I don’t know the mechanics of demon hunter vision or how it would interact with a quantum-locked alien angel monster that feeds on paradox energy.
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No, no you got a point there.
I’ve been thinking about this all day.
I think I’ve worked out a possible concept to help ameliorate ‘Bad RP’ out in the world, a systemic solution.
All roleplayers are dependent on addons to communicate their characters to others. When TRP-3 was updated with pronouns, community conditions improved for trans and gender non-conforming players/characters by facilitating their ability to establish boundaries and expectations with others.
I reckon ‘First Glances’ could be augmented with two additional rows of icons. One would be Genre Tags:
One person might have under their First Glances:
Low Fantasy, Combat, Horror, Adventure
Another could have:
Steampunk, Crafting, Slice of Life, Markets
This’d help signpost like-minded roleplayers, helping them seek out one another easily, getting exactly the kinds of experiences they’re after. You could use a standard array of icons based on various common genres and themes for this purpose.
The other row of icons, positioned above, would list Lines & Veils, a common TTRPG safety tool. Square icons could represent Lines, Triangular icons could represent Veils. As described by Dr. Lotte Reinbold:
Put simply, a line is something which will never come up as part of a campaign or session, while a veil ensures that whilst an action or event might take place, this will happen ‘off-screen’: mentioned in passing, but not dwelled on in detail and not a significant part of any plot or encounter.
For example, I could set ‘Torture’ or ‘Kidnapping’ as a Line, clearly broadcasting in advance to other roleplayers that I don’t want to experience anything in my roleplaying involving these elements, either directly or in passing.
Think on how useful this’d be in a RP-PvP scenario for example, as it’d broadcast instantly that the player in question doesn’t wish to be captured, or if taken prisoner, doesn’t wish to be mistreated.
I could likewise set ‘Genocide’ or ‘War Crimes’ as a Veil, where- say, I don’t mind talking IC about say, the Burning of Teldrassil or the destruction of the Draenei, but I also don’t want to be ICly made in an event to pump Blight gas into a village, or roleplay out burning the surviving Kaldorei villagers alive as they scream for mercy.
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This would not be a silver bullet, and wouldn’t stop Bad RPers from transgressing, but it’d normalise the establishment of clear boundaries enough that Bad RP would -hopefully- be less likely encountered in random, every day roleplaying experiences.
Why? Consistency. Everyone will have the same system at their direct disposal, and less people will feel hesitant to speak up if they feel supported by the interface.
While there is already an OOC section and ‘permissions’ section in the back of people’s TRP profiles, not everyone fills these in or necessarily reads them before interacting with other players. It’s not always practical in situations involving large groups of people, or where attention might flag.
This is why I think a more visually oriented, directly displayed approach would be handy, as it’d remove ambiguity and improve general safety. It’d give everyone the tools they need to protect themselves. Prevention is better than cure and communication and negotiation are the balm to interpersonal conflict.
There are however a few issues with this concept. Players might not use the Genre Tag and Line/Veil glance rows as intended, instead using them as 10 additional First Glance tabs. A Dark Souls type set-phrase system could remedy this. However, this whole concept also adds more code to debug, and more memory on to the addon, damaging performance.
While it could be made as a seperate addon, this would preclude widespread adoption.
Creativity thrives best under limitations. You can’t have sparks without friction. No sparks? No fire. I’ve also no understanding or experience of how Addon development works, so it might not be practical or feasible.
In any case, this’d probably necessitate either a seperate thread, or me getting in touch with TRP-3’s developers, as I’ve overthought things a little.
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Anyway, I’ve derailed enough! These stories are all very entertaining, so thank you a bunch, I’ve found them both entertaining and amusing.
But that’s not RP it’s a power-fantasy. We NEED to be more discerning as a collective to what constitutes as actual roleplay and what is just some bored gooner / housewife / second-life players direct self insert. I don’t know what happened to AD but we’ve become illiterate in this regard over the years.
Don’t deign slop as ‘RP’ as it detracts from actual roleplayers and roleplay.
I’ve got an even easier definition
Good RP is simply character concepts that are grounded within the universe they are meant to be in. Playing a dragon is fine, provided you are playing it for reasons aside from aforementioned above. There is nothing inherently wrong with ‘powerful’ characters and there’s nothing inherently right about playing dung shovelling peasants. Good RP is collaborative storytelling and / or character development.
Bad RP is quite simply RP that is flawed. There isn’t enough ego-separation between writer and character, the concept is not tethered to established lore and/or the character is a vehicle for bad faith interactions - power fantasies, ego tripping, bullying/harassment, barely disguised fetishes etc.
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Fair dinkum. I suppose that works as a better definition. Less waffle.
It’s boiled down, straight to the point.
Returning the main topic, any more interesting stories or anecdotes, anyone?
Roleplay is defined as an act of pretending to be a character. That includes people doing dumb stuff such as 19000 dragon mothers. Once you start creating some further requirements for what RP is based on quality or perceived motivations, you´re going to run into a very fun scenario where various group of RPers on the server are going to call each other non-RPers because what they´re doing is “slop” (and here´s another funny thing, someone can call what you do a slop simply because they don´t like what you do, regardless of any actual quality of what you do).
Do the examples such as a gnome, nelf and a human RPing out Lord of the Rings in Burning Steppes constitute as RP? Or a druid turning himself into a second breakfast for group of Forsaken? Or a guy named Oorgrim pretending to be “Progenitor of the former Warchief”?
Because all of these examples were given by people in this thread describing their RP encounters. Even yourself describe the things you proclaimed to be non-RP to be an example of bad RP in the same comment. So, which one is it?
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On our way to Booty Bay through Stranglethorn, me and my traveling troupe met a poor jungle camo’d hunter human (played by our GM) who was terrified of being killed by a rogue forsaken assassin, who infamously sat on his targets dead corpses and made camp.
Some say he still wanders in there in quest greens, pretending to feign death to avoid being ganked.
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I love it so much when we RP in the open world and people stare and join us. Especially when in the middle of nowhere, briefing before an event and random people decide to stay in line with us. Especially when it is an Ally without pot. So they just stand there, not understanding a word, for the vibes alone. xD
Once a shaman ran into us in Suramar, and later DMed me on Discord and made a doodle of her getting a /pat from our orc. Was really cute.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/990190965161603112/1343713397086093384/image.png?ex=67fb93de&is=67fa425e&hm=4c9277ef88d866e7ea982482de14ca2234ff370ae6ca0f8f30efe33dc4162e09&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=413&height=554
so basically just SCP-173 then?
Had a random RPer appear deep in Stranglethorn to save my high elf from being assassinated.
The assassination was agreed upon and scheduled OOCly, and said high elf of mine was not set to survive the night. The encounter probably lasted for about an hour or two, and by the end, the assassin had her paralyzed on the ground in the middle of nowhere, Stranglethorn.
Then quite literally a single emote away from execution, this random Illidari approaches with the intent of asking for directions, sees what’s going on, and immediately starts fighting to save her life. It was glorious.
Said character is still alive today, thanks to him.
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