My Five Prejudices About Roleplaying Games

[pbeakley]

So today I finally posted my oft-threatened "five secret prejudices" to the Yaplet discussion at Story-Games. This is an edited transcript of what I think is the most interesting stuff. Proceed with caution. It's probably offensive to some, which is why they've been secret.

"Paul B" is me of course.  Other participants should be recognizeable by

Comments

"emo porn"

[andcastnoshadow]

With regards to the "emo porn" issue, two comments:

First off, I see it a lot like playing evil characters in games. Some people do it legitimately, to try to explore an evil character's thought processes, or "what it means to be evil", or simply to provide opposition to other players. There are others, though, who simply use it as an excuse to let them do the nastiest, most disgusting things they can think of in play, and/or to try to stomp on other players' fun.

Second, I agree that RPing an emotional problem one is having is not necessarily a good idea. With proper guidance, it can be good -- but the key there is to realize that it is your own emotional problem. Without that guidance, it's easy to project it onto the character, denying that you have that problem and insisting that you're just "playing the character".

Which is how it's like playing evil characters -- some people just want to be evil to the other players, and create an evil character so they can, then deny that that's what they're doing.

Re: "emo porn"

[chicating]

I've never really had the patience, but I've thought about it. Though I guess fanfiction is sort of a chick variant.(yes, I know chicks who RPG, but way more who write fanfic.)
Some of it is self-indulgent, but, hell, so is "Twilight" and that wench is totally rich now.

Emo Porn, part deux

[pbeakley]

So we got to talking a bit about how I define "emo porn" in my own head as it comes to a certain style of roleplay. I think emo porn is very much like porn-porn: you know it when you see it, right