Respecting character

[evilhat]

Thinking about doing character generation for a campaign of rob_donoghue's this past weekend, has collided with some musings I've been having about MUSH play, in order to produce a little bit of a random thought this morning, that I wanted to capture while it's still fresh in my head:
Satisfying roleplay requires mutual respect of character concepts.
In

Comments

A few random thoughts

[chotii]

Where there is no trust, IMO, there can be little or no conflict. If conflict drives play (and while I agree that it does when the conflict *goes* somewhere, random conflict-for-the-sake-of-conflict has a high likelihood of going bad & causing players to avoid each other ever after, which hurts rather than causes play. In fact, I think CFTSOC is about as meaningless as TS-for-the-sake-of-TS, without the "payoff" at the end except for adrenaline junkies).

I have not yet seen a combat system on any game, coded or otherwise, that substitutes for trust. It may appear to, when players chance together who share a similar play style and preference, but that same system will not facilitate conflict unless all players involve agree to make use of it. Or frankly, if they simply forget to use it. If only one of them insists on going by trust, or claims that *this* conflict does not fall under the auspices of the system...the whole thing breaks down.

Where people don't know each other enough to trust, or for that matter have had a bad RP experience with someone and have acquired a specific distrust, it seems natural to me that they *would* go by precisely what is portrayed in poses. On games where metaposing is discouraged, it is not possible for a player to gain any insight into the internal workings of someone else's character. On games where metaposing is the norm, of course, one may gain insights (good or bad) but this runs into the risk of knowing too much, and difficulties keeping IC knowledge separate from OOC knowledge. A skillful player may be able to write poses that imply motivation, without actually SAYING what the motives are, however not every player can do that. This leads to characters sometimes coming across as archetypes (The Pure and Gallant Knight, The Endless Victim, The Vestal Virgin, The Godling In Flesh) and being mocked for it.

Ultimately, unfortunately, I don't have an answer to this. You can't force people to trust each other; you can't even force them to use a coded system, no matter how well designed, not even when it would help them navigate disagreements about outcomes. You can't make people really, really grasp that it's a real human on the other side of the keyboard, with emotions*, investments, and varied writing skills. You can only observe normal human behavior and try to design around it.

*I think we often forget that emotions are part of RP, particularly negative emotions. How often will someone be chided for feeling negative emotions (sorrow or anger - "What's your problem, it's just a game") but when they are delighted or gleeful, that's just fine? I suggest for those who think negative emotions have no place in RP, should go read Where The Red Fern Grows or the last chapter of The Incredible Journey or maybe the chapter in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where Harry Potter goes to his own presumed death....and remember that what you read can wrench your emotions terribly...yes, and make you angry, or make you cry. Written words on a game are no different IMO, and we've usually more invested in them than in some book off a shelf. To disrespect another player based on their emotional reaction is to say, "You have no right to your emotions, simply because I do not feel the same way." There are a lot of layers to this "respect" thing, and I think a lot of them are disregarded because of the medium.

Re: A few random thoughts

[drivingblind]

Yep, fair enough. I'm not saying that system can substitute for trust; for the record, I'm saying it can be oriented to facilitate it more, or less.

Then again, I'm also a fan of putting a big fat sign out front that says "Your level of trust for everyone must be this tall. If it's not, go find another game to play."