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+--- Thread: Character Tone - Action Scenes (/showthread.php?tid=8764)
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RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Sounsyy - 12-03-2014
So one of the things I loved about XIV 1.0 is that it told this unusually dark and hopeless story for an MMO and dark even for a FF game. The good guys hardly ever got a win, corruption ran rampant in all the city states, the evil empire almost seemed good by comparison despite their atrocities, and even the Light of the world (Player Character) faltered at every turn. (Definitely not like in 2.0 where everything the Player Character does is like WOW OMG YOU'RE SO SPECIAL) In 1.0, you were a nobody. Nobody had faith in you. There were fights you could not win because you weren't strong enough. The Elementals of Gridania had even given up hope for the world.
So when creating the persona of Sounsyy Mirke, I really took that dark, hopeless setting to heart. I wanted to play with that "good guys don't win" motif and what the constant loss and struggle would do to a really pure, young and impressionable heart. So I made a Miqo'te Gladiator hailing from the fallen nation of Ala Mhigo (cuz big fan of J'moldva) and her backstory was designed to be just one loss after another, until now, in the present that I RP her, she's just a husk of a person.
From there, I really wanted to RP a flat, two dimensional side character who really has no more goals in a setting with other RPers who had made very dynamic, three dimensional characters and see what kind of response that evoked from Sounsyy. I wanted the joy of seeing how a flat character would respond in a dynamic situation. How does she respond when a comedic character approaches her, when a character struggling with his own drama befriends her, when someone tries to love her? And so far, RPing her has been a great experience and the few people she's met have really shaped her in unforeseen ways.
As for action scenes, Sounsyy so far has only gotten into a few fistfights (which she's terrible at). But being a Gladiator and a seasoned veteran besides, I like to keep her fighting visceral and gritty, even when sparring with friends, just to keep that dark setting looming over her.
/endgush
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Warren Castille - 12-03-2014
Ooh, Sounsyy raises good points worth echoing here. Warren also came to exist during 1.0, and as a no-roots wandering type he was a bit disheartened when he came to stop at Ul'dah. The world was already gone to hell in a handbasket even then, and his early characteristics were a lot more "keep to yourself, work for your meals" sort of blue-collaredness. One of the things I miss the most going into ARR was how the miner's guild changed. Now it seems... clean. Organized. Legitimate. 1.0's seemed a lot more like what you think of when you think coal miners nowadays: Dirty, grungy. They had a "bar" there with "dancers" and the place was obviously also a whorehouse.
Warren's initial arc to picking up a weapon in earnest were defined by wanting to protect people from that dirty world, even if he himself felt he was going to live and die in it.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Zhavi - 12-03-2014
Gritty, gritty, gritty, dirty. I wanted Zhi to be in-your-face gross, the sort who rarely says no to anything, has a chip on her shoulder, and rarely lets anything get her down. She gets moody, frustrated, but most of the time I picture her as having a cocky grin and an indomitable you-can't-get-me-down sort of attitude. She makes a ton of mistakes, and she does enough stupid things to make me cringe while I'm writing it, but she always manages to come out of it on her feet. Even if she's limping and all bruised to hell.
I don't particularly like writing comedy; I have exactly one character meant to be lighthearted, and the rp she's in is inevitably black humor-- plenty of people die or get crippled, but done in that sort of penny-awful style with some Black Adder snark tossed in. And lots of breaking the third wall. So if there's one thing I'd say is nearly absent from my rp with her, it'd definitely be comedy (though I do add humor, but inevitably it's the make-others-groan sort >>).
Still, I try to keep her varied, but there's inevitably that filter of awful. She's a downtrodden sort of pathetic, and even when she's chest out and chin up I like to toss down little reminders. She's nothing, a nobody, and she sure as hell ain't no hero.
....and the only action I seem to do with her ever is when she's getting beat up. Except that one time she killed someone, but that was too much of a backstab to really count.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Verad - 12-03-2014
Mostly comedic, although lately that's been taking a darker turn. I'm going to need to moderate that and get back to form.
Actions scenes are tricky for me, and they've really only come up on the few occasions that Verad has participated in the Grindstone. Then his style varies between incompetent - no marmot is safe when Verad draws his bow - and competent, but undercut by his own ridiculous sense of style and his insistence on evil twins.
I'd feel really bad for Eorzea if the entire setting revolved around Verad. It would all become a lengthy Hildebrand plot.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Gegenji - 12-03-2014
(12-03-2014, 01:52 PM)Verad Wrote: I'd feel really bad for Eorzea if the entire setting revolved around Verad. It would all become a lengthy Hildebrand plot.
I see no downside to this.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Liliana Nazareth - 12-11-2014
While I attempt to keep Lily as a support/background character, things/plots usually happen that unwittingly throw her into the spotlight. That being said, the way I've always played Lily is as a motivator--she's very inspirational, and has picked up people who have hit rock bottom and turned them into heroes -- even when her days of being a hero were at an end (and I mean that in the retirement/"I'm sick of this" way, not the more...morbid route).
A lot of the time, alongside being a motivator, she's also been described as a knightly type--chivalrous, polite, can come across as a bit stiff, stifling and overbearing with the way she speaks. But she's very proud, strong, and independent, and I think the tone of how she's RPed is sometimes projected onto others in a negative/positive light.Â
Whenever I RP, drama always seems to happen. IC, mostly, of course. She's thrust into a lot of grimdark or otherwise moody, dark, brooding or foreboding RPs; very seldom does she get the chance to be a joker and loosen up. And she does a lot of combat RP, for being a healer, which is something I just find odd. xD
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - Mercurias - 12-19-2014
I usually write my characters from a tone that's fairly...Flexible. Honestly, I need to work on varying my phrasing because I notice myself reusing things a lot and I don't want to pull a Simon R. Green and repeat the same lines over and over.Â
Msato is very stark and dry. He has warmth and playfulness hidden deep down, often because he's so insecure and positive the world wants to kill him in specific to really relax easily and be himself. There are very, very few exceptions to that rule. He can sometimes inject humor and -often- inject snark, but I think the few times he's added warmth are sort of my favorite moments with him.Â
In combat, Sato normally SHOULD be in the back and taking care of people like a good combat medic, but he often loses his cool and tried to do something borderline insane.
Solomon is the opposite. He smiles and laughs and parties and drinks too much, but he mostly does so because he's tired and jaded and trying to feel anything at all. He's a sellsword and bar manager, very good with blades and very experienced with them. In combat, Solomon prefers the parry to the block, the disarm to bashing a weapon over and over, and he prefers to use a blade's sharpness along with the force of his opponent to make sure his killing blows land unexpectedly and finally. He'll smile and quip and pour drinks for you all night, even going so far as to give concerned advice and kind words or mocking banter, but deep down he lives his life as if he's done it all before and has long-since grown bored of it all.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - cuideag - 12-19-2014
Jajara is generally lighthearted and is more open to a bit of silliness. She's not very worldly and is most definitely ignorant about a lot of the things in Eorzea and its people, but she means well even if she goofs things up now and again. I definitely do not try to play up lalafell cuteness and so on: she's NOT a child, she's older than most of the people she knows/works with, and characters who know her well know she has her own problems and concerns and the like. But her optimistic nature lends itself to a warmer tone overall.
When she's in FIGHT MODE!, though, she's pretty serious. Probably because it doesn't happen very often! She knows people will underestimate her because she's a lalafell and she definitely uses that to her advantage.
Delial is more of a mix. Most of her interactions are cold and deadly serious, and that might be partly because that is what is expected of her. It isn't too often that she can be, gasp, silly with anyone, but the people she jokes and teases with are the ones she adores the most... if only because she likes them enough to show a bit of a different face around.
In combat, like Jajara, she is all business. She is only OK with aetheric manipulations of either the hurty or healy variety and she's not much of a physical fighter at all. It would be horrifically easy to disable her in a fight if not flat out kill her and she is very aware of that fact.
RE: Character Tone - Action Scenes - C'kayah Polaali - 12-19-2014
I've been mostly out of the RP scene lately, but I've always tried to stick to a semi-realistic low-power lore-oriented feel. C'kayah lives in Eorzea, but he's not a Warrior of Light. He doesn't possess world shaking power. He's an ordinary man living in an extraordinary place. The power he does possess is mainly social - he's good at making and keeping connections with people.
I suppose a good way to describe how I approach RP with him is he's a character actor who thinks he's playing the lead role.
As far as action scenes go, I'm heavily inspired by Fritz Leiber, and my own writing during action and fights reflects that. Though, like I said, C'kayah's powers are mainly social, so if he's gotten into a fight, he's already done something wrong. He's a decent, but not powerful, fighter with a fairly defensive style, but at the end of the day he's not superhuman and I'm entirely willing to let him lose (something which has caused conflicts with other RPers in the past - a lot of us like to think in terms of light-vs-heavy RP, but I think the high-vs-low power level is a more important axis).