I’ve yet to run into this secretive cabal of Gnomes, but my investigations will continue nonetheless…
I read that as “masochistic” and then i got disappointed.
It’s my hope you don’t, they’re a nasty bunch.
In the brief rp I’ve had with you Raes you’ve been one of the top three Gnomes I’ve come across.
1 Like
Not quite sure who these other two individuals you’ve apparently been consorting with but I shan’t take this betrayal personally.
2 Likes
If it’s any consolation one of them doesn’t play anymore, but I still rank highly as she played one of the most interesting Gnomes - very realistically and very three dimensionally.
That said the top three are all very equal in my eyes.
People’s thoughts on how non-human characters should act has become overly rigid and stale.
Want to roleplay a Gnome who isn’t a wacky, zany engineer then prepare to be told your acting “too human”.
How about a Dwarf who’s thoughtful, reserved and considers all his options before acting… Nope! You’re “doing it wrong”. These two Dwarves from the lore are loud, impulsive and sweary so all Dwarves should act this way… Plus this one roleplay guide I read said that all Pandaren are peaceful, jovial and will only fight in self defence who forget trying to RP one any other way.
In short, the whole “too human” stuff needs to die out.
If humans can be such a diverse race with an unlimited amount of character types and personalities then so can any of the other races of Azeroth.
18 Likes
It’s really funny when you’re then told - “if you’re not playing an overly zealous xenophobic, uneducated footman or paladin with conveniently flexible morals then you’re playing a bad human.”
It’s insane.
4 Likes
To add to this, there are draenei members of Cult of the Damned.
Living. Draenei. Necromancers.
In fact, Blizzard often places members of various races into positions where, if we followed RP guides, these people have absolutely no place. Yet in the lore, we see them behaving completely different than how their race should apparently behave.
1 Like
That’s because most RP guides, even ones written with an open mind are usually based on a handful of lore characters and disregard the other 99.9% of the race being discussed.
It’d be like writing a guide about our own human race by only using David Beckham, Ronaldo and Gianfranco Zola as your focus.
2 Likes
You’re either too human or not human enough. It’s impossible to win at that game.
1 Like
This server goes a little too far with the “Keep IC and OOC separate” and “This is just what my character would do IC” thing.
Not that I don’t agree with those principles, I 100% do, they’re great. BUT most people just use that as a cop out for whatever behaviour they’re doing that isn’t conducive to enjoyable RP.
For instance, it’d take a while, but if in my DnD campaign, one of my players kept derailing things with their over-the-top antics, to the point where it got annoying, or was just impossible to work with the other players, I’d kindly say “Hey man, you’re kinda ruining it for the rest of us”. In WoW, you can never do that, or if you do, you have to walk on eggshells and blame it on anything other than “your character’s personality just doesn’t work too well”.
6 Likes
To be fair, with WoW you can just pick ul your toys and go elsewhere if you’re not enjoying someone elses roleplay.
2 Likes
Of course. But, I should say, I’m not really trying to be malicious when saying that. It’s a general issue, that I think people could keep in mind a bit more.
2 Likes
This might be because the individual members of a race don’t have to be a walking stereotype. A draenei can be cruel, cowardly or lust for power. They can lose faith in the Light and follow more untoward beliefs. They might be the minority but that doesn’t mean they can’t or shouldn’t exist.
It would be very boring if we all rigidly stuck to the archetypes of the races we played. There’s always some room for deviation and difference, provided the player doesn’t completely lose sight of the origins their character possesses - the Orc Elves of Orgrimmar are an example of the ‘bad’ side of this.
3 Likes
Actually in lore there is a draenei pirate, in the Pearl of Pandaria or Quest for Pandaria story. Li-li meets him when they’re on their way from Booty Bay I believe, as he’s boarding the ship she’s on.
And in WoD we actively see living Draenei join the Legion, despite that they are draenei because they did not want to join the rest of the Eredar in service to the Legion in the first place.
So I guess a draenei necromancer at that point isn’t so out of place.
Draenei are an inherently subservient and corruptible race, only saved by Velen’s presence, so it’s not surprising that any that fall outside his circle of influence attach themselves to the next nearest power source - legion, scourge, twilights, etc. - as a replacement.
1 Like
I presume that Draenei are like any race in game in that individuals have their own goals, interests, fears and failures.
More importantly:
I’m peeved, for lack of a better word, when there’s lore characters like Azshara who get hinted at ‘coming’ for a long time but never do. But then when they do come I’m equally peeved that we have to kill them because it is like killing off a piece of the lore.
On a slightly related note to going over the top with the “keep IC/OOC separate” line, I reckon that everyone who says “it’s better to lose RP-PvP campaigns because it is better RP” is lying either to the world or to themselves, because at least when it’s unrestricted or there are points systems with tactics that you have to coordinate OOC, everyone wants to win on some level.
1 Like
Which is why PvP in RP is inherently contradictory to the nature of RP, as RP is a co-operative venture, PvP is a competitive venture. There comes a point in every RP-PvP campaign where that friction needs to be lessened or the whole thing unravels. More often or not these days its the latter.
Players should operate on good faith to one another, which a great many do - but there will always be some who exploit that good faith to push their own -player driven- not -character driven- desires maliciously and use such terms as if it were a protection against reprehensible thinly-veiled behaviour their character does.
If more of us were to adopt the stance you showed in your DnD, then we would have less problems I feel.
Essentially, I think the only way you can do RP-PvP right, is to play it as a strategy game, where it’s mostly up to the leaders making tactical choices, but could be influenced by the troops aswell.
The problem is that the troops don’t usually… well, react too well to the situation. I myself am guilty of this, when someone’s outnumbered, they should retreat, when a healer is attacked, they should not be able to fend off the attacker themselves, they seem to have another purpose, and are ill-equipped for fighting themselves.
There are many other things aswell such as agreeing to be pushed back when there’s a line being pushed into you, etc.