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)

Response

• Marquess/Marquis/etc: French is Marquis/Marquise. English is Marquess/Marchioness, but I think there are a few different sources about this. I'll try to simplify it.
• What you are describing as the first category of "powergaming" is actually "metagaming." Powergaming refers specifically to a "powerplay," or an action on one person's part that forces someone else's character to say or do something that they did not consent to. This is completely different from playing for the purpose of making your character win, which is not under the heading of powergaming -- "meta" gaming is RPing "about the game" as opposed to in the game. I have seen these terms lumped together in BM before, but they are not at all connected in my book. I think the only relationship they have is that people who do one in BM are more likely to do the other than people who don't.
• No problem with formatting in RP (boldface, italics). I was referring more to ASCII art.
• It's not so much that RP is centered around events so much as something has to drive the RP. Plays and movies typically have to address the question "why are we looking at this particular 24 (or however many) hours?" So it isn't "an event" so much as it's an engine; something has got to be pushing the RP forward. If it's just your character hanging around with his buddies shooting the breeze, that's no good. If it's your character hanging around with buddies shooting the breeze and then something happens, that's a little different.

On the whole, this article isn't designed to "fix" things I see in BM so much as it's simply designed to set a good example. When it comes to showing people how to RP, the carrot is always better than the stick, and people also don't like the idea that one or two or even six people know how to RP "more" than they do -- and that's not really even an unreasonable stance, since people feel quite strongly about their own writing. The goal of the primer is not "time to teach you how to RP" so much as it is "here is what, in my experience, makes for good RP, both in Battlemaster and in other writing." --Aquitaine 01:02, 18 May 2007 (CEST)

The term powergaming has more than one connotation, and I can't say that I agree completely with either of Anaris' or Aquitaine's strict definitions. Powergaming is a bit nebulous in BattleMaster, due mostly to the dual nature of the game. BattleMaster is both a roleplaying game and a strategy game. Simply because a person plays the game for the strategy aspect does not make them a powergamer, as Anaris suggests. So long as the player stays within the restrictions of the game, they are doing nothing wrong. Leave them to play the game how they want to play it. However, Aquitaine's definition of someone who takes RP actions without the other character's consent, or who does not allow the other player a chance to react, etc., is too narrow. Yes, that is one aspect of powergaming. Unfortunately it completely drops the other aspect of powergaming that deals mainly with the strategy side of BattleMaster. This is the use of game mechanics to achieve the best possible outcome for your characters, regardless of whether the actions make IC sense. This is pretty much the first definition of powergaming as listed on Wikipedia. Pigeon-holing powergaming as only one of the two possible definitions is leaving it only half defined. --Indirik 16:55, 18 May 2007 (CEST)

Powergaming redux

I agree that, taken generally, we could talk about how to define powergaming all day and not arrive at a firm answer.

This is an RP guide and not a "how to play Battlemaster guide," and so for the purposes of this text, I think the crowbar separation between "metagaming" and "powergaming" is necessary to make the points I'm trying to make. Metagaming (as I define it) is not against the rules in BM, but it is still not good RP -- and so any decent RP guide should tell you to avoid it. Powergaming (also I define it) is against the rules, and so even if there may be some crossover in terms of labeling these behaviors, they're singled out for different reasons in this article. Very little here is meant to talk about the rules in BM; it's assumed the reader already knows those. Consequently, since the whole article is taking a "none of this is required, but you should think about doing things this way" I'm not sure how else I can describe it. -- Aquitaine

Made ambiguous

It's now listed as "a form of" powergaming rather than "the" definition. --Aq

Dos & Don'ts?

On looking at this again, particularly in light of it being referenced from the Serious Medieval Atmosphere page, I noticed something else I thought would be a good change: the reworking of the Dos and Don'ts into Musts, Must Nots, Shoulds and Should Nots. It makes it a little more complicated, yes, but distinguishing your characters is much, much more important for the average player than, say, developing their NPCs. The latter is something that's really only for those interested in writing a good deal of narrative RP, but the former is something that every single player should be doing. --Anaris 23:47, 6 January 2008 (CET)