Prince said
However, we were bitching about the fairly common trend of people doing it wrong.
My knight example was without changing anything. It was kinda making the point that the same base can be applied to multiple RP's. ie, bring in the exact same sheet, with cut and paste location names in history at best. I'm sure it would become more difficult to c/p a sheet if I gave said knight ability to breathe fire, sure, with you there, but a lot of roleplays follow the exact same conventions. That's my point. Not pushing for sir Spitflame in a setting where there's no magic, but that the same sheet can be used for different RP's.
Jig said
No it doesn't. I just don't really consider a reinvented character to be a 'recycled' character, and more building a character from scratch using the same thematic root. Reusing themes, as you later go on to discuss in a later post, is perfectly fine by me. However, the manifestation of those themes is going to be different from RP to RP, depending on the content of those settings.
It's more using the same character to explore different themes, an RP's theme can easily differ without too many adjustments to conventions. You lose sight of that at some point when you're creating, I know. I still remember one time I thought to have something totally original until someone said "So like x-men?" And internally I went like god-fucking-dammit. However, despite my best efforts to protest, Wolverine and Nightcrawler would totally be viable characters in that world.
Which coincidentally is also what I was getting at in the last quote. Settings really aren't as radically different as we like to pretend them to be.
Jig said
When I see people doing this, I always get the impression that they're harking back to a dead RP when they had fun, which, at the 'accepting characters' stage, doesn't really fill a GM with confidence that the player's interest in the RP is 'legitimate', rather than an opportunity to briefly relive their previous experience.
Here's a hint; ask them how they feel instead of assuming it for them. When I have a bad impression of a CS, I ask people what they meant by it.
Look, If it obviously doesn't fit, it obviously doesn't fit, but from my own experience I've gotten a lot of characters in with minimal retouching. I have a character for three different RP's in a row and the only thing I've ever had to change about her is her power level (strangely, it's only gone up since her first incarnation). And yeah, for a large part my motivation was "I want to play this character because another RP died and I'm not done with her." But that doesn't mean I disrespect the creator or will force the RP to adapt to suit my character. It just worked out without major changes, except that powerlevel and a slight CS format, because a lot of RP's use the exact same conventions. Same way, I have a couple characters made for post-apocalyptic RP's and I've yet to find one where I can't use the exact same characters.
Again, I think people only ever notice the bad examples. Because the good ones are... Well, good.
ZombieMagikarp said
Apparently 6 people is waaaaay too much for a RP! What's this? Two people who have been dying for this sort of roleplay REALLY wanna join? Well, fuck them! We can't let them join! 6 is too much and 8 is a whole fucking shitton! Even if they really wanna get in, we can't risk having this RP be overcrowded with 8 people!
Eight is the magical number, I'm told, but what I can tell you is that more than four PC's in one scene can quickly make a scene chaotic or make every post round a filler-fest where only one or two people are proactive.
