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

Gaspard · **03-02-2015, 01:29 PM**

You're making a logical mistake in your example, and your raised question in regards to roleplay;

The example of death you've quoted from the Wire was so that the story had something to feed on. a key moment to move the story forward. That was a decision a director made pertaining to a figure from literature. See the boy die (Even with his personal implication of liking the character), so that the story gets the necessary panache (Because the story goes first).

So far so good. So you have the director sacrifice a character for the progress of the story.Â

ergo;

A singular Writer/Director kills of a Character in the singular narrative that he writes/oversees.

Now, In roleplay, you do not have a singular narrative. There's no singular story to follow. Infact, in Roleplay you're not the Director, you are more of an Actor. Every single player follows his own characters narrative UNTIL you decide to switch from organic/open RP (actions/consequences entirely free and unrestrained) and switch towards Story writing RP (Actions/consequences are shaped to adhere your character but also to enable the progress of the desired Narrative that includes others).Â

Another big kicker is that Roleplayers often do not only seek to own their Character, but also their Characters Story. The distinction is important for the following reason;

If a person just focuses on maintaining character, you can literally throw his character at anything. Alien invasion, Zombie Moogles, A trip to hell, or grocery shopping with Ul'dahs prom Queen. Maintaining Character simply means that the character IN that scenario will undoubtly react how he should react to it, yet he sees no claim to where his character would end up in, or what he would face. If he'll be encountered with a lethal force he'll roleplay out dying, if he'll encounter poisonous gas he'll roleplay out dying form that slowly, if he'll encounter a rock-slide burrying him he'll get squished. The point is, to maintain character, you needn't control over narrative.Â

But that's not how most people roleplay. We don't just remain in character, and react. We also own our characters story, and therein, the narrative and actions of our characters.Â

So, to answer your initial question ;Â

Quote:So I'm curious, have you made decisions to promote a better story? Did your characters ever go through something that, while it would not have been 100% in character at the time, would enrich the story? I'm not saying complete 180 but did you have to think of a way to steer your character a certain way to make it in character with the ultimate reason being a better story?

((You have no idea how much I was trying to imagine something like a Wire tap crew investigation working on a big drug trade organization like the Barksdale Organization or the Co-Op. @_@ Complete with Brass Blades of Ul'dah and some Maelstrom made high-potency drugs or something. And codes.))

I'll address this portion by portion;

First, and this should be almost biblical law to every roleplayer; NEVER break Character. While others can never tell you if you do or do not break Character, you yourself will know. There's alot of immersion for yourself that you will ruin if you have your character wash up / apart in order to satisfy someone else, and more importantly, this dis-satisfaction WILL wash over into your play, therein making your portrayal of your character the way you want to portray him skewed. Think like an Actor; You want to deliver the best performance you can.

However;

That doesn't translate into "Never cooperate". While you should never break character, you can, and should BEND and SHARE narrative. If you're imaginative enough, you can have your most vile enemies work together if both parties do the right things with the narrative. Take for example X-men Comics. They constantly toss their characters at almost ridiculous scenarios, but seldomnly is character broken in any of those. All it takes is a NPC here, a vile action there, a bit of drafting on both sides to make almost anything possible without anyone ever having to break character.

Which leads me to my last point ; Your initial post kind of tackled a massive amount of points, such as ; consequence, narrative, character integrity, story progress, IC/OOC seperation, and so on. I could keep writing on this for days on end, and still not give you a satisfying answer. I guess what it all boils down to is the following ; Make the quality of your Roleplay your personal responsibility. That is the only way you'll get the specific Quality of Roleplay out of it that you seek.

Decisions Made to Promote a "better" story

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