RPing pet hates

[siead_lietrathua]

omg lord lundar that's hilarious!

i know once we had our monk throw the shapeshifter into a crowd. mid-flight he shifts from small form (serpent) to his biggest (bear).... SPLAT gobbos.

[lordlundar]

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent). little things that can make the game more interesting in the little downtimes between events. plus some things, like having a clumsy person along, can help trigger events. expecially when they trip face first onto the floor-trigger for a trap....
damn i really miss D&D, lmfao.

Had a pally from another realm (aka dimension) where all but clerical magic was considered 'evil'. He and the more wizened priest he was with wound up in our group where everyone else used non-clerical magic. To add to this he could also go berserker.

Queue the incident where we came across a pretty large stash of magical items and he proceeded to break a +1 arrow then drop it in the pile. Picture a small tactical nuclear weapon of arcane energy going off after 10 seconds.

[Andara Bledin]

Sometimes I don't like a lot of character flaws. Why does every character have to be dealing with some great internal struggle? I have internal struggles, I don't want to be reminded of them! Sometimes I just want a story about a guy who kicks ass.

However, as noted in another thread (on fantasy stories), if your guy has no flaws, he's about as interesting as a cardboard cutout and spoken from the point of view of someone who has written one of those characters, very hard to design conflicts for that don't alienate pretty much every other player.

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent).

This.

Some of my best characters had unusual flaws.

One used an affected and difficult-to-understand accent just to be a prat. Another had an alternate personality that would cause trouble at interesting moments. Then there was the one that was terrified of letters on objects that could flex... such as books and paper money.

To add to the OT discussion:

Godmodders >_<

^-.-^

[siead_lietrathua]

ya but a flaw doesnt have to be an internal struggle. it could be blindness, hyperactivity or a language barrier issue (like your dwarf never learned common language very well and has a hard to understand accent). little things that can make the game more interesting in the little downtimes between events. plus some things, like having a clumsy person along, can help trigger events. expecially when they trip face first onto the floor-trigger for a trap....
damn i really miss D&D, lmfao.

[DrFaroohk]

Sometimes I don't like a lot of character flaws. Why does every character have to be dealing with some great internal struggle? I have internal struggles, I don't want to be reminded of them! Sometimes I just want a story about a guy who kicks ass.

[siead_lietrathua]

im used to table top, not forums, but alot of the same issues arise.

also i have to add in powergamers! great for when you are playing an mmorpg where you can solo it, but when you have a group and actually need to work together as a unit it can be damaging. my b-i-l is a powergamer, and he ended up making him self overly-specialized and useless to the team. and we were the team of weirdos! when the monk can out-fight the fighter its not a good sign.

also character flaws are awesome. our shapeshifter was neurotic, the monk was an egoist and i was a psycotically happy drow with a halfling obsession..... damn i miss D&D

[DrFaroohk]

I used to RP on an old BBS, until the other experienced RP'ers started hating on me cuz I didn't understand the Mists of Buttholia or something. So I started my own RP forum, and then they all started coming there to bitch about my rp. "You're doing this all wrong! Are you stupid? You had a DEMON on your first day you can't do that derp derp!"

[Lace Neil Singer]

Just to get the venom out of my system. XD I still like to forum RP; it's just that certain things irritate me about it. XD

* Mary Sues. Gotta be at the top of the list. In an RP, a character can not be the focus of the RP or the main character who everyone else revolves around as tho they are the centre of the galaxy. I mean, there are dozens of guides about how to make a decent character so there really isn't any excuse for coming up with a Sue. I'm also not talking about original characters or characters who happen to be beautiful/clever/insert positive attribute here. Too many people get butthurt when their character is accused of being a Sue and claim it's cuz their character is say, super beautiful or talented. No, it's not. You can have a beautiful and/or talented character without them being a Sue; you just have to not be a lazy writer and to balance the character with faults rather than just positives. And I don't want them in my RP if you can't be bothered to do that, kthxbai.

* Constant lack of spelling and/or grammar. I'm not a nitpicking grammarian; I myself do shorten words out of laziness or misspell occasionally. I'm not talking about that kind of thing at all. What I mean is constantly posting with shortened words and ignoring proper sentence structure. Good forum RPs can be read as stories; bad ones are impossible to read at all. And please post more than just "he said hello"... I'm not demanding a massive ream; for one thing, asking for several paragraphs often just means that you end up with a post being a shitload of filler and purple prose. Just post several sentances and try to not just post dialogue; post what your character is feeling or doing as well and try to move the plot on.

* Lack of understanding. This pertains to a) misunderstanding the plot; b) misunderstanding what I mean when I say I want experienced RPers and c) a general lack of understanding about RPing. I realise that not everyone is an expert, and I'm perfectly happy to have someone less experienced RPing alongside me as long as they're going to be happy to take advice and edit their post if necessary. What I don't like are people who either try to completely take over the RP, which is just rude; or people who try and shoehorn in plots or characters which don't fit the RP at all. Like the idiot who tried to turn a Resident Evil RP into Happy Magic School. -.- Argh.


Will probably be more added on later; those are just the main ones and hopefully someone can make sense of my rambling. XD