Roleplay Pet Peeves

[Fomsie]

5 hours ago, the1egend1ives said:

Another pet peeve I have is that I main a natural origin character and I frequently have to fight off demigods who constantly remind me that I'll die in five seconds to a gunshot wound,or that my arrows are totally ineffective against 99% of enemies.

Superman would have the "Natural" origin too.

 

That said, even the description during character creation states that you have honed your natural abilities to superhuman levels.

 

So it isn't like you are Bob from Accounting, or even Hawkeye, you have developed your skills and abilities to the point of actually being super human. So tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. Because clearly your arrows DO harm all the enemies you face, and your other skills/powers keep you alive while doing so.

 

 

Now my pet peeve would be the flip-side, the person who insists they are just a normal human... in spite of surviving bullets, blades, fire, poison, alien probing and getting yeeted by giant robots, all while tossing around incarnate and other powers that they fail to explain away. "Sure Bob, you are just an every day guy from Toledo... but that Barrier you just magicked up around everyone that stopped those giant death rays, isn't something you just picked up at Costco..."

[TemporalVileTerror]

Given this games' ludonarrative?  I rather think one -could- just pick up those Incarnate abilities at CostCo these days.

[Arctique]

39 minutes ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

Given this games' ludonarrative?  I rather think one -could- just pick up those Incarnate abilities at CostCo these days.

You save a fortune if you buy your Incarnate threads in bulk!

[TemporalVileTerror]

Yeah, but having to sign away a part of your soul to get a membership card is kind of annoying.

[General Idiot]

On 2/23/2021 at 12:06 PM, Fomsie said:

Superman would have the "Natural" origin too.

 

That said, even the description during character creation states that you have honed your natural abilities to superhuman levels.

 

So it isn't like you are Bob from Accounting, or even Hawkeye, you have developed your skills and abilities to the point of actually being super human. So tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. Because clearly your arrows DO harm all the enemies you face, and your other skills/powers keep you alive while doing so.

I mean, Hawkeye could harm Superman. All he needs is a Kryptonite arrow. And to not be in a completely different universe made by a different publisher but still.

 

...Green Arrow on the other hand, he just needs the fancy arrows. I think some versions of him even keep a few around just in case.

[TheCorvus]

On 2/22/2021 at 3:06 PM, Fomsie said:

Superman would have the "Natural" origin too.

Wait...wait...wait...

 

Flying and super-strength are not natural for Kryptonians. It's only after being under the effects of....

 

...

 

meh..nevermind.

[biostem]

On 2/22/2021 at 12:01 PM, the1egend1ives said:

Another pet peeve I have is that I main a natural origin character and I frequently have to fight off demigods who constantly remind me that I'll die in five seconds to a gunshot wound,or that my arrows are totally ineffective against 99% of enemies.

Isn't the origin just the starting point of your character?  I mean, you may have started off as a "mere human" fighting Skulls and Hellions with a bow, arrows, and some training, but by the time you are fighting those demigods, you've far exceeded what any baseline human can do.  And it need not be by such obvious means, either - maybe you really are just that damned lucky!

[jkwak]

On 2/21/2021 at 8:12 PM, TwoDee said:

I'd echo this, and note that if your 'trickster' persona involves calling other characters a "weaboo furry emo angst club," to paraphrase, then you're establishing an adversarial dialectic to your razzing and it's no wonder that people don't want to play with you.

if you dont want to interact with specific characters its up to you, but reflecting the interaction with one character on the player behind it is just bullshit.

You cant just judge someone because of one character.

 

[TwoDee]

On 2/27/2021 at 2:12 AM, jkwak said:

if you dont want to interact with specific characters its up to you, but reflecting the interaction with one character on the player behind it is just bullshit.

You cant just judge someone because of one character.

Correct, which was why I did not say Azari is an adversarial person (because I don't have enough information for that), but I did say Azari had established an adversarial dialectic.  I understand that offhandedly dismissing the most popular RP hub space as a hive of special-snowflake degenerates while complaining about how nobody will RP with your good-natured jokester can be construed as the justified hurt of someone who feels ostracized by that same space and is lashing out, but it also paints a stark portrait of what tone the player may be bringing to the RP through that character.

And this:

  

On 2/20/2021 at 12:32 PM, Azari said:

In my experience in everlasting the roleplaying community has NOT been very friendly or accepting to newcomers (or perhaps specifically me?).  They don’t like to laugh.  They’re very uptight.  They often seem annoyed by my presence.   Perhaps my punctuation and spelling isnt perfect enough.  Maybe they dont care for my characters backstory or something.  Idk but i’ve never had any luck with roleplaying, as i tend to just get driven off or ignored by the clique nature of it.  RP’ers can be overly serious and my characters trickster personality with a sense of humor maybe rubs people the wrong way.     Excuse me for not wanting to use [walk] everywhere.  I’m a freakin’ super hero.   I fight bad guys.   You’d think the RP community was a weaboo furry emo angst club by my experiences. 

 

Is an adversarial dialectic, pitting player versus community in the very ground level of the argument, which frames what is clearly a mismatch of expectations, as the community being stick-up-their-ass fuddy-duddies and the player/character being a lovable scamp that nobody appreciates.

 

I'm a big proponent of dropping the pretense of 'It's what my character would do/it's how my character is,' and abandoning character authenticity if it means that you'll be a better fit with the RP you're trying to engage with.  This is especially true of casual-social RP, which already relies on a lot of contrivance to explain why heroes and villains can coexist in a bar setting without descending into violence, or at least performative, shit-slinging kayfabe at every opportunity.  I wouldn't describe my characters as either 'dark' or 'light' themed characters, but rather they adapt to whatever the tone of the RP is.  I've had the same character beat a victim into a coma in anger during a particularly dark supergroup RP, that I used to play a drunken improv in Pocket D where everyone was making up fake band names, that I've had give Objectively Bad Hot Takes to invite other players to dunk him for that fun argumentative catharsis, that I've done cutesy relationshippy stuff with, that I've occasionally allowed to be legitimately heroic and straight-up save the day from the bad guy.  Humans have many faces, and so do our characters, and you shouldn't feel beholden to maintaining a particular tone 24/7, especially if it's clearly causing a disconnect.

 

Accordingly, I'm always very wary of playing 'jerk' characters, even 'lovable jerks with a heart of gold,' because many players play this game as escapism, and that's the RP that they're going to seek out.  Dealing with jerks isn't part of the escapist fantasy - it's just an ugly reality lived by basically anyone in a service position.  The logic being - "I get to spend all day getting heckled and having my work qualifications questioned, and then I log into the game and now I have to roleplay a character getting heckled and having my work qualifications questioned?  Hard pass."

 

This isn't to say that there isn't a place for jerkish, rude or uncouth characters, and I've got quite a few in my stable; when I'm given the remit I love the opportunity to play an odious dick and bask in the negative attention.  But if you think of casual RP as attempting to project a variety of compelling traits out into the open for other players to latch onto and run with, "heckles you" is more often a turn-off than a turn-on, which I think is part of why it can lead to radio silence in response.

[Coyotedancer]

On 2/27/2021 at 2:12 AM, jkwak said:

if you dont want to interact with specific characters its up to you, but reflecting the interaction with one character on the player behind it is just bullshit.

You cant just judge someone because of one character.

 

 

Eh. You might not approve, but to be completely honest? If I ended up running into that character and he said something like that Emo Furry Weaboo business to my rakshasa illusion controller, or one of my kitsune characters? The player would be on /gignore so fast his avatar's head would spin. I absolutely WOULD judge him as someone I had zero interest in interacting with, no matter what his other characters might be like. 

 

Sorry if that offends anyone, but I like to be able to play in peace. That often involves having to be proactive with the "NOPE!"-button.

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[jkwak]

so i m not allowed to play a looser, who thinks he is the greatest and acts like an edgie asshole even though it is stated in his bio that he in fact is a looser

because people dont want to take the "time" to look thru his facade and call him of on his bullshit?

Edited March 2, 2021 by jkwak

[FrauleinMental]

2 hours ago, jkwak said:

so i m not allowed to play a looser, who thinks he is the greatest and acts like an edgie asshole even though it is stated in his bio that he in fact is a looser

because people dont want to take the "time" to look thru his facade and call him of on his bullshit?

It's not that you're not allowed to play someone who acts like an edgie asshole.  It's that--acting like an edgie asshole--you have to expect that some people will react to you like you're an edgie asshole.

 

Expecting people to treat you according to the brief exposition in your bio while you're acting like a different person pushes the bounds of even reality-warping spin-powers.  Sometimes, you have to actually RP the character you wrote.

[jkwak]

16 minutes ago, FrauleinMental said:

Expecting people to treat you according to the brief exposition in your bio while you're acting like a different person pushes the bounds of even reality-warping spin-powers.  Sometimes, you have to actually RP the character you wrote.

i play my character exactly like i wrote him in his bio and give hints durring an RP situation still only 3 other players rolled with it. everyone else started to ignore me after a short while.

If i describe a completly insecure body language and have him tell something edgie at the same time i think people should catch on.

Dont get me wrong if people dont want to interact i dont have any problem, i m fine with a character of mine having just one friend, but if i read that people would put me on /gignore for in character behaviour i m getting angry

 

if you get anoyed by a character and he wont stop bothering just tell the player OOC to fuck off and leave you alone it works on any other RP comunity just not COH

i m completly fine with all my other characters btw

[Haijinx]

On 1/5/2021 at 1:53 PM, TheCorvus said:

 

"I'm a Kryptonian."

 

Yeah.  This is a real problem.   COH has its own lore.  Trying to import DC/Marvel and so on is really immersion breaking.

 

Some make up their own lore.  This is okay I guess.  After all the game doesn't specifically say there aren't human like aliens  with supes type powers ..

 

But its actually a lot easier in COH given it HAS a built in origin for superman expies already ala well of furies and incarnates.  

 

Not to mention various groups trying to recreate similar powers out there.

[Arctique]

6 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Yeah.  This is a real problem.   COH has its own lore.  Trying to import DC/Marvel and so on is really immersion breaking.

 

Some make up their own lore.  This is okay I guess.  After all the game doesn't specifically say there aren't human like aliens  with supes type powers ..

 

But its actually a lot easier in COH given it HAS a built in origin for superman expies already ala well of furies and incarnates.  

 

Not to mention various groups trying to recreate similar powers out there.

Honestly the easy way somebody could handwave it if they really wanted to play a character from another universe than CoH's, would be to just say they're literally from another universe via Portal Corp. CoH does have its own lore, but that lore also provides an easy excuse to make theoretically any sort of character possible to exist.

That's kinda the beauty of CoH as a setting for RP, honestly. It establishes a world where there's really just no limits on the kind of characters you can play, but it still has enough of its own lore and history to not just be some boring blank canvas. A player that bases their character in existing lore, a player that writes their own fully original lore, and a player that borrows lore from another setting can all occupy the same space without any really being out of place.

If handled well of course. Being lazy with writing your character will make any concept feel really out of place, lore friendly or not. It just ends up being especially common for people to be lazy with characters based on other settings.

[Haijinx]

2 minutes ago, Arctique said:

Honestly the easy way somebody could handwave it if they really wanted to play a character from another universe than CoH's, would be to just say they're literally from another universe via Portal Corp. CoH does have its own lore, but that lore also provides an easy excuse to make theoretically any sort of character possible to exist.

That's kinda the beauty of CoH as a setting for RP, honestly. It establishes a world where there's really just no limits on the kind of characters you can play, but it still has enough of its own lore and history to not just be some boring blank canvas. A player that bases their character in existing lore, a player that writes their own fully original lore, and a player that borrows lore from another setting can all occupy the same space without any really being out of place.

If handled well of course. Being lazy with writing your character will make any concept feel really out of place, lore friendly or not. It just ends up being especially common for people to be lazy with characters based on other settings.

Could you?  Sure.  I guess.   

 

My reaction to the idea though is .. yuck.  

 

I personally don't want to see any DC lore, or Marvel Lore, Star Wars Lore, and the rest of that crap.  After all this is a pet peaves thread. 

 

-----

If I'm rping with someone that thinks they are a Kryptonian.  I am going to either ignore that part of their RP, Just RP with someone else, OR treat them IC like they are crazy.

Not a whole lot different than how I would treat someone who told me they were a Kryptonian IRL. 

[Arctique]

2 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Could you?  Sure.  I guess.   

 

My reaction to the idea though is .. yuck.  

 

I personally don't want to see any DC lore, or Marvel Lore, Star Wars Lore, and the rest of that crap.  After all this is a pet peaves thread. 

 

-----

If I'm rping with someone that thinks they are a Kryptonian.  I am going to either ignore that part of their RP, Just RP with someone else, OR treat them IC like they are crazy.

Not a whole lot different than how I would treat someone who told me they were a Kryptonian IRL. 

Definitely nothing wrong with that either, personally I usually don't like characters ripped from other settings either most of the time, but I try not to treat them like it's objectively wrong for those characters to exist at all.

Though it's still usually best to avoid playing characters from other established universes for other reasons. IIRC it's technically not actually allowed, right? I could be wrong and remembering the rules regarding copyrighted characters/content incorrectly though.

[Grindingsucks]

7 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Yeah.  This is a real problem.   COH has its own lore.  Trying to import DC/Marvel and so on is really immersion breaking.

 

Some make up their own lore.  This is okay I guess.  After all the game doesn't specifically say there aren't human like aliens  with supes type powers ..

 

But its actually a lot easier in COH given it HAS a built in origin for superman expies already ala well of furies and incarnates.  

 

Not to mention various groups trying to recreate similar powers out there.

While I'm not currently playing any characters from other comic book (or novel, move, or TV) universes, I don't agree at all.  Comics have a long tradition of "crossover" events, so it's totally fitting to the genre, IMO.  Everything that exists in  CoH is based on well known tropes.  Why shouldn't players leverage this particular trope, especially given Portal Corps and ready access to dimension travelling technology (as Artique points out)?

 

Setting blenderizing and crossovers via comics examples have included  Marvel vs DC,  X-men , Superman v.s Aliens, Batman vs Predator, Star trek &  G.I. Joe vs Transformers, for example (Many of these are a fun read, if you can lay hands on them).  I'm sure there are tons of other examples.  I don't see how it's immersion breaking.  It may be ridiculous, yes- but that's a characteristic intrinsic to the genre as a whole, and we are somehow able to retain immersion, anyway.

 

YMMV, of course.  I'm just offering a different perspective.

[Haijinx]

4 minutes ago, Grindingsucks said:

While I'm not currently playing any characters from other comic book (or novel, move, or TV) universes, I don't agree at all.  Comics have a long tradition of "crossover" events, so it's totally fitting to the genre, IMO.  Everything that exists in  CoH is based on well known tropes.  Why shouldn't players leverage this particular trope, especially given Portal Corps and ready access to dimension travelling technology (as Artique points out)?

 

Setting blenderizing and crossovers via comics examples have included  Marvel vs DC,  X-men , Superman v.s Aliens, Batman vs Predator, Star trek &  G.I. Joe vs Transformers, for example (Many of these are a fun read, if you can lay hands on them).  I'm sure there are tons of other examples.  I don't see how it's immersion breaking.  It may be ridiculous, yes- but that's a characteristic intrinsic to the genre as a whole, and we are somehow able to retain immersion, anyway.

 

YMMV, of course.  I'm just offering a different perspective.

I don't like crossovers either though lol

[Haijinx]

8 minutes ago, Arctique said:

Definitely nothing wrong with that either, personally I usually don't like characters ripped from other settings either most of the time, but I try not to treat them like it's objectively wrong for those characters to exist at all.

Though it's still usually best to avoid playing characters from other established universes for other reasons. IIRC it's technically not actually allowed, right? I could be wrong and remembering the rules regarding copyrighted characters/content incorrectly though.

I don't think being a Kryptonian is specially not allowed.  But being Superman, Supergirl, PowerGirl, General Zod, Krypto   those are all out.  

[Coyotedancer]

15 hours ago, jkwak said:

so i m not allowed to play a looser, who thinks he is the greatest and acts like an edgie asshole even though it is stated in his bio that he in fact is a looser

because people dont want to take the "time" to look thru his facade and call him of on his bullshit?

 

You're allowed to play anything you want.

 

It's just that other people are ALSO allowed to say "Nah, bro. Not interested."

[TheCorvus]

11 hours ago, jkwak said:

 everyone else started to ignore me after a short while.

 

That should have been your clue. 

 

Nobody has to role-play with you. If you want someone to RP with you, you're gonna have to meet them at least half way.

 

You also talked about people taking the time to see through your character's bullshit.

 

Even in real life, if someone's an asshole to me, I'm not gonna ponder it over. I'm not going to poke and prod and cajole and convince them to tell me what's wrong or show me who they really are.

 

I'm going to ignore them, at minimum.

 

This isn't my job. If someone (or their character) is so unpleasant that I don't think RPing with them is going to be fun, I won't do it. 

 

Maybe I'm just hurting myself. Maybe I'm missing out on an awesome experience. That could be. It could also be that I end up wasting time and energy and end up frustrated with a RP session that just wasn't fun. I'd rather potentially miss out on something than waste my time.

[twozerofoxtrot]

2 hours ago, TheCorvus said:

Nobody has to role-play with you. If you want someone to RP with you, you're gonna have to meet them at least half way.

 

This, or, place yourself in the appropriate setting to make this sort of play work. Pocket D upstairs bar isn't that place.

 

I've had great experiences RPing with other players who wrote for "loveable" asshole characters. The caveat was that I was in a villain group, and a lot of that came with the territory. At the time I RP'd a ditzy, size-changing mad scientist as well as a self-serious flying brick with delusions of grandeur. Both characters offered great foils for the "assholes," but the foundational premise was that it was expected due to the setting of the play.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by twozerofoxtrot
a single word.

[jkwak]

2 hours ago, TheCorvus said:

Nobody has to role-play with you. If you want someone to RP with you, you're gonna have to meet them at least half way.

thats not the point,

my point is that putting someone on /gignore, like some people in the forum stated they do, without telling them OOC "hey i dont want to play with your character leave me alone" is just not the way to go in my opinion and i think i m not only asking for my self if i ask you to do this befor putting someone on /gignore i bet most people who play such a character would be understanding and will leave you alone.

 

[twozerofoxtrot]

20 minutes ago, jkwak said:

putting someone on /gignore, like some people in the forum stated they do, without telling them OOC "hey i dont want to play with your character leave me alone" is just not the way to go in my opinion

That sounds very rational, I personally agree with you.

The flipside to that equation is that if someone jumps to that extreme in reacting to something that they don't like, it's possible they're doing you a favor in precluding future interaction with them.