RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Caspar · **12-23-2015, 04:17 AM**

A lot of people have anxiety about playing villains. I think that recent discussion has made me realize that such characters are a delicate matter.

If it's a character designed to fulfill the role of antagonist within a story arc, I can see the use in making them NPCs. That is generally the approach I take. If the character is meant to be morally ambiguous and resemble a PC, I think that perhaps not specifically defining them as a villain in your own mind can help. "A crafty hero and crafty villain differ in but a word." I think it makes sense to simply juxtapose the PC's goals opposite others in a story line, and other players will organically come to see them as an adversary for their own characters. There was never a specific intent to make the character a villain, but you did make their goals adversarial, and so they maintain the behavior and overall feel that makes a PC engaging for you personally to play, while at the same time fulfilling the role you intended them to in a greater overarching narrative. There was a slot for a villain open and your PC naturally gravitated there flexibly as part of your plans. That is just my idea. Perhaps if there is fear that the character won't be received well, lure others in with likability and gradually develop them into a foe.

Aggressively anti-social villains that cannot function within the day to day environment PCs occupy naturally may not always be easy to play in a casual, impromptu RP encounter because of the massive conflict they heap upon anyone who approaches them. That is why such villains in my RP are exclusively NPCs.

That being said, anxieties. Spoilered for length. I get the feeling this is too telling, but to hell with it.

Show Content

Spoiler
I've mentioned it before, but from where I came from, I was moderator and one of the oldest RPers on the site, as well as a few other forums. I was new once of course, but it's been a long time since then. Coming to RPC, it was something of a fresh experience to be the new blood and have something to prove.

It's strange, when I first arrived at this site, I felt open enough to share these things, but now I feel a bit uncertain as to what good it'll do me. If I force myself to type, I wonder if it would provoke interest, or just vent stress? Is it a legitimate concern or just paranoia? When I was on other RP forums, I never needed to be concerned about what was considered average, or how the average player would react. I've seen quite clearly this is a place where you must tread lightly. I consider myself a confident writer, and I don't doubt my own ability that often, though like any I can hold myself to unreasonable standards. Yet despite this, I was surprised by how much this feeling can make me hesitate. It just comes to show doubt is not something you always outgrow.

If there is an anxiety, if I feel uncertain about the game or RP, I want to generally look inward first for a fault. I have a pretty strong paranoid streak. In the past it was very easy for me to assume others thought the worst of me, so keeping a leash on that habit is a tricky thing to do. Likewise, my tone doesn't translate well through text and it's easy for me to miscommunicate. I've spent years writing and somehow never ironed out this problem. In the end questions like "am I being avoided?" are just best ignored. There's no way for me to really know these things without being inappropriately nosy or psychic. So it's a two-decade old elephant in the room that goes unfed, and every once in a while I hear its stomach gurgle.

Also, style and taste cannot be accounted for. If a person wants something different from me, the challenge is welcome, and I love going outside of my usual comfort zone. I adjust-but to what degree? Which is appropriate and how far can I bend without violating the basic story angle I'm trying to communicate? It's easy to see me as someone who advocates playing powerful, exceptional characters, because I constantly talk about "the right to not suck" on the forum, but in practice I'm pretty conservative about dialing things up. If my story demands characters who are strong, I give it strong characters. If they must be weak, I make them weak. Every story needs to match the gritty, adventurous, or cinematic levels of realism to the characters, but that comes naturally. It's matching that up to the level others play by that can be tricky. I often wonder if I'm pushing it too far since suspension of disbelief is very personal and often involves deliberate restraint of good faith. What is too "forced?" What is too "edgy?" Fiction is suffused with soundbite catchphrases that have lost objective meaning in the context of criticism. It makes collaborative writing a nerve wracking affair, if you let it get to you.

Personal hand wringing aside, what about my RP itself?

I want to believe my character is liked, at least among the few players who've actually gotten to see her, and some who haven't. I'm not available enough so I keep from making too many snap conclusions. If there's a disconnect between how I want her perceived and how she is perceived, it's slight. A lot of the reactions to the character are more or less what I expected and in some cases engineered from the start, and I'm proud of that.

If there was anything I wanted more of, it'd probably be more people mistrusting of her. It feels more gratifying to me, narrative-wise, to build up to that level of sympathy and understanding. A character Virara spoke with recently was dumbfounded by her casual ease with the idea of murdering unwanted enemies from a shadowy organization, because she built a sense of identity on an action he'd come to see as deplorable and felt incredible regret over. I like seeing that sort of interaction, where there's the possibility Virara can act as a catalyst for change within another character, whether it's aggressively rejecting her way of doing things, or perhaps being unintentionally poisoned by her influence. From the start I intended any increased strength on the part of Virara to be ill portent. I do want her to be sympathetic, for I love the tragic monster, and her background is loaded with those. I intend to ramp up the level of questionable behavior on her part as her story progresses, but that in itself leads to another concern...

I need to net interest, but I want to do it organically. It has to be reciprocal; I'm not looking to push Virara into plots just to advertise my own; she needs characters she will care about and help with their problems, both so I can enjoy the storylines, and also to mutually develop characters. I know there are people who want to play with me, but I also lost a lot of them and I am uncertain as to how fast I ought to progress. I don't want to rush things, but I also don't want to go too slowly. If I start plantings seeds to grow into future events, will it be meaningless if none of the participants are left to reap the rewards by the time they reach maturation? People's schedules change, and their interest in FFXIV comes and goes. I want a playgroup that will stick with me at least with some degree of frequency, so that occasional events related to my story can be run. But other factors frequently separate play groups. The majority of the people originally involved in my first event are either gone from the game, gone from my FC, gone into different groups of players, or all of the above. The remaining few have waited very patiently for me to do anything with the storyline, and I feel deeply that I must deliver eventually, but I'm gunshy about getting burnt again.

Virara is just a hook, an entry point into a larger plotline that is bursting out from inside of me. She's small, in some cases even insignificant, to the objective behind the story, at least in the parts not related to herself and her Master. Yet I wonder if I won't get distracted by other plotlines, or the players will become busy and unable to participate. That's why I've held off for so long. If I cannot execute it in a way that satisfies me and will be concluded definitively, I feel uneasy about soldiering onward. So many RP I've been in essentially just don't finish. On BBS I was resigned to that, but this is a new world so to speak.

And of course there's the issue of flinging myself into other people's RP. I need to get involved to build connections and make people interested in my character, as well as getting to know characters I find fun to play with, or that will affect my writing in interesting ways. But I have to often consider whether I'm pushing too little or too much, or if I am sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. Everyone is so private and yet the public RP doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for. Even though I'm willing and able to do both, will either give long term story connections? I'm not totally sure. I shoot tells like a shotgun and hope for the best. I feel bad that at times it's led to me forgetting to keep up existing RP interactions, and so I want to re-establish those links. If I've neglected you lately, prod me to play and I'll do my best to accommodate.

Another stylistic concern as this devolves into incoherent rambling is the matter of foreshadowing and insinuation. I've often hinted at things that seem obvious to me but generally go unnoticed. I don't feel that it is because the others writing opposite me are stupid or anything; it's more like I'm again not really communicating my ideas in a comprehensible way. And at the same time, when I aggressively try to pursue making them comprehensible, I feel the subtlety is eradicated. It's very linked to the availability of players as well; what to do with the empty plot threads that are left hanging when I get people's characters invested and they must leave the game or become less available? Unusually, wasted effort doesn't bother me. I've written practical essays on RP concepts and story settings that never went into play. So this isn't a huge concern to me.

All this is moot if my writing style can't keep people engaged, or if my character is too outrageous to catch interest. So I'm always looking for ways to adjust to the tastes of specific players. I have been throwing out feelers, stretching myself thin over Balmung as far as my meager faculties can manage, and still I'm uncertain as to whether I've been able to actually land anyone who's interested in exploring Virara's background story deeper, outside of the core few. It's greedy of me, but I want to gather a party, I guess...

Roleplayer Uncertainty/Insecurity Theater

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes