Post by Morreion on Jul 6, 2012 11:12:35 GMT -5
Behind the Mask: The dangers of roleplaying as an outlet (Massively)
There are two basic types of troll character: The first is a character who is simply rude or abrasive in all of his or her interactions, and the second is a character who is very pushy or vocal and has to interfere with other players' roleplaying in rude ways. There are other types of troll characters, but I want to focus on these two because the other types of RP trolls are deliberate, and I assume anyone reading this article is a decent human being. If your intention is to offend or annoy people in the first place, then learning how to avoid being annoying is not going to be a priority for you. Also, if your intent is to annoy people in roleplaying, please stop.
The two types of RP trolls mentioned above create unfun RP scenarios because they interact harshly with other characters by their nature. People like creating fun and interesting stories with their characters and resolving them, and being negative or pushing your own RP story on other characters defeats that purpose.
There can be a fine line between RPing a jerk and being a jerk! When in doubt, an /OOC exchange can help...
The jerk is a fairly easy, cut-and-dried problem. While not all people who play jerkish characters are good enough to convey a character in more sociable ways, I have high hopes for anyone reading this article. The overly extroverted nosy character is a very different, more difficult problem.
Instead of being relatively quiet except to hurl barbs, the nosy character is the kind who will dive into a conversation and shove her situation down your throat. Her signature move is to jump into a conversation and explain about how her story or situation is so very important and how you should all be paying attention to her. I'm somewhat concerned that this is more of a player attribute than a character attribute. However, in a few circumstances, I have interacted with otherwise pleasant roleplayers who also play one or two characters like this.
There are two basic types of troll character: The first is a character who is simply rude or abrasive in all of his or her interactions, and the second is a character who is very pushy or vocal and has to interfere with other players' roleplaying in rude ways. There are other types of troll characters, but I want to focus on these two because the other types of RP trolls are deliberate, and I assume anyone reading this article is a decent human being. If your intention is to offend or annoy people in the first place, then learning how to avoid being annoying is not going to be a priority for you. Also, if your intent is to annoy people in roleplaying, please stop.
The two types of RP trolls mentioned above create unfun RP scenarios because they interact harshly with other characters by their nature. People like creating fun and interesting stories with their characters and resolving them, and being negative or pushing your own RP story on other characters defeats that purpose.
There can be a fine line between RPing a jerk and being a jerk! When in doubt, an /OOC exchange can help...
The jerk is a fairly easy, cut-and-dried problem. While not all people who play jerkish characters are good enough to convey a character in more sociable ways, I have high hopes for anyone reading this article. The overly extroverted nosy character is a very different, more difficult problem.
Instead of being relatively quiet except to hurl barbs, the nosy character is the kind who will dive into a conversation and shove her situation down your throat. Her signature move is to jump into a conversation and explain about how her story or situation is so very important and how you should all be paying attention to her. I'm somewhat concerned that this is more of a player attribute than a character attribute. However, in a few circumstances, I have interacted with otherwise pleasant roleplayers who also play one or two characters like this.
