Fuxx said:
Girl characters are a bigger problem that RDMers, SATT people spawning broken NPCs in spawn, propkilling people with lights and the incessant minging in town.
K
there are two ways to answer this
there's how i'd answer it to a friend
"ikr"
because i'd trust that friend to be being a sarcastic fuck (as many of my friends are) and i think itd be rude not to respond with the same brand of sarcasm. i might even throw in a
"the other day someone said metagame destroyed more roleplay than rdm lol. what a fag"
just for good measure - to make sure they didn't think i was some kind of cockstumbling spungaloid
that's the type of response which would be normal to give to someone with working higher brain functions and a general comprehension of the world around them.
here's the other one:
John and Bob are characters. The roleplay they're in involves an attempt to perform a coup on a faction. They're in some secret hideout, discussing their plans quietly. Rather suddenly, the scene is disrupted. Their roleplayers glance upwards as some moron with a gun storms in and guns them both down. Fuck. Now he's playing with props. They return, shoot him, barricade the door to the area they're roleplaying in, and continue. John and Bob discuss the finer points of their plan. Later that week, they attempt their coup, but Bob is gunned down in the process. John finds himself in the position him and Bob originally wanted, but forever resents the organisation around him for causing the loss of his friend.
John and Bob are characters. John and Bob are characters. The roleplay they're in involves an attempt to perform a coup on a faction. They're in some secret hideout, discussing their plans quietly. Unfortunately, the character they're trying to coup is not a character, but an avatar. What they're facing is the embodiment of some repressed individual who is in a generally powerless situation in the real world, and thus seeks the catharsis of having people listen to him in a game. Because of this, when that person enters the server and sees that Bob and John are on together, they search the map until they find a spot where they can listen in. When Bob and John come to the moment of their coup, they find themselves inexplicably surrounded by avatarlets, and are both killed.
"Okay, I guess that's a fair point about how momentary disruptions on the scale of general minging are actually far less disruptive than a general disrespect towards the nature of roleplay - how does this connect to girl characters? Fuxx is only talking about girl characters here, not metagamers!"
Walker is not just talking about girl characters. Fuxx is trying to downplay the issue by reducing it to a single concept which doesn't actually bear any semblance to what Walker is talking about. Fuxx isn't quite stupid enough to think that Walker is actually just complaining about female characters, so it's actually just a clumsy manipulative attempt to make Walker look foolish. It's clumsy because the people here aren't half as stupid as Fuxx expects, so I seriously doubt anyone will take the ploy seriously.
What Walker is actually talking about is roleplayers who prioritise characters who suit their fantasies over communal roleplay. That is to say someone who would make the same characters regardless of the setting, and regardless of how little they fit in with the ongoing roleplay. This is the type of person who, if you were writing a story one sentence at a time - taking turns to write the sentences - would make all of their sentences about how good their character is, how smart, cute, and just generally awesome they are, all the while pointing to whatever shallow emotional tags they've managed to stick on to them and crying "Look how developed!"
Of course, if you were to do that, you'd be a bad writer. In a roleplay setting, you're also being a dick. The whole concept of making a fantasy or an obsession into a character undermines all the principles of John and Bob. It means that the character isn't actually a narrative entity, but instead a toy-thing of the author, designed to get whatever they want, like an avatar in a game.
One group of those issues is momentary, the other is lasting and not only annoying but also directly disruptive towards good writing and communal roleplay. If you find yourself more frustrated by someone forcing you to request a teleport back than you are by someone playing a character who is clearly just a mix of someone's obsessions and fantasies, then you're probably playing an avatar yourself. Who was it who played the charismatic rebel leader on HL2 who had a submarine again? Does that sound at all familiar in terms of... not fitting in with the setting, or fantasies/obsessions? In fact I actually
remember you telling me about how you charted your success in HL2 by the success and repute of your characters. The reason you have trouble understanding that this type of person and this type of character are a real issue is because you are this type of person and you play this type of character.
That said I don't think Clavier should be banned. While he seems to be rampaging through pretty much every principle of roleplay available, no-one thought to actually make that against the server rules, and since TnB adopts a written rules over judgement approach to this kind of deal, it wouldn't really be fair.
