Lalliman

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

Think about this, though. Would the same group of characters appear more legitimate or interesting if they were ugly? If people are attracted to and obsess about beauty in real life, why wouldn't they in a fantasy? And the people behind the computer screes, who play these characters, are they not teenagers or young themselves? How much depth should you be able to expect from them? I'm not trying to be snarky here, genuinely interested in these questions.

@Prisk

You didn't ask me, but I feel inclined to respond.

I think that attractive characters aren't a problem in themselves, but can be a symptom of another problem. If a character is really super totally hot, but their attractiveness doesn't have any interesting implications on their personality, it could be an indication that someone is playing for wish-fulfilment more so than to create a good story. Chances are, they're just playing an idealised version of themselves, whether they realise it or not. And that's usually detrimental to good story-telling.

For the second point, there's a notable difference between someone playing a character who is snarky teenager, and an actual snarky teenager playing themselves. The former person knows he's playing an annoying character, assumably with the intention of making them less annoying through character development. The latter person probably thinks the way they're acting is actually cool. Their perspective is limited due to their inexperience, and if they don't see the flaws in their own character, they're unlikely to create any interesting development.

These are generalisations, of course. Point is, the problem isn't about snarky teenage supermodels specifically, but about the fact that they are statistically likely to overlap with a miasma of bad roleplaying practices.

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

@naptime The roleplaying community is full of people who A) are too fickle to maintain a long-term RP and B) are socially-awkward and can't handle confrontation. This kind of ghosting happens all the time to everyone. Just scroll back through the bitching thread and you'll see there's tons of complaints like that. So it's probably not your fault. :) In the future, if you're starting an RP with someone unknown, try having a look at their post history. You can usually recognise the serial ghosters pretty quickly.

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

@SleepingSilence I think what bothers her is that you’ve turned a roleplaying complaint into a politically-charged real-life complaint. I say “politically-charged” because not everyone is going to silently agree with you on the question of whether someone should be allowed to continue living with their parents as an adult. I am inclined to disagree with parts of your statement, but I’m not going to go into that because that’s not what this thread is for. Though, if you want to have a discussion about this with someone of a different viewpoint, you can feel free to PM me.

Edit: I jumped to premature conclusions.

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

I just remembered an amusing story that I'd like to share, and see if maybe someone else here was witness to it. It's not really a bitch, but it has to do with someone being a dickwad, so it seems appropriate to this thread.

Years ago, it might've been in the Old Guild, a new user showed up in the arena section. Literally new: his account was made that day and he had zero posts to his name. He starts a thread in the arena section, asking who the best combat writers on the site are. He then talks about how, if the best writers come forward and prove themselves, he "might consider taking them under his wing". I'm pretty sure he said that word for word.

Let that sink in for a second. Not only did he deem himself so skilled that only the best writers on RPG are just barely qualified to become his apprentice, but he also assumed that we would take his word for this unquestioningly. Of a random nobody who made no attempt to introduce himself. If he'd started with something like "I've been roleplaying for 40 years and consider myself a master", then... he'd still be a tool, but at least he'd be giving us some reason to take him seriously.

Needless to say, the arena regulars chewed him up, in part by calling him out on the fact that someone's writing skill isn't easily ranked. After all, he didn't even make clear whether he was looking for the people who write the best scenes, or the ones who win most often. He never responded to any of them. The act of not being immediately accepted as the genius he claimed to be caused him to disappear into the void as quickly as he’d come.

Or well, he’d made one other post on some ongoing arena battle before the shitstorm shooed him away, saying something like “Interesting. I will be watching this thread.” I’m sure that in his head he sounded very mysterious and intimidating.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of perhaps the biggest tool that Roleplayerguild has ever witnessed. (I kinda hope someone can top it though.)

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

@SleepingSilence I see my posts as something that I have to put a one-time effort into, and is then displayed on the internet indefinitely, for a potentially infinite amount of people to see. (Keyword is potential.) As such, I go out of my way to make them as high-quality as possible. But a lot of people don't seem to think like that. I imagine they see it as just part of a conversation, a fire-and-forget piece of text that they'll never have to worry about again once it's posted. From that perspective, I can understand why they wouldn't want to put any more quality control into their posts than they would put into a text message. I don't like it, but I can understand it. Still strange that you found this even in the advanced section though.

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

Dudes who set up RP universes that are heavy in racism, sexism, homophobia, etc all in the name of "being realistic hurr hurr hurr".

@Drache

This is a case of someone failing to communicate the real reason for their decisions. Which is very common, though it's not always as bothersome as this. You're not including these things because they're realistic, you're including them because you want them to exist for the inherent value they bring to the story. It's a matter of tone: if you want a dark, gritty fantasy world, this is one way to get there. The sense of realism is just a peripheral benefit.

Of course, there's also the people who use fiction to push a political agenda. Fuck those people. But in my experience, it's rather hard to differentiate with certainty whether the beliefs of someone's character / setting are their own real-world beliefs, or just flaws to make the character / setting more interesting. As long as they're not openly preaching misogyny OOC, that is.

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

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.

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

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.

@Buddha

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."

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

"I'll focus down to one or two martial arts. Despite them being so similar in all. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, I know the differences."

????????????????????

@Oddsbod

I guess they're similar compared to Scottish claymore fighting or Greek phalanx combat.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

@Oddsbod See, it's I'm-cosmically-important syndrome. I suspect that's the true reason why weeaboos have a bad name, rather than their excessive reverence of Japanese culture. Though they might be very closely linked.