Roleplaying: Kind of like writing stories, but sometimes worse!

I will admit I have partaken in roleplay, and I will also admit that a LOT of it is pure shit.

Let me tell you guys a story: On another forum, I ran a medieval fantasy RP, that was intended to be a very realistic take on medieval Europe. A lot of it was derived from traditional medieval folklore and such, I really put a lot of time and research into this RP setting. Hell, my rules post had an entire section on realistic medieval European swordfighting on horse and on foot.

Anyways, it was going alright, but then we got this new member named "Superdark 33". That's a good sign to begin with, right? He made a character named Dreavos Wearlock. Let me quote, in full, his character's personal history:

Quote :

Dreavous was born to a princes but his father is not roalty. at a night, his fater, a hot young blacksmith, recieved an invatation from unknown source.he came to the place and found out that it was the princes who invited him to a secret location. after a few monthes the princess discoverd she is pregrent, but because she know that if her father will find out, he would kill the baby she wanted to find a place that her father wont be able to find. after a few unfortanate events**, the baby was transported to the kingdom of the Prince of Darkness.
the prince spared the little boy and trained him to knighthood (of evil)
now, not knowing his true parents (but dont care about it), Dreavos Wearlock
is a Knight, and he was sent by the prince to be a spy on the lands, as a knight from a far kingdom.
He is a Killing machine, but has weakness for hot women,good food,good wine and is allergic to somthing he dont know yet....

Yeah, I think that speaks for itself. I told him his character was rejected, because he hadn't met standards for grammar or spelling. He then COMPLETELY disregarded this rejection and posted in the in-character thread. What did he post, you might ask? This:

Quote :

Drevos arived in teh citee for the startling of the tournements

OH NO! The tournements have been startled! Now they're running all over the place! That was his entire post. Luckily, he lost interest shortly after that.

There was, however, another godawful RPer, if you wish to hear more.

I would love to hear more. I mostly play with a very select group (mostly tabletop), but there have been some doozies over the years.

Feel free to share more. I've admined a few sites over the years, and I've seen quite a few profiles that are similar. Maybe I can even dig up a few of my really ancient characters for lolz.

Well, again, I'll just quote this guy's character profile. His grasp of grammar is a little more solid than Super Dark's, but the characterization is weak and ridiculous. I've added comments of my own in italics:

Quote :

Name: Daewulf Oh that's a good sign
Age: 16 Oh ever better
Heritage: None that he knows of himself Never heard THAT before

Origins:
Daewulf, named after the wolf that perpetually chases the sun in children's rhymes (which some take to be an ancient name of the moon, though these are but rumours as of now), was born the one and only son of a poverty stricken woman in the slums of Ashel. So he's a street urchin, fair enough

Spending his days tending for his mother, who kept on harping about the great deeds he would carry out, and all because of this one thing she kept on mentioning "you're of the blood!" Mysterious background, CHECK!. He never knew what she meant, he probably never will, and he has never had the time to think of this mysterious statement all that much. A stray job there, a theft there, a night sold when food was scarce... his life was not as happy as one might think a beautiful boy.

For he is beautiful Oh boy..., his face is fair and his skin is soft, pale even, his hair falls straight and silken, a chestnut brown in its colour Wait, wait, wait, so a MEDIEVAL STREET URCHIN is a bishonen? , he has oft been asked by ladies of less questionable honour to come work with them, that they would help him find a good place in this world, he has always refused, at least to stay for long. His beauty have not always brought him good things though, and at least once every few days, his mother would pad his wounds with a rag soaked in sour wine Because poor medieval beggars had plenty of wine for this kind of stuff!, telling him he deserved better, and that those other kids were naught but jealous Yes, jealous of the pansy womanly-looking beggar, obviously!.

However, through this darkness I can see where this is going, this need to help his mother, this lack of food, this growing hatred for his own face Fuck, he's an emo, Daewulf found one thing that lit the way for him, the gleaming swords and shining song of the battlefields. He never truly left home, he would run away, and follow the knights For follow, read: Perform homosexual acts for until about a day or two away from Ashel, but after that, he'd be sent home, and he truly did miss that of sorts. As he grew older however, knights would start to take a liking to this strange child A very... personal liking, and teach him if he asked them That's call paederasty, kids!, if only for a moment or two, or tell him stories, and, at the age of 13, he rode out on his first campaign HOW!? Where the FUCK did he get the arms, armour and horse for that sort of thing as, you know, a MEDIEVAL STREET URCHIN.

Now, he is returning, his own chestplate, scarred after battle, a spear across his back, a longsword hanging from his sadle Sic ,its metal neatly kept clean, it is almost white in the mid day sun, and far less scarred than the armingsword by his side. His shield is freshly made, the old one was split down the middle as several battles finally took its toll on the worn wood when he fell off his horse during a thunderstorm. His heraldry, at least what little he has on his shield, is that of a pale moon. And WHERE THE FUCK did a street urchin get heraldry!?

He is not an outstanding legend Nor should he be, he is not a noble Understatement of the year, but after these past three years, he is no longer a mere street urchin, his beauty have grown Fuck off, and likewise his skill, and the respect he commands from the people he fought with, maybe, just maybe, his mother was not all wrong when she spoke of what he would become.

So, in summary, he's pretty and he's handy with a sword, and is otherwise devoid of any defining traits or personality. Who the fuck wrote this?

I read through those character descriptions and I think the funniest is "to reveal the slight inditation" in which poor writing implies that the character's clothing is going to cause her massive breasts to basically rupture.

Quote :

Let me tell you guys a story: On another forum, I ran a medieval fantasy RP, that was intended to be a very realistic take on medieval Europe. A lot of it was derived from traditional medieval folklore and such, I really put a lot of time and research into this RP setting. Hell, my rules post had an entire section on realistic medieval European swordfighting on horse and on foot.

That sounds awesome and I hope you're still running it and ohmaigawd I want to join.

Anyway, when I was in high school I played D&D. My group was pretty good, except there was one guy that always played the same character every time. He was always a knight clad all in black, usually a paladin, sometimes a fighter or a knight, and he was always Lawful, and even if he was Lawful Good he was constantly toeing the line of Lawful Evil. Despite his low charisma score, he would always try to be the mouthpiece of the party, and he would always try to make the story about him. His character progression, while not bad, was predictable and always moved in similiar ways.

It got so bad that in one campaign we did where he didn't play, the than-DM made an NPC named Therrin Urn A-Lucidick (a combination of all his characters names) a "knight clad all in black, with a voice slightly raspy from disuse, despite his inability to ever shut up."

I miss playing D&D.

There was also the one guy that joined for a short amount of time. He played a chaotic stupid tiefling rogue that was constantly toeing the line of evil and always going on angsty monologues that none of us cared about (neither in character or out of character). I knew we were in trouble when he joined up with our party in this manner.

We were all sitting around the campfire at night, eating and sharing stories (keep in mind there were not just 1, but 2 3.5 edition paladins in this party). Than, this strange, black-garbed demon-looking thing stumbles upon our camp, dagger drawn.

It says: "Whoa. I would've killed you guys and taken all your stuff if you were all sleeping."

Party: *all weapons get drawn and pointed at this emo demon thing*

The DM made us play nice, so after some not-quite-so-smooth smooth-talking on the emo demon's part and some massive stretches of the imagination and our characters personalities, we made nice. And he joined the party.

Sadly for his character, I was playing a half-orc, half-ogre barbarian with poor impulse control. Every time he tried to steal something from my character (or tried to stab me in the back) (these two things happened more often than they should have with a chaotic neutral character) my character would beat him to a pulp. He might have even killed him if the paladins weren't there.

Once upon a time on another forum, some of the users who used to RP regaled their tales of grand adventures to one another. Then they got to talking about the most awful deaths they had witnessed or been part of during campaigns. The guy who told this story won:

A player joined the rest of the party with an amazingly annoying gnome character (or small halfling, the details escape me). It got to the point where they killed him by ramming him up a troll's butt, then set the troll on fire.

I wish the guy had gotten into an explanation of why it came to that, but maybe the gnome's demise speaks for itself.

TheHermit wrote:

saeku wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

On another note, if you take his "fag it up" content out of context, it sounds like a hip, new popular dance craze. Just fag it up, uh uh, just fag it up, yeah uh, just fag it up, yeah yeah, just fag it up, uh yeah, just fag it up. I'll stop now.

Slide to the left
Slide to the right
Fag it up, now, y'all
Fag it up, now, y'all

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

I am so sorry.

Also, the RPers in the original post do realize that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not a romance? Also, I'm pretty sure that part of that tragedy is that their love isn't True Love, it's teenage lust (they've known one another how long?), so they really die for nothing. Cool RP, bro.

Dr. Professor Science wrote:

Also, the RPers in the original post do realize that Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, not a romance? Also, I'm pretty sure that part of that tragedy is that their love isn't True Love, it's teenage lust (they've known one another how long?), so they really die for nothing. Cool RP, bro.

I rather get the impression they don't. Or they know a it's a tragedy, but they can't deal with the idea that what's going on between the characters is anything but twu wub 4ever. So they have to give it a happy ending to protect their fragile little brains.

BTW, my son Morgan and his boyfriend saw an (almost) all male version of Romeo and Juliet (set in modern times) put on by a gay theater company in Des Moines. It retained the original Shakesperian ending, and Morgan said you came away with the realization that the two of them were idiots who'd mistaken infatuation for true love and killed their fool selves because of it.

I used to roleplay via messenger services, and only recently did I try returning to this practice. I wish I didn't. Now, some roleplayers are quite good in that they provide depth and description when they post. That's not been the issue when dealing with people who roleplay anything set between the dark ages and the modern era, at least in my experience. It is the execution. Dear Goddess, if I see another 'rebellious' and 'fiery' princess easily out manuever a trained and much older mercenary, not to mention blantantly mocking him to his face while he is armed, then I'm going to explode. Its like people take all of the bad traits of Mary Sues from fanfiction and then unleash them on unsuspecting roleplayers. They have excellent grammar and fluid writing style, so the horrible Mary Sue characterization comes as a shock. I'd much rather have the person write poorly so that my expectations are lowered before I'm blind-sided by the sparkly princess sue from hell.

I'm sorry if this seemed like a rant. I've been holding that in for a good while. It is a bit theraputic to finally get that off my chest.

knightwithoutacause wrote:

Attack of the Romance Princess Sue

If you have an LJ, you can probably find a decent game by lurking on BRPS. Or hell, by typing up a longer version of what you've just posted, and posting it there and asking for a link to unsucky games.

I've never used LJ before, but I will give it a try. Thank you kindly for the advice.

A Link to the BRPS community..

On an entirely different note, as opposed to Forum RPing, LARPing is fun.

I'd rather be doing this than RP on a forum any day.

Jay/Cris wrote:

Quote :

He has very long brown shiny hair everywhere

Um.
Like, everywhere everywhere?
Even under his toes and inside his ears and, y'know, that place where the sun don't shine? (viz. inside his stomach.) Even if the rest of the description sounds like something I'd hit on - oh, yeah, I love a good bulge on a man - that hairy bit... eh. Bears ain't my thing.

Chewbacca uses L'Orreal, because he's worth it.

Before

After

I got invited to a D&D thing last week. Surprisingly it was rather awesome and hilarious. Somehow, half-jokingly, I ended up as a thief unicorn with the intelligence of a stump and the reflexes of a sugar-high cheetah. And yet whenever I went to pickpocket anybody I kept ending up with half-eaten apples...

Hell yes I still love this.