(04-15-2015, 11:56 AM)Reiner Dorn Wrote: I agree, as far as I'm concerned RP is just a writing exercise, one of quick reaction, and heavy improve. To do that well you have to be able to place some part of yourself into a character to be able to relate, to make -realistic- decisions without accounting for the fact that you have minutes to think up the perfect response.
 If a character that someone connects with on a writers level is somewhat of an exception, that they want to be the main character in a story they've written, and then wish to engage them into the world we've made, then I can only say we all pay our 15 bucks to have fun and that's that, I can't judge.
This is not quite what I mean. Partly, I think there is a much wider range of "realistic" responses than most players. Realistically, people are often bizarre and irrational, yet such actions are often seen as being unrealistic.
When I say "realist fiction" I mean an aesthetic drive to display life "as it is" for whatever metric of "as it is" one might have. In this regard, the trappings of fantasy settings - all the aether, the various races, the politics, the melodramatic plots, so on - are very much not life "as it is" because they are things that don't actually exist.
My point here is that to criticize unusual race/nationality/class/whatever combinations for being unrealistic or somehow "inauthentic" in a largely fictional environment full of things that, while inspired, perhaps, by real-world cultures, don't actually exist, is to complain about the speck in one's eye while ignoring the plank in your own.
If one takes the argument to its conclusion, then the mere act of RPing in a fantasy culture is itself inauthentic, to continue to use the OP's term. RPers have merely tared out that they are playing in an inauthentic environment for any number of reasons for the sake of whatever character concept they have in mind.
It also makes me question why we desire authenticity in our characters when I'm not sure we could come to a consensus about what authenticity in a fantastic setting might be. Or perhaps this is just using "authenticity" when the desired term is verisimilitude.
Edit because I can't stop talking: I think my other problem is the notion of "Your character matters first" is that it presumes that a character's, well, character, is somehow separate from the circumstances that produced the character. Take out the race/class combination issue - it's presuming that a character's upbringing and nationality somehow do not affect a character's personality. Somebody growing up poor would have the same character as somebody growing up rich, somebody growing up in a happy home would be the same as if they grew up in a broken home. It's an argument that's pretty heavy on the "nature" side of the good old nature v. nurture debate.
But we know that it's not entirely true, and that while there are some intrinsic personality traits, that upbringing influences character. So it is with race and class, especially of an unusual nature. These things influence and affect who a character is and how they behave, changing their character, and thereby making them interesting.
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Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
