Talk:RP Primer

Excellent article! --Tom 10:20, 12 May 2007 (CEST)

(Aquitaine)

I hadn't actually meant for anyone to look at this yet - I wrote the first bit and then went away for a few days.

But since you're here:

- What features are common to the best RP you've had? - What should be avoided? - How can these things be communicated to people?

Opposing viewpoints for characters

Do distinguish your characters from each other by having them adopt opposing viewpoints or by giving them different character traits so that they immediately stand out from one another.

I think the most important part of this statement is in the first four words: "Do distinguish your characters...". Having your characters adopt opposing viewpoints for no reason other than to differentiate them is almost as bad as having your characters be carbon copies. BattleMaster is positively riddled with families that have a rift between brothers, or siblings that hate each other. It becomes just another tired cliché: "Oh look, another pair of brothers that hate each other and fight constantly. And they're fighting on opposite sides of the war. Imagine that..."

Just as important as differentiating your characters is originality. Creating original scenarios and personalities is likely to much more enjoyable for both the person behind the characters, and the other people playing alongside them. There's no reason your characters can't agree with each other on some issues. Or perhaps they agree on the same goal, but disagree on the methods used to achieve that goal. --Indirik 20:49, 15 May 2007 (CEST)

Agreed

Well put. I will make the adjustment.

--Aquitaine

Some comments

• Regarding Marquess/Marquis/Marchioness:

I had always thought that the female of "Marquis" was most correctly "Marquise", it being a French word to begin with. And shouldn't the male of "Marchioness" be simply "March"?

• Regarding the term "powerplaying":

I would be cautious of defining it so rigidly. The term "powergamer" can be much more broadly applied, and generally is, in BattleMaster circles at least. In my experience, there are generally two "levels" of what is referred to as powergaming: the first and more innocent can also be termed "strategy playing", and refers to players who are purely out to win battles and wars, but still perfectly content to stay within all the rules and guidelines of BattleMaster. The second refers to those who actively try to put themselves above others, in strategy and RP (if they RP), to the point of breaking guidelines and even violating rules and cheating. Playing another person's character for the purpose of making your character "win" whatever situation they're in certainly falls under the heading of powergaming, but phrasing it as you did ("This is called "powerplaying"") at least implies that that is the only meaning the term has.

• Regarding decoration in an RP:

I would actually encourage the use of formatting in an RP, if it's done correctly (eg, boldface, italics). It's not that difficult if you use the Rich Text Editor to send ingame messages, and most mail clients support some form of rich-text formatting in emails (for sending to the RP list). The sometimes-oddly-placed asterisks and slashes are generally misguided attempts to produce boldface and italics in ingame messages.

• A less specific criticism, but more profound:

Particularly in the last section, you make it sound as though RP is centered around "events" or "snippets"--narratives written around a particular, well, event. However, I would contend that, while it appears more difficult from the outside, that is actually the less important side of RP, while the more important side is keeping the consistency and mindset outlined throughout the article in all your characters' actions and words.

In general, though, I think it's a great article. We do need to teach more people what good RP is, and what you've written is a very good way to do so. And forgive me if anything in the above seems in any way condescending or assuming you are ignorant of the ways of the game: it's not at all intended that way, we just don't really seem to move in the same circles ingame, so I don't know how much of what I see, you also see. --Anaris 00:47, 18 May 2007 (CEST)