Realism vs Fun

[eTaylor]

What I think is a really interesting aspect of this topic, what the game is to me doesn’t necessarily translate to what it means to you. There’s no clear definition of what it is exactly that we do here besides that we are role-playing. We are left to interpret things for ourselves, and that creates a disconnect between players. It creates conflict, because technically no matter where you are on the spectrum you’re neither right nor wrong. This only becomes a problem for the people who don’t realize that.

[Derrek_Wilson]

Depends on definition of fun. Usually on heavy roleplay communities, realism at its finest is the whole fun of it. You may have to do some research if you'll be doing some sort of role-play, but that's pretty educational if you ask me. Either its criminal mind related, or legal stuff. You actually end up reading up a lot of stuff and facts, and bringing it over to a virtual world is pretty neat, as you get to express some of the events that you can't pull off in reality, as its may be extremely risky and well, life-causing. But we all enjoy it, great story and follow up through development.

 

When people bring up the "its only a game", yes - you are correct hundred percent, but your in a heavy-role-play community, goal is to stream closer to realism and filter few things that can't be pushed into a game, and you make the best of it.  If people wanna have fun on GTA V, they can simply join a Cops & Robbers servers or any other TDM or something, it ain't difficult to browse through Rage MP client for spots to cool off from role-play, a lot of done it back in the day. 

 

Not sure if some of you are familiar with "LS:RP" , community back on SA:MP , when we were in a deep and insane RP situations and wanted to take a break, we'd simply hop on a TDM server and unload there, but remained on point in the server. That simple.

 

A lot of people take "fun" in RP communities as something to avoid facing consequences, heavy jail time or whatever. 

 

But like I said, define what you mean with "fun", because text-based RP is fun as it is. Heavy RP communities are usually completely different breed, people don't look for trollish-medium RP stuff in here, but are doing their best to push for out-most realism, because that's what makes it fun, exciting and interesting. That's how we all fell in love with RP concept to begin with, inspired by neat character-development and interactions with people.

 

Define the usage of "fun" though, if this is fun vs realism, you should consider going for less, RP standard communities.. 😕

[vally]

Roleplay over realism for me; portraying a character in the universe you are playing in, it may be a Dungeon and Dragons universe, a Science Fiction, an Historical Fiction, an Horror, or a GTA universe.

Just see what the game environment offers to do roleplay with, and you'll have fun if you like it, if you don't it's probably not the RP genre you are looking for.

[MCB666]

On 1/11/2021 at 9:13 AM, hentai! said:

Realism through fun all the way. I RP-ed gang life first, then the PTSD caused by it, then therapy and we'll see where life takes my character now. 

I've had fun doing all of this because that's what I'm into - roleplaying how it should be, like someone said, roleplaying involves portrayal of realistic emotions and reactions to occuring events. With realism, comes fun. The fun is hiding in the randomness and development. You can't have fun roleplaying when you play safe.

Personally, this for me ^

[Large Hazard]

Everyone has their own idea of 'fun'. As has already been covered in depth, for a lot of people (including myself) the fun of roleplay is in realistic portrayal and immersing yourself in something.

 

I was surprised to see this thread swings heavily in favour of realism. Historically this topic has always been more balanced and you'll find a community split on it.

[Declan]

11 minutes ago, Large Hazard said:

Everyone has their own idea of 'fun'. As has already been covered in depth, for a lot of people (including myself) the fun of roleplay is in realistic portrayal and immersing yourself in something.

 

I was surprised to see this thread swings heavily in favour of realism. Historically this topic has always been more balanced and you'll find a community split on it.

I agree. I think it's a testament on how far the community has came in terms of realism and I'm all for it.

[Tsarna]

You should RP the things you love and think always about the realistic repercussions of your decisions. I mean - before you do any action, just think, if you character, realistically, would do those things or not. 

When it comes to full realism, I disagree - I am pretty sure, that 99% of the people in the server only drink alcohol and give fucks about food, occasionally eating one or two times a week, when some restaurants decide to open. So, realistically spoken, people need to eat AT LEAST twice a day - are you doing it on your characters? 
Realistically - the distance between Paleto and LS should take hours to drive there. Are you realistically adding that time or not? 
Realistically - how long have the gangbangers here taken a "time out" to have their wounds heal? 😄 I usually see people who get shot, running around the next day without no worries. Yet, they complain, when you say "no" to extortion. 

Don´t bring full-on realism into a damn game - it does not work like that. Only realism you should think about it, how your character is portrayed in different situations. And if that is not FUN for you, then make a new character, who would act like that. 

Some of the people told that people SHOULD RP everything in situations, where they find themselves. I disagree in the strongest way possible. If someone is kidnapped or someone tries to rape your character: you can say "NO" and you do not have to RP it, imho. Simple as that. People are mainly here to have fun - and nobody shouldn´t think for a second, that they are some higher RP virtuoso, whose fun should be pleased in every possible way, and the other person, who is there in that situation, should please IT, even if they are disgusted with the situation IRL.

[negs]

For some people, the realism is the "fun". For others, it is not. The answer is somewhere in the middle. Those who are super-obsessed with realism should be accepting of those who roleplay realistic characters, but consider fun differently too. And those who just like to have fun, have to make the effort to roleplay a realistic character to good standards at least. Not everyone is at the same level of roleplay. There is a standard though. As long as that is met, you should accept other people and where they stand. 

 

Yes, this is also how elitist circle jerks are created. This is also inevitable though. People will always roleplay with people of their own skill. High level roleplayers roleplay with high level roleplayers. And so on. 

Edited January 17, 2021 by negs

[Tsarna]

11 minutes ago, negs said:

For some people, the realism is the "fun". For others, it is not. The answer is somewhere in the middle. Those who are super-obsessed with realism should be accepting of those who roleplay realistic characters, but consider fun differently too. And those who just like to have fun, have to make the effort to roleplay a realistic character to good standards at least. Not everyone is at the same level of roleplay. There is a standard though. As long as that is met, you should accept other people and where they stand. 

 

Yes, this is also how elitist circle jerks are created. This is also inevitable though. People will always roleplay with people of their own skill. High level roleplayers roleplay with high level roleplayers. And so on. 

Totally agree, but that high level rp-ers roleplay with high level rp-ers is a bit vague. They should also RP situation with everyone, but this is also a difference - some people try to rp with everyone in the server, some rp-ers report you even when you twice start you sentence without a capital letter or forget twice punctuation. And many of those people think that you are a low effort rp-er if you forget to put a punctuation mark after you finish your sentence. 

And those are the ones who praise realism at every point. Why not praise realism in sentences, because everything what I say as a character is what you realistically would HEAR, not READ, which means, basically, I could use the phonetic alphabet and you should not have issues with it. 😄

Edited January 17, 2021 by Tsarna

[negs]

6 minutes ago, Tsarna said:

Totally agree, but that high level rp-ers roleplay with high level rp-ers is a bit vague. They should also RP situation with everyone, but this is also a difference - some people try to rp with everyone in the server, some rp-ers report you even when you twice start you sentence without a capital letter or forget twice punctuation. And many of those people think that you are a low effort rp-er if you forget to put a punctuation mark after you finish your sentence. 

And those are the ones who praise realism at every point. Why not praise realism in sentences, because everything what I say as a character is what you realistically would HEAR, not READ, which means, basically, I could use the phonetic alphabet and you should not have issues with it. 😄

 

Everyone should RP the situation they are in, irrespective of roleplay ability. I am saying it is inevitable that people with similar levels of roleplay will gravitate towards others with the same level. That is all.