Role-playing

[Harroghty]

I've seen many different styles of role-playing over my years with this game (and role-playing elsewhere). A thought occurred to me earlier today: I believe that role-playing is not just expressing yourself fluidly in smotes and emotes, but it's assuming the role of your PC. It's about what your PC is saying and doing, not as much about how they are saying and doing it. (Their actions expressed artistically in good descriptions is a plus!)

[Aysa]

It's not only about what's being said, or the aesthetics of how it's being said... but it's what being said / how they are saying it ICly (while OOCly you're screaming at your own character to just shut up... ). Whether that's standing before a Kelemvor and explaining why you "defiled" a corpse, or being a lowly priestess of Lolth and chastising a half-drow that could easily rip you in two. You are playing a role, and get consumed by that role and not the "ROLL" (as it were).

Anyway, that's my two cents.

[Ungtar]

It's why I sometimes end up abandoning characters at a certain point. Sometimes a certain type of roleplay becomes exhausting, or it feels too contrived, or just isn't as much fun later on as I thought it would be.

[Bellayana]

Lauds for Aysa's posts and I echo it's sentiments. I actually have come to notice that roleplaying is a difficult aspect to get into sometimes. Getting into a character, developing a backstory, researching the culture behind the race or religion. Faerun has a whole cosmos and it's way too big for my brain. (Which cannot hold anything.) But playing a character in this world is affecting and influencing the world and the game as a whole. Your character can go as far as you make him/or her (cough) I try to always reward good roleplay, conflict isn't a bad thing. I know one of my characters has been thrown in the Waterdeep stocks for doing something IC and it caused conflict (big surprise?) Don't be afraid to make characters!

[Rhangalas]

I think it should also be noted that not all RP is common knowledge. That is to say, there is no one character that knows every experience of another. Given this, you really cannot judge another PCs action s as out-of-character or inordinate unless you have a significant amount of time playing with them. There is a lot of RP that goes on behind the mainstream that goes unnoticed or is not revealed. I've found that if you see an experienced player somewhere odd or doing something odd - chances are, they have a valid reason for it.

I say this not to be rude, but because since I have started playing regularly again, I have noticed this trend of, "You are not in my immediate circle, so you have no business being involved in this." or PCs will insinuate that you are acting OOC because you are in a certain location or RPing with characters that they believe that you shouldn't be; even though their PC has never met your PC nor know anything about them.

[Ungtar]

I think it should also be noted that not all RP is common knowledge. That is to say, there is no one character that knows every experience of another. Given this, you really cannot judge another PCs action s as out-of-character or inordinate unless you have a significant amount of time playing with them. There is a lot of RP that goes on behind the mainstream that goes unnoticed or is not revealed. I've found that if you see an experienced player somewhere odd or doing something odd - chances are, they have a valid reason for it.

I say this not to be rude, but because since I have started playing regularly again, I have noticed this trend of, "You are not in my immediate circle, so you have no business being involved in this." or PCs will insinuate that you are acting OOC because you are in a certain location or RPing with characters that they believe that you shouldn't be; even though their PC has never met your PC nor know anything about them.

Well, as a new player I will say that there is a certain clannishness amongst the older players, but it can be broken through. Some of my character concepts worked out where I could shoehorn into other roleplay okay, but some didn't.

It's sort of like real life ... find a friend and then they'll introduce you to their friends and pretty soon you have a circle.

There's a lot of twinking going on which also sort of breaks up the rp of a new player when you do find a friend. A couple of people I exp'd with at rat hill at level 5, I come back three days later and they're in their late 20's and nowhere I can hang out with them. Because their high level mage buddies follow them around and keep them stoneskinned!

I kind of get the feeling the player base used to be larger and FK is suffering from the same problem most muds are ... a top heavy player base. A lot of high levels and not a lot of low levels.

[Kaaurk]

Some people have far more time to play the game then others so are going to have more time to level. I work 10-12 hours a day 5-7 days a week depending. I level slower then those who have more time but I still enjoy the game. Make of it what you want and don't concern yourself with what other people are doing you'll have more fun that way.

Also there are indeed a lot of older players but those older players tend to make new characters so you'll find the game is quite diverse level wise.

I'll say it again in closing. Make the game what you want to make it and play for yourself if you concern yourself overly much with other plays you'll not have as much fun.

[Mele]

I hope to see this thread take a more positive turn.

A lot of times when people feel uninvited it's because others simply do not think to invite. Invite yourself! Take part, send tells! Ask questions! Are the goodies going to hug your evil aura alt? No, not likely. But that hardly means they don't want you around for OOC reasons. Did that person out level you in a few days time because of stone skin? Not likely! It's a level 4 spell so their friend doesn't even need to be max level to have helped them!

I believe the message of the OP of this thread is to point out just how much all of these other things should not be an affect/excuse of roleplay. That when you roleplay, you should think "Bob would do this." not "I'm going to do this as Bob, because these people are OOC/Overleveled/Not roleplaying properly/etc."

Immerse yourself in the character and enjoy the roleplay that comes from that! It's the finest type there is!

[Bellayana]

I have been playing here for a while, and the staff fully supports players playing their character, I won't lie there are times when people's rp irks me, but I shrug it off. It's a game. Roleplay, and make things happen. We are the players, and we need to remember that our Lvl 20 character is not going to be able to do epic things, don't push too hard, Twinks, I love you, but I hate you. You suck the RP out of the story, and character development. Leveling System I love you, but I hate you. Who the hell knows how it really works, it does as it does. Simple as that. Roleplay people, seek people out, send an otell and say Hey I got this idea, and I blah blah blah. They can either go, eh I'm not comfortable with that or they can say Hey great, that can start some rp!

For the love of nothing in this world, just don't jump to conculsions. It is a matter of looking at the game, as a roleplay intensive game.

[Ungtar]

Oh, don't think it's taking a negative turn. Not at all. I totally dig it. But I've had some problems finding people to do things with. I do not particularly enjoy playing the never-seen-anything, fresh-off-the-farm level 2 character in the market square and I don't have a level 50 top-of-the-line anything to sit around and be awesome.

I've got 5-6 adventuring buddies at this point who go out and do things and that helps somewhat. My BIGGEST problem with the game is that I can't decide which character I want to play. I can't exactly lay blame at the game's feet over that.

ETA:

Also, as a perspective, the game I came from I have been playing for SIXTEEN YEARS. I'd been a player, a builder, a coder, and then a player again. I knew every bit and byte of the code and how everything worked and there wasn't a room in the game I hadn't been in or a character class or race I hadn't leveled a character up to the top in.

So a LOT of my game frustration is just that I don't know squat about squat. The ASK channel is remarkable for giving me access to what I want to know and I have appreciated the heck out of that as a resource.

[Ungtar]

Just to add so we're perfectly clear ... I am loving this game. I ain't playing 14 hours a day because I hate it.

[Rhangalas]

There's a lot of twinking going on which also sort of breaks up the rp of a new player when you do find a friend. A couple of people I exp'd with at rat hill at level 5, I come back three days later and they're in their late 20's and nowhere I can hang out with them.

It's not really twinking, maybe speed leveling to a degree, but it is because once you are able to go beyond Rat Hill there is a progression of leveling areas for each level bracket. With a group, you can knock down levels and easily move on to the next area in line to do the same.

I wouldn't recommend it. What I normally do is level in intervals - once I reach a specific level, I stop leveling and use any further experience gained to learn new skills/spells , RP/Quest to flesh out the character, and give skills and abilities some time to improve.

Sure, levels open up more of the game to you, but the extra content will be useless to you if your PC is not strong enough to survive it.

[Ungtar]

That's absolutely good advice. My dwarf warrior climbed levels rapidly and quickly found himself hitting the late 20's with mediocre skills. So that stuck me with a bunch of feat points points I couldn't spend because I didn't meet the skill requirements.

I'd like to be able to move away from Howling Peak a little more, but location, location, location. It's where the xp is and the people are.

On a previous mud I played we would "seed" rarely used areas with magic items and treasures or sometimes a quest chain or other reward. That moved people around a little more.

Still though, some people are explorers and some aren't.