Player housing would solve this horrible math problem.
I could build something that matters for me, in the world that the devs create.
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âAction figuresâ is apt.
If a characterâs personality and motivations are constantly changed on the fly (see: Jaina, Rexxar, Sylvanas, etc.), or are so bland + static as to preclude any actual development (hi, Anduin!), then theyâre not really a âcharacterâ; theyâre a toy.
Though I suppose it is impressive that Blizzard has somehow made a character-driven story without any actual characters.
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The C in character-driven stands for âconflictâ.
conflictharacter-driven
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The world is the main character = huge cop out.
A good character has things that haunt them, flaws, weaknesses, desires, needs. They make mistakes that drive narrative. We watch them grow and reconcile their ghosts, become better people, transform from the personification of an anti-theme to a theme in a way that resonates. We cheer them on, we shout at the screen, we shed tears, all that stuff.
A âworldâ just isnât that. The player-character hero going through the expacâs story via quests and cut scenes is not that. Even the main franchise characters arenât that, not if their growth occurs off-screen, within some novel that can be retconned at any time.
RPers have a chance to make actual, meaningful characters with arcs that are played out and adjusted, improvised day-to-day as they reach change and resolution.
To that end I say have at it. Play the hero. Play the Maw Walker, even, as Iâm sure 75% of the people posting here could write a better Maw Walker arc than weâre going to get. Or donât! Either way, thereâs more depth and resonance in many TRPs that I read than the most well-rendered cutscene!
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yknow whatâs funny about this, is that in ffxivâs rp scene, thereâs tons of people who play the warrior of light or a warrior of light.
this sounds like a controversial take, but thatâs just because of the wow rp communityâs strange hangups on letting people âplay what they wantâ. i think people should largely be accepting of more exclusive ideas, and amicable to the fact that not all rp is meant for everyone. i donât have to play by the books or cater to everyone for my rp to be valid.
that sorta stuff.
if someone said they were playing the canonical maw walker, then i say âhave at it.â as long as you understand that you wonât be palatable to all or most rpers, then thatâs a good thing.
i have more to say but its unrelated to your comment, so iâll continue in another post.
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maybe thereâs a reason ive always been drawn more to wowâs rp, and i think it stems largely from
stuff like that. why? well, its hard to really rationalize, but hear me out. rp for me is largely a writing exercise. im aware thatâs very likely not most peopleâs main reason for doing it, but⌠what do rpers consistently spend their time doing? offering fixes for the story, trying to fix the worldbuilding in their own rp, taking areas underdeveloped or underexplored and expanding upon them in their own storytelling.
you all have seen it. seen one dedicated person sit down and decide to turn a vaguely established canon kingdom or group into a fully fleshed out and complex structure. youâve probably even done something like it, just on a smaller degree. like making up a few religious aspects for your character, or making up some sort of head canoned magic.
warcraft is a big broken setting with an extreme amount of wasted potential, that you me and the tree can see. and between you, me, and the tree⌠fixing the holes and making compelling tales where the creators of the setting have failed to do for the better part of gestures at the last few years is very fun.
(forgive the off-realmer for their strange long talk.)
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A huge cop out?! In the World of Warcraft story?
You better have some evidence to back up this outrageous claim.
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It can be.
But the problem Iâve consistently run into over the years is fellow players who are unwilling to accept the patch work done on those gaps because tHaT BrEaKs LoRe!!!
And also thereâs the growing and undeniable problem, for me, of just being tired of having to do that or having to do weird mental backflips to work around glaring problems. Eventually I just need something with a better foundation to work with if only to give my brain a break.
Yeah the lore police have to realize that RP, by default, breaks lore. Nothing we do exists in canon.
They also have to realize that if they come at people like that, nobodyâs gonna take em seriously. Those types of people go solidly on my âDonât bother withâ list.
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I have come to the conclusion that my pitbull has actually figured out how to try and talk to humans.
For the past few months if myself or someone talks to him, so long as heâs not snoozing or professionally ignoring, heâll respond with properly timed âwuffsâ in a tone matching the subject.
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My confession is that I think less of people that RP as part of a covenant, or rp as always going to the Shadowlands, as if theyâre clocking off at 5pm and heading back to the Tail for a drink before going back to a hard dayâs work in the morning.
Shadowlands is just boring.
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So, been chugging along and working out more details for my âSuperheroâ novel that takes a lot of ques from mythology to help craft itâs world building (as well as painting the return of the various pantheons as an apocolyptic scenario since I lay the seeds to say they donât really get along and gods clashing is mad, mâkay) as opposed to science fiction.
Of titles for an installment of this, I can safely say I never expected to use âKing of the Demigodsâ as one since the main villain is a demigod who fashions himself in this manner and leads what is functionally a cult of people wanting the return of the gods.
Still havenât decided if the finale for that is an actual power struggle for that title, or simply the bad guy declares it and his opposition going âMmmmmmmmm⌠gonna be a hard no there champ.â
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writing is pain
i am a masochist because I enjoy writing
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Definitely this. I run/used to run a roleplaying community on another site and I let it eat up far, far too much of my life. It was the primary focus in my life for years, basically. Getting it established, given that I donât own the site, was a bit of a struggle because it basically involved SO MUCH drama. The only way the community is run is through social means, so it involved having to wrestle control away from the established group, and then dealing with those disenfranchised souls being bitter and forming their own cliques and trying to take back control.
And in the end we won and the other groups are gone.
But then I had a slight falling out with one of the people I helped rise to a pretty prominent position within the siteâs administration and while weâre cool now, I realized âWhy am I putting all this effort into playing pretend on a Internet forum? Especially one I donât own?â.
So now Iâm pretty disengaged from it, I canât treat it with the same love that I used to because I know that in the end, we are all just playing pretend and if I want to put that level of effort worldbuilding, creating characters and artâŚI want it to be for something that isnât shackled to a forum that again, I donât own and have no control over.
So instead I treat what I do over there as âpracticeâ, and I try to approach helping others not with âwell, this is the best way to RPâ but rather trying to help them with their creation as an editor would for someoneâs book or game or whatever. Even the stuff I create now, I do so with the intent on using that community as more of a sounding board, and seeing how what I make works in a setting with other factions.
That way I can fine tune what Iâm working on for integration into my other projects.
Same goes with writing Fanfiction, why go through the effort of writing all this stuff for characters that you donât own, in settings you donât own? Iâd rather just take the ideas I have and convert them into something original.
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i confess that realizing that my fic about Sint beating up a big bad orc having 1500 total views in the places Iâve posted it
is sending me to a higher realm
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Unleash the serotonin
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i reached that point in quarantine that i been watching newer seasons of the simpsons and i think some of them are actually pretty funny. Not classic simpsons funny but they hold their own, they also have moments of surprisingly fluid animation that i wouldnt expect.
After unlocking Kul Tiran as an allied race, I canât stop coming up with Kul Tiran characters. But their customization is so limited, Iâm instead trying to fit other races into the ideas.
On top of that, I entirely forgot the idea that drove me to do the unlock in the first place.
So what was it all for, man?
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The ability to falcon punch your enemies off the middle of Eye of the Storm.
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I need to remember to make a macro for that racial so that whenever I cast it, my Kul Tiran will yell âFALCON PUUUNNNNCHHHH!!!â