Yeah, that’s the first major drawback that came to my mind too. But on the other hand, criminal RPers get accused (rightly or wrongly) of godmoding all the time anyway.
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Who is Katie and, assuming it’s a RL name, should you really be using it in a public forum?
Kate Lightshield I assume, who runs (I think it was) a guard guild in SW, which means it’d only be a nickname
Perhaps criminal RP would last longer if the criminals were a little smarter. I can’t count the times I’ve seen people try to pickpocket or mug someone in Cathedral Square.
One thing I sorely miss is TRP3’s scan function that now doesn’t work with BFA. I’d use it a few times in days long gone by to scan for potential RPers walking along the roads outside main cities. Perfect place to hold people up for real crime - away from prying eyes and rampant metagamers.
Criminal RP doesn’t have a place on AD because IMO the community has changed. Gone are the real RPers who wanted to play out the journey of a band of criminals - now the ‘bad guy’ rpers just want the edgy points and the results. It’s not about thieves or cultists surviving in a world that hates and reviles them anymore, it’s about “hey what’s the most edgy and cool thing we can get away with doing?”
Lynching Void Elves and shooting pregnant women it seems.
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It’s back now, with updated TRP.
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Looks like it’s time to hold people up on the roads again…
remembers nobody leaves SW anymore
DARNIT.
I don’t know about you, but a bunch of angry manlet RPers butthurt they got void elves and venting their OOC frustrations on stuttering void elf bakers (which, might I add, is stupid but that’s a topic for another thread) doesn’t look like criminal RP to me. There’s another term we use for that kind of stuff - bad rp
criminally bad rp.
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The fact that you consider disagreement “derailing” emblematises everything wrong with organised crime RP’ers and their attitude to roleplay. It’s the same kind of entitlement that led you to create a thread complaining that other players are bad RP for refusing to conform to the “Victim” role that you’ve assigned them in a script that you’ve written for them.
This isn’t a problem restricted to “Old Town” RP, it’s been a problem with organised crime RP for years and it has had a pervasive influence on every criminal guild I’ve ever RP’d in and with, both good and bad, some of which you’ve named in your opening post- and it’s entirely because of the preoccupation with power and its maintenance. It can be extended, too, to antagonist RP in general. If your problem as a player is that other players won’t conform to your narrative expectations in order for you to realise your character concept, then the problem is the concept, or at least its execution. More on that later.
I didn’t.
I mean, I wouldn’t agree that characters like Tommy Shelby or Michael Corleone are low-grade chocolate, or even that, in the case of Michael Corleone, an obsession with power (or wealth, or fame) for its own sake is a shallow or unworthy subject for fiction - especially considering that it is Michael’s obsession with power and control which leads to the destruction of everything he ever cared about, and gives the Godfather saga its tragic element. However, the possibility of telling such a story, or realising such a character, through random RP encounters is remote to say the least - and this is precisely why I said such stories should be told through bubble RP and guild events/ campaigns/ storylines. Oh, and don’t demean people’s arguments by calling them rants, it isn’t polite.
In addition, every one of the quoted characters meets the criteria for the “good criminal roleplayer” you’ve described below:
But none of that criteria actually matters if it doesn’t manifest through their roleplay. If average Joe’s only experience of your character’s rich psychological depth is some grunting neanderthal swinging fists at him or her outside the Shady Lady, what does it matter if your character has a sweet old granny he’s trying to fund a pension for? You can cram a TRP with as much detail and nuance as you like - it doesn’t then legitimise cliched, hackneyed behaviour. And bear in mind - this is the hypothetical scenario you highlighted as being emblematic of the problem - criminals being unable to victimise Average Joe’s through violence.
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This isn’t a counter to my argument. Nowhere did I say antagonists weren’t rich with potential. But the big, big, big, BIG problem here is you keep using “plot” and “tension” as a justification for your argument - but random, walk-up RP doesn’t have a plot.
In literary criticism, plot is considered distinct from story. Plot refers to the ordering of events of the story, as they are shown to the reader or audience. Plot is structure. It is exposition - elaboration - inciting incident - complication - climax - falling action - resolution - denouement. Tension as you describe it depends on that structure. It depends on the investment and expectations of the reader or audience. It is more than just risk or jeopardy, it is more than just the stress and anxiety involved in worrying for a character’s fate, it is the anticipation of a problem or conflict and the knowledge that, one way or another, it will be resolved in a way which has lasting changes for the character, for good or for ill.
Random RP has no plot, or structure, or narrator of any kind. To me, the joy of random RP, or casual RP, or improv RP, or social RP, or whatever you want to call it, is that it is entirely character-driven, not plot-driven, and - unique amongst all mediums of fiction - it allows for a kind of story-telling which mimics the ebbs and flows of everyday life. It allows for perhaps the fullest, most true-to-life realisation of a complex human psychology in fiction, allows for the full range and breadth of human thought and feeling to be expressed, allows for the development of truly three-dimensional characters. Of course, there’s the possibility for storylines, or character arcs, to develop organically as a result of a character’s experiences and relationships - but, like in real life, there’s none of the neatness of plot, none of the tidiness of narrative.
There’s an ego, I think, an entitlement or a presumption in viewing yourself, as a criminal roleplayer, the antagonist of somebody else’s story - especially when it is on the basis of one violent interaction, in which they are expected to emerge the loser. Without the collaboration or consent of the player, such an occasion is likely to be a minor incident rather than a major event. You won’t move their story along, you won’t advance their plot, you won’t cause tension. You won’t contribute to the development of their character. And, in addition - there’s unlikely to be a resolution or a denouement. The consequences to any criminal character will never include significant or lasting disadvantage, because death or imprisonment brings an end to roleplay, and doesn’t create more.
If anything, the only tension, stress, and anxiety you will cause for the player will be entirely OOC. “How unsatisfying is this likely to be?” “How much of my time is going to be wasted?” “Why is this alleged career criminal trying to beat me up in public, in full view of patrolling guards?” “Two days after my beating, why have I encountered this same career criminal violently assaulting another person, in daylight, in an open street, in full view of the Guard, a day after their arrest?”
I want to add, by the way, that I have been a criminal roleplayer. I have dealt with, time and again, meta RP, god-emoting, and consequence dodging - most of which I used as fuel for further character development. I played a deliberately underpowered stick-up artist - an average Joe criminal with a severe depressive, self-destructive streak and an aversion to violence that rendered most of her robberies complex attempts at out-bluffing her victims. When I did stick-up somebody, I telegraphed, far in advance of the actual robbery, my character’s ill intent with subtle tells and emotes - twitchy fingers on her gun, surreptitious glances, slightly too bright smiles as they attempted to lure strangers into deserted alleyways and dead-ends - little things which gave players plenty of opportunities to back out gracefully IC, or turn the tables on my character. I wonder if you would make the same allowances for the escalation of a fight? I wonder if it’s even possible to do that, in fact.
At times her perpetual victimhood grew tiring - but, for the most part, finding herself at a physical disadvantage gave me, as a roleplayer, plenty of material to work with as she tried to talk her way out of a bad situation, or struggled to secure her survival as she got tangled up in webs she had herself blundered into.
That being said, the times I have been best able to represent my character’s cunning and insight have been in events - her greatest criminal achievements have been in DM’d heists. And this is my point - there are some concepts that require a narrator (or DM) and the structure of a plot in order to be realised properly - and organised crime is definitely one of them. And sure, you might say you disagree - but you’re the one that created a thread titled “why criminal roleplay doesn’t last or have a place on Argent Dawn”, then identified the reasons why. Those reasons aren’t ever going away.
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I’m really just bumping in here to say that you’re good with words, keep doing that writey thing, it suits you.
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You called your argument a rant in your own post.
Anyway - that’s my rant over, it’s disjointed and incoherent and I’m sure full of holes, but challenge me on it and if I find the time I’ll try to clarify/ articulate myself better.
… It’s too late for this sh**.
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… So I did. My bad! Snark withdrawn. Teach me to multi-task on five hours sleep.
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I used to do this both horde and alliance side and yeah, when I threaten a character or flex gained assets, it’s generally ignored, has no lasting effect as you said or I’m told I’m power gaming for the tools and money at my disposal, despite these characters being snakes who found their way into my existing (and at the time very successful) trading guilds.
One I used to do a lot was a grizzled veteran who had her leg destroyed by a battle gone wrong and was discharged from the kings navy, she used to go around yelling at anyone she deemed indecent, lazy, or generally disrespectful and would give the spiel of " I fought for your freedom so you could X " And often try to fight them. A handicapped, drunk, depressed character and I’d either get like, 5 action posts or totally ignored.
Ultimately, I don’t think it works without rules or pre established outcomes. The only ruleset I’ve found to work for this kind of intricate ongoing story is to use Homebrew Pathfinder RPG sessions on Roll20, but then that only affects the 10 or so people who still remaining in my guild with the downturn of BfA.
In a fantasy I know would never happen, I wish there could be one agreed upon system of Rp that’d work to the same end but despite wanting this, I know I’d be part of the problem as many of the RP systems people do use, from little dice rolled events to Rp-pvp to homebrew’s in other systems, just don’t sit right with me so I chose not to involve myself much as others will chose not to as well, and thus the community is again fractured on the continuity of criminals.
I have had successful criminal and justice RP just not able to hold that continuity through in game interaction. Most of my longest running criminal and intrigue stories have been horde side too.
Sorry, I know this offers no actual solutions, I just thought I’d share my experiences.
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Sorry, I know this offers no actual solutions, I just thought I’d share my experiences.
Valuable experiences though, mate. Your post nutshelled a lot of the injustices I was talking about in my OP, but from a player of a criminal’s point of view.
It also brings some much-needed empathy back to this thread. Most of the big posts that’ve been landing here for the last couple days have been from non-criminal role-players, and it shows.
This is it, really, isn’t it? The sad truth of WoW role-play, which I’m glad you pointed out.
In a conventional system we could simply roll a dice to inflict ourselves on others and be criminals that way, in WoW our response-tool to one another is /e. And /e is blank by default. It’s subjective. It has no luck involved. It isn’t affected by your character’s gear, roll bonuses, character development, (at least not really). No, /e is entirely down to the player’s writing ability. And if that player wants to bully your 500 lb Pandaren with her 180 lb Human, she will do; making you both look like idiots in the process.
I also wish there was an agreed-upon system. Then there could at least be a fair, accessible playing field. … And if there was a very bad, inexperienced criminal role-player bothering people (to all you I Win!-mentality advocates)… He could at least be smited down by the guards and physically knocked unconscious, teaching him consequences the right way… Solving more issues than one. – But alas.
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Is that what that is? Explains a lot. Being ignorant towards the problem is the worst way to handle it by a land mile man, yeah.
I’m very sorry to hear you gave up on criminal RP, by the way. I’d love to offer you an initiative to get involved in, but-. … I don’t know if any exist at the moment.
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Sixty Thieves.
Boom. Quick maths
Another problem is that it goes both ways to be honest. I’ve seen good interactions between criminals and law enforcement in the Bilgewater Battalion but at times we have situations where someone just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, we catch them and they act more like the Titanic is sinking and we’re all aboard rather than just accepting that they dun goofed.
Sadly our guild has gone out of trying to enforce the law outside of the occasional riot policing role as things going OOC if you’re inconvenienced as a criminal RPer is going too far. I can be wandering around one day and suddenly I get ambushed by a group invite followed by 4 people interrogating me just because criminal X got caught because they were in the Tail five minutes after we lost their trail and got caught.
I think that’s why we’re never going to have good criminal RP on this server really, because this trust goes both ways and the actions of a few hero archetype characters has caused criminal RP to become very insular and cliquey to the point where it’s extremely hard to get involved on either side.
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Said criminal roleplayer who puts all the blame for current state of criminal RP on non-criminal roleplayers.
I think the issue here is that people have come to expect the worst from some types of roleplay and just can´t be bothered even dealing with some things.
We need to remember that roleplay includes two parties, yet some people see it only as their character´s personal story, with other characters being just NPCs that happen to be controlled by real people instead of characters who are equal to their own. There is always reason behind stigmas and all the dragons who wanted to be awesome and powerful, nobles who wanted power over others and criminals who wanted to be great criminal mastermind/amazing thug probably caused some people to, as I said, stop even bothering with people who approach them as these types of characters.
You can give benefit of a doubt only finite amount of times before you stop giving a f***.
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Presumptions like this just make you look bad, boio.
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