Defining good roleplay

[Phased]

So, I'll put this a little bluntly based on a discussion between me and a couple of old LS-RP friends had on discord this afternoon.   We've been on this server for roughly three weeks roleplaying with each other, and trying to roleplay with as many different people as possible.     I'll be honest it had been so long since I'd been on text based RP that I was a little worried, but I'd felt like I'd slipped right back into where I was in the LS-RP days.

 

However, today I received a PM from another player telling me I need to be more descriptive in my /me's, and my friend was messaged by a server admin the other day to say that "two /me's to do that isn't up to our standard".

 

I don't want to pick at either situation, because one's an admin decision and one's a persons preference, but I feel very strongly that the concept of "good roleplay" has got mixed up with "long /me's".

 

For myself, I've always been very much along the lines of clear and concise.  I've been playing text based roleplay games since the days of MTA:VC with 15 others on a server and no capacity for local chat.   Out of respect for others we didn't clam up the whole chat with three paragraphs to roleplay moving a box.  We kept things simple.   This carried over into SA:MP, and while it wasn't for the benefit of others having to read it anywhere on the map, it was mostly to allow people to get their input, and to keep things quick.   There was no point writing out war and peace to put some handguns in a duffle bag.   It made more sense to just type "/me loads the firearms into the duffle bag, before zipping it closed."

 

As roleplay got more advanced for me and the people around me, this adapted into more of a shorter sentence shorter action format, which I honestly believe is far more fluid for roleplay as a whole.   It allows others the chance to interrupt, to bounce off what you're doing, and to converse.   The format I am seeing being pushed repeatedly goes against that.   The expectation seems to be that it's not good roleplay if I don't rp every single thing in one /me, which honestly feels like power gaming to me after years of multiple short actions.

 

I'll give an example of what I feel is being pushed, and an example of a way I have been told on this server it's not "descriptive enough" by others, but allows a lot more fluidity. 

 

Example of what I feel is being pushed.

* Phased Surname reaches forward into his pickup truck, he sighs a groan of relief as his fingers reach the edge of the spanner.  He moves closer and grasps his fingers around the spanner. 

 

What makes the roleplay flow faster.

* Phased Surname reaches into the truck.

* Phased Surname grabs the spanner.

 

My second gripe with how I'm being pushed to roleplay, is people keep defining good roleplay as Long descriptive /me's.   Good roleplay is about the character and what my character says is far more important than him grabbing an item.   I can sit and portray a character with serious anxiety and stress just by the words I use, or I can unveil the rich history of my character by regaling a story with my colleagues and friends, but it's not classed as good roleplay if you only consider how long the /me is.

 

Can we please move away from this stigmatic view that long /me's are good?   Most of them are dogshit over-explaining of simple things.   We don't need to go to the details of every single movement to pick up a box, or get in a car.   It's absolutely better for the flow of roleplay with others if you're not causing people to have to grab a thesaurus to figure out what your clever alternative word for grab was.

 

 

[Phased]

Also, on top of what I've said - forcing this on mechanics is a sure-fire way to make me want to stop going to mechanics in game.   I want to interact with people, not be handed a catalog then have my car whipped away while someone does 50 solo /me's that I can't see to work in my car.   

 

I'd absolutely rather have every mechanic actually talk to my character while using  "/me replaces the turbo charger."

[.Pluto.]

Well, about the things admin said to you, it depends of the situation. If you were doing scriptwise job, this server wants you to roleplay your actions while doing that job. It prevents abuse and simply doing the job to farm the money. Other things? I do long /me's only when it includes Roleplay where people don't need to "defend" themselves, for example, brawls, or whatever. If it's taking an item, pouring a drink, or whatever similar to that, I do a long /me with several sentences in it. I'm enforcing short /me's only in the situation where I'm roleplaying with another player, especially if he needs to be given the chance to defend himself. But, it's about the person behind the keyboard. To be honest, it's same if you do three short /me's, or put all of that in one big /me. Just my opinion.

[slick!]

In my own opinion, long, descriptive /me's are often more quality-driven, there's more heart put into the lines which give you a lot more to work with in reply. However, that's on a case-by-case basis, because sometimes these /me's aren't necessary, especially in the case you provided, just picking a spanner up. This seems to be a common theme pushed by LS:RPer's, pushing for fast pace roleplay. Roleplay as a concept is supposed to be extremely slow paced, but is pushed to higher speeds by the medium.

So, basically, what I'm saying is use long /me's in something like a conversation, it portrays more emotion and gives people more to work with in a reply to you. Shorter /me's are reserved for things that don't really need to be explained, or if a situation is genuinely a little messy, so you don't wanna clog up the chat and waste time writing it out.

[Valkyria]

It's context-driven and everyone should be adaptive. Find a middle ground and roll with it.

 

[Phased]

3 minutes ago, Wirbelwind said:

It's context-driven and everyone should be adaptive. Find a middle ground and roll with it.

 

If that's the case, why are mechanics and truckers pushed to use longer /me's under the classification of "roleplay quality".   All I am seeing from this is mechanics dragging cars into garage units and roleplaying these longer /me's in case an admin sees, or a trucker being told off for only using one short /me to unload crates.

 

Why can't that be adaptive so I can actually have conversations with these characters instead of just seeing them move away from conversation and smack out short stories to move a crate, or remove an air filter?

[Smilesville]

Perhaps it's just my unpopular opinion, but emoting when nobody else around is silly.

 

If a trucker doesn't emote every time he reaches a stop that has no people, that doesn't change the fact that they're contributing to the immersion by the virtue of existing as a trucker. People see them drive by. If they're so inclined, they can find and interact with them. They're part of the world and provide a realistic backdrop for others (unless they're violating every traffic law known to man, but we can deal with those issues as they arise.)

 

There's more to roleplay than the text you push out.

[SCANDALOUZ]

"Defining good roleplay"

 

I'll admit that I scrolled over the OP and will focus on the title as opposed to the content.

 

How I define "good" role play?

 

Role playing is about storytelling, therefore role playing well means telling a good story. Stories however have themes and genres, and you can't please everyone. So, to me, it's not about wether people (or a majority) like the story, but wether its sticking to some (imo) necessary fundamentals.

 

For example, role playing has to be realistic of the environment/playground that it is in (and be aware of it). So, do your homework.

 

I'd go in even more elaborations, but I honestly CBA, so I'll just quickly address the point about emotes that you were trying to make.

 

Good role play (see above) = not long emotes.

The length (or rather, detail) in emotes should be case sensitive and depending of the whole act-to-situation context. Nobody gives a damn about you lighting up a cigarette inside the night club, so spare me your three paragraphs about it. On the other hand some others would require detail.

[Éireann]

I agree with Phased on those long drawn out /me's for things that could be simplified, that bare no contextual part of 'said' scenarios. I personally when looking over characters and not so much 'judging/rating' because he or she doesn't do paragraphs /me's for every action. I think Roleplay is more fluid when common sense applied especially engaging with others and giving time for responses and that doesn't mean physically fighting, It could be just a conversation in a crowded bar between 3 friends, they all don't need to do long /me's to say they are drinking from a bottle, when they can host a very entertainng discussions amoungst doing various short /ame's and /me's without flooding the chat for every in that bar.

 

On scriptwise jobs, yes I totally understand people using it to farm cash by doing little /me's however, I honestly dont see why truckers need to do a paragraph /me to load crates into the back of their trucks if no other player is around them. There is no one else there to see it nor interact with it. For common sense here is to do one-two /me's starting to load then finishing loading, same goes for unloading when no one is around. I use /ame's and /me's when doing this but I dont flood the text channel with /me's nor write massive paragraphs, it's quite difficult to do that when trying to load and hold a conversation with a fellow driver.

 

As said I understand people abusing scriptwise stuff but at the same time I think some common sense on each scenario can be equal to more fluid and enjoyable RP.

[Apa]

1 minute ago, Éireann said:

I agree with Phased on those long drawn out /me's for things that could be simplified, that bare no contextual part of 'said' scenarios. I personally when looking over characters and not so much 'judging/rating' because he or she doesn't do paragraphs /me's for every action. I think Roleplay is more fluid when common sense applied especially engaging with others and giving time for responses and that doesn't mean physically fighting, It could be just a conversation in a crowded bar between 3 friends, they all don't need to do long /me's to say they are drinking from a bottle, when they can host a very entertainng discussions amoungst doing various short /ame's and /me's without flooding the chat for every in that bar.

 

On scriptwise jobs, yes I totally understand people using it to farm cash by doing little /me's however, I honestly dont see why truckers need to do a paragraph /me to load crates into the back of their trucks if no other player is around them. There is no one else there to see it nor interact with it. For common sense here is to do one-two /me's starting to load then finishing loading, same goes for unloading when no one is around. I use /ame's and /me's when doing this but I dont flood the text channel with /me's nor write massive paragraphs, it's quite difficult to do that when trying to load and hold a conversation with a fellow driver.

 

As said I understand people abusing scriptwise stuff but at the same time I think some common sense on each scenario can be equal to more fluid and enjoyable RP.

Fáilte.