I feel I'm somewhere in the middle of what I'm sure will be a very polarized topic in the posts to come.Â
So I want to preface this with what I hope to be common sense and should go without saying for most people: I don't have the time, patience, or inclination to police anyone's pretendy fun times. If/when I run across roleplay that is just so objectionable I can no longer stand to be in its presence let alone interact in it? I'll do the polite thing and just excuse myself. As stated, no time/inclination/patience to 'correct' someone's pretendy fun times therefore I can only logically be accountable for my own. Now as it happens this is not a common occurrence because, even though I'm very lore-strict with my own RP, I'm also very tolerant of those that are not, within reason.
Now be that as it may, I still count myself as a 'writer' or better yet, 'writer-type-person-whom-engages-in-writey-things'. So things like narrative, character development, and story continuity are very important to me. Someone might ask "what about adaptability in terms of RP with others", and typically what they mean is 'how do you handle strange characters and/or strange occurrences'. Normally I say I handle it with rather good aplomb, however if the person or the occurrence is just so far out there that it literally shakes the setting and breaks the scene I do get rather bothered.
The reason is simple: as before I stated I care about narrative and and story continuity. If a character or an occurrence is so far away from the established game world (to use a tired example we can go with the usual fairy-demon-vampire-cat-girl-with-angel-wings-one-white-and-one-black-with-a-fox-tail-and-super-mystical-powers-that-make-niisan-her-bedroom-puppet-in-an-eyeblink) it's not an issue of 'respecting their RP' to me, it's an issue of "How do I handle this person who just disrespected the narrative and practically crashed the story continuity into the ground because they demand validation?".Â
The usual attitude seems to be "we have to respect all people's RP", which I more or less agree with with. Though 'respecting someone's right to do $thing' is NOT the same as 'agreeing with them doing $thing', it's just a sort of silent agreement that you won't publicly shit on them for whatever their choices are. The caveat to this that I propose is that when your character or the actions of your character literally break the continuity of the scene or threaten current narrative you are actually disrespecting other's RP by virtue of being there, as well. This is very much a two way street.
Again for the record I'm not going to chastise or publicly denounce these theoretical individuals because that requires more effort than I'm generally capable of mustering. I will engage my right to seek more agreeable pretendy fun times elsewhere, though. Obviously the example was an extreme one that is probably in the <1% of situations. Most of the time it'll likely involve authority figures and 'whose interpretation of lore is 'more better'; in the case of the Ishgardian Miqo'te Dragoons etc.Â
tl;dr respecting RP isn't just you tolerating things you find questionable, it's also about people who play 'questionable things' respecting others who do try to play in the sandbox, as well.
So I want to preface this with what I hope to be common sense and should go without saying for most people: I don't have the time, patience, or inclination to police anyone's pretendy fun times. If/when I run across roleplay that is just so objectionable I can no longer stand to be in its presence let alone interact in it? I'll do the polite thing and just excuse myself. As stated, no time/inclination/patience to 'correct' someone's pretendy fun times therefore I can only logically be accountable for my own. Now as it happens this is not a common occurrence because, even though I'm very lore-strict with my own RP, I'm also very tolerant of those that are not, within reason.
Now be that as it may, I still count myself as a 'writer' or better yet, 'writer-type-person-whom-engages-in-writey-things'. So things like narrative, character development, and story continuity are very important to me. Someone might ask "what about adaptability in terms of RP with others", and typically what they mean is 'how do you handle strange characters and/or strange occurrences'. Normally I say I handle it with rather good aplomb, however if the person or the occurrence is just so far out there that it literally shakes the setting and breaks the scene I do get rather bothered.
The reason is simple: as before I stated I care about narrative and and story continuity. If a character or an occurrence is so far away from the established game world (to use a tired example we can go with the usual fairy-demon-vampire-cat-girl-with-angel-wings-one-white-and-one-black-with-a-fox-tail-and-super-mystical-powers-that-make-niisan-her-bedroom-puppet-in-an-eyeblink) it's not an issue of 'respecting their RP' to me, it's an issue of "How do I handle this person who just disrespected the narrative and practically crashed the story continuity into the ground because they demand validation?".Â
The usual attitude seems to be "we have to respect all people's RP", which I more or less agree with with. Though 'respecting someone's right to do $thing' is NOT the same as 'agreeing with them doing $thing', it's just a sort of silent agreement that you won't publicly shit on them for whatever their choices are. The caveat to this that I propose is that when your character or the actions of your character literally break the continuity of the scene or threaten current narrative you are actually disrespecting other's RP by virtue of being there, as well. This is very much a two way street.
Again for the record I'm not going to chastise or publicly denounce these theoretical individuals because that requires more effort than I'm generally capable of mustering. I will engage my right to seek more agreeable pretendy fun times elsewhere, though. Obviously the example was an extreme one that is probably in the <1% of situations. Most of the time it'll likely involve authority figures and 'whose interpretation of lore is 'more better'; in the case of the Ishgardian Miqo'te Dragoons etc.Â
tl;dr respecting RP isn't just you tolerating things you find questionable, it's also about people who play 'questionable things' respecting others who do try to play in the sandbox, as well.
