Talk:Jack Swordmenace's Big Book of Roleplay/@comment-3028058-20121010044623

According to Sven Daggersteel/skull? I don't remember the last name, roleplay now involves hacking and doing whatever it takes to win. Not building a story. Not creating fan stories. Not doing group RP. No, apparently it's now just factions with seriously bad attitudes battling it out and acting like a bunch of rabid lunatics. What happened to community? What happened to a clear boundary on what was considered part of roleplay (like characters being at odds with each other) and what was considered part of interactions between the actual players? This is no longer roleplay: it's raging at each other with fancy titles and bad attitudes. That is not roleplay. He also seems to not understand that the concept of roleplay isn't exclusive to POTC, pretty much every game has RP communities in it. I think the principal reasons why people now think of RP to be what Sven described and the reason why RP is now looked down on and restricted on the site is because the maturity level and age of the game's average player is much lower than most MMOs. There are too few people giving a good example of what roleplay is really supposed to be: like acting on a stage, but within a video game instead. Placing yourself in your childhood fantasies, and cooperating with other RPers to create events, stories, personalities. Now, it's basically griefing with roleplay as the excuse. This is not roleplay, and I refuse to call it roleplay. The truth is, roleplay in POTCO died a long time ago, and that is precisely why I left the game. What's fun about all of this, what they are calling "roleplay"? It's not fun, it's just a source of unnecessary stress, anger and grief. It pits people against each other. It causes people to lose all sense of reality and creates the illusion that crossing those once-established boundaries that in reality made RP fun and good, making them think that by crossing these boundaries, hacking, reporting, spamming, insulting one another, they are being more involved in the roleplay and making it more immersive. In reality, they are ruining it by eliminating the primary purpose: everyone should be enjoying themselves. I think this is because people don't seem to understand the concept of roleplay so far as creating a character and recognizing when actions are being made between two characters, and when they are between two players. When someone attempts to maliciously assault someone else via hacking or reporting for no reason, they are not fighting in character in the roleplay, that is now between the two people who are playing the game. This, made popular by people like Pearson Wright and Captain Leon, is NOT ok, it only creates drama and grief, and it is fundamentally not roleplaying. It's in fact one of the biggest things you should never do in roleplay, because it destroys any sense of immersion and character depth. If you can't distinguish between a character and the person playing the game, it's not roleplay anymore.

Next, there's addressing the issue that people seem to think that roleplaying is about "winning". Everyone thinks they are better than everyone else: everyone has some ridiculous title, everyone pretends to own Port Royal mansion (I too am guilty of having done this, and many other things I am now condemning), everyone pretends to be stronger than everyone else. We see things like *stab no miss* happen all the time, and what's the fun or realisticness of that? That is not roleplaying, it's god-moding, and there's nothing fun about it. It's utterly pointless and it's one of the big reasons why rpers are now the laughing stock of games like POTCO, where the roleplaying community is being dominated by people who simply put, aren't roleplaying, they are metagaming.

Historical re-enactment has been practised by adults for millennia. The ancient Romans, Han Chinese, and medieval Europeans all enjoyed occasionally organising events in which everyone pretended to be from an earlier age, and entertainment appears to have been the primary purpose of these activities. Within the 20th century historical re-enactment has often been pursued as a hobby.

Roleplaying is supposed to be like acting! Do you think historical re-enactors are trying to kill each other in real life when their characters are fighting? No: when the scene is over they continue on with their lives, friendships, building their COMMUNITY. Roleplaying in a game is no different, or at least it shouldn't be. Every game except POTCO that has roleplaying in it understands this, understands what in-character (the banker wearing the Union uniform, in the battle re-enactment) and out of character (the banker at his day job, helping out his neighbors, etc.) are and that that banker wouldn't try to poison his neighbor's food when they were at their homes, not participating in the battle re-enactment. Because that just wouldn't make sense. Roleplaying in games is no different, and that's why roleplay in its current state in POTCO is something that I simply refuse to call "roleplay" anymore. What Sven told me about is not roleplaying: it's someone developing split-personality disorder. Roleplaying is not universal throughout the whole game: you are not constantly acting is if you are your character and behaving accordingly including using the game's mechanics. If you are, '''you're doing it wrong. Roleplay has an on/off switch.'''

The Solution:

1. Remove the agenda of "winning" from roleplaying. Roleplay should be more about telling a story and developing a character's personality than about fighting wars.

2. Remove the concept of power in the game. The reality of it is that you winning a war that makes you king of spain does not give you any real power. There is nothing that gives you actual authority over anyone unless they choose to do so as part of their character. Don't try to say that because in your roleplaying sphere you won a battle that you now have dominion over people, particularly non-roleplayers. They aren't a part of the roleplay, they aren't under your control.

3. Think of yourself as an actor, and your character as a role you are playing for a production. You still act normal to the rest of the cast when you are off stage, so why should roleplaying be any different? When you aren't in an RP event, you should be out of character unless everyone agrees to be in-character, or you are in an area that is accepted as an "rp area" (this is why RP dedicated servers are always a nice touch to any game, but unfortunately this was overlooked in POTCO). This will also create better emersion because you won't get people ruining immersion by mocking you because you are roleplaying. Plays have rehearsals for a reason, if everyone literally started acting like their role throughout their life, they would probably be considered certifiably crazy. Roleplaying is no different.

Feel free to discuss this with me any time and if there's any confusion I'd be more than happy to clarify.

- Jack Swordmenace