Kweschun. I haz wun.

[metalsyko]

Poking around the forums as I tend to do during maitenance led me to one of those typical "I have RP ideas and I say I want concrit but what I really want are people to fawn allover my ideas and not give me anything really constructive" threads (Link for the curious.).  What it really stirred in me was a yearning for some draenei RP

Comments

[rantyrantsock]

Draenei are pretty win. So are Broken. As for actually playing one... well, since you're here, you pretty much automatically know How To Do It Right. You've seen so much fail, you're essentially inoculated from it. You already have that in your favour.

However... you brought up the sticking point. The model isn't available to PCs. How would you go about informing people that you're a Broken, not a draenei, without having to natter on about how you're a Broken? Would you choose to do it through their peculiar speech pattern?

[metalsyko]

Yeah, my major hangup is people who don't have RSP addons or who don't read flags. I can sometimes manage to keep mine short, but I do tend to get long in the tooth. There's not really a set "RP outfit" for a Broken, so I'd have to rely on emotes and that sort of thing. Given the way RP events fluctuate between people leaving and showing up, I feel like it'd get kind of tedious having to constantly reiterate something.

It'd be doable, but would wear thin in a really populated RP setting. I've also noticed that Broken have slightly different naming conventions. Not as many double vowels, or some have a more Japanese sound to them like Nobundo.

[thinginthetub]

I've met a number of people that have played either Broken, or Draenei with some fel-taint and have a few Broken-like qualities (like a healthy dose of Ugly). I think they've all done an excellent job, but just like anything else, it all depends on who's doing it.

One thing a friend of mine had a problem with was people not reading her RSP. Her character was a tainted female draenei and was described as being pretty unattractive- wrinkled face, snarl, thick nasty hooves, all of that fun stuff- but people kept approaching her in the way a lot of people approach female draenei toons. "Hey, hottie," and so on.

So that said, playing special characters like that is mostly hard because it makes everyone have to suspend their disbelief a little more.

[metalsyko]

Well, I'd be playing a male draenei, and there are maybe seven other people on any given server including myself who find male draenei attractive, so I'd at least be able to dodge the "heyyyyyyyyyyy there hot thang" comments. (Which is why I stopped playing my priest. She's not even described as breathtakingly beautiful. She's a very plain and sort of chubby librarian-type, like Verin Sedai from the Wheel of Time ... or a more frumpy "Plain Jane" Evelyn from The Mummy, for a more recognizable reference - I mean come on, she's playing a dorky clumsy bookworm, but Rachel Weisz is gorgeous. I can't go anywhere on her without getting obscene tells from people who've READ my flag, let alone the people who just see HEY HOT FEMALE DRAENEI AVATAR HUBBA HUBBA

[metalsyko]

I actually totally forgot that the Alliance got a foothold in the Swamp of Sorrows, so I missed out on those quests. I'll have to go back and do them, or at the very least, look 'em up on wowhead. Thanks for the info! Like I said, it really burns my biscuits that they were and are so grossly overlooked. I think it infuriates me further when I see so much draenei porn in either art or written form. I mean, come on, they're so much more than eye candy and fetish/fantasy fodder

[farseer_lolotea]

Can this guildie's stories by any chance be found online?

[farseer_lolotea]

First off?  I think the lack of a new class was a symptom of the way Blizzard is shuffling them under the rug, and the only one I'd consider "absurd" would be warlock.  But enough about that.

In regards to roleplaying a Broken?  Hard to say.  I've actually considered RPing my warrior as a Broken, but dismissed the idea because I figured it was too wangsty.  (Also, I figured that the way female draenei are designed versus "oh hai, Broken!" in her flag might strain suspension of disbelief a bit too much.)

So, long story short?  As long as you don't play it for wangst, I don't see how it would be that much more of an issue than my drae characters being a bit off-model (one of my girls is short, skinny, and flat-chested, one of my boys is pudgy, and so on).

[blot]

I dunno. I always see anything with hooves being a Rogue as a 'Um wtf' unless they like, put cloth on their hooves to keep them quiet.

[farseer_lolotea]

Even if there was no hand-wave about their hooves being muffled, it's always mystified me a bit that the idea of an unguligrade sneaking, in a high-fantasy game, strains people's suspension of disbelief.  (Additionally, there are already some satyrs in the game that stealth, and no one bats an eye at them-or, for that matter, at a draenei or tauren hunter breaking out the camouflage.)

Now, I can see how it might be culturally dubious.  But I'd hardly call it "absurd."  (Again, that'd be warlocks.)

[deadborder]

It comes down to being one of those "it depends heavily on the RSP" things and all that comes with it. There are plenty of RPers who dont have RP addons and plenty who don't read RP descriptions even when they do. Add to that compatibility issues and such, and there's going to be a lot of people out there who haven't read your RSP when you start RPing.

I'ts not as out there as a lot of other concepts I've seen, and certainly not terribad by a long way. I'm not saying that it can't be done, more of that it's going to be very difficult to pull off and, more to the point, take al ot of re-iteration of basic facts to players.

YMMV as to if that's going to be worth it.