Which is why I don't generally approve of the use of the Omnidisciplinary Scientist trope in RP. If you want a genius character, you have to put forth the effort to actually research things that character knows about, and it's easier to make them specialize in one or two fields of study than ten of them. Same thing with any profession your character is. I spent multiple days researching the culinary arts and various dishes for my chef character, and while I haven't fully ramped up the extravagant dishes (the fanciest I've mentioned so far is a souffle) that may be made, it always help to have the knowledge. Even if you don't plan go into much detail about your character's profession or what they know, you still gotta research because you never know when that knowledge is going to actually matter.

On the lighter sides of things, I hate it when my mind derps up and forgets to mention people in the IC post, so I have to mention them OOC.

Am I wrong though. Whenever people play a supposed genius they just meta-game the shit out of everything to make the character seem smart.

Or, worse, they make the NPCs act exceptionally stupid to make their own character seem smarter, even though the character's actions aren't really noteworthy.

Generic McDumbass: "There was a burglary in this house and we can't figure out what happened! Help us, Pseudo McGenius!"
Pseudo McGenius: "Hmm, I can deduct from these obvious muddy footprints that the burglar entered through this windows, took something off that table and then left. If we go outside, we can follow his footsteps through the conveniently muddy landscape!"
Generic McDumbass: "Wow, Pseudo! I don't know what we would do without your clever insight."

@Lalliman lol, I've never seen that myself except in silly anime-like RP's where it honestly makes more sense, but yeah if you're going for a realistic RP you should take care to show, not tell, how smart your character is.

Which is why I honestly believe that you have to be a genius to play a genius. And part of that might be having a lot of knowledge about a given topic.

It's easy to downscale knowledge (anyone can play a dumbass that knows nothing), but it's very very hard to upscale knowledge (you can't know what you can't understand) and thus it's hard to play a character that is 'above you' so to speak.

@Buddha
You don't actually have to be a genius to play a genius lol. Unless you were only referring to the intellectual aspect of the word or only having in mind scientists and such, a good hand to hand combat fighter could be called a genius based on his extraordinary skills on the field. Now you don't have to know shit on hand to hand combat in order to RP as a genius on the field. That extends to magick-using characters that are called geniuses of that particular field of magick.

To bypass this barrier, let's see an example.
You are a hunter. You are tracking some bandits that ran away through the forest.
Instead of researching for tracking methods online, you could just say :"My character uses his tracking skills to scan the area for any clues"
You don't have to be highly intellectual in order to play a genius.

@Bishop Yeah, but that'd be telling instead of showing.

@Mr Allen J Well my point is that you can play a genius without being one yourself. Now to actually show* your genius skills in RP is just show off. I mean seriously, why would you even bother going into detail about how you do stuff. What matters is the story and player interaction not naming all the subtracts and different substances you mix to form the reaction while writing the equation on the side. I mean no one cares for that, so who are you doing it for? Maybe it adds to the immersion if you go into detail but personally, I find it pointless.

@Bishop and that's the difference between, what is in my opinion, good writing and bad writing.

If you write 'Bob uses his tracking skills to track the bandits' what is my character gonna do? You didn't describe anything except that he did tracking. What is he doing, tasting shit that bandits left behind? Looking at their bootprints with a magnifying glass? IDK, not a lot to respond to with my character. So all I can say is 'my character watches Bob track'. Nice. Good post.

And yes I was talking about intellect, which I stated kinda. But it wasn't very clear. Even so I disagree. I am a martial artist myself (woe me, I hate saying that, but I have a black belt so I suppose I know a thing or two about my respective martial arts style, so just ignore the air of arrogance that sentence causes and bear with me). The amount of shit I've seen written because a character was a supposed genius has me shaking my head in displeasure. Just because he's a genius doesn't mean the way you write him is immediately sensical.

Calling him a genius is not the same as him actually showing traits of a genius. Telling is worse than showing. It's writing theory 101. The only time telling is more acceptable than showing is in free roleplay, when you can't be arsed writing a paragraph explaining the details of what you are doing. Any other time it is, again in my humble opinion as I am not the perfect roleplay, impermissible.

It's the equivalent of calling yourself a genius of martial arts when you don't understand a thing about it, and then trying to do a crane kick in real life. It's just silly, it doesn't work, and it makes you look like a moron. The same goes for you as a writer. Don't pose your character as a master of chemistry and then say he 'mixes together some fluids' and creates gold. That's just silly.

But coming back to the original point, yes I was referring to intellect. I do believe 100% that if you are not a genius, you cannot accurately play a genius without powergaming, metagaming or godmoding. If your way of playing a ultra-perceptive character is to metagame in information to show off how perceptive he is, you're a bad roleplayer and you should feel bad.

@Bishop

Bob Handwaves the Problem away.

@Buddha
You seem to have a picture of O-Sensei now.

@The Grey Dust yessir.

I can't ignore my chemistry stuff I learned in class, even though you probably already know this. Unless you're doing alchemy (which is one of its goals, and that can only happen in fictionland), you can't create gold from other chemicals. It's always a balanced equation that uses the same elements and the same amounts of the reactants as the products, which you can balance with coefficients. You cannot flat-out throw a new element to other side without balancing, that completely ignores one of the scientific laws saying you can't create or destroy mass. All you can do is form new compounds or break them apart.

Sorry for that, on topic now.

Yeah, that kind of proves my point about research. You have to research how tracking works, even if you don't want to delve more than two sentences to it, just learn about tracking to the point you know what you're talking about and the other roleplayers and potential lurkers can visualize it some.

Also if you like learning, by having to do all this research you get to learn a metric assload about all sorts of interesting topics that you never would have otherwise

@UmbreonRogue

Actually you can make gold from lead.
You can in theory, via high energy electron bombardment, change the protons without a nucleus of led into neutrons by inducing electron capture. Displacing your electron configurations and all, I'd imagine it is very possible to create a very unstable isotope of the next few element down from lead. Which you'd have to reduce by neutron emission/fission. And keep repeating the process until you are left with gold.

Wow, really? The more you know, I suppose.

You can create gold out of lead, as well as theoretically any element out of any other element, but it's not really chemistry at that point. You'd need a particle accelerator and it only works in atomically small amounts. So anyone saying they "mix some fluids together to create gold" is still an idiot, not necessarily due to their way of describing the procedure, but because they don't understand one of the most basic aspects of chemistry.

I think, like in all things, that there's a nuance to be had. If we're talking about the main character of a story and his defining characteristic is that he's a chemist, the writer better have some pretty in-depth knowledge of chemistry, otherwise his characterisation will probably be pretty unconvincing. If we're talking about The Smart Guy of a Five Man Band, you've got more leeway, because there's plenty of other things going on beside the genius being clever, and the reader probably didn't come to read a lecture about chemistry. If we're talking about a standalone story instead of a roleplay, it also means the genius in question probably isn't the PoV character, which makes a difference.

I'd say that unless the character's scientific field is the focus of the story, you don't need to have quite as much knowledge on the subject as your character supposedly does. You just need to have enough to avoid Dunning-Kruger syndrome (thinking you know all about it because your knowledge is so lacking that you don't know what you're missing) and not make a fool out of yourself in front of someone who is actually an expert.

As long as you can give a surface-level description of what your character is doing, you can be pretty convincing. Writing "Science Guy creates some mustard gas to throw at Those Damn Nazis" is lame because he might as well be using magic to conjure it. But adding a little extra detail goes a long way, e.g. "Science Guy enters his lab, grabs some chemicals from his storage, and begins synthesising mustard gas. Soon he will have enough to repel Those Damn Nazis." This is still very basic, but it gives somewhat of a practical indication of what he's doing. I don't know the exact method for synthesising a haloalkane, but I understand the concept of synthesis well enough to know that I'm not making a fool of myself by describing something blatantly impossible (i.e. synthesising gold). If you're diligent you can say that he's using ethylene gas and sulphur dichloride to synthesise it, but it depends on your audience whether or not that adds anything. Even if you know it's accurate, to most it might as well be technobabble.

I'm terrible at examples, but the point is that the level of technical detail you give is a matter of style. I don't think a lack of in-depth explanation is inherently bad, as long as there is enough explanation to be able to visualise the character's actions, and to be able to tell that the character isn't magically pulling things out of his ass. It should be mentioned that I would personally enjoy receiving greater depth than the example I gave above, but that doesn't mean it's inherently a poor way of doing it, depending on the circumstances.

Why do people get so sensitive if a character is mean to their character? Sometimes people take it personally? Like goddamn if my character is criticizing your character it doesn't mean I'm criticizing you. In the same vein, if my character is unkind in some way, it's just part of the story and how things are going... It doesn't mean anything about what I think of their char.

Maybe some context is needed here. In order to improve my writing, I try to play characters way different from me. This includes playing assholes, and not just the typical 'gruff but lovable/has a soft side' but like... Weasely, snide pricks lol I also tell people 'yes hey so I kind of want to play an asshole and I want to try to develop this character to not be so terrible.' getting back into rping, I'm trying to experiment with all sorts of different chars, you know? I don't think I can improve if I keep playing chars similar to me. I've seen peeps who do that and then all their chars end up exactly the same. It's weird.

But even when I tell peeps that, sometimes they just get so weirdly offended over my char being 'mean.' or they complain and tell me they don't like my char later on in the RP. Even though I told them what kind of character I wanted to experiment with.

Or I wanted to write a very misogynistic/sexist character with the intent of developing them to learn from their mistakes and not be such a bigot. Someone complained that it was 'too strong of a flaw.' like... What?

Ideekay. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Maybe my characters are 'too flawed'? They always seem to have more flaws than other chars I see. But i always write them with the intent to develop them and change them because if I don't think my char is going to change through the rp, I get bored. I don't think there's anything wrong with writing static characters, it just bores me personally if they don't change in some way through a story.

I'll learn more I guess. I still don't know why some peeps take it personally though.

Why do people get so sensitive if a character is mean to their character? Sometimes people take it personally? Like goddamn if my character is criticizing your character it doesn't mean I'm criticizing you. In the same vein, if my character is unkind in some way, it's just part of the story and how things are going... It doesn't mean anything about what I think of their char.

Oh boy, I had a lot to do with this shit when I first started RPing. Frankly, if I've learned anything over the years, it's that some people almost live vicariously through their characters; like, they see an insult to their character as an insult to them, and they take big leaps to make sure their character comes out smelling of roses no matter the circumstances. They can say what they want about not actually caring about what happens in character, their actions always betray their investment in their own character. It might not be all people, but some people definitely act like this.

I'll tell a little story to illustrate my point; I once had a character make another character out to be a pervert. It wasn't a big deal; they just pretended to believe they were a pervert after they did something vaguely pervert like. It should have been clear that the character was just having a giggle, and that considering it was happening in a group including only one other person, it wasn't some big deal that needed to be addressed. Except it was. At the time, nothing happened, nobody got mad out of character or anything, but later on I found out the head GM of the whole damn thing had something to say about it. See, this RP had a newsletter like thing being run by a few other members of the RP, and they interviewed him one day and he explained that he wanted to correct the "bad reputation" the character had gotten or some shit like that (it was years ago). What this told me was that 1; apparently my character's little joke was such a big deal the head GM had to make an announcement about how they were going to try and correct the situation, 2; the person whose character mine had uh, "slandered", probably was actually offended by what my character did, and went so far as to bitch to the head GM to get them to do something about it, and 3; in spite of what my character having done being such a trivial, small scale thing, I managed to get no less than two people so offended that they wanted it "corrected".

Fortunately, I had already left the RP, so it didn't matter what they did, but it still amazed me that so much attention was drawn to such a pathetically insignificant action one of my characters had undertaken. I mean, given the size of the RP at the time, I somehow doubt that too many people were even reading my post, since it concerned nobody other than me, the offended person, and one other player, hence the head GM must have either been alerted to my post or had way too much time on their hands. That and other experiences are way I remain convinced some people are just too damn invested in their RPing.

LOL. Ugh. I LOVE mean characters, though. Love playing them when I'm feelin' ballsy enough. Love playin' WITH them. Love all the flaws.

Honestly, as soon as I catch on that someone has trouble separating their character from themselves (as far as things happening to them IC goes), I have a hard time taking them seriously at all. I get that some people like to play characters that are similar to themselves-- there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is here to explore all the different sort of characters they can play. I get it. I'm guilty of it sometimes, too!

But GAWD.

Even if the character isn't at all like you-- and I think this goes back to the "show, don't tell" thing-- you shouldn't get mad at other people for 'misinterpreting' your character unless it's obvious the other person simply isn't reading what you write.

For example-- say your character is meant to be a "handsome smooth talker", but you're ass at writing smooth dialogue. I dunno, can you really get mad if other people respond to your character like he's a weirdo instead of Mr. Smooth? Of course we'll have to acknowledge that he's good looking, but come on. I get this is a hobby and not everyone is here to improve, but don't expect other people to pick up the slack for you all the time.

Why people gotta be so defensive about their characters, anyway? Learn to recognize when it's YOUR fault your character is being interpreted a certain way by the other characters. Understand when it's the CHARACTERS interpreting them as such and not the players.

And hell, I would consider it hilarious if one of my characters was mistaken for a pervert when they totally weren't. And I applaud the inclusion of such things like sexism and misogynist ideals as character flaws. They're real life issues! Why pretend they don't exist? Seems really narrow minded to label a character as "too flawed" like that. I mean. Unless the GM is creating a utopia where complete and total equality has been achieved. But even then, I generally frown upon GMs trying to control the opinions of characters concerning their plot.

Blughhhhh

Dudes who set up RP universes that are heavy in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc all in the name of "being realistic hurr hurr hurr". Listen buddy, you just got done explaining how XYZ kingdom is run by some kind of undead cabal and how half the population is capable of either telepathy or flinging fireballs. You'd think you would have enough imagination to let your players play a brown gay guy or a legit warrior chick without heaping things against them unnecessarily.

Buddy, if you can't abandon all the -isms long enough to allow characters representing marginalized peoples in positions of power you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

Blughhhhh

Dudes who set up RP universes that are heavy in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc all in the name of "being realistic hurr hurr hurr". Listen buddy, you just got done explaining how XYZ kingdom is run by some kind of undead cabal and how half the population is capable of either telepathy or flinging fireballs. You'd think you would have enough imagination to let your players play a brown gay guy or a legit warrior chick without heaping things against them unnecessarily.

Buddy, if you can't abandon all the -isms long enough to allow characters representing marginalized peoples in positions of power you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

Hate is everywhere, and excluding it from a story to be inclusive is stupid. If the author wants a specific culture to be something-ist, then that's their choice and adds to the complexity of the world. Racism can be down to the base form of humans don't like elves, homophobia can come down to 'Oh god I don't want to be of someone with the same gender, please go away' and sexism could just as well be woman-on-men as men-on-woman, or a third option to both.

Plus, playing a character who's universally hated in such a world can enrich the character as they struggle to find their place, and maybe even doubt themselves before coming to the conclusion they are who they are.

@Ammokkx

You missed the point of what I'm talking about. I didn't say RPs shouldn't include those themes. I didn't even say that characters who are minorities in worlds with those themes shouldn't have to struggle. I'm talking about DMs who create worlds specifically so they can enforce their own real-world bigotry onto other people under the guise of "being realistic". There is a subtle but definite difference.