BrokenPromise

Tips for writing POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters in RP

I’m going to use “progressive characters” as a catch all term for “POC, LGBT+, and other minority characters.”

I’ve written (nearly) everything under the sun from a bisexual Chinese woman to her adopted Indian daughter to a Jamaican news reporter. And I’m happy to say that regardless of what you write, you’ll do the best job if you stick to one simple rule:

Write your progressive characters the exact same way you would your normal characters.

I feel like a lot of progressive characters make this mistake where they are so focused on being non-hetrosexual/white/etc that they forget to be a compelling character with motivations and aspirations that extend past their preferences/skin.

I once had a neighbor that happened to be a lesbian, but you wouldn’t know that just talking to her. It took her a few weeks to warm up to my family and I. That was when she felt comfortable talking to us about the tragic death of her wife. Compare that to your average homosexual RP character who makes sure everyone knows how gay they are seconds after meeting them. That's also a surefire way to make your character look like a sex addict, which isn't too flattering.

While it’s good to learn about cultures, it only really helps the character if it’s important to them. As an example, there are lots of Chinese-Americans who are still faithful to the Chinese way of life. But just as many have embraced America’s culture and couldn't care less about Chinese customs. Even if they did, most of these people aren’t going to drop Chinese sayings into casual everyday speech with strangers. It feels pretentious and might even be a little embarrassing for all involved. I’ve personally seen Japanese-American characters who were born and raised in America, yet for some reason they add Japanese honorifics to their otherwise perfect English. It's all reminiscent of lazy translations done in anime. You could argue that their parents taught them to speak this way, but I have yet to hear anyone talk like this in real life. Point is, while culture can be a great thing to learn, over-applying it can turn a character into something that is both generic and bordering on racist. I think that’s something we all want to avoid.

I’d also like to add that you should absolutely bury your gays if the story calls for it. Sure, we’re all familiar with the tropes. How the black dude dies first and what not. But if your story is one that is rife with despair and sadness, excluding progressive characters from the looming threat of death is a disservice to everyone. Making your chosen minority/etc safe or otherwise infallible in a story is just as bad as indiscriminately killing them off. A writer should not be held at gunpoint by their characters.

Ultimately, the less special treatment you give your progressive characters, the better.

If you need to research something, do some reading on the area where they grew up, or the time period if that makes more sense. Learn about their job and what type of skills they may have. Read reports on what happens to people who go through their extraordinary circumstances. That information will serve you well. But also note that this kind of stuff is good for any character you choose to make, not just your progressive ones. I just spent a few hours reading about Kharadron Overlords so that I could play one in my brother's tabletop game.

Calling all dice mathematicians

@Clever Hans You'd better not be trying to get me to do your math homework.

For simplicity, let's work on one set of dice at a time. Your d8 VS my d8.

We both have the same chance of landing on any particular side. Both of our die have 8 sides, so there are 8 X 8 = 64 different scenarios that all have the exact same chance of occurring.

If I roll an 8, I'll have beaten 7 out of 8 possible outcomes you could roll. 7 beats 6, 6 beats 5, until I roll a 1 which can't beat anything. So we just have to add all my victories together and compare them to the number 64 to see my chances.

7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 28

We both have a 28/64 chance of winning, or 43.75%. The remaining 8 rolls we tied (12.50%) We'll keep this in mind for later.

I don't think it's going to matter too much that a d6 has a slightly higher chance of landing on all of its sides. It has a better chance of landing on smaller numbers and higher numbers. Moreover, 16.6666666...% repeating is hard to do math stuff with compared to the totally chill 12.5% offered by a d8. Regardless, all outcomes should more or less have the same chance of happening, which is what matters.

Same as before, we multiply the sides of our dice together.

6 X 8 = 48

This time you have a d6. That means that for each side of my die, there's 6 possible outcomes. If I roll a 7 or an 8, I win every time. Then from 6 and below it becomes possible for me to lose. So we can add that up like so:

6 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 27

And for you it's pretty much the exact opposite:

0 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15

And then we tie on 6 rolls, which should account for our 48 rolls.

27/48 = 56.25% = my chance of winning

15/48 = 31.25% = your chance of winning

6/48 = 12.5% = the chance we tie

Now

We now know each dice's chances of beating another dice. But it gets a little interesting here because we aren't rolling these dice as sets. We're rolling both our dice at the same time and seeing who has the highest number. As an example, my first d8 might have been a 5, which was higher than the 4 you rolled, but you rolled a 6 on your d6 and my other die was a 1. So you would have won that. But at any given time, I'm only going to have one die that has my highest number, or two dice with an equal number. Ultimately, any of my dice has to compete with any of your dice. so the outcomes are:

My first d8 against your d8
My second d8 against your d8
My first d8 against your d6
My second d8 against your d6

Because there are so many d8s, this wasn't even really worth considering, since 50% of the contests are going to be like one of the two scenarios mentioned above. So that makes this part pretty simple. We're going to divide our %s in half and add them together. And in the end...

I have a (43.75% + 56.25%) ÷ 2 = 50.00% chance to win.

You have a (43.75% + 31.25%) ÷ 2 = 37.50% chance to win.

And we have a 12.5% chance to tie.

Tense and Perspective in Roleplaying

God I hate collabs

I try to actively avoid any kind of interior monologue and try to only ever use the surface-level actions of what my characters are doing, including facial expressions, because I know the other person is going to toss in an "I thought" somewhere in there and being inside of the headspace of two people feels so wrong to read.

@Ammokkx

This is pretty much why I try to collab one-on-one as much as possible, because most roleplayers aren't aware of this.

Though you can still make neutral observations. As an example, you don't have to write "Bill thought Abigail looked good tonight," as that is clearly inside of Bill's head. As soon as Abigail's player inner monologs about how she doesn't understand why Bill is standing so close we'll have two perspectives. You could instead go for "Everyone knew Bill was into Abigail, except Abigail herself." That type of description doesn't come across as being inside of Bill's head. It's just an observation from the narrator that could be made by anyone, even Abigail.

Calling all dice mathematicians

I'd be really curious to see how much % chance switching from a D6 to a D8 actually affects your chances though. Now you've got me looking up the system...

@Mae

The chance of landing on any side of an 8-sided dice is 12.5%. Therefor, you have a 25% chance of rolling something that is unattainable on a 6-sided dice, and a 37.5% chance to at least get something equal to the highest number on a 6. Compare that to a 0% or 16%-ish chance respectively. Or if you prefer a non % based representation of this in the real world, let's do number of times out of 24 since that's a number both 6 and 8 go into. If you rolled both dice 24 times, the d6 would give you a 6 only 4 times, where the d8 would give you a 6 or greater an astounding 9 times.

Another fun test, let's pretend you have "perfectly normal" luck and you'll always roll each side of the dice the same number of times. in 24 rolls, You'd roll every side of the d6 4 times which is (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6) X 4 = 84. Meanwhile, with the 8 you would get each side 3 times for a total of (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8) X 3 = 108

Calling all dice mathematicians

Does rolling two of the same die and taking the higher result actually give you better odds of producing a higher result? This is what's really making my head spin.

@Clever Hans

Short answer: Rolling multiple die and taking the better result not only more frequently yields a higher result, it more consistently avoids lower rolls.

In the game you describe, you roll 2 dice, and you always take the die with the better result. If you were just rolling 1, you have a 1-out-of-6 chance to get a 6. This is easy to see, because all we need to do is count the number of sides on the dice, which will give us all our possible outcomes.

1,2,3,4,5,6

It gets trickier for two dice. Because to find every possible combination, we need to multiply this by the number of sides for each additional dice. 6 X 6 = 36, and all the combinations are as follows:

1/1,1/2,1/3,1/4,1/5,1/6,
2/1,2/2,2/3,2/4,2/5,2/6,
3/1,3/2,3/3,3/4,3/5,3/6,
4/1,4/2,4/3,4/4,4/5,4/6,
5/1,5/2,5/3,5/4,5/5,5/6,
6/1,6/2,6/3,6/4,6/5,6/6,

See? 36. If we rolled 3 6 sided die, we'd have 6 X 6 X 6 = 216 possible combinations. But we won't worry about that for now.

So going back to our possible outcomes for a single die, you can see that there's a 1-in-6 chance of getting a 1 or a 6. But when using 2 dice, it's clear things aren't quite so balanced. Statistically speaking, you have a 1-in-36 chance to get a 1 and a gnarly 11-in-36 chance to get a 6. Had you been rolling a single die, you'd roll a 6 6 times, almost half as frequently. And you'd have rolled 5 more 1s.

EDIT: should probably mention that the number of outcomes does not always equal the percent chance of getting a particular outcome. But in this case where all the dice have the same number of sides, each dice has the same % chance to land on any particular side.

Tense and Perspective in Roleplaying

I do not like to randomly change tense or perspective, and prefer to write everything in past tense from some variation of third person.

And in case anyone didn't know, there are (at least) three ways to handle third person. You've got omniscient, where the narrative knows everything that's going on, and limited, which tells the story primarily from a character's perspective or the narrator's perspective. I tend to prefer limited, and which type of limited depends on the character.

Tense just sounds better when it's past tense. But you're never writing exclusively in one tense because there will be times you need to explain when something is happening at the same time or how something correlates to things that have happened.

Lock down another finished RP.

It was messy at times, but we completed the RP. It only took 4 years.

If one of you lovely mods wouldn't mind putting a lock on this bad boy, it would be much appreciated.

Regardless of who locks it, I'll just give @Stormflyx a random ping for no reason whatsoever.

Darkest Before the Dawn: A CYOA Magical Girl Roleplay [Completed]

“Pen pen.”

— Aighorost

I wonder if Penny’s going to appear. It would kind of be a shame if we didn’t see her again until the event ends. I mean I assume they turned down a proper fight against me because they wanted her to appear again. Oh well…

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L O S T I N T H O U G H T

@DarkwolfX37

Needless to say, Nuncio was a little concerned when the doll girl randomly didn’t trust him and stubbornly waited for Penny to come back. He probably would have stayed with her, but that was one hell of a retcon that he had no intention of introducing He instead focused on leading Shion out of the overcity.

Needless to say, the overcity wasn’t exactly a convenient place to navigate. When they came out they were several blocks from Sanctuary.

”So uh, bit of an intermission there.” Nuncio folded his arms. ”Ya was sayin somethin’ about leaving Penrose?” He sighed. ”I ain’t gunna lie. For Faith, for Sammy? I think it’s in all of our best interests we get the flock outta here.”

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S P E C I A L N E E D S

@Ariamis

Su wouldn’t even have time to think of a response to Helga’s question before she was cut off.

”Seems we have other things to be concerned about.” Su yanked the bandages off of her head. ”There no reason we can’t help an ally of Penrose. Let’s see what we can do.” And with that, they ran for the portal.

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V I C T O R Y T H R O U G H V I O L E N C E

@FamishedPants@Majoras End@twave

The pile of cradle agents detonated, and everyone was thrown away from Veronica.

”What’s this? Another foe invades Penrose?” She pointed at the portal. ”We should follow the rest of Maura’s agents!” She blazed a trail straight for the portal, followed by a scrambling Trixy.

Viridian, on the other hand, seemed content to stay behind.

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P A T C H N O T E S

Hello Patrons!

Like we promised, we’ve finally rolled out the newest balance patch for Oros, and it’s a pretty significant one!

The biggest and most notable change is that Oros is no longer a monster girl! She has a new purified skin.

In terms of balance, we wanted Oros to seem more like Mika, so we removed a lot of her monsterous abilities. Her VIT, MAG, and LCK have all been reduced slightly. She’s also lost a lot of her unfair survival options, which allows her to feel pain and survive attacks that would cause her heart to stop beating. She can also no longer void step, and her ability to sniff out Mint and Beacon players has been entirely removed! We know Beacon players needed a lot of help, and we all breathed a sigh of relief to see that go.

But it’s not all bad news for Oros mains. Oros’s martial training lets her make use of non-magical weapons in her hammerspace, and her memory link lets her share her memories with others. We understand that players who enjoyed Oros’s beast like qualities might not like this change, but it does give utility and role play opportunities to those who wish to use her more cautiously. The dev team is a really big fan of frying pan => Shotgun => Memory Link(“We dated in an alternate universe”) => Endless Eclipse => M4 => AA-12 => Tentacles => Pool Fist Dash => Memory Link(“This Was Your Death”) => Headbut.

We’re happy with how she is, but we’ll be keeping an eye on Oros until the season ends. We’ll likely have to roll out one more patch for her before the Christmas event starts.

-The Riot Team

Can You Call Yourself an Advanced Writer if You Only Write Female Characters? -Closed-

If you post a topic, be it to ask a simple question or get advice, the community is going to try and turn it into a discussion.

Even with most everyone here thinking advanced is an arbitrary thing, there's one camp that thinks writing everything makes you a better writer, and another that thinks it's better to write what you enjoy/can do well. This could be discussed further.

Sum up your week in roleplaying in just 3 words

Ending the Carnage