Sapphire Rose
[I]Only thorns left on this rose.[/I]
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Chit-Chat: General Roleplay Discussion Thread "the RPD" (archived)
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machomuu
Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
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- Take a left, turn right at the next stop, bear lef
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I'd actually be quite happy being able to use characters I've made in older, defunct/discontinued roleplays. There are quite a few of them that I enjoyed playing and, honestly, if I were given a chance to do that in a RP event, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Just seems like a waste to let 'em go like that.
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It's rare to see, but occasionally people play uglier characters. As Fox pointed out, I have one. In my opinion, it depends on the setting and the general theme. A lot of our games are inspired by anime, video games, or general sci-fi/fantasy. In most of those, you see characters that are attractive, or bulky and strong, or just generically visually appealing. In gritty, dark genre's, like the old west or "realistic" apocalypse stories, you'll see uglier, more flawed characters.
I also blame the option to use pictures instead of descriptions. Even gritty, dark characters tend to look better in fan art and drawings. Plus, I've noticed a trend of people using anime style pictures, which in general have a cleaner, prettier look.
So, the theme of the story and the medium of the pictures tend toward cuter, more visually appealing characters. Personality helps, too. Most ugly characters, I find, are either villains, misunderstood loners, or comic relief. Even I'm guilty of that. Most of my gruff or ugly characters aren't meant to be taken seriously, and serve as foils to the more handsome characters. I guess I enjoy the comically serious or bumbling fat guy tropes.
...what? Thought I was just the funny guy? I can overthink and analyze things, too. Hidden depths!
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Hello I'm not entirely new to RP's but I am new to PC and just want to say hi and hope to enjoy RPing with a lot of you. Sorry if this sounds like an introduction but might as well start off with a hello right? :)
Hello, looking forward to RPing with you also!
Make sure you have read up on the rules and all that, otherwise if you need a hand with anything feel free to drop me a VM/PM (or of course ask one of our three glorious mods).
On the topic of "perfectly pretty characters"...
I feel like the reasons mentioned are fairly accurate... but in my opinion it's probably due to "protagonist syndrome".
As writers, people will be proud and excited to act out their characters actions in written word. A lot of the time, especially with newer Role players, people will tend to want their character to be someone of major importance to the story and subconsciously when building their characters they will try and include certain aspects that will make them more appealing as a central character. This can sometimes bleed into personality, which leads to "Mary-sues and Gary-stues", but the more common example is found in the appearance section.
Ninety percent of the time in media of all forms the main character is good-looking, attractive and likable. This is because these qualities make us like the stories protagonist more and root for them to be victorious, "quirky" aspects like physical imperfections and weight can be added to side characters and villains to give them their own charm. So long as they don't take away from the protagonist.
As people we will always be influenced by other people, we know that the populace likes better looking characters most of the time and without even thinking on it deeply we often want our own characters to match these standards. As we get better at RP we begin to see that every story needs characters whom are more imperfect in personality AND appearance (it makes for better character development and more potential for interesting sub-plots), though even then we still tend to make "pretty and perfect" looking characters from time to time.
Now, I'm not saying that making beautiful characters is a bad thing at all, nor am I saying it's a primarily rookie mistake. I'm just saying that it's a common thing and it tends to be more frequent with newer players.
At the end of the day, in writing games such as these, appearance is only one small factor in the larger scheme of things and I find that other aspects are much much more important. Still, it's fun to talk about and improving on these tropes is a way to improve all of our skill in the long run.
Once again though, this is just my two cents on the issue.
And hello there Haunter! Seems you've managed to make your way to the RP trouble without any trouble... welcome to the hub of interactive writing games here on PC! I anticipate many great RPs in our futures!
I feel like the reasons mentioned are fairly accurate... but in my opinion it's probably due to "protagonist syndrome".
As writers, people will be proud and excited to act out their characters actions in written word. A lot of the time, especially with newer Role players, people will tend to want their character to be someone of major importance to the story and subconsciously when building their characters they will try and include certain aspects that will make them more appealing as a central character. This can sometimes bleed into personality, which leads to "Mary-sues and Gary-stues", but the more common example is found in the appearance section.
Ninety percent of the time in media of all forms the main character is good-looking, attractive and likable. This is because these qualities make us like the stories protagonist more and root for them to be victorious, "quirky" aspects like physical imperfections and weight can be added to side characters and villains to give them their own charm. So long as they don't take away from the protagonist.
As people we will always be influenced by other people, we know that the populace likes better looking characters most of the time and without even thinking on it deeply we often want our own characters to match these standards. As we get better at RP we begin to see that every story needs characters whom are more imperfect in personality AND appearance (it makes for better character development and more potential for interesting sub-plots), though even then we still tend to make "pretty and perfect" looking characters from time to time.
Now, I'm not saying that making beautiful characters is a bad thing at all, nor am I saying it's a primarily rookie mistake. I'm just saying that it's a common thing and it tends to be more frequent with newer players.
At the end of the day, in writing games such as these, appearance is only one small factor in the larger scheme of things and I find that other aspects are much much more important. Still, it's fun to talk about and improving on these tropes is a way to improve all of our skill in the long run.
Once again though, this is just my two cents on the issue.
And hello there Haunter! Seems you've managed to make your way to the RP trouble without any trouble... welcome to the hub of interactive writing games here on PC! I anticipate many great RPs in our futures!
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Welcome to the Roleplay Corner! ;) what kinds of RPs do you like?
I love the idea of being able to use characters from defunct RPs! How about you'd sign up in a stickied OOC thread by simply linking to the SU post of any char you have made and want to play as?
We could also vary the IC setting every month or so. To start off, maybe it's a hotel with descriptions of various places within. Then next month it becomes a medieval castle. Then suddenly we're castaways on a tropical island...
The settings could be presented as new "chapters" in the same IC thread and you wouldn't have to sign up anew and could just keep playing as whoever you happened to be (unless you want to change). The mods could try to keep a list of which player is currently playing what character.
... Or we could just start new ooc and ic threads every time we change setting, but that would make the threads shorter and not as history-filled in the long run.
That sounds like so much fun! I'd love to play as a specific (slightly murderous) character across various stories and setting in an RP like that one. The setting changing idea is excellent and the ideas you posted alone have me excited... hotel, island medieval castle... it all sounds so cool! *Eyes sparkle.*
I'll definitely be joining it if we go through with it and if you ask me a single OOC and IC thread would be best with the setting changing every so often. That way we have a record f all the previous chapters so that one day in times to come we can look back and say. "Dang, this thing is awesome."
Foxrally
[img]http://i.imgur.com/omi0jS3.gif[/img]
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OMG I love this idea so muchhh
It's copyrighted though. The only way you'll receive my permission to use it is if you make Blarzigord the mascot of the RPC.
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Provide me with a picture of Blarzigord, lord of all aliens, and I'll put him in the splash banner.
Foxrally
[img]http://i.imgur.com/omi0jS3.gif[/img]
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Blarzigord looks a lot like Kang (or is that Kodos?)
But that's okay because Blarzigord can be whatever he wants to be, one of the perks of being a supreme overlord.
I support the "use old characters" idea, that's what I did with Smash which was really fun whilst it lasted. Unfortunately it just went up at a bad time and everyone became too busy IRL. I have a suggestion though, if you make it a long running thing, I think it might be cool to open it up to characters from FF&W as well to perhaps draw some more interest into this section and help our "cousins" in that section with their characters at the same time.
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That is an awesome idea! We could work together with Bay to advertise it in there. Maybe even put up an announcement or redirect thingy on the index so that people could find it easily if they feel like making their characters coming alive.
I would love to see that become a reality.
I've had a lot of characters honestly, so I'm not totally sure. My One Piece character Skellen would be really fun and my character from the old Hoenn Grand Festival Event would be pretty fun too I think.
Foxrally
[img]http://i.imgur.com/omi0jS3.gif[/img]
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Aahah, you guys better give me credit for this >:D
I'd love to have Sophia from Gunpowder or Ryan the waterbender from Avatar New Legends. Sophia would rant about her day and Ryan would constantly make puns.
"Ugh, I tell you - being in a roleplay GMed by that pie dude is so stressful."
"Oh, you mean GM-e-pie?"
"..."
"Come one, you have to gimme credit for that one, it was good.
"**** you, I'm going to the One Piece guys."
Turnip
Magnificent Turnip
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Turnip. The Turnip that led to me being called Turnip. Turnip the Turnip. All the way.
From the looks of things, this little café get together RP character thingy is at the very least chipping away a bit at the fourth wall :P How do you guys feel about the fourth wall in this sort of thing? Should it be preserved as much as possible? Entirely abolished? Or is it just down to each individual RPer?
Foxrally
[img]http://i.imgur.com/omi0jS3.gif[/img]
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The fourth wall is meant to be destroyed in this sort of RP, although in the end it's up to everyone :P
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