Are niche characters considered bad?

[Kipps]

Report people who say shit like that. It's not up to them to decide who they do and don't have to roleplay with.
 

[marbella mondays]

Play the character you want to play. Once it doesn't completely break immersion, there's nothing wrong with it. Niche people exist irl. Niche characters exist in game. 

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

2 hours ago, Edelweiss206 said:

If you go up to someone and try to earnestly RP where it doesn't look like you're just trying to hit a tick box for a stereotype, and they turn around and go "I don't RP with joke characters." There is one there, but it aint you.

This. This is it right here.

I love a good niche character. And good on you for trying to play one. A lot of people try and play niche characters and one of two things happen. They come off the niche eventually when they're seeing it doesn't work. Or they're so committed to the niche that it ends up becoming this big spectacle of whatever attention everywhere they go as this thing of  "Look how unique my character is". That's what sucks. And that's what most people end up doing.

I'm sorry that happened to you. I know the Karen trope is becoming tired at this point, and there have been some terribly executed ones out there, but look around. There are terribly executed everythings on this server. Keep your head up and keep trying to do what you like until your next idea comes along that you like better.

[NexusExodus]

Niche characters are great. I’ve seen people dedicated to roleplaying as servants/butlers, blue collar workers and other roles that don’t really thrive in the GTAW environment. If people legitimately think you’re trying to troll, perhaps you may need to revise your approach  with your character but it’s not an excuse to refuse to roleplay with you. You’ll find stubborn individuals rooted throughout the community who might do this, but those people aren’t worth convincing if they won’t give you a chance. The way Keane put it is perfect.

[ThomasNoman]

As long as it's good, no, not bad. However, I personally find it kind of cringe sometimes with people roleplaying such characters, and I believe some people also do, but you don't have to care because what you roleplay is your choice.

[Pascal]

3 hours ago, BINGBONGGHOST said:

Gonna assume it's because the majority of the time they're used it's for outlandish and borderline trolling characters, nothing OP can be blamed for of course.

 

FAT character FAT because HAH he's FAT. 

2 hours ago, BINGBONGGHOST said:

I'm sure @Pascalwould have a decent opinion on this, big zaddy and all. 

 An interesting topic I've thought about a lot. People have done a good job of summarising so far, and I think it largely boils down to depth/dimensionality and whether the troll character is being used to "escalate" scenarios. If a troll character is one dimensional and only has one "trick" (or a few), people tend to get put off and not want to roleplay with those characters. I've met a handful of characters like the fat pedskin characters you mention, and they tend to not last that long as people will often get bored of seeing an eating joke repeated for the 999th time.

 

Conversely, if "niche/trolly" characters do not just rely on their "trick(s)" and also create scenarios and roleplay for others to respond to and develop from, they tend to see more longevity. Passive roleplay is fairly important in this regard, to, and you could make a similar link with faction roleplay. If niche characters are just playing out the same thing over and over, it's very similar to faction roleplayers who just "roleplay gang activity" or "roleplay a cop" and only do related activities, forgoing branching out their character with more casual, passive, everyday roleplay. This is a typical trap most niche characters end up falling squarely in, and some of my favourite "troll" characters other people play I've roleplayed with were great to roleplay with because they avoided doing exactly that.

 

Similarly, you have characters that simply exist to escalate - like causing intentional conflict in roleplay scenarios and disrupting scenes. One example I remember was then there was a faction being roleplayed that also had a lot of trolling involved, who would find ways to escalate roleplay until they could all pull out hammers to threaten the other group of roleplayers they were interacting with. While funny to the people doing the trolling, it usually ends up pulling apart whole roleplay scenes and causing OOC frustration, and is usually poorly portrayed. A repeat comparison can be made with "standard" factions that are conflict-prone who find ways to escalate tension between factions for little reason other to DM, and not necessarily to develop. While OP's case is not as extreme, I think this sort of thing is where people were finding issue with their character, as there is a fairly long history of people using this sort of roleplay to disrupt and take over roleplay scenes, usually teetering on the edge of rule-breaking in attempts to DM others. OP's example isn't necessarily bad IMO, just likely tainted by a lot of negative experiences with similar types of trolling.

 

Something to also consider when it comes to niche characters is the opposite also applies. People tend to assume stereotypes of characters based on how they look, and not necessarily in a "realistic" way resembling actual real-world discrimination based on appearance. Similar to what was pointed out before about anti-ped skin stigma, there's also ped skin biases. When I've roleplayed with my character in fairly average situations, there's been quite a lot of instances in either /low or people roleplaying other languages where they've commented about the character's weight. While making judgements about people's experience is fairly commonplace IRL, many of these interactions play out as if it's a rare event like the second coming of Christ and they've never seen a fat person before. This is not particularly accurate given the obesity rates in America, yet is poorly reflected on the server due to most people's preference for the GTA:O skin models.

3 hours ago, ChickenOffSky said:

Ive tried a few other niche characters such as an elderly man, a homeless guy, and an overweight woman (all using the PED skins). I’d still get people who would say things like “sorry I don’t RP with joke characters” which would ultimately make me lose interest in said character. 
 

My past experiences left me with a few questions: Are niche characters a bad thing? Do other people who RP on them get the same hate from other players as I do? Why do people seem to hate them so much?

All-in-all, it really depends how you approach roleplaying the character. Besides Zaddy, two of my most played characters have also been based on niches (Parisian obsessed with high fashion, Little Seoul elderly bootleg goods dealer), and all three of them have seen longevity and plenty of engagement with thousands of other characters.

 

My best recommendation is not focus completely on only doing the niche, but consider how to develop other areas of the character, and how to create engaging longer term scenarios that will play out with other characters. As an example, why is Karen a "Karen", what sort of experiences have made them like that, and could there have been some sort of long-term goal for them to involve a lot of other characters in, like being outraged at some specific institution and how that could create opportunities to bring in every day characters, lawyers etc. into the fold to develop around it? Outraged characters can definitely work - I remember a friend in the early 2010s parodying an outraged third-wave feminist Tumblr blogger reflecting politics at the time, and it ended up going down well with a lot of people due to how they played it out, balancing the comedic aspect of it with making it also somewhat believeable/grounded.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Pascal

[Biscuit]

No! Never should they be considered "bad".

 

Whoever plays Big Zaddy is a fucking legend.

Edited January 16, 2021 by Biscuit

[Cocaine Capital]

I feel stereotypical and basic characters need to be more accepted in this community. As long as the roleplay is correct and not outlandish. Not every character needs to be a super complex character with a ten page character background. There are so many people in this world who are basic and fit the stereotypes. 

[SCANDALOUZ]

There's a very thin line between A) Niche, Unique, Creative, Different & ETC and B) Snowflake, Cringe, Comic-Relief, Not-Serious, Bad, Caricature & ETC.


In your case, the Karen-character in questioning seems to fall into the B) category, even if your intent was to be in the A) one.
Why? It's indeed stereotypical and a comic-relief more-so than anything else. It's good to see such things as NPCs, but not as characters.
It may be unique, but it's still depth lacking. You mention a background, okay, but backgrounds are bullshit and they are the least important part in character creation. Where's her personality beyond being a Karen? Where's any depth, motivations, aspirations, or any hope for a character arc (or character development), or "telling a good story" with/about said character if you will?

It's a fun one off, but it's indeed not a character I'd label good.

TLDR: Roleplaying is about storytelling (or telling a story). You know, writing/reading a book/novel.
Can't write a book solely based around a stereotypical Karen. Not a good one, at least.

Edited January 16, 2021 by SCANDALOUZ

[Deuce]

1 minute ago, SCANDALOUZ said:

There's a very thin line between A) Niche, Unique, Creative, Different & ETC and B) Snowflake, Cringe, Comic-Relief, Not-Serious, Bad, Caricature & ETC.


In your case, the Karen-character in questioning seems to fall into the B) category, even if your intent was to be in the A) one.
Why? It's indeed stereotypical and a comic-relief more-so than anything else. It's good to see such things as NPCs, but not as characters.
It may be unique, but it's still depth lacking. You mention a background, okay, but backgrounds are bullshit and they are the least important part in character creation. Where's her personality beyond being a Karen? Where's her any depth, motivations, aspirations, or any hope for a character arc (or character development), or "telling a good story" with/about said character if you will?

It's a fun one off, but it's indeed not a character I'd label good.

Guess you roleplay a gang banger who has a new character every other week then.