Why criminal role-play doesn't last, or have a place on AD

Argent Dawn
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As Jeyce said, there are people out there who use RP to further and shape their characters and don´t write long life stories into their profile.

I’m aware of this. Don’t know why that needs to be said.

So what you suggest is to commit to RPing situation I may not enjoy with someone who may end up being powergamer only because it would be preposterous to just ignore them outright?

Already answered this three posts ago.

The mature thing to do would be to politely explain in an OOC whisper that you aren’t enjoying the role-play, you feel uncomfortable, and would prefer to end it there. No flaming. No attitude. No resorting to meta or power emotes to get outta dodge. If both parties are adults, then the role-play will be concluded and you can both go on your merry way without embarassment and only a tinge of awkwardness.

… >

it really seems like you honestly believe that criminal roleplayers are this nice group of people who, even if they do powergaming and all other kinds of things that are signs of bad roleplay, are absolutely understanding to others? And somehow, it´s everyone else who is in wrong and we should just be more understanding of average Stormwind mugger, even if said mugger is doing it to “win”.

It seems like this thread has hit the bedrock, where basic reading comprehension has gone out of the window and there’s no more constructive discussion to be had. I haven’t argued or advocated for any of this, Dorlas. The narrative of the last 30 posts has been so nitpicky and all over the place, however, I’m not surprised you think that’s what’s going on here.

To cut a long story short, this thread started to derail around Morduas’ (brilliant) reply, which was post #29-30, and since then it has been plagued by ‘hurh, criminals suck!’ and this shallow thought that criminal role-play is hopeless because (quote-on-quote) ''the only reason people do it in the first place is to win!‘’… As though the real reason we role-play isn’t because we enjoy the process of writing a character we find rewarding to play.

I’m going to call it a day there. Great reply though at #55 or so, Rocmar. That was a bloody lovely post.

I could be alone in this but heroes journeys are a dime a dozen. I’ve always found regular folks tales in universes such as Warcraft’s more captivating. How life works and how it affects normal people in terms of the day-to-day makes it both relateable and intriguing.

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No, you didn´t, you said basically the same thing as in previous part and it could be all boiled down to this: OOC whisper them and if you are both adults, it will be fine.
But that´s not how it works. When you are met with RPer who does everything they can to “win” ICly, changing your IC interraction to OOC level where you whisper this person may end up with this person continuing to whisper you and maybe even try to harass you (granted, the last part is pretty unlikely).
Of course, you can ignore them, but one could ask whether this risk is worth it when the only benefit is you giving change to good criminal roleplayer to have fun.

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I am reminded of the certain guard guild in Stormwind who - demanded - that their members place their rank in their rp addon’s “title” section, and even remember watching arguments about it spill into the /emote channel.

Because there is a sizeable, loud minority of Alliance roleplayers who lionize and place ““peasant”” rp on an unassailable pedestal because they adhere to this weird logic that “hey i’m playing a WEAK and USELESS character, I must be BETTER than you heroes” then proceed to mumble into the buzzbox about how a certain heroic character is BULLYING them.

Cue ten peasant npc characters appearing out of nowhere in less than ten seconds trying to cudgel said heroic character to death, only for the heroic character to go “hey no go away” and teleport/shadowstep/heroic leap/fidget spin out of the way. Which then causes said peasant characters to have quite the volatile reaction.

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To cut your long posts shorter, what you’re doing is essentialy trying to whitewash the type of roleplay that has a history of being dodgy and attracting suspect players. I’m not the one who gave criminal roleplayers a bad reputation, neither are the other people posting in this thread. You complain about me misquoting your words but you’re guilty of the charge yourself: the sentiment isn’t that criminal roleplay exists to provide a platform for people who seek victories in roleplay, but rather that it attracts that type of people. I’m not saying this issue doesn’t appear anywhere else, but you certainly see it very often among criminal roleplayers, who I might also add sometimes don’t even appear as actual roleplayers, rather they project their RL personas into their characters which leads to a whole diffrent set of problems.

And when you list:

as one of your positive examples, then I am forced to politely disagree and it makes me even more confident in the assumption that you don’t see where the problem is, or rather you refuse to see it.

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True and based

Playing a more down to earth character is/can be cool but I don’t get the spin of “weaker = better quality RP”

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Concerning Reed. –

I’m glad you brought this up, because this is poor conduct from you, and this is a part of the problem. Let me tell you why.

I met Reed and I had my own suspicions about his (and his group’s) role-play, because of what I’d been told by people like you. Then, I actually role-played with him. As well as Aisha, Guarrez, and a host of other fantastic characters who hung around the shop. He welcomed my characters into his group with open arms. He encouraged my plots. We planned things, IC and OOC, at length, sometimes for hours. In the space of knowing him, we did two storylines together. The role-play was chock-full of character development I had a great time.

And this’ from someone who you’re implying was an issue.

Personally, I think there’s a hole leftover where Honest Blades was after he left Stormwind. Nothing else has replaced it, so you can snipe him from the forums all you want, but I don’t see you or anyone else stepping up to try and do better. Reed did the best, with what little he could, and made something good out of it for a lot of people.

And no, that’s not to say he was perfect. There were some members of his crew, as you say, who fell into bad tropes. He also had a very laissez-faire attitude towards his reputation, which I strongly disagreed with (as it let bad sh** fester). I told him this myself. Vaguely remember pleading with him to do initiatives that would shift his public image, to no avail. But, despite all that, he did have hard rules in his guild on meta-gaming and power-emoting. He respected fair play.

TL;DR: Reed was an honest guy who cared about people. If you took the time to see the nuance and explore the grey areas of the issue, Jeyce, you’d know that, and I wouldn’t have to defend an old friend here on the public forums. In your own words:

I am forced to politely disagree and it makes me even more confident in the assumption that you don’t see where the problem is, or rather you refuse to see it.

Last of all, I’m not whitewashing anything. You’re talking about fourteen-year-old role-players who play archetypes, not original characters. We all know this story, Jeyce. We are all very aware that there are bad role-players out there (on both sides), and as there isn’t a ‘role-playing academy’, they will either never get better, or could even get worse. … But what you’re saying is nothing new, and it is not constructive.

I’m talking about well-written, fully-developed OC’s who are not taken seriously for playing criminals, when they should be. – We’re on two very different wavelengths. Night and day, but–. Hopefully, this clears things up.

As the first reply to my OP in this thread suggests:

Pretty much summed it up.
People want to be the heroes and don’t want to be the victims, or if there are any victims a hero will turn up midway through a crime and stop it.

This is the issue. The playing field needs to be leveled so that there can be feel-good moments on both sides.

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Counterpoint: I have had tons of fun on my pickpocket. It’s very anecdotal of course, but pickpocketing random people in Orgrimmar resulted in significantly more successes than failures, which meant that when failures did come they were suitably impactful.

It was on my petty thief character rather than some godlike ninja, of course, which might have made people more positively inclined.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_XIII_Gemina

Don’t suggest we’re a embarassing Warhammer 40k references ever again.

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As an Italian you just embarrassed my culture instead.

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You just embarrass me with your weird OOC behaviour ingame.

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I’ll take that as a compliment.

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You run around in a fruit hat spamming twitch emojis in /s and spams toys to wind up roleplayers in the main roleplay hub; claiming it’s allowed in the ToS.

I wish you didn’t take it as a compliment and actually stopped the disruption instead.

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Really, this is the most important thing.

I don’t actually have a clue who the people you’ve mentioned are/were, nor the guild they were in, so I can’t comment on them.

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I shall respect your wish and cease the fruit hat on all places except the barrack’s ledge.
And the ToS has changed, covering only to the naming policy, however…
I would be at fault if we’re to drop my massive sized clefthoof on a parade which falls under grieving.

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Also, I do agree that people who are unbearably negative - who find fault in everyone and meticulously catalogue the mistakes that other RPers make - are a part of the problem in this case. Sometimes I find it difficult to understand how such people can find any joy in playing the game at all.

A positive attitude or, at the very least, a live-and-let-live attitude would go a long way.

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Subjectivity.
Also text lacks tone that can change the way a message is received by another person, people tend to forget that.

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Very well surmised truth be told. Not a huge amount to add.

I think if people were more willing to be the player character and let other people be DMs, even if this person had to assume the role of nobility, law or military to do so things might work out better. But it is not easy to surrender your character to intimidation, harm or robbery and I understand why people don’t want it.

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I wouldn’t play him as my main, but sometimes it’s nice to be the support cast for an evening. (So Jarodh here, who’s an humble bone settler and little mender, and don’t live adventures so far.)

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Both the magical and the mundane have a place in Azeroth, provided that the mundane doesn’t ignore the magical.

But still, high-fantasy city with a high-fantasy criminal organisation would be :weary:

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Pretty sure it’s been attempted, from what I’ve seen, but it has a habit of degenerating into the crime bois being accused of all kinds of godmoding for little to no reason.