaging with me and vice versa.
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Iâve never killed, or wanted to kill my main Blondie off, mostly because I canât find a good reason for it to make a narrative for the general RP, except for having a personal RP moment.
Itâs also the same reason why Iâve never fixed her post-death amnesia or never got on a personal quest to find who pushed her down face-down in a shallow grave.
Because itâs clichĂŠ and boring, and more fun to roleplay an Undead who has no memory of being anything different but a rotting corpse.
At times, my character makes mistakes and gets a, what would be for living characters, fatal blow. Which for her means often than not getting stitched back up, or blowing monthâs of mercenary contract wages on a regenerative Troll Blood bath from the black market, which means sheâs in a coffin for the next few weeks slowly healing.
This is how I kinda treat âdeathâ, a huge setback which pushes my character back to square one. Time has been lost, money drained, and her personal goal of retiring on a private small Island a lot further away.
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Death in WoW RP has never been about making sense IC. Thereâs no rules in WoW RP, no DM in world RP and no proper lore.
Hereâs why I donât kill my character:
Time Played:
If someone plays for 5h every day, their character is available to be killed for 35h every week.
If someone plays for 8h every day, itâll be 56h every week.
Now letâs say someone plays rather casually on weekend, 4h every evening for a total of 12 hours.
If I compare both, itâll take three to seven weeks to equalize time played. Most storylines donât reach the magnitude and people forget characters after one or two weeks.
Villains got this already and stay offline nowadays, because the more a character is reachable, the more itâll get pounded by heroes.
World is too small:
You canât hide in WoW. The only safe place is instanced content. You canât escape anyone because everyone somehow travels at the speed of light or is able to use divination to get the location of your character with single meter accuracy and that across continents.
Buzzboxes are the best example of it, but not just.
Power Level:
Contrary to RPG, thereâs no power progression in WoW RP. You can spawn as a 10000000000 years old Kaldorei who did everything. Or you just pick a hero class and lolroll on people with uberpower. Not legal enough? No problem, add some nobility into the mix, add some fancy titles and your 1h played character is ready to kill people.
Meta RP/Alt
In any proper RPG where death is a consequence, people should be forced to play one character and one only. Anyone playing two characters in the same location, or interacting with the same characters to two degrees of acquaintance, is passively accumulating knowledge the âwrong wayâ.
Example of conflict of interest alts:
- Hero main/Illidari alt. Spectral sight people, transfer knowledge to main/friends.
- Villain main/Guard alt. Funnel information to main/Know of planned events. Can stay offline and pretend they donât meta.
- Undead/Druid. I legit saw people playing Undead and being tossed out to log their druid alt and start protecting their Undead alt.
The list is infinite. Evidence of wrongdoings through alts characters is nearly impossible, so thereâs no reason to accept death from an alt character.
Number game:
Winning a conflict in WoW RP is often the result of outnumbering people. Doesnât matter where or how, if three people are around and start dunking on a fourth one, itâs game over. Even if the character has allies, they are offline for any reason and people wonât care, they will kill the character and refuse to get hunted and killed later on.
Bad Actors:
Iâve read a lot of âif it makes sense IC then the character should dieâ. If we remove the typical loldodge roleplayer, it takes two to three people to create any situation where -your- character will die. No exception.
At this point, thereâs no âIC is ICâ anymore, the death of a character must be refused OOCly.
Guard RP Monopoly:
If you ever played on AD long enough, they youâre aware guard guilds are always trying to impose a monopoly of laws over other guard guilds.
I created my own for my character, gave the lead to a friend and chaos ensued. Iâve been pressured IC&OOC by people saying my guard guild âdidnât existâ or âwasnât registered to their guard guildâ. That I was going against the âconsensusâ of roleplayer guards and they had more authority on my character than my own guard guild.
Guard guilds in SW hiring Forsaken or guard guilds roleplaying with Maiev have tried to kill my character, and they got -nasty- when I told them no. Harassement, bullying, spreading around the death of my character and worse.
I am certain horror stories like this are plentiful, but speaking out puts a target on your back.
OOC friendships:
This one is a short one, but friends gravitate around friends. Itâs not rare for the strangest concept to be accepted only because the player is a friend. From this point, the character will be protected not through lore, but through bleeding friendship.
Thereâs no escaping it and the lore is wonky enough to create a plausible deniability in why the characters are friends IC too.
Try attacking or killing an Undead/Demon in SW and see how it goes. You -will- get jumped by people defending them. So why would you accept death? I do not.
It was slightly longer than expected. The conclusion I reached is to never kill my character and never kill another character. I donât care if it makes sense, I donât care if the opportunity is here, I donât and I let the player decide for themselves because itâs the only option that works in WoW RP until we get a proper set of rules.
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Lots of great points and ideas in this thread!
To summarize my opinion: I think no matter what, RP should always be about the story. Is your character arc not over yet? Donât die, then. Give yourself some more time. If it doesnât make sense to be ganked by armed hozen in the middle of Stormwind? Why would you die to that? Love yourself.
Some people will tell you that a âgood storyâ is one that makes sense to them, and sometimes what makes sense to them is their right to instakill you because you said something rude to them once. Because thatâs just their character! IC is IC. 
Well, my character isnât a character that gets murdered in Old Town two days into their arc. Sorry.
I wish we could respect each others narrative more and try to learn how to meet in the middle on these matters.
Sometimes RPing with certain people is like reading a bad book. I just try to pick up a better book.
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The problem is though, alot of the things we post on these forums here are just us preaching to the choir. Since itâs mostly the same people that use the forums here, and there are many people , including the ones we often mention here, that do not read the forums for various reasons.
Itâs sometimes nice to be reminded that there are others out there with reasonable takes as well - just to reaffirm that we arenât entirely crazy
What is the consensus on just dying at random points in RP from idk, a heart attack?
I mean⌠Go for it if thatâs what you wanna do? Itâs not like anyone can stop you.
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Have you ever had anyone completely avoidably kill themselves in front of you just for the drama? Not necessarily anything problematic with it, but it sure is an experience⌠
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This one time long ago on guild wars 2 some kinda mage i forgor the kind randomly tried to force their way into a nobleâs house and when the guards didnât let them they goresploded
It truly was a âRPers want nothing more than to walk into places that have armed guards at the doorâ moment
Epic gamer moment.
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