At the down of modern aged role-play we had a man going to a military game meeting and bringing along a new game he created called D&D. This was a landmark for role-play, no more was role-play just kinky people pretending to be french maids and black men in their bedroom! No! We now had a sophisticated way to be super amazing adventurers while never moving from a table and drinking so much pop that it would eventually give us cancer in the butt! As I said before, THIS WAS LANDMARK. It spawned a whole new realm for role-play, the only successful path REALLY being VIDEO GAMES. Regardless I'm here to talk about the less successful and downright stupid paths that came out of it, but not the lessor of two evils which is larping, but rather the loneliest path ONLINE role-play. Now I'm not entirely certain online role-play originally did spawn out of D&D, but I think it's a combination of that and the french maids and black men moving to the internet. However, this isn't going to be a conversation about cyberer's, I'll be saving that for another day, this is going to be a conversation about people who want to ROLL DICE in role-play. It seems at first glance a sane enough thing to do right? If things came out D&D then of course we're using dice since this is just D&D's retarded stepbrother right? Well that's still up for debate... regardless it's not completely insane either.
Dice is often associated with many things that are competitive. For example Backgammon! And even if you're not competing against other challengers with dice games you are often at the very least competing against the "game master" like in roulette or D&D. Now for those of you who do come online to pretend to be someone else in order to out compete everyone around you, this is wonderful, but for people like me who want a happy healthy environment this tends to be a pointless add on to the role-playing environment. Dice used by the online role-player is a way to mediate online fighting that isn't based on T1 or T2 (Which honestly I don't know what the fuck these T's stand for. All I think of is Tea bagging) since everyone wanted their super amazing awesome character to win the fight without ever taking a hit. When I cared about competition we worried about post length! Back in the good old days your post in a "fight" consisted of your dodge/block and your counter attack and if your post was longer than theirs well then SHIT, you dodged/blocked their attack. This however is a stupid idea.... cause posts just get longer and longer to the point of insanity till one of you gives up......(Lets also point out the idiocy of fights going on and on and on without a single hit and then one hit ending the whole fight....) so one may say we can either T1bag it or T2bag it (The bag stands for douchebag) right? OR WE CAN DICE? Seems perfectly fair right? Well, this is all under the assumption that you WANT to be competitive. I like the idea of a friendly amount of humble juice.
The role-play is about character interaction not who can build the bigger stronger character right? Being constantly bombarded with the loner cool guy werewolf/vampire/elven superhero who can take on anyone makes it annoying passed almost anything I know. When "fighting" happens in a role-play lets just all be humble and let our characters take a punch? Maybe let the weird circumstances change the fight? Really you should be judging whether or not your character COULD win the fight given the circumstances! Also, don't make retardedly boring characters who could split the universe in half with their pinky. I mean it's a role-play we should be able to take a punch for the sake of interesting plot development. I've had a number (2) of counter opinions, which were so condescending I think I'll post them here for your amusement. For example: "That's so Primitive!" This being from the guy who wants to role-play our characters going on starcraft esk "missions."
I've heard missions from more than one person before..... what does this even mean in role-play? I don't even know. Regardless you can either take the creative path or the competitive T2000bagging path and see which is more fun. I don't role-play with dice though.
I've heard missions from more than one person before..... what does this even mean in role-play? I don't even know. Regardless you can either take the creative path or the competitive T2000bagging path and see which is more fun. I don't role-play with dice though.
I can't say that any of my recent RP has come across this issue. But I can see both sides of it. As a story and character driven RPer, when it comes to combat I usually go with whatever makes it the most dramatic and fun. Sometimes I kill lots of NPCs, sometimes they wound me and it forces me to rely on my RP partner for help, strengthening the relationship.
ReplyDeleteBut if two people are fighting and they both legitimately want to be the victor, an outside objective mechanic, like rules or dice, would be the best way to resolve the instantiated conflicts within an RP fight fairly.
-Joker
I of course agree! If you read what I wrote I gave dice the credit of disputing better than the other methods (Including one I used to use). My point was a subjective one, first saying why someone would use dice, second how I feel, then offering up a role-play style without competition. I just feel if role-players are really honest with themselves about their characters and wrote well balanced characters they'll never have to "both legitimately want to be the victor."
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