(06-21-2016, 11:28 AM)Kilieit Wrote:(06-20-2016, 07:56 PM)Unrealname Wrote: For me, one of my biggest issues is trying to explain or show off a character during a roleplay. One of the hardest parts about playing out a scene in game is all the little subtle details you can include on a forum post are near impossible for me to implement in game, and while it feels a lot more natural I have a harder time making note of my characters unique flaws or features.
Like, I really enjoy playing out a physical disability that would drastically change how my character would react to another. Blindness is by far my favorite in this regard but I'd feel like a clown if that was one of the first things I point out. But I'm also afraid if I'm too subtle, the feature gets all blurred and they don't pick up on it. It's hard to balance the two, especially with random pub encounters.
I actually have this problem too, with a really simple issue: my character's height.
In RP, he's 5'9''. But the shortest his preset can be in-game is 6'6'', so his in-game model is 6'6''. This means he's about a head shorter than his own in-game model.
This is a relatively small detail... until you have people emoting flavour that they're "looking up at the tall Au Ra" or "craning to see him" and so forth, when actually he'd be about the same height as them. Suddenly I'm having to backtrack and whisper them OOC to correct them.
There's such a variety of heights in-game, so I can't just emote him as "the short au ra" off the bat, either. On the grand scale of things, he's still pretty tall! He's taller than most midlander hyur. He's taller than the huge majority of miqo'te, and taller than every lalafell. He's still taller than the huge majority of auri women, too. He's just... shorter than his in-game model looks. It's a lot harder in in-game RP to just slip in details about his relative height compared to the scenery than it is in longform RP - especially when we already have a visual (his in-game model) that's contrary to what I'm emoting, leading to confusion.
It feels awkward as hell to whisper people up front before the RP even really begins like "yo btw my character is a head shorter than he appears in-game" because while it is one of the first things their character would likely register about mine... by whispering like that, it feels like I'm placing it higher up the OOC hierarchy of facts than it should be.
It's not something I necessarily need to "warn" people about before they talk to him. Like, if my character was an aggressive murderer, I might warn people OOC so they don't accidentally initiate a darker-themed RP than they expected by talking to him. His height isn't like that - it doesn't impact the type of RP I do on him; it's just a minor detail, story-wise, that happens to be visually obvious to other characters in a way it isn't to their players.
It feels like by telling people before it's relevant, I'm shoving it in their face unnecessarily and making it out to be a bigger deal than it is; but by leaving it until they already made a mistake, it feels like I'm being obnoxious and contrary...
I'd suggest simply having fun writing weird description-emotes? Like, "the remarkably average-height Au Ra says the thing", or just "the Miqo'te doesn't have to look far, as the two are almost the same height". You get to come up with weird ways of describing his height, and it draws attention to it as well. So people might catch on easier, both IC and OOC?
