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what makes a good roleplay character? written Oct 11, 2023 19:39:04 GMT
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Oct 11, 2023 11:55:15 GMT said:
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Oct 11, 2023 3:13:49 GMT said:
i'm also not talking taking it into RP where the themes are not already present. i'm talking "an admin writes a setting where women are not allowed to do xyz" and you write a character that agrees with that in a non-violent manner-- and you get OOC backlash for it from people who, if they want to be free of those themes, could easily have read "this setting has misogyny" and not joined.

it's like being yelled at for playing a murderer in a crime RP.

hell, even non-RL opinions that aren't "strictly correct" from the ooc perspective of the site can get you harassed, such as playing someone who supports the Empire in a Star Wars RP (unless they are a sexy white guy).

I understand there's nuance in the situation, and sometimes people do go overboard, but I like when characters have flaws that reflect a setting and limited view of the setting, i guess. A perfect example is, when Sylvanas was doing her thing during BFA, it was expected that your character knew everything exactly as it happened. I respected the players who played with propaganda and limited worldviews in play over those that immediately knew everything Sylvanas was up to and everything Sylvanas did, but you couldn't actually RP them with everyone because odds are you'd run into someone whose OOC and IC opinions were perfectly lined up, and they'd "lore police" you IC for it.

my final edit, i swear: i also had a member afraid to app rose quartz from steven universe on my site because Rose is a character that is definitively flawed within the narrative and is constrained by a myriad of factors outside her control and some within. So it definitely isn't just "well some ppl don't wanna RP with Racism," it's just that some people don't wanna deal with characters that aren't perfect representations of their personal takes on a piece of media, and it's exhausting.

So I really respect when players are willing to not only RP as characters they don't agree with, but *with* characters they don't personally agree with. It's a good sign for me.
i'm ngl your community sounds miserable. might be time to move on
i've left most of the examples, and the rose quartz example was more due to past bad experiences than experiences on my site. the player faced no actual issues on my site, it was more that they were scared to do so in the first place that bothers me.
last edit on Oct 11, 2023 19:50:38 GMT by illidan main

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what makes a good roleplay character? written Oct 11, 2023 3:13:49 GMT
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i'm also not talking taking it into RP where the themes are not already present. i'm talking "an admin writes a setting where women are not allowed to do xyz" and you write a character that agrees with that in a non-violent manner-- and you get OOC backlash for it from people who, if they want to be free of those themes, could easily have read "this setting has misogyny" and not joined.

it's like being yelled at for playing a murderer in a crime RP.

hell, even non-RL opinions that aren't "strictly correct" from the ooc perspective of the site can get you harassed, such as playing someone who supports the Empire in a Star Wars RP (unless they are a sexy white guy).

I understand there's nuance in the situation, and sometimes people do go overboard, but I like when characters have flaws that reflect a setting and limited view of the setting, i guess. A perfect example is, when Sylvanas was doing her thing during BFA, it was expected that your character knew everything exactly as it happened. I respected the players who played with propaganda and limited worldviews in play over those that immediately knew everything Sylvanas was up to and everything Sylvanas did, but you couldn't actually RP them with everyone because odds are you'd run into someone whose OOC and IC opinions were perfectly lined up, and they'd "lore police" you IC for it.

my final edit, i swear: i also had a member afraid to app rose quartz from steven universe on my site because Rose is a character that is definitively flawed within the narrative and is constrained by a myriad of factors outside her control and some within. So it definitely isn't just "well some ppl don't wanna RP with Racism," it's just that some people don't wanna deal with characters that aren't perfect representations of their personal takes on a piece of media, and it's exhausting.

So I really respect when players are willing to not only RP as characters they don't agree with, but *with* characters they don't personally agree with. It's a good sign for me.
last edit on Oct 11, 2023 3:43:02 GMT by illidan main

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what makes a good roleplay character? written Oct 10, 2023 3:19:50 GMT
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gonna add: a willingness to be deliberately wrong about something without being cartoonishly caricatured.

a huge problem in pern is that people like to write conservative settings, but then no one in the rp adheres to that setting or has any sort of ill teachings as a result of it. they never have a real arc of overcoming it. they always knew better, and they were always the most politically correct little guy.

it's a dystopian setting thing in general, i've noticed. everyone wants to be the hero, no one ever wants to be misguided or wrong or brainwashed. well, a RP'er whose character isn't immune to propaganda is infinitely more interesting to me than the millionth Katniss Everdeen knockoff.

that being said, given the ooc harassment some people face for playing characters that aren't perfect (and we're talking less "racist" and more "might be a little mean"), i kinda get the desire to not play characters with actual, real flawed thinking.
last edit on Oct 10, 2023 3:23:18 GMT by illidan main

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Post a Random Thought written Oct 6, 2023 15:51:48 GMT
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double posting but does anyone find it sketch when expose videos about "toxic youtubers" have sponsorship deals and midroll ads? like you're calling out a woman for being a bully and not caring about any cause she sponsors, but ur profiting off the pain she caused?

just kinda makes me side-eye.

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Post a Random Thought written Oct 6, 2023 15:30:25 GMT
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when u want to write a character and ur writing partner that is writing with the character is busy, and you know you're not gonna be able to play this character literally anywhere else because his backstory is giga-specific and you don't really wanna compromise on any element of his character.
last edit on Oct 6, 2023 15:30:51 GMT by illidan main

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what makes a good roleplay character? written Oct 5, 2023 16:03:32 GMT
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A character that fits into the story we're writing and that I can easily play against.

I play in appless environments a lot (I primarily do MMO RP and Pathfinder these days), so an app length doesn't matter to me, and I'm probably not even gonna read an app unless I'm approving it or I NEED to know something from it tbh. I prefer plotters to apps, because I don't actually want to know everything about your character. Give me a tl;dr with plot hooks, please.

If you have a plotter, I will read that. I cannot overstate how much I prefer knowing what you want to write with the character instead of what the character has already been through. I am fine learning history and personality and powers and shit through IC, unless they're relevant to our starting plot. But I only want the most relevant tidbits. It's more fun to me to "get to know" the character as I go.

Obvsly if we're making highly connected characters, I will want to know more. But at that point, I have probably been RP'ing with you for a while.

So yeah. Apps are meaningless to me. How does your character connect to the story? How do you play into the role? If you're playing a random nobody in the RP, I'm probably not going to approach. I'm too busy to plot with every single character. But if you take an important position, or have an interesting plot hook that is relevant to the story, then we'll talk.
last edit on Oct 5, 2023 16:05:56 GMT by illidan main

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Post a Random Thought written Oct 5, 2023 15:32:55 GMT
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Oct 5, 2023 5:56:56 GMT said:
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Oct 3, 2023 16:36:13 GMT said:
if i can give just a bit of advice to people just starting a site: scope. scope. scope.

if the site is too big ICly for your starting memberbase, your startup site will probably fail. I know personally the seduction of having a million ideas and locations and a bunch of IC drama, but scope is a huge reason behind a site's success or failure.

That pretty much sums up the rise and fall of Hihou in a nutshell. My friend and I were regular players on Shin Hyakuji High School back then, and the former said, "What if we borrow Hyakuji High's "anything-goes" premise, but expand upon it x100?" It was a neat idea on paper, but in practice what we ended up with was one hell of an overdesigned setting with overly bloated rules filled with unnecessary legalese, templates for just about every possible anime archetype under the sun (that we don't even know will even see any RP action to begin with), and too many IC location subforums.

It's not helped that I wasn't really into this project to begin with, and was only roped in because I didn't wanna disappoint my friend. (I.e. I knew deep in my gut this was never gonna catch on, but I didn't have the heart back then to outright say "no" to him) To nobody's surprise, the site failed to draw in anybody besides the two of us and a couple of RP partners we made on Hyakuji. Turns out, the sheer open-endedness (as I said earlier, it aspires to be what Hyakuji was but "do it bigger") turned out to be quite an audience-alienating premise in and of itself.

Hihou pretty much taught me 2 lessons. 1) How not to make and run a site, and 2) never to be a people-pleaser, I.e. Sometimes, you just have to say "no", even to your closest friends.
and like here's the thing, it's absolutely fine to have a ton of IC locations. but you have to BUILD to it over time. You can always add more, you can always build up, but it's important to start small and go there later.

I had this issue with Ars Arcanum and I should have probably just started with Caerni and Baalgarde if I had planned on keeping it public.

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Post a Random Thought written Oct 3, 2023 16:36:13 GMT
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if i can give just a bit of advice to people just starting a site: scope. scope. scope.

if the site is too big ICly for your starting memberbase, your startup site will probably fail. I know personally the seduction of having a million ideas and locations and a bunch of IC drama, but scope is a huge reason behind a site's success or failure.

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Post a Random Thought written Oct 1, 2023 17:26:44 GMT
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Oct 1, 2023 9:48:37 GMT said:
I don't have too much experience outside of animanga but to review you need the following skills to make a site that many people consider to be worthy of joining

-People Person/Leadership skill
-Recruiting
-Ability to make or outsource a customized skin that no one has ever used before, but looks enough like every other skin to be cool.
-Good Writing Ability
-A compelling plot
-Flexible Schedule
-Image editing skills
-Artistic Talent or Money for commissioned art or a sworn statement from an artist with three witnesses in a court of law.
-Money to subscribe to premium so people can write segs /j.
-SEO optimization.
-Years of experience with a stellar reputation.
-Established friend group to mod and startup with.
-Discord chat moderation skills.

With all those things on the table, is it really any surprise when you can't find a site about a niche manga that has never been translated to English or adapted into anime?

The hobby is not dying, it has just become a career field to make things happen. So I'd either get used to panfandoms and very popular series RPs or try to lower standards a bit. The mid 2010's golden era where a couple talented people were hammering out skin after skin is over and aesthetic expectations keep getting higher.
honestly yeah. the people who won't join sites with premade/simple skins are part of the problem. the aesthetic arms race of creating a site has become a huge issue, and it honestly discourages a lot of people from trying.

this is a issue in RL as well, tbh, and i feel like it's a huge hurdle for getting involved in forum RP. even joining forum RP without an innate understanding of how to appeal to ppl's aesthetic "needs" will get you ignored. it's part of why i don't join sites where templates are in-use, even if they are optional, because they are almost always necessary to get the community to pay attention to you.

i can imagine why people would do discord RP when forum RP has so many hoops to jump through.

edit: you also can never not be on discord as an admin, but this is an issue with discord RPs too. rip to anyone with a sleep schedule or offline hobbies.
last edit on Oct 1, 2023 17:31:37 GMT by illidan main

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Post a Random Thought written Sept 30, 2023 16:39:09 GMT
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tbh i maintain that a huge reason the RL community is bigger than the animanga one is that RL has better resources for finding FCs. most of my FC usage is RL for that reason.

like idk i prefer animanga from an aesthetic standpoint, but i can't deny that if two identical sites have an "fcs must be 18+" rule, and the only difference is what kind of FC they use, i'm joining the RL one every single time. it's less work on me to find a good FC when the FC directories for RL are sorted by age, gender, and race, and there are a million of them to choose from.
last edit on Sept 30, 2023 16:41:43 GMT by illidan main

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Muscular lady 30+ written Sept 23, 2023 17:10:13 GMT
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Illaoi from League of Legends.

You could also possibly use some characters from Steven Universe. Garnet, Jasper, and Bismuth come to mind. Jasper might need humanized art, and Bismuth might need photoshop to give her a more human skintone depending on the setting, but they're Options.

Ambessa Medarda from Arcane also works if you wanna really lean into Shredded Milf. Same with Renata Glasc from League of Legends.

Striga from Castlevania.

If you're in a fantasy RP, you can use Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3.

Depending on art, Riven, Sejuani, and Vi from League of Legends all work as well.

Jolyne Kujo isn't 30+ but you've listed Korra so might as well get Jolyne out of the way, too.

And of course, Zarya from Overwatch if you want a muscle option with a billion pieces of art.
last edit on Sept 23, 2023 17:15:51 GMT by illidan main

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