Role-Playing Aesthetics

[Sienna_Rose]

(now to give away, or hint at, one of my most secret characters, 'cause this popped into my head)

Know from the start
This game I play
It is an art.
Learn all its rules
Lest you be bested
By silly fools.


No offense, the char speaks in rhyme, all of the time. And, she counts herself a fool - I'm certainly not calling anyone in this discussion a fool. Anyway. . . Free Form RP as a game or art? I think it can be counted either way. . . we're, uh. . improvisational novelists! Yeah, that's it.

As to aesthetics - everyone has their own tastes. Heck, mine change from day to day. Someone makes a long entrance, one day I'll think to myself, "Wonderful, another novel writer." Another day, I'll look at the same entrance and think, "Hmmm... good descriptives in there, nice touch."
Yes, we have to get into our characters' heads enough to make them come to life. But, that can be done with short sentences as well as long. Simple imagery or complex. That goes for any form of writing. We can be as verbose as Tolkein, or as precise as a psychologist writing an evaluation. It's all individual. And that is how it should be.

 

[Alek]

Does anyone else think it's ironic that the kind of people who would be helped by such a system, are not the ones that would actually read and understand that?

I think, to put it simply, you need to make a character based around a personality. A personality that is interesting, engaging, mysterious, what have you, but it needs to *feel* alive for others to want to interact with them.


Also, free form RP can be an art form, just like any other literary work. It can also be just a game, or both at times.

 

[Kalreil]

Alek is right. And as I have seen on several things"You know you roleplay too much if you talk about your characters like they are real people", The most memorable ones seem like real people, not just to you, but to those they interact with.

 

[Qijdi]

Well said everyone...

Enjoyment is indeed a great deal of the name of the game..

Yes... I've favored structure and method.. it's the right of every player to choose their path.. Another friend of mine choose randomosity.. the list goes on..

One thing that is certian is that there is a distinct difference between IC and OOC. This line is much thinner than most would care to admit and can lead to all kinds of mischief, both fun and then not.. In another example, those of us who are observant often notice right away if someone can seperate reality from fantasy and those who can blend and then those who can't... Alll have their place and usually end up in their own circles until it is time to graduate to the next level. I'll never forget Zathius... Or Filthius as Q used to address him.. This was a young one who delighted in making a nuscience of himself - everywhere... Frankly... such oddities add to the colour of the room and can often be very amusing.. Especially remembering the night that player arrived under another guise and literally challenged Qijdi to a duel after flitting about doing the same to others.... I found it quite amusing how he left... stompping out infuriated at being virtually ignored, then whirling back in with his big, bastadonic sword of unoerthly doom just to directly confront one of the folks who does not intefere on a usual basis - HAHAHAH!!! then plunging his toy * snicker * deep into Goldy's right foot... Filthius's current guise quickly found out that his play thing was quickly lost and he was face first in the corner again... OMG!!!!! It was tooooo pristine.. That and along with how many folks came by to PM in misunderstanding tht I was offended by such an ounce of bad behavior... or tht Q could be so... was very nice that... at any rate... What was not ok was how the player then decided to try to snertily powergame... saying he was behind Goldy when G already had the stool and his back against the bar and I had clearly beat him to the posts all the way to the gentle port to the nearest corner... That... was poor form on his part... Now We are unaware if he's been back, but that was one of the ones who served, like me, to add colour - whether he knew it or not.. At any rate.. What is not acceptable is indeed being rude OOC, especially concerning a play that makes no sense... We will not name names or the event tonight, but IC and OOC are to be kept as seperate as possible... If someone came to one of my chars and We allowed he or she to " catch a tigre by its toe... " that person would have to be able to substantiate the grounds and reasons for such an ingress to convince this antique of the validity of said move... On the other hand..... If it's so frigging clever that We are amused... then it really doesn't matter.. so long as it's fun.

What has been in debate of late along with general gaming aesthetics... are the attempts to overly control creativity... This takes away from the " Virtual Realism " of the fantastic venture, and carves away more and more avenues for " Fun & Creativity " as those who step heavily and with little thought or consciousness begin to suffer from greed and jealousy... in their attempts to spread the same to others... I've seen how many have left because of this.. WE... are as good as gold about Our word... and promised to at least maintain presence, but others are not so bound. Some of us are here to simply phaff about to relieve pressure... others are here for learning... others still enjoy the complicated medium for what it is.. A wonderous stage of the imagination as real as Carl Sagan's Ship Of the Imagination... Thing is... if someone seeks to play with the " Big Boys & Girls " who've been at it or years and know tons... it is always acceptable so long as we all choose to work with each other and stay within reasonable lines of adjudication concordant with the matters and characters at hand... You Know??? It is perfectly alright to ask questions, just be prepared for the answers whatever they may be.. That's why some of us are neophytes and the rest of us are on different rungs of the ladder.. Another obvious point, " We've All Been There " It has been my expierence that most decent players will be glad to help another understand the in's and out's of things....even if a time for discussion must be arranged later.. Heck... I watched and learned for an entire year at least before going at it hammer and tongs, but that's me. If folks make a genuine effort... most others will respond unless they are just total jerks... and we've seen those too..


One thing about a really sound RP session... The rest of the players around a body can become as white noise when the player is devoted enough to the RP. Method acting is so very rewarding in the long run... It calls on every aspect of a person's training and all their knowledge and expierence and wisdom.. * chuckles softly * Even if there isn't much of it at the time..

It's both a simple matter & complex... depending on play. What I'd like to see is folks happily productive again like we used to be during the days of Hasbro servers, where folks had plays that lasted for months and you actually had to even petition to get in on some of them.. or be asked at a pivotal moment..... I have so many good memories of those days that play like movies in a holodeck whenever I wish.. for example... I was there the day the tavern vanished and BG was obliterated.. a player with the handle of Avalanchrider has the Tavern's original " No Fighting " sign and I have BGs left big toe ( HAH! ) Yes... no one's getting that back.. have him regrow another * smirks and chuckles *

Oh... and one important thing Trels.. the timeout on the service is too short.. I can't even process email while watching a 30 min TV program and watching chats for an opening. We understand not letting folks sit idle for hours and hours when others need to log on, and bandwidth costs money. The seriously short time also makes it difficult to bring on more than one character without becomming rabid about using them all at the same time... Sometimes... I just like to watch and or wait till someone I know popps by... It is also known that the system can be properly set to get rid of that double login that's never been fixed... Fatora's chat works perfectly and she also uses flashchat... Please attend to the problem..

Thanks folks.. and Rama Bless,

Qij.

 

[Magi_Gabriel]

Oh... and one important thing Trels.. the timeout on the service is too short.. I can't even process email while watching a 30 min TV program and watching chats for an opening. We understand not letting folks sit idle for hours and hours when others need to log on, and bandwidth costs money. The seriously short time also makes it difficult to bring on more than one character without becomming rabid about using them all at the same time... Sometimes... I just like to watch and or wait till someone I know popps by... It is also known that the system can be properly set to get rid of that double login that's never been fixed... Fatora's chat works perfectly and she also uses flashchat... Please attend to the problem..

As the magi's tech monkey I should address this one, I'm always working to try to fix bugs like the time out problem however it is complicated given that EN World is a huge server that is administrated by someone else and I can't tinker with various settings or stop them from tinkering them.

That and Flashchat doesn't come with any documentation and consists of thousands of lines of code, so it can take me a while to sort out bugs.

 

[Qijdi]

Very well then... Thank you Gabriel for continuing to work on the issues... It's unfortunate that certian aspects of the server are so placed, but that's life... We simply felt it necessary to note the descrepancy due to it's consistent nature.

Flashchat can indeed be almost infuriatingly short-sighted in so many ways....but at least it works.

 

[Elf_Ariel]

Hmmm I read this, and I find it rather insightful, somewhat out of my depth and far more tactful that I'd ever dream to be. I'm not known for deep thoughts, or rather for expressing them when I have them. But for a moment, bare with me and I'll at least try, for my own sake perhaps.

The moment someone speaks to me of aesthetics my mind tends to wander just a little to ergonomics, designing something for human usability. Perhaps it's not just how 'well' you're playing the character you are playing, but the need that the character fills in others. Through experimentation, trials, countless errors I've somehow managed to develop a little cache of understanding on the how-to's of effective characters. The most important and central of these is to what I'd call egonomically designing my characters. If you're not offering something that other characters want to interact with, then typically your character isn't going to see much interaction. There has to be things there that other people think/see that their characters need. I think I just repeated myself didn't I...hmmm... These things vary, dependant on what characters you are intending on interracting with. As with real life people, not everyone suits everyone, it's a false assumption that you can make a character to blend amongst all other characters. Amongst actors and other artists one would put ergonomics 'playing' to your audience. In Freeform the audience is whoever/whatever you've chosen to play with. Some of us have altered our styles in accordance to our characters. Hence why the 'groupies' form. If a character fulfills the capabilities and requirements of certain other characters that's where we should naturally 'play' them. What's the use in forcing the 'box' when we know for a fact that it doesn't work. On the other hand this is not to say we should create all our characters to fulfill the same character needs, (believe me I'm guilty of this several times over.) Part of being an artist is being able to do more than just one form. I'm struggling, but that's okay, patience.

Perhaps there's where to leave it, until the rest of my jumbled thoughts get remotely chronological. Then I'll try again.

 

[NYC News]

Playing and playing

I tend to run in both the CRT and TMP settings, obviously with different characters.

While CRT is relatively unbounded - wounds can be healed in seconds, people can shoot lightning bolts from their eyes and so on - TMP is not. You see a lot fewer devastating combats in TMP (the occasional murder isn't unheard of though) than you see in CRT. Part of that is the players' keeping to the idea of the concept.

In TMP, technology exists and magic (by and large) either doesn't or is kept very low-key. Any massive damage to a character keeps them out of play until they're healed enough by medicine or time to return.

CRT has the strength in bigger-than-life characters and their exploits. TMP has it in (for the most part) requiring characters to work things out without guns. There's more intrigue in TMP than CRT from my looking about both.

What's my point?

Don't have one. The two are vastly different places that require different styles.

Any, for what it's worth, I play a handful of active characters in each.

NYC News Reporter, signing off.....

 

[Dribble.]

Damn, I got SO lost.