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Asmodean · **05-26-2015, 02:22 PM**

(05-26-2015, 01:45 PM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: I felt lost with my character, so I killed her off.

I am very happy with my two current characters. However if I feel lost with them they might go away as well.

No story is meant to go on forever.

While it is true no story is meant to go on forever, death is not the only way to end a story. If, however, the death gives others a reason for a rp event or a reason for characters to shift their mindset then the end of a character is fine.

Right now Asmo is a character is I haven't had a real chance to get into a deep rp event due to IRL things but I feel given a bit of time I'll easily find a place for him fit in even he's an action over words. He'll have his moments if others try to get understands his back-story or want just get to know him on a deeper level then knowing his a friend they can fall back on. If I ever feel I have to let him fall out of a story, I can easy say he was gone from Eorzea due to a hint letting him know something about his non-Eorzean mother or simply his tired of battle and he's come to the mindset of it's time for him to steady down.

Most of the time, if you lost your love of your character, take a break for a week or two before doing anything rash. While you could have some rp reason for them coming back from death, I often feel thing like this just cheapen the meaning of death in a rp setting.

Rila · **05-26-2015, 04:57 PM**

I've struggled with this myself.

As a writer, I daydream more than I actually write. When there's a character or a concept that excites me, it'll frequently appear in my thoughts. An image as I drive to work. An idea while I'm picking up groceries. A lot of the fun of fiction, for me, is dwelling in the realm of possibilities.

But sometimes, a big idea about one of my characters simply ceases to excite me. Fun and dramatic is now silly and lackluster, maudlin and burdensome. Sometimes a piece of lore I hadn't known tears the whole thing apart. When I've mentally invested days or even weeks into an idea, letting go of it can leave an uncomfortable vacuum.

RP adds another level of complexity to this. Sometimes I've started something big with someone and they ended up losing interest. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes there's a change in someone's personal life that impacts the amount of time that they can devote to RP. A lot of potential lays dormant and many possibilities are left unexplored. It can feel especially frustrating if you're very active on your character and there's an important part of their story that you're having to write around. At one point, I'd been tempted to scrap I'rila over this very thing.

One thing I've learned, honestly, is to try not to stress about it and let go of expectations.

Which sounds like the most contrived piece of advice ever, but hear me out.

RPing is not a chore. Your character isn't an ongoing school assignment you have to write a weekly submission for. Neither is anyone else's. There is no real commitment, and if you don't feel like doing it, you really don't have to do it. Your character will still be there in a week. A month. A year. Any time you find yourself thinking about them again and getting excited over more ideas, they'll be there waiting for you to step into their shoes again. You don't owe anyone RP, and similarly, no one owes you, because doing something that's supposed to be for fun out of social obligation is silly.

Would it be considerate to OOCly tell people what your character's doing when you take an RP break? Sure. But people are generally flexible from my experience, so if you disappear for awhile and then reappear, they'll probably be happy to work things out logistically - so long as you keep your expectations at a minimum and remember that they're not obligated to you any more than you are to them.

So just sit back and let the inspiration happen on its own. Hell, let something other than FFXIV hold your interest for awhile. Who knows? It might give you an idea for your character you might not have had otherwise.

Terra · **06-05-2015, 05:16 AM**

I am also experiencing some troubles with this with my 3 level 50 characters all made for their backstory with defininitive personal goals. One I have a solution for that works perfectly for her as a character... the other two? I'm going to have to come up with something...

My main, Terrini, hasn't been fun to play for a while, and it has had a lot to do with the fact that she was landed with leadership of a free company that she never wanted or expected - this free company was made within the roleplay by another roleplayer and my character joined and supported the company - in fact, all three characters I'm having troubles with were the founding members of this company and the fact that the creator of the company left without a word to another server saddling me with it was something that did not just affect me out of character but in character as well. Terrini can be seen in my roleplays to be struggling valiantly with the responsibility, and worked really hard to accomplish the goal of getting a large house for the company to act as a base, a home for the wanderers and nomads, and after that happened, things started to fall apart because I didn't know how to lead a company and it just got to the point where me and my alts were the only people logging in. Throughout this process, Terrini had a boyfriend and they finally got married recently and now all her personal goals are done (get married and be able to settle in a personal home in Gridania has always been her goal, before personal housing was even available). So I am giving FC leadership to another and am "retiring" Terrini. She may come back one day and get involved with her friends, but she's being put out to pasture for RPing until further notice since I just don't RP her much anymore...

The next person screwed over by the original leader jumping servers is Deianera. She had an AWESOME roleplay relationship with him. He was strong and ambitions and goal oriented and really warmed my cold mercenary's heart with how much she admired him. And then he disappeared without a word and she went back to ice. Her own roleplay story ended up with her killing her only friend as well, because of a promise she had made. All of this resulting in her leaving the company she helped to create because she wasn't able to prevent the dark roleplays that happened there (all other character storylines) and so she decided to make a change and go to the other RP company. Deianera, though, is a hard character to play. She doesn't open up to people very well, is very cynical and she doesn't make friends easily (only with people that have a similar jaded personal view). She needs to get involved, but she needs to have someone to play off of to do that!! There are a few possibilities but I don't want to steal options from other people arbitrarily, that's no fun... so she's in quite a quandary. She's fun to play as the stoic cynic, but only when there is someone to play off of that.

Finally there's Sakha, and she's now kinda stuck as a bookkeeper for the free company with no other avenues available to her. Her defining premise was built around the hope of playing with a friend of mine as her brother, but he ended up not getting into it and Sakha's been on a "never-ending quest to find her brother". Up for random RP "Oh, I was just in the area looking for my brother." There's only so much you can do with that, and the bookkeeper thing at least has given her something to play off of besides her brother, but with the activity level of the company... not working so well lately. A friend even thought to surprise me and made a new character as her brother. I had no clue and was shell-shocked and it took a couple months for me to even accept it enough to try and initiate a roleplay about it and when I suggest it, he says that he won't be able to follow through because of his main character goals for Heavensward, so it seems that little bit of development is retconned and she's back to being a bookkeeper looking for love, but the only one interested is a lesbian that just doesn't connect with Sakha on a personal level. They're similar in some ways, but way too different in others.

I've tried to start conversations about this with the RP linkshell, but it seems whenever I say "RP" it just seems to be "not with me" or better for my more light-hearted alts to enter into things because their purpose is not in the story behind them but instead how they interact with the world, so it's easy to just throw them in anywhere, while my main 3 need to have a reason because of being weighed down by their stories and personal goals. I love these characters and put a lot of work into them, and they're all beautiful to me and I'm proud of them but another part of me is saying that there isn't really anything left for them... It'd kinda depressing...

Mountie · **06-05-2015, 10:28 AM**

(06-05-2015, 05:16 AM)Terra Wrote: I am also experiencing some troubles with this with my 3 level 50 characters all made for their backstory with defininitive personal goals. One I have a solution for that works perfectly for her as a character... the other two? I'm going to have to come up with something...

My main, Terrini, hasn't been fun to play for a while, and it has had a lot to do with the fact that she was landed with leadership of a free company that she never wanted or expected - this free company was made within the roleplay by another roleplayer and my character joined and supported the company - in fact, all three characters I'm having troubles with were the founding members of this company and the fact that the creator of the company left without a word to another server saddling me with it was something that did not just affect me out of character but in character as well. Terrini can be seen in my roleplays to be struggling valiantly with the responsibility, and worked really hard to accomplish the goal of getting a large house for the company to act as a base, a home for the wanderers and nomads, and after that happened, things started to fall apart because I didn't know how to lead a company and it just got to the point where me and my alts were the only people logging in. Throughout this process, Terrini had a boyfriend and they finally got married recently and now all her personal goals are done (get married and be able to settle in a personal home in Gridania has always been her goal, before personal housing was even available). So I am giving FC leadership to another and am "retiring" Terrini. She may come back one day and get involved with her friends, but she's being put out to pasture for RPing until further notice since I just don't RP her much anymore...

The next person screwed over by the original leader jumping servers is Deianera. She had an AWESOME roleplay relationship with him. He was strong and ambitions and goal oriented and really warmed my cold mercenary's heart with how much she admired him. And then he disappeared without a word and she went back to ice. Her own roleplay story ended up with her killing her only friend as well, because of a promise she had made. All of this resulting in her leaving the company she helped to create because she wasn't able to prevent the dark roleplays that happened there (all other character storylines) and so she decided to make a change and go to the other RP company. Deianera, though, is a hard character to play. She doesn't open up to people very well, is very cynical and she doesn't make friends easily (only with people that have a similar jaded personal view). She needs to get involved, but she needs to have someone to play off of to do that!! There are a few possibilities but I don't want to steal options from other people arbitrarily, that's no fun... so she's in quite a quandary. She's fun to play as the stoic cynic, but only when there is someone to play off of that.

Finally there's Sakha, and she's now kinda stuck as a bookkeeper for the free company with no other avenues available to her. Her defining premise was built around the hope of playing with a friend of mine as her brother, but he ended up not getting into it and Sakha's been on a "never-ending quest to find her brother". Up for random RP "Oh, I was just in the area looking for my brother." There's only so much you can do with that, and the bookkeeper thing at least has given her something to play off of besides her brother, but with the activity level of the company... not working so well lately. A friend even thought to surprise me and made a new character as her brother. I had no clue and was shell-shocked and it took a couple months for me to even accept it enough to try and initiate a roleplay about it and when I suggest it, he says that he won't be able to follow through because of his main character goals for Heavensward, so it seems that little bit of development is retconned and she's back to being a bookkeeper looking for love, but the only one interested is a lesbian that just doesn't connect with Sakha on a personal level. They're similar in some ways, but way too different in others.

I've tried to start conversations about this with the RP linkshell, but it seems whenever I say "RP" it just seems to be "not with me" or better for my more light-hearted alts to enter into things because their purpose is not in the story behind them but instead how they interact with the world, so it's easy to just throw them in anywhere, while my main 3 need to have a reason because of being weighed down by their stories and personal goals. I love these characters and put a lot of work into them, and they're all beautiful to me and I'm proud of them but another part of me is saying that there isn't really anything left for them... It'd kinda depressing...

Oh don't be so down. In fact, while I won't even attempt to go into depth -mainly due to my lacking it right now- it seems like a lot of these issues involve the FC and those leaderships you mentioned. So pass the torch. Sure you can be there to support, and OOC you can even still run the company, but let another stand up for the group as far as the main story goes, and let your characters be free once more. I have a rather dear friend who was struggling with a similar issue when her character ended up in charge of a Free Company that she had only meant to help with finding its way. It ruined the adventurous and dynamic character she had created, and only now that she is finding ways to explore away from the group again is she truly happy with playing her character once more.

FallenVanguard · **07-25-2015, 07:01 AM**

With me it depends on a few things. I often enjoy characters developing differently than intended, in fact I rarely have too much of their development set in stone save some key changes in their beliefs, ideals, work ethics, etc. Aside from that I let their rps develop them and wind up pleasantly surprised nearly always. This sort of "unexpected development" is something I actually enjoy and thus not an issue.

Now, if a character is just straight up de-railed, I need to find out why they are the way they are and how they came to be that way. Am I just screwing up when I play them? Have I disconnected from their personality? Or has their personality slowly shifted not because of development but for other reasons? If that's the case I would typically just sort of rework and tweak the character a bit...typically.

In an rp like this, where I literally PLAY this character both as roleplay and as a video game avatar of sorts, well, it would feel odd for me to just go and rework them out of the blue. I'd probably do my best to find a way to make their derailment make sense in their story, like...well, I actually can't think of an example. They got possessed? :p

If I can't then...huh, I don't know. I'd probably just go with the rework and act like nothing had happened.

Sigil.9054 · **07-27-2015, 04:40 PM**

A boring story is the only "bad" turn my characters' stories can take. I care not whether they're having good times or bad times. All I care about is that things remain interesting. Even should things get boring, I haven't stopped "loving" the character. I'm simply bored with the story. In those (rare) cases, I just move on, perhaps to return later.

Of course, since strife usually makes things interesting, I suppose that my characters' stories only ever get stagnant because my characters have achieved their "happy ending". Which is a good thing, I suppose.

Flickering Ember · **08-18-2015, 10:24 PM**

Honestly, I have never experienced this.Â
I'm either in love with my character or I'm very 'meh' towards them.
There is no in between for me.
I usually know pretty early on (about two weeks after creation) and there's only one character I've salvaged from 'meh' status.
I have never lost interest in a character I loved.Â
More often than not, their stories end before I want them to.

The thing is, I am able to keep interest with a single character for years in MMOs because I let my characters' stories evolve over time. A lot of that is dependent upon the people I RP with too rather than personal quests, so there is always something new to RP because there are always new people to RP with. So, for me personally, I've found my RP works best if I give each of my characters good reasons to like and approach people. They're not all affectionate or sociable but other people are important enough to where their sense of value and self worth is somehow entangled with the people around them. Even if the story is 100% focused on another character, I can give my characters enough quirks, fears, flaws, strengths, likes, dislikes, etc. to make any story relatable to them.Â

So, if my character's story is always evolving then I will never get bored of them. I've made more "dud" characters than ones that are "beloved" though. They might not possess the qualities of the above paragraph. Â I know quickly enough if these characters are duds and I will either make futile efforts to salvage them (again, was only ever able to salvage one "dud" character) or I will force myself to move on.

Caspar · **08-19-2015, 04:54 PM**

Lol, I'm often a victim of this. With my own character? Of course not, I love them. However, often others get bored of their character and stop playing them. I tend to like linking my story to another's. This can leave me high and dry.

Ignacius · **08-19-2015, 05:09 PM**

(05-24-2015, 08:56 AM)Steel Wolf Wrote: So...hey, I was just sort of curious/wanting to pick the brain of the RPC on this topic.

What happens when you put together a character that, after a pretty lengthy period of time, just sort of falls apart? Â Either the direction of their RP takes a turn you weren't expecting, or things just spin in some way that makes that character un-fun to play for yourself and for others. Â Or maybe there's a new class or race that just looks like WAY more fun. Â Or you have a new concept but OHLAWD dat MSQ gate. Â Either way, there's some defect in the character's lovability matrix, but there's also a HUGE deal of time and investment in the character, both emotionally as well as in relation to in-game advancement/items.

What do you do? Â Is it just a matter of "Fantasia and f**k it" or is there deeper thoughts on the matter? Â Has this happened to you, and what do you do?

Personally I find a situation like this very tug-o-war'ish. Â Like, there's a LOT of work and investment put down on this goofy little avatar and then just...something goes blah and you're caught between wanting to try again and wanting to salvage the situation.

There's no contract here. Â We're essentially RPing at-will here. Â If something isn't fun, for whatever reason, you are under zero obligation to play with this. Â IF you love the character, extract your character, however suddenly, from the situation or retcon it completely. Â If you don't, fantasia and start over.

DO NOT FORCE YOURSELF TO RP WHEN YOU AREN'T ENGAGED! Â You will burn out.

SaintEaon · **08-19-2015, 05:25 PM**

Been struggling with this Â a lot lately and I don't think its that I got tired of my character so much as, there is a group of people who OOCly go out of their way to cause problems with people. I'm not sure if this is by design or if they're just bad at RP and can't tell the difference between IC or OOC or if they just choose to ignore it. Anyway these people have effectively ruined 3 HUGE and super significant plots involving my character, the first two they did on the same day and I figured, fuck it I'll Blacklist them all, burn the bridges and move on.Â

Turns out that's hard because the time you invested is a lot and when you have to explain to your partners what happened it takes the steam out in a big kinda way. So I'm finally starting to get back into things and then recently this same set of people shows up and OOCly crashes another RP thing. To make matters worse I'd been lied to about the pretense of the situation OOCly before arriving so it causes this big scene in Ul'Dah. A good portion of the people who found the RP joined in only to see nothing happen and me storm off, I got blamed for the entire situation even though I'd been lied to about what was going to happen (if they'd said Hey so my plan is to not do this thing, then call in some help, this is who I want to call, I could have explained why that shouldn't happen because of those issues, but this person decided to ignore those issues and not say anything OOCly and give me a completely different plan to go with), then flamed and humiliated in front of people I either didn't know already or had just met. So the result is after months of working hard on my character, I got my reputation dragged through the mud by these two FC's and this other person.Â

Its humiliating, its frustrating and it makes you want to not log in or change characters, but after so much work you don't want to just walk away either. The shitty part though is you can't really talk about what happened because when you get ganged up on OOCly its your word vs theirs, and sometimes you don't know someone till you've RP'd with them for a month almost exclusively to see the shit they do.Â

My FC Told me later they had some members in previous months have the same thing happen with the same group of people, but again if you can't talk to anyone about it or feel like you can't, you don't. That said it does make you want to stop playing.

EDIT:
To the guy above me, sometimes its hard to not RP even if you don't want to, because if I'm dating a character or something if I take a week or two off, relationship can change over night. You start to feel pinned into it. I'm not saying you are and the right people won't understand, but I know that anxiety well.

Caspar · **08-19-2015, 07:03 PM**

If I am suffering from writer's block or feeling meh on a concept, I generally have to work through it by writing more, not abandoning the idea. However, I'm one of the few who see RP as more writing than improv or acting.

D'aito Kuji · **08-20-2015, 02:12 PM**

tl;dr Playing a villain sucks so I stopped and "disappeared" the character.

My favorite characters ended abruptly when City of Heroes sunset. Â I was able to wrap up their plot lines and allow them to sail away.

When I moved to The Secret World, I decided to play a self-insert character that shared my darker moods and thoughts. Â She was a straight up villain and made no excuses for that. Â At first, the RP'ers around me seemed to like having a villain to bounce off of, someone who would always question the sincerity and purpose of their characters. Â But overtime I noticed a cooling of that point of view and there was a sharp uptick in OOC drama. Â Some took my character's villainy seriously as OOC commentary on their characters and their RP. Â I tried to explain a couple of times that my character was evil and would do evil things, like backstabbing and betraying and conspiring against those around her. Â But eventually, the backlash got bigger than I wanted to deal with and I was getting tired of the constantly grim nature of the game. Â I tried to re-roll a heroic character but my heart wasn't in it. Â I let the character simply vanish. Â Because of the nature of The Secret World, someone suddenly disappearing wouldn't be that unusual.

With D'aito Kuji, I am not tired of her character as I'm still getting to know her. Â But I will admit that these long gaps of in-game time are weakening my desire to play at all. And I'm going to get seriously busy in a couple of weeks with college. Â I've given thought to retiring the character for a while. Â Not killing her, but something mundane like getting a permanent job, falling in love...or something less mundane like becoming a pirate.

KitKat · **08-21-2015, 04:58 AM**

I've killed three different versions of Kat trying to find one that will stick. I'll find something or I will keep trying. No problem killing a character here.

Oilbasedoleander · **08-21-2015, 09:40 AM**

I start each character with the soul purpose of making them evolve, for the better mostly. Very rarely do they go bad. They just get put into tough situations sometimes.

I give them trama and scars. And then RP with others and watch the magic happen and embrace the influence of those around them. Just like people do in real life. The only reason I ever "shelf" a character is when someone who is part of the main storyline stops RPing with me and I can't just revert my character back to their original state. Worked too hard, gone too far.

Also because I get tunnel vision and usually focus one character at a time and flesh them out.

But! If it's become more work than play, and it's not salvageable, just shelf 'em and re roll a new concept and character. RP is suppose to be FUN. So... Make of it what you will.

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Defects in the Lovability Matrix

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