Kind of skimmed a lot of this thread. Also don't think this is a judgement of you personally. I haven't ever interacted with you directly, and you don't strike me as a bad RPer/trouble person, just someone who has a character idea they really like but don't know how to make it RPable.
However, I suspect the "I need another RPer to do the bodyguard thing with me so I can RP my character" might be coming off as OOCly needy in a way that might be setting off subconscious alarm bells for people. Completely by accident, and I'm sure if someone took the time to RP stuff out with you they'd find out those alarm bells aren't well founded, but at least for me I know a had the "Eek!" reaction the first time I saw the "be my bodyguardee!" posts in the Mateus discord (yeah I'm a lurker, I'm looking for events to jump in on)
I've RPed with the kind of partner who was dependent on me for all their RP hooks. I think most RPers have had one of those. And while at first it was "yay, steady RP buddy!" it turned into posessiveness and frustration when I was playing my own character in a way that didn't feed his RP needs. Everyone who comes to RP does so because they have characters living in their head that they want to let "live" in some way - and it sucked to feel like someone felt entitled to having my character feed his personal fantasy rather than just letting her be her and seeing what happened.
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tl;dr - yeah you should def. work toward having him function independently, I think it will help people engage with you more.
As for how to do that... what kinds of people pique his interest in particular? If he saw another Dark Knight, for example, might he approach them? If he overheard another character talking about how religion is bullshit, might he feel like joining that conversation?
If you know what characters he'd play well with but you're just having trouble with the approach, IME the quick OOC tell saying "hey! I'm interested in joining your RP if you don't mind but my character doesn't really approach strangers, can we work something out?" works waaaaaayyyyy better than sitting in a corner emoting your thoughts. It comes across as more cooperative.
Maybe you could give him a job for right now that he hates and he's looking to get out of. Like he's a blacksmith or something, but it's boring and repetitive and he longs for an opportunity to branch out and go places. Maybe right now he's bodyguarding for an NPC who is obnoxious/a terrible person/super religious so he's gritting his teeth and looking for a reason to jump ship. Give him something to do, and he'll bring something to the table for other characters to play off of.
Maybe give him an unexpected quirk? Juxtaposition of opposing character themes can be pretty fun and strike people's interest. So he's the masked armored guy who almost never speaks, but maybe he can be seen sitting in the corner reading the Eorzean equivalent of a superhero comic (or Haropo Popoto and the Scholar's Soulstone).
However, I suspect the "I need another RPer to do the bodyguard thing with me so I can RP my character" might be coming off as OOCly needy in a way that might be setting off subconscious alarm bells for people. Completely by accident, and I'm sure if someone took the time to RP stuff out with you they'd find out those alarm bells aren't well founded, but at least for me I know a had the "Eek!" reaction the first time I saw the "be my bodyguardee!" posts in the Mateus discord (yeah I'm a lurker, I'm looking for events to jump in on)
I've RPed with the kind of partner who was dependent on me for all their RP hooks. I think most RPers have had one of those. And while at first it was "yay, steady RP buddy!" it turned into posessiveness and frustration when I was playing my own character in a way that didn't feed his RP needs. Everyone who comes to RP does so because they have characters living in their head that they want to let "live" in some way - and it sucked to feel like someone felt entitled to having my character feed his personal fantasy rather than just letting her be her and seeing what happened.
Â
tl;dr - yeah you should def. work toward having him function independently, I think it will help people engage with you more.
As for how to do that... what kinds of people pique his interest in particular? If he saw another Dark Knight, for example, might he approach them? If he overheard another character talking about how religion is bullshit, might he feel like joining that conversation?
If you know what characters he'd play well with but you're just having trouble with the approach, IME the quick OOC tell saying "hey! I'm interested in joining your RP if you don't mind but my character doesn't really approach strangers, can we work something out?" works waaaaaayyyyy better than sitting in a corner emoting your thoughts. It comes across as more cooperative.
Maybe you could give him a job for right now that he hates and he's looking to get out of. Like he's a blacksmith or something, but it's boring and repetitive and he longs for an opportunity to branch out and go places. Maybe right now he's bodyguarding for an NPC who is obnoxious/a terrible person/super religious so he's gritting his teeth and looking for a reason to jump ship. Give him something to do, and he'll bring something to the table for other characters to play off of.
Maybe give him an unexpected quirk? Juxtaposition of opposing character themes can be pretty fun and strike people's interest. So he's the masked armored guy who almost never speaks, but maybe he can be seen sitting in the corner reading the Eorzean equivalent of a superhero comic (or Haropo Popoto and the Scholar's Soulstone).
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