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Portrayal Issues


radreaper100

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What does "portrayal issues" mean to you and who is able to determine it? Have you ever been told you have portrayal issues?

 

Hi, I'm radreaper. I play similar characters but not the same, typically white males that are "Italian American." I associate best with this and find it enjoyable, though don't subscribe often to the usual stereotypes that Italians are known for. Among all though, I always give 110% in my roleplay and try to generate good interactions for people. I've played both Nicholas Longo and Victor Lombardo, as well as Luciano Sapo. 

 

I've been in this community for over a year and rapidly approaching two in my time here I've been removed from LSPD in August 2021, SFM in October 2021, SAPR in January 2022, and finally LSSD in December 2022. I was in LSFD but I resigned of my own accord without any discipline IC or OOC. I guess from the following you could probably ascertain that I'm a troublemaker, a malicious individual that has no respect for the server's rules or institutions and a generally poor roleplayer. Maybe some of that's true, maybe all of that's true--but I'd like to think if it were entirely the case I probably wouldn't be at this server for as long as I have been. In fact, I boast a fairly clean administrative record.

 

There's one issue that seems to be inherent in all of my issues and it's a commonly cited one: portrayal concerns. Character portrayal issues. Roleplay quality. 

 

Today, I'm writing this to try and understand what this really means. You see, for almost twelve years that I've been roleplaying, I haven't ever encountered the term portrayal concerns until landing here, at Grand Theft Auto: World. Maybe that's because my former mediums of roleplay aren't that noteworthy or perhaps not expansive enough but I engaged in everything from tabletop to Garry's Mod to Conan, SWTOR, and more. This term appears to be unique here and what's more, is it seems to be used sparingly. 

 

I suppose my biggest issue with the term is that there are no set criteria for what poor portrayal really is, does it mean that your character doesn't act according to certain unlisted expectations or rules, does it mean that your objective roleplay quality is poor i.e. grammar and /mes, or that your character's goals aren't defined or you simply can't roleplay well? Well, I don't necessarily know if that's the case. To me, the idea of "portrayal issues" almost appears to act as some sort of artificially generated and manufactured charge, one that is incredibly difficult to rid yourself of once you've been stamped with it and requires you to either make vast changes to the formula of your roleplay i.e. what you find enjoyable and butcher your characters for the sake of some approval (I've been told to simply make new characters to advance) or, for example, continue to be branded as someone that's responsible for poor portrayal.

 

To me, I believe portrayal should be left to the judgement of RPQM ultimately... and whatever criteria it is they utilize to try and discern good characters from bad. Allowing factions to make those determinations themselves on what is and isn't okay for a character is a bit of a slippery slope, especially if it seemingly comes off to the whims of leadership inside of those factions that has no formal connections or ties to RPQM or any quality assurance times such as LFM.

 

And what's more is off the basis of these labels, of being removed from one faction or another faction due to character expectations or some other slippery slope of an argument that you're hit with, you'll find that the times for being barred from these factions can at times progress not only months, but in some case over a year. And these bans are serious, too. Especially when you consider that there's a limited number of agencies that an individual can apply to enjoy that kind of law-enforcement based roleplay, for example. And with reputations that seemingly carry from one circle to another, it's often the same people making those decisions over the same people that are on the proverbial shit-list of being labeled and denigrated a poor roleplayer or someone with a poor character. It shatters the IC/OOC boundary by halting progression or development artificially.

 

I don't know why I wrote this, but maybe I'd like some opinions from the community about what I believe is an unspoken issue, and that is the issue of lording over others' roleplay.

 

Am I a shitbag?

 

Thoughts?

Edited by radreaper100
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Portrayal concerns are rather straight-forward in the context of being part of a faction. If the character you're portraying is not realistic or at the very least feasible, then that is when you risk termination depending on how strict the faction is. Roleplaying is basically casual acting, and joining a faction is like auditioning for a particular role, if you aren't fulfilling their expectations for the role, then that is when people can start considering that poor portrayal. 

 

Now of course, you could bring your case to any random two or three people and almost everyone would have a different take on it, because every faction leader has different expectations. However, at the end of the day, I can speak from experience here and say that whenever anybody who gets fired for portrayal issues, it was usually run by their LFM first, or it met a specific set of criteria the faction leader was given awhile back. 

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20 minutes ago, TheSenate said:

Portrayal concerns are rather straight-forward in the context of being part of a faction. If the character you're portraying is not realistic or at the very least feasible, then that is when you risk termination depending on how strict the faction is. Roleplaying is basically casual acting, and joining a faction is like auditioning for a particular role, if you aren't fulfilling their expectations for the role, then that is when people can start considering that poor portrayal. 

 

Now of course, you could bring your case to any random two or three people and almost everyone would have a different take on it, because every faction leader has different expectations. However, at the end of the day, I can speak from experience here and say that whenever anybody who gets fired for portrayal issues, it was usually run by their LFM first, or it met a specific set of criteria the faction leader was given awhile back. 


not true, it usually doesn’t involve LFM. Furthermore who determines if you’re within what’s realistic for that faction or not? Humans are unpredictable and act in a different set of ways.

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14 minutes ago, radreaper100 said:


not true, it usually doesn’t involve LFM. Furthermore who determines if you’re within what’s realistic for that faction or not? Humans are unpredictable and act in a different set of ways.

 

Dude, I'm a faction leader, I'm speaking from direct experience here when I say that they either give you guidelines or direct advice. We don't always consult them for every single case, but the blessing to remove people for portrayal comes from LFM and it is based on the guidance provided either in writing or based on previous precedent.

 

And once again, a lot of people will have differing opinions on what is and is not realistic. However, certain people do possess enough knowledge and/or experience to make those kinds of judgement calls, some people here are real cops, real paramedics and EMTs, real firefighters, etc. Speaking from my own experience, you can certainly pick out certain things from people here that a real first responder would never do or say, I won't give a specific example here, lest I be punished for unintentional faction bashing. But I can assure you that certain behaviors go beyond human variability and into the realm of making it abundantly clear that the player has absolutely no idea how to portray their role.

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2 minutes ago, TheSenate said:

 

Dude, I'm a faction leader, I'm speaking from direct experience here when I say that they either give you guidelines or direct advice. We don't always consult them for every single case, but the blessing to remove people for portrayal comes from LFM and it is based on the guidance provided either in writing or based on previous precedent.

 

And once again, a lot of people will have differing opinions on what is and is not realistic. However, certain people do possess enough knowledge and/or experience to make those kinds of judgement calls, some people here are real cops, real paramedics and EMTs, real firefighters, etc. Speaking from my own experience, you can certainly pick out certain things from people here that a real first responder would never do or say, I won't give a specific example here, lest I be punished for unintentional faction bashing. But I can assure you that certain behaviors go beyond human variability and into the realm of making it abundantly clear that the player has absolutely no idea how to portray their role.


That’s not necessarily what we’re talking about though, not an inherent breach of guidelines or deliberately problematic actions but this persistent attitude that your character portrayal is poor or believed to be poor and then there isn’t a whole lot backing that, or it’s based off subjective opinions.

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10 minutes ago, radreaper100 said:


That’s not necessarily what we’re talking about though, not an inherent breach of guidelines or deliberately problematic actions but this persistent attitude that your character portrayal is poor or believed to be poor and then there isn’t a whole lot backing that, or it’s based off subjective opinions.

 

I answered that in my original post, it is all in the opinion of the faction leadership, if you think they are acting unreasonably or you can make an argument as to why your portrayal wasn't unrealistic, you should appeal to LFM. However, the provision exists as a quality control so faction leaders can remove members who hurt the public appearance of their faction.

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A cop won't be able to afford a million dollar car or house.

 

A port worker can't afford a million dollar car.

 

Gotta be realistic for the job you're going for, tho differently if you actually earned it through IC work that dosnt usually involve crime nor low paying jobs.

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I wouldn't call scifi and fantasy roleplay mediums as not noteworthy, rather different. Roleplay in those settings is a lot different than we we portray here,

Which could be an issue in itself. Technically speaking, we cannot really go with "a cop won't be able to afford million dollar house, when infact they are."

That's the economy situation, people can say...use your imagination, which is exactly what we are doing. But on the otherside we are also greedy,

And price a house, a cop would be able to afford...in millions. Thus creating a rift which goes further and further as we delve deeper into GTA style roleplay.

Difference between scifi, fantasy and GTA is realistic portrayal and open pvp feature, which is not the core in fantasy and scifi rp.

Edited by Engelbert
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