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Roleplay Discussion Thread

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Hi everyone! :) I was tossing around starting a RP. I'm still working on it but here is a little sneak-peek trailer of it.

In a world where magic and machine collide, two young heroes depart on a perilous adventure. Momo Ardal, a spunky water magician with a short temper, and her brother Lucus Ardal, a curious goofball who is an excellent earth magician, set out in search of the legendary Acala. Little do our heroes know, a dark cloud looms over the land of Lacardia. Lutharan, a cruel and power-hungry king, seeks the power of the Acala to rule both man and machine. Can Momo and Lucus stop the deranged king from taking over the world? Or will Lutharan enslave the world and become all powerful? The answers to these questions and more lie within the magical world of Lacardia.

There will be more characters then just Momo, and Lucus. Those two are just the two main characters I created. (and more bad guys then just Lutharan) I originally made this as a story for one of my assignments. :P So some tweeking is needed. But what do you guys think for the general idea of it? Magic and Machines meet/combine in this world.

Hm. Well, for one, a question came to my mind: what kind of magic, and what kind of technology? These are terms that have gotten standards, over all the times they've been used. You mention water and earth, does magic have to do with the elements? On a different matter, apart from the setting, the plot seems... random, and quite normal. There is the hero, and the villain, by the looks and sounds of it. I suggest you find something to spice it up a bit; saying this, without knowing what you have already planned. Also, you place these characters as if they have to be used by others. Why not let others make their own characters? Overall, I'd say you could work on it a bit more, add some nice but crucial details that bind the setting with the plot, the magic and the machinery with the storyline.
 

Miss Doronjo

Gaiden
4,473
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I sort of want opinions on this, but:

What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

What I mean is, characters come in all shapes and sizes -- what sort of personality and traits would a character need to be interesting to roleplay as, or to read about? Or are there more factors, like... the backstory?

...If this all makes sense! I might of worded it awkwardly, haha.
 
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Sapphire Rose

[I]Only thorns left on this rose.[/I]
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What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

Imperfect characters with a lot of fails.

Sounds weird doesn't it? But I honestly don't like perfect characters. They are boring to roleplay with and it's harder to make funny moments occur (don't want to offend anyone with this). It's more fun for a roleplayer to have an imperfect character with fails, they eventually change later on but at least it'll be great for awhile.
 
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What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

Imperfect characters with a lot of fails.

Sounds weird doesn't it? But I honestly don't like perfect characters. They are boring to roleplay with and it's harder to make funny moments occur (don't want to offend anyone with this). It's more fun for a roleplayer to have an imperfect character with fails, they eventually change later on but at least it'll be great for awhile.

I agree with Pink. Even though when I think about it, I seldom make characters with faults. I should think about that more carefully :] Might make a player care more about their character than if it had a generic personality/situation.

Also, characters who can and want to interact with others are good. Sure, maybe someone wants to play a gloomy, asocial character once in a while for whatever reasons, but they are not really easy to RP with. I'm not saying RPing should be easy at all times either, but when a character's personality doesn't make it likely that he or she would want to talk to or even be near other characters... the point of RPing kind of gets lost, don't you think?
 

Xlugon Pyro

Dragon Tamer
308
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16
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What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

The context of the roleplay is important. They need to fall within the game world's limits of possibility. I often see half-breeds of compatible races receive scrutiny for a variety of reasons, but even if they're rare, I wont hold it against the character and its player even if said combos have a bad rap in the community for being poorly designed characters. It's not the player's fault that a ton of people had the idea he/she had. If a certain lore topic is controversial, I advise avoiding it for characters, but too often I see faulty claims by other so-called roleplaying and lore experts that are just flat out false, so more than anything the character must be well written with a variety of traits that don't contradict each other too much.

I personally do not like characters that are too flawed. With all of the stigma out there against Mary/Gary Sues and the like, I see the opposite extreme of characters that are doing everything wrong and are just messed up with that design being intentional. I find these characters to be far too shallow and boring, but I suppose that same thing translates to real life as well. I generally don't like people who don't have a deeper moral conscience or are those obsessed with materialism.
 

StinkomanFan

The Thing with Questionable Taste
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A Good Roleplaying Character?
Personally, I like an RPer's character to be a different entity of the one controlling them. Like speaking to the character would be different than speaking with the writer. It's the level of depth within the character that separates them from the actor that makes great heroes out of bad people and keeps fiction so entrancing. Another thing I like about in a character is how to see how their process works, how each one would come up with a different solution to the same puzzle. Place them in a basic situation and let your mind flow into what would be the most realistic option for him or her.

I personally like the "Locked Room" method I read somewhere. "Your character is locked in a room and wants out, how would they go about doing it?" Scenarios like these not only help you come up with new solutions but new ideas for different characters.
 

EvilSkittles

Lord of the kitchen
75
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14
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Y'all still aren't making sense. So are ya just pulling them off the top of y'alls head or is this coming from something else?
 
25,503
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They are questions that the original asker wants answered be it something they heard elsewhere or something they thought of themselves.
 
37,467
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From the unmentionables. Never mention the unmentionables.

Rule One of Unmentionables, don't talk about Unmentionables?

Sometimes the best solution is to just go with it.

Hahaha what is happening

Yes, the questions we pose in this thread? A person is usually either wondering something specific and wants to scout our little community for opinions or answers, or they want to steer the discussion in this thread in a better direction and thus pose a question we can begin discussing instead of whatever we previously talked about.
 

Somniac

Probably sleeping.
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A Good Roleplaying Character?
Personally, I like an RPer's character to be a different entity of the one controlling them. Like speaking to the character would be different than speaking with the writer. It's the level of depth within the character that separates them from the actor that makes great heroes out of bad people and keeps fiction so entrancing. Another thing I like about in a character is how to see how their process works, how each one would come up with a different solution to the same puzzle. Place them in a basic situation and let your mind flow into what would be the most realistic option for him or her.

I personally like the "Locked Room" method I read somewhere. "Your character is locked in a room and wants out, how would they go about doing it?" Scenarios like these not only help you come up with new solutions but new ideas for different characters.

I try my best to alienate myself from my characters and see them from an objective viewpoint as an outsider, it helps me work out how they should respond and act without imposing some of my personality on them unintentionally.

What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

Imperfect characters with a lot of fails.

Sounds weird doesn't it? But I honestly don't like perfect characters. They are boring to roleplay with and it's harder to make funny moments occur (don't want to offend anyone with this). It's more fun for a roleplayer to have an imperfect character with fails, they eventually change later on but at least it'll be great for awhile.

Perfect characters with no flaws are known as mary-sues and are indeed terrible and difficult to RP with. I also dislike any RPing with anyone who has one of those ridiculously tragic backstories where every single thing goes wrong with their character and they have the worst luck ever. It's a similar deal, just makes it difficult to RP with that character.

Obviously, ballancing competence and bad luck is what makes a good character, but just don't overdo it guys.
 

machomuu

Stuck in Hot Girl Summer
10,507
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16
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Perfect characters with no flaws are known as mary-sues and are indeed terrible and difficult to RP with. I also dislike any RPing with anyone who has one of those ridiculously tragic backstories where every single thing goes wrong with their character and they have the worst luck ever. It's a similar deal, just makes it difficult to RP with that character.
I'm think that's backwards; Mary-Sues are characters that have "terrible tragic pasts" while perfect characters are simply perfect characters.
EDIT: Ah, they really encompass both of the tropes.

Though really, despite the fact that I do it as well, I don't think that a character needs to have flaws initially or at all. A flawless being isn't always a perfect one, one can still not have any visible flaws and still not be the best that they could be. There's nothing wrong with creating a flawless character by itself, so long as they can't handle any and all challenges or situations that come their way.
 
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Kawaii Pikachu :3

"The Cutiest Pokemon Gamer!"
202
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11
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Hm. Well, for one, a question came to my mind: what kind of magic, and what kind of technology? These are terms that have gotten standards, over all the times they've been used. You mention water and earth, does magic have to do with the elements? On a different matter, apart from the setting, the plot seems... random, and quite normal. There is the hero, and the villain, by the looks and sounds of it. I suggest you find something to spice it up a bit; saying this, without knowing what you have already planned. Also, you place these characters as if they have to be used by others. Why not let others make their own characters? Overall, I'd say you could work on it a bit more, add some nice but crucial details that bind the setting with the plot, the magic and the machinery with the storyline.

I understand where you are coming from. I just used Momo and Lucus because this is actually a story I had to write for an assignment so I had to come up with a character or two who could take on the villain. I'm basically turning this story into an RP. I will let people come up with their own characters. Being the GM (I'll probably find someone else to GM with me) but I might use Momo or Lucus as my characters since I had to create them to begin with :P There will be different races to choose from as well. Humans and Drone are just two of the races. I'm working on the others.

The plot is where I am spending the most time tweeking. It is exciting in the story but I know I have to turn the plot into an RP plot since I won't know how my participants will "act" out the story. I'm trying to pick some major points out of the story that will help guide the RP and am putting them to the side. Once I feel like I have enough I'll combine them and see what kind of plot it is or if I have to end up making something completely new.

Right now I just wanted to see how people would react to the idea of a RP like this and if I would even have anyone join. It would suck a lot to do all this work for it and no one bothers to join. :\ But I guess that's the risk everyone takes when making RPs. :P

The magic will be elemental based: Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, and then Light and Dark. Earth beats Wind, Wind beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Fire beats Earth. Like in Pokémon the elemental order will determine how much damage is done in battle. All attacks will do some damage if they hit but if say a fire attack is used on a water magician the damage will be halved. Light and Dark beat each other but are neutral to the other four elements. They do the normal amount of damage to each of the four and the four do the same to them. I'm thinking about creating a new special race that are the only ones to use the Light and Dark elements.

As for the technology, I want the feel to be like the olden days but with advanced technology. There are cars/trunks/tanks/etc. There will be flying ships (no space ships) but only the rich and the military own them and the cars/trucks/etc. Farmers and others like that will have old, semi-broken down trucks to carry feed and stuff like that but it's the basic "poor mans" technology. So our heroes will have to walk everywhere until they can find (or fix up) a ship/truck/etc. There will be drones (robots basically) that have AI's that make them like humans. They are normally used by the Kingdom to keep the peace and are like the police. There are a few that are a part of the general population but only in the bigger cities (unless something brought them to a small village). There will be the technology to have mechanical limbs to if someone wants to have like a robot eye or arm they can. The technology will also be mixed with magic. Like the ships will be ran on Wind magic and characters can have weapons that are combined with magic. Like one weapon I came up with are two silver pistols that use fire magic and shoot fireballs as their bullets. Things like that.

There will be character classifications as well. Like magician, drone, mechanic, and medic. Normally there will be two classes to each character. Like Magician and Mechanic to help create new weapons that use magic and also so the mechanic can fight in battle more then they normally would. Those that choose to do a non-attack class can still participate in battle. They will just use guns or knives. Things that normal humans would use to fight with.

Magician ~ self explanatory, uses magic to attack or manipulate the environment
Drone ~ a mechanical robot with a human AI (have the main firepower of the group but slow)
Mechanic ~ fixes broken down weapons, armor, drones, cars, ships, etc.
Medic ~ self explanatory. Normally dual classed with mechanic to be able to outfit patients with mechanical limbs/eyes/etc.
 

Nakuzami

[img]https://i.imgur.com/iwlpePA.png[/img]
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Oh, hey, I love what you guys are talking about! //has no idea what's going on

So many new interesting rps, I just wanna sign up for all of them. I'm actively having to hold myself back here, anyone else have this problem?

Every. Single. Day. O_o

What would you say defines a good roleplay character?

Character.

Or, in a less redundant way of saying it: humanity.

A good roleplay character has believable human qualities; a believable story, personality, and whatnot. No, that doesn't mean the story has to be realistic. I just mean that they can't be too . . . too great, if you know what I mean? The characters would become Mary Sues if they were too 'great'.

I'm not quite sure how to explain this. I think you all should get what I'm saying though, right? xD

Aaaaand

I was wondering

since I've been playing it a lot recently (first time playing it)

what does everyone think of an Assassin's Creed-esque roleplay? I have no intentions of making one, at least not in the near future, but I think it's a neat idea. ;3
 
25,503
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11
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Hey guys, Novia is nearly full so if you want to get in I suggest you get in quick.

As for the current topic, I believe that a good character needs the possibility of character growth so they can develop beyond the basic design of the SU, regardless how skilled/powerful/lovable/etc they are they need to have some flaw they need to work on or room to develop or they become boring. That being said I do believe that the RPer also has something to do with what defines a good character because really a good character is one that the RPer can easily get into character as and easily write as. For example, I tend to play more quiet, academic types, although I do sometimes branch out, because those are the character that are easiest for me to writes as and the most fun for me personally to play as.
 
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