Die Shize

Gets drunk a lot.

I totally agree with this. I've personally never really understood the almost inherent notion among many people that a person should take elements of their own personality and add them to their character, whether good traits or bad ones. 'The human heart in conflict with itself' makes perfect sense, and so we can find plenty of inspiration among people or other fictional characters, but this apparent obsession with pulling those aspects from ourselves or die? Just don't make no sense. I can bond just as well with a character who is mostly unlike me (it's kind of hard to find absolutely no similarity between oneself and one's character), has no relation to any of my own experiences offline, as I can with a character who is like me in every way. But the latter, I find boring. Why write about my boring self in a world that's not meant to be boring? That's just boring and such a bore. Makes me bored.

I don't always roleplay, but when I do, it's with a foul-mouthed and grumpy mercenary dwarf who's only in it for the money. Keh, not really. Krrrrt! I really like never roleplay anymore, but when I did, one of my gazillion characters was a foul-mouthed dwarf named Korvar who was quite the opposite of my honorable dwarf named Balvin. Balvin was gungho about his homeland, the Halls of Tazarek, and would put his life on the line for e'er a dwarven matey. Korvar swore like a sailor and demeaned women to a fault, not because he hated women--he loved them--but because he just tended to objectify them as bed-warmers and lesser creatures in general. He would make this known by nature, because that was his nature. It's already been pointed out, but you just need to try (keyword: try) to strike a balance between your character's personality and what they can contribute to the story. You try to do this because you need to try to do this. You should never forsake one for the other. If for some reason (and I cannot usually think of one) your character has utterly no place in the story due to his personality, then use another character or quit the roleplay altogether. But I personally feel that changing your character's personality on the whim, without any true structure, is more detrimental to the story than changing the personality to somehow fit it. And, again, I stress that this should never be the case because it's never the case IRL. Character personalities clashing doesn't mean that the story is crumbling. Unless you have a really rigid goal of the plot in mind (one of the many reasons people post threads with big fat "Closed" on them), it just means the story might be changed and the players in turn adapt and adopt. Like supernal stated, characters may come to outright hate your character, but that doesn't mean that players do. Let me take Korvar again. He's a surface dwarf who views subsurface dwarves the same way he views women: lesser creatures. Except he makes way more fun of subsurface dwarves than he does women. It's his goal to insult and tease them. Now, as the writer of Korvar, the creator of the character, I also happen to know way more about Korvar than other players do. I know there's an actual reason for the way he is; a backstory; experience that helped shape his personality. Other players don't. So all they see is this nasty, nasty little dwarf poking holes in their characters and burping in their faces (sometimes that's literal). On the other hand, we're supposed to have emotional responses when we read fiction, to an extent. Characters can make us cheer. Characters can make us laugh. Characters can also make us recoil or tut in disgust. There's generally no right or wrong outcome, so long as they make us feel (just...not feel too much. Crying or vomiting is probably a sign of much needed therapy). So there's a given benefit of doubt in such scenarios, I also feel. And even though I had Korvar swinging his phallus boastfully around the Halls of Tazarek, verbally abusing everything that these cavernous dwarves stood for, I--Die Shize--outright admired the dang place. Balvin, my 'better dwarf', was my avatar to emphasize and expand on that love. Tazarek is one of the greatest places this website has ever boasted. But I'm Die Shize. I'm not Korvar. I'd even cringe just writing some of the nasty words that popped out of my unscrupulous dwarf's mouth, but I always tried to write him to the situation. There was one point where he sat down with another player's character who was offering Korvar a spot in the Tazarek military, and it appeared to be very plot-purpose and story-driven. Well, Korvar just wouldn't be Korvar if he accepted the position, and the before circumstances led him to even view the offer as quite suspicious indeed. So he literally spat the offer back in the character's face and the next post was basically him being dismissed. This wasn't to shut down the story or throw a wrench in it, but to spin a surprise web in it. If progressing the plot had meant Korvar joining Tazarek, what does this now mean? How can the twist be adapted to keep the story going? Stuff like that is always dynamic to me, as long as it's pulled off 'well enough' (can never be perfect). As a player, I have no qualms about being on the receiving end of such scenarios. "Wait, but, your character was supposed to . . . Ah never mind. This is much more exciting!" I'll stop there before I Die Shize the paragraphs up too much but, yeah, that's my 9,001 cents.

There are no rules for rules. Just invade.

I may be wrong, but I believe Robbie worded it in a way like, if a person were looking at it from the view of a rigid game structure already, would responding differently to someone who, well, 'threadjacked' the roleplay be acceptable? As in, would responding IC that your character hopped into an uber-fridge and survived a nuclear blast that came out of nowhere from a character who just entered the thread be acceptable, on the basis that stupid + stupid = stupid and move on?

kk lil nub tim 2 di

fite me

I think so. This is not a novel we're writing; though we are indeed 'writing', we're roleplaying, and it's just not the same thing. We often are left with choosing where are our characters will go for the sake of roleplaying, and sometimes quite physically. For example, if the character Jack was in Genesaris yesterday, and today there are no threads in Genesaris that seem worthwhile, the roleplayer might suddenly throw Jack in Terrenus for that one awesome open thread he just saw--that happens to, coincidentally, take place not long after Jack's events in Genesaris. The point I'm trying to get across is that there is an inevitable 'merging' with IC and OOC--to an extent. The two are not strictly and entirely separate entities, similar to...time and space? As much as I try to roleplay with my characters 'to character', that is, writing Jack out as Jack would do things rather than as I would do things, no matter the consequences, sometimes I simply feel in a particular mood. If Jack is my only character because multiple characters confuse me (lol), and though Jack is generally a serious guy, I might be in a jolly mood for some comedic writing. So all of a sudden I change things up and, at least in this one roleplay thread I just entered, Jack is written entirely for comic relief. Because, in the end, this is roleplay, and we sometimes alter roles in order to play and have fun. I should have clarified in my above post that it may not be acceptable on this site to flat our ignore another's post even if that post was written with the word 'invalid' screaming at everyone. It may require immediate attention OOC or some kind of more appropriate response IC, particularly one that still makes sense based on the current story. But if I can get away with being completely stupid IC as a response to someone else's being completely stupid, I probably will. It's not like I'll ever look back at that thread and go: "Gee, that was really out of character for Jack." I don't keep that much track of my characters and, again, I'm not writing a novel.

I hear that. I would also stress that though avoiding a nuke by hiding in a fridge is...debatable...it doesn't necessarily validate the nuke going off in the first place. I've pulled off a few stupid stunts myself in the past in order to explain my character's survival, but only because it was very, very apparent that the roleplayer who dished out the 'attack' had no valid grounds to do so to begin with (such as suddenly popping up and saying "make your time ha ha ha" *button press lol*). Of course, outright ignoring such posts as if they weren't there or reporting them, assuming they're posted out of malice, works too, and informative correction toward the poster who just really had no clue is also a good tool. My first ever roleplay post was 40 years ago. I had just discovered roleplay on a LOTR board. I hopped in a thread all happy-clappy as a sheriff (because I wanted to be a sheriff) and demanded everyone pay me fines for trespassing in my forest. Of course, my recipients raised their brows both IC and OOC, but quickly deduced the size of the gap in my head where an idea should have been, and amiably corrected me. It can work.

Yes, yes and yes and, ultimately, there's a reason I stopped going to that-one-site and came here. This place really isn't unique in the apparent trend of semi-closed and closed roleplays, so I can't fault it for that, but it taught me a good lesson in the wisdom of not automatically granting just any character the status of being free game and able to be targeted for combat whether the roleplayer is in the moos or not. My IC activity is quite barren now, but I've learned a good deal here. I don't always roleplay, but when I do, it's on Valucre. EDIT: I was going to correct the spelling to "mood", but I just might have created something there. Hmm.

Grand Theft Auto

I will admit that a part of me does miss the freeform system I mentioned where danger was very real, 99% of roleplay threads were open and (mostly) skilled fighters could enter those threads and target other (mostly) skilled fighters with (mostly) plot-based goals, even if that goal was to get rid of certain races because they suck. But most of those people were outright okay with it, since the site began that way and oldies stuck to it while newer ones were introduced to it and accepted it. Eventually, though, people began adopting the "closed thread mindset" (I said it) and the join-thread-fight-char MO became far too pointless and irritating. I think it has a lot to do with what people are looking for in their roleplay, and who. That basis really determines what they'll accept and what they'll reject, and who. But it also has a lot to do with what people are okay with even if they're not looking for it. I've had a few instances where I'll start an open roleplay looking for an amiable adventure, when someone hops in saying my merry smuggler has a price on his head and so fite me. Even if there was no actual backstory behind this, and I wasn't necessarily looking for a fight, I'd probably be okay with one. It makes sense IC, it's dynamic, and it's what I expect out of roleplay. I don't think I put myself in any concrete category of "Gamer" or "Storyteller" so I probably straddle both. I generally stay away from choosing a category and let the categories choose me instead.

Again, I think it first and foremost boils down to what kind of roleplay environment we're talking about. If it's a website that explicitly permits such conduct, then it's inherently permitted. Valucre, as we (should) all know, generally requires clear agreement to PVP before anything like that can even happen. Thread status should also be taken into effect. If the thread is "Closed" to begin with then the merry band of douchebags probably have no business posting in it to begin with. It's like, you can't tell the officer "Ya know, it's the darnedest thing, I just, I just didn't have mah bi-noc-u-lars out!" when the stop sign is ten feet behind where you are stopped. Honestly, most of what I quoted you on is just common sense. Akiris was also correct in regards to such things being downright dirty. I, as touched upon in my last post, know from guilty experience.

That reminds me of what I somehow left out in my over 9k paragraphs: I once was in a Star Wars roleplay where this Sith dude was on Coruscant preaching something something when some Jedi rolled up and was all "stop it you sith you suck" and then some douchebag Sith rolled up and was all "FORCE CHOKE LOL" in his friggin' entrance post. From thereon out, ho boy, it was chaos. Suddenly every Jedi, Sith and their mothers entered the roleplay thread as though everyone was telepathically told IC what was going on. People came out of nowhere to fight each other. All, essentially, because of that first douchebag who decided it would be a good idea to double team the Jedi and, of course, make his first attack in his first post. I know because I was that douchebag. ba dum ba dum TSS

Do you have any characters that break the fourth wall or are aware they're characters in a forum roleplay? I tried this a while back, for the sake of trying it, since I like to try things regardless, and I think I greatly succeeded in finding out how not to successfully break the fourth wall. Never tried it since. What if characters are sensitive to lore and try their best to keep it? What do you think of characters who are aware of lore changes? What if they perceive the edits as reality shifts? How would this affect roleplay? I think others have answered this better than I can. Have you ever had a self-aware character? I've thought about it but haven't been sure on how to pull it off. Mainly because most people don't have 'self-aware' characters, which would probably screw up most roleplay scenarios or just make my character appear insane, which is probably not the route I'd be going for if I wanted a sane self-aware character. How would a self-aware character deal with the fantasy setting if Valucre, knowing it's impossible, inconsistent, and very different from reality? Would probably buy a plot of land and grow as much baneweed as possible. How would they deal with drastically different lore from two territories? Probably the same way they deal with drastically different cultures from two territories today I guess. What are the ways someone could pull off having a fourth-wall breaking, self-aware character without breaking the mild powers rule? Don't metagame/godmod/godmode (honestly, to this day, even after reading articles, I don't understand the difference in the terms). Again, this has been better answered by others, but, simply put, don't actually use any 'fourth wall information' to the point that you're unfairly gaining an advantage over someone else. And of course, if your partner agrees to it, you can probably get away with doing just that. Maybe it's part of the plot.