Let's B!tch. I feel it's a healthy release for our roleplay annoyances 2.0

[Rare]

Well, this thread is going to be lock now.

[Brovo]

Imperfectionist said
Can you give a specific example, Brovo? This is a very complex concept, especially considering all of the different interpretations of magic out there.Which kind of magic did this person claim was more realistic?

Apparently one form of fire magic that involves summoning gun powder out of thin air and lighting it on fire is more realistic than just summoning fire in the same space. Makes the head spin, doesn't it?

[Prince]

Magic itself is normally defined as a super natural force, ie not natural, ie not real. You can't have something that is by definition 'not real' be 'more real' than another form of it. You have magic realism, high fantasy, low fantasy and a dozen other genres like Sword and Sorcery. All of them are, for all intents and purposes, fictional. Even if one is a perfect alternate Earth, that doesn't inherently make it 'less fictional'.

[Imperfectionist]

Brovo said
Apparently one form of fire magic that involves summoning gun powder out of thin air and lighting it on fire is more realistic than just summoning fire in the same space. Makes the head spin, doesn't it?

Hmm. Not necessarily. I think I understand where this person is coming from, as in real life, fire doesn't erupt out of nothing. It always has fuel. So, fire magic that involves physical, actual fuel rather than mystical fuel (the "spell energy" that fuels the flame in most fire magic) can be seen as more realistic, in a somewhat superficial way.

I mean, in real life, there's no such thing as mystical energy that is able to fuel fire, but there are a wide variety of substances that are flammable. Take a real-life flammenwerfer, for example. It doesn't "throw" fire, not really. It throws gasoline which has been lit on fire, in turn causing whatever is coated in said flaming gasoline to burn. What I can imagine is a conjurer/alchemist who uses various substances to achieve similar effects to fire magic, but is much more versatile. Burning conjured gunpowder or oil is very different from burning phosphorous, for example.

Where it falls apart is when you say "this way is better", because obviously it isn't. It's just different. I would allow both methods, if I was running a magic-based RP, even if one of them would make more sense in the real world.

EDIT: It could still get more complex, though. If you use "more realistic" to mean "makes more sense in-universe", THEN you have to get into arguments about the intricacies of magical energy and magical theory in whatever universe you happen to be in... So it becomes case-by-case, and ultimately up to the GM to decide. What was the result of the discussion, Brovo? Did the GM allow both?

[Brovo]

I was the GM at the time and I allowed it, just informed the person politely that other people's interpretations of magic, which I had already approved of, weren't invalid just because they felt it to be so.

That person dropped out a couple weeks later anyway, though... So...

[Imperfectionist]

-nods- Reasonable. I don't think I understood that the player wanted everyone else to adhere to her/his version instead of their own.

[Prince]

I think you could derive an interesting plot alone from the differences between the classes of magic that have similar resultant effects. In mutation-based roleplays of mine, it was always a large source of interaction when two similar abilities met and even more so when their roleplayers had positive IC interactions instead of conflicts. For instance, I had one character with a large, mutated arm that allowed him to manipulate fire, while another one simply had a type of pyrokinesis. With some close supervision and some world-scale decision making by the GM, this interaction actually opened up and answered a plethora of questions surrounding those abilities and how magic/mutations worked in the world as a whole.

[Brovo]

Imperfectionist said
-nods- Reasonable. I don't think I understood that the player wanted everyone else to adhere to her/his version of their own.

Eh' well. It was partially my fault, I think. Usually when I include magic in a system, I include all kinds of magic under the premise that magic is pretty much capable of anything. Ergo, magic ends up being somewhat vague, and the consequences of using it aren't immediately clear, you have to figure it all out on your own.

Also. Right. Another good complaint.

When people go into mystery plots and their one and only action is to accuse or violently assault everyone they think might be a bad guy. This is especially insane if they attempt to attack, say, police officers, or princes of kingdoms, or angels, or etc.

[Xhin]

I was going to make a post about this within itself, but I found this thread so.....

RPer A makes a RP request thread (of a certain fandom, idea, etc) for RPer B to express interest and the two start plotting. After sharing ideas, the two agree to finally start what seems to be a promising RP. RPer A writes an good quality over quantity, starter and awaits excitingly for RPer B to reply so the RP can officially start. And so A waits and waits and waits before finally messaging B who either flat out ignores him or says how they are too busy at the moment to reply even though it's been close to a week since A started the RP.

More to the point; What is the purpose of expressing interest (whether you are the GM or the partner) in a RP only to never carry through? I'm mainly talking about 1/1 as if your partner drops out, your RP is done if you cannot replace them. It's just so frustrating and I've encountered it time after time again and again site to site. I'm currently dealing with it now, and while I'm open minded to my partners' personal life, I find it a bit rude and terribly frustrating that our RP has been sitting for almost 4 days untouched even after my partner gave promises to reply soon. I get sometimes stuff happens or come sup where we can only post from our phones, and how hard it can be to give a good quality post, I truly get that. However, that isn't an excuse to never reply to the RP. (In the events it's your only means of RPing for the time being, that is.) It's even MORE aggrivating when they give you every excuse in the book yet you can clearly seem them online, replying to all their other RPs... like why? When your muse is so high for a certain type of RP and you finally have found a partner that in turn, doesn't deliever, it is the worst ever. It's like a little kid knowing they got the bike they've always wanted, but can't have it till their birthday that is months away. It's mental torture because it's so close yet so far away! If by chance said partner is reading this (you know who you are) I'm sorry, I just need to vent a little. (And I hope you reply to our RP soon!)

[Jig]

New B!tching:

I know everybody has different ways of dealing things, but any kind of system to resolve a character conflict decided by anything other than good ideas for where the story goes gets my goat. Sure, it would be really interesting for your character if he were to be defeated by the monster, and have his confidence and maybe leg broken, but, nope, the dice say you kill it in one hit.

I see RPing as storytelling and not as a traditional game. The objective, for me, is to be writing prose in a format that doesn't require the same energy that solo fiction requires. There is no 'winning', beyond the satisfaction in taking part in the game. The idea of trying to 'win' an RP baffles me. If that's what people wanna do, it's what they wanna do and it's fine, but, like, ew.

Equally, I sometimes worry that, even if I genuinely believe that it would be good for the story for my character to win an engagement of some kind (say, to affirm alpha status in a group rather than have it be an informed attribute), I worry that people would think I'd be cheerleading for my own character's success, rather than the development of the story.

Old B!tching:

Prince said
Magic itself is normally defined as a super natural force, ie not natural, ie not real. You can't have something that is by definition 'not real' be 'more real' than another form of it.

Perhaps 'realistic' is, in this case, used as a wrong synonym for 'comprehensible' or 'credible'. If you look at two different versions of magic (say, most of the Final Fantasy series versus Rowling's Harry Potter), the magic in HP is more comprehensible. It's suggested (if not explored) that there is a science behind it, and it is bound by tangible rules: spells typically require incantations, gestures, and the focal point of a magic wand. In most of the FF series, magic is just a vague thing that makes shit blow up that some people can do and others can't and usually has a limit expressed by the unaddressed concept of 'Magic/Mana Points'. The magic in HP feels more credible and comprehensible because it can be understood better, even if it's not, per se, more realistic.

I tried to create a Pokemon RP that was to be, in my own words, realistic. Of course, fire-breathing dragons and electric rodents aren't remotely realistic, but, by realistic, I meant credible - dealing with some real-world ramifications of a modern society that has to deal with freaking huge monsters and people that have the ability and drive to tame them.

Rexcalibur said
On Jig's topic: I was in a similar community as well. It was on Gamefaqs instead of an RP-based site though, but I was always RPing with folks in the social boards lol. I didn't think sites actually dedicated to RPing would actually employ this. On the site you mention, what if the "owner" of a canon character leaves the site and never comes back? Was there a rule for how often you had to be active? What if the owner couldn't write that character well at all though? lol

I didn't stick around long enough to find out, though I think one of the semi-important canon characters had, indeed, gone AWOL.

[Pachamac]

Jig said New B!tching:

I know everybody has different ways of dealing things, but any kind of system to resolve a character conflict decided by anything other than good ideas for where the story goes gets my goat. Sure, it would be really interesting for your character if he were to be defeated by the monster, and have his confidence and maybe leg broken, but, nope, the dice say you kill it in one hit.

I see RPing as storytelling and not as a traditional game. The objective, for me, is to be writing prose in a format that doesn't require the same energy that solo fiction requires. There is no 'winning', beyond the satisfaction in taking part in the game. The idea of trying to 'win' an RP baffles me. If that's what people wanna do, it's what they wanna do and it's fine, but, like, ew.

Equally, I sometimes worry that, even if I genuinely believe that it would be good for the story for my character to win an engagement of some kind (say, to affirm alpha status in a group rather than have it be an informed attribute), I worry that people would think I'd be cheerleading for my own character's success, rather than the development of the story.

Jig you and me should be friends. :)

[Jig]

Jig has friends?!

[Kestrel]

@Jig, dices are random (obviously). While it might be great development for your character to experience defeat, it might also be great for them to be on a long winning streak and become overconfident because of it (and then end up making mistakes that aren't salvaged by dice rolls). The dice gives you less control, but not less development or story.

[Rilla]

A pet peeve of mine is when playing a character in the roleplay I am also.GMing, people automatically follow my character as the leader, despite a lack of leadership qualities. for instance, in ny bleach rp of days past, my character had little to no leadership traits and was still made into the de facto leader of our mission.

[vancexentan]

That's true for some reason people tend to gather around the GM's person. That's why in my gundam roleplay I made an NPC Captain Jason Hiyan as the captain by default since he's well the captain of the ship. Paul was made a lieutenant under his command for the troops to rally behind in battle.

[Pachamac]

@ Rilla, this is a common trend and minor pet peeve of mine, too. It was pretty funny because at one point in my rpI had three main characters, one who was the leader of the group, another her close friend/partner/confidant, and another a former bandit and absolute stupid idiot. I had a story arc where the leader had a crisis of confidence and along with her partner, tried to abandon the remainder of the group. When it came to the point in the rp where the rest of the characters went to search for these two missing characters, the person who they tried to gravitate to and follow was... my stupidest of stupid idiots. Made no sense whatsoever.