Consistency in roleplay?

[Kat Asherstone]

We recently had this bloke running around and posting on the forum who failed to note the difference. That's poor roleplay, because he wasn't. But if he had/is acknowledging the difference between IC and OOC, would he be a "good" roleplayer? What's good, what's bad? You tell me.

I'm cool beans for any and all attempts to promote roleplaying, but I seriously doubt that there is a) a real actual problem, and b) there's any way to actually solve it, if there was one.

Put it this way, if I came up to you in game and said "Whats your favorite Color?" and you said "Purple of course"
and the next day I said "Hey is your favorite color purple?" and you said "hell no, I love green"

1) Your character has memory loss
2) Your character is a liar
3) Your character has multiple personality disorder
4) You're a bad roleplayer and couldn't remember that your characters favorite color is in fact purple

The problem is on pang... most players end up falling into 4, you can read several in character posts that do almost exactly that... I don't forget any given day IRL what my favorite color is or things like that, because in essence those small things are what make me, me.
The same goes for roleplay.

You can ask me ANY question and I can give you a near complete different answer from any of the persepctives of my characters

The Blacksmith that doesn't speak because.... he dead, died a long time ago... Fortunately thought through the typical use of black magic the older of the Asherstone sisters brought him back as a slave for her... a blacksmith slave... a GOLEM, that's right if you ever see Jared Monet' he won't talk to you, if he does you'll like it because it ALWAYS involves monotone speech patterns, disjointed connections in logic that are apparent to people but missed by "AI" he is for lack of a better word, a robot.. yeah I roleplay a robot blacksmith.

There's of course Kat, the childish and headstrong Bard who would pick a fight with a bear if she didn't like how it growled, her loyalty is her biggest flaw, she clings to an idea and NEVER lets go. Example: Because of her storyline and the search for her sister (can't catch a person who's on your own account so the two can never actually fight, just come real close to catching each other) she has joined sides with Tekstone at one point to further that quest, when Tekstone was declared a group of killers she was branded a heretic and rather than turn she embraced it, because those who are not her friends are surely her enemies... or cute bunnies... it was a long time before getting to go to town and not get guard whacked and it sucked, stopped using her for a little bit it sucked so bad but I realized... nope, no crying in baseball.. the character wouldn't run and so you can't.

Jesper Partole' the treasure hunter, like some kind of indiana jones... only he can't fight.. I don't raise his fighting skills because well he's kind of that English Gentleman deal, would rather discuss the issue at hand over a nice cup of coffee while discussing the trade prices of Indestrucable Mining clothes in comparison to the Shalrius index. Smart and Jovial, quick with a handshake and a word... but even quicker with a lockpick, he's seen more than most in his travels seeking treasure... he once spent a year in the depths of despise (when it had much harder shit lols) sneaking between chests in the darkness.

The point is, while there are some things that are close with some characters they are DEFINITE, you will most likely not find a contradiction within storyline of my characters, IN FACT... if you ever see an "edit" on a post of mine IC, it's because after re-reading it thrice, that's right 3 times... I found something that was disconnected

ex: story I recently did about the Children of Julatria, when I intially created the story I had called one of the children by the wrong number of night/day sequence.... AND I named the children after the child who still lived.... whoops talk about an error on my part, can't have the whole storyline fall apart because I couldn't count to 6 by two's then divide correctly, and I can't have it fall apart because I called Sam, Joe at the very last minute... had to be corrected... but that's the thing, some people don't see that in their posts... they might not realize they called Sam Sam the entire storyline and then at the last second said he was Joe.... well shit cliffhanger now

is it Joe or is it Sam? That's "bad" roleplay to leave it, fix it if you see it... if someone points it out, either fix it or figure out a way to discreetly take out the contradiction

I could have made another story explaining that X happened to change the number system or I could have said that the children shared a middle name or something... plenty of things could have been done, but adding "fluff" to cover a mistake just makes it more likely that another mistake will be made later

think about it like this, they say that for every lie you tell you have to tell 2 more to keep it alive... that's roleplay in essence
Some people will reach a point where their "lie" is dead, and that in essence is bad roleplay... because we have the option with the forum to edit our lies... there should never be a lack of 2 more lies to keep it alive if you can go back and make PERFECT lies, and perfect lies... are perfect roleplay.

[Kat Asherstone]

We can create our own RP events/stories to keep the quality up.

Yeah, but people don't which is why THIS is an issue.
Player created events can only encompass so much, and the way in which most players go about Pang means that even less of those will be used...

Player run events are normally

Market - I can buy and sell to others without the forum for a half day, woot
Tourney - I can kill peoples with minimal risk and maximal gain

so if we want to limit our server to buy and sell and kill each other then there's no reason to even roleplay we might as well be a kekeke lulz i buy server... and that's why this must be addressed and not brushed away as "leave it to the players" if staff claims this to be an RP server then they had better be part of addressing Roleplay issues, and they usually do a decent job of it... it's the accountability that has to be raised onto the players, they do their job... we don't do our part. I cannot be more clear about that being the point. You want to say it's up to us... and yet leaving it up to us has resulted in a very low amount of RP on an RP server. Unacceptable.
That power shouldn't be ours if we aren't using it to make Pang a better place.

[Glarundis]

3) Your character has multiple personality disorder
4) You're a bad roleplayer and couldn't remember that your characters favorite color is in fact purple

that's the thing. it's imo, too hard and impossible to keep up with ALL THE THINGS about your 5 different chars, first of all, because, not countign with your real self, it's 5 different personalities you must "memorize". this is imo impossible, unless you yourself have a multiple personality disorder and can shift through them at will.
you can memorize general things, such as why this char is like that etc etc, can even create a background story for it, but can you really memorize all those things without any sort of text file or something IG to keep you update? i myself can't, i could probably do it with like 2 chars, and even then, with a lot of flaws and mistakes.
where a person comes from
what he likes/dislikes
why
what does he do and why
what happened throughout his life
his opinions about politics
his opinions about religion
his favorite color
his favorite food
his favorite clothes
his favorite city
his favorite whatever
and it goes on and on and ond. your memory can only fully work for yourself, and even then, it's less than admirable

[Kat Asherstone]

3) Your character has multiple personality disorder
4) You're a bad roleplayer and couldn't remember that your characters favorite color is in fact purple

your memory can only fully work for yourself

It can all be written down on the forums or the characters profile in game... no need for memory except maybe a quick recall of something

Then again that whole story about the children of julatria and everything actually started because of an IG conversation that took place.... 3 months ago, I just happened to recall the story i used as a means by which to imply someone was being a chicken... it was just a joke metaphor at the time since I planned to have Nyla talk through metaphor and folklore of her people... so I simply said the persons name was kind of like their word for chicken, then told a story about how that was a good thing because the chicken isn't the bear, furibria or a variant there of I'd have to check my "dictionary"... that's right, I write it down... but the whole thing was I recalled that specific moment, that interaction and was able to use that to direct the character further, to use that interaction as a basis for an entire story of folklore, a heritage even.

maybe some people can't recall those things, i'm blessed enough to be able to... but I have some tricks for it that may help other players... and that's the goal of the school, if I can keep my 5 straight with little tricks and such then perhaps others can to if they had those same tricks, we can ALL get better at roleplay and maybe some people have tricks that I haven't thought of yet, the teacher learning NOW THAT is raising all the ships with the tide.

[Kat Asherstone]

what happened throughout his life

this is the only real question that matters, it dictates the others... if you know the events of their life you can extrapolate other things from it.

[Kat Asherstone]

I realized, I don't even have the other Asherstone sisters on my account anymore... but I still know their stories... heres a good way to go about it, in what way are all 5 of them related

Jared is the slave Golem of Talia, he used to be friends with a treasure hunter Kesco Sinclair
Kat is the Middle child to Talia and Ezmerelda
They have all bought goods from Kesco Sinclair treasure hunter extroidinaiiir as he puts it
Kat wants to kill Talia because of a spell she once cast that killed their family, unbeknownst to her a newborn child survived...Ez.
Ez seeks to set right between the three by any means
When Talia vanished (deleted) Kat found Jared wandering around without purpose, he recognized her being one of the three sisters and thereupon was bound to her
Jesper stayed in despise for years
Nyla was born and raised across the seas and eventually sailed over on a ship.... a ship captained by none other thannnn dun dun dun Jesper Partole' coming back from a treasure hunt after he finally left despise in search of glory across the seas with his mentor Kesco Sinclair, who did not return from the voyage... some believe he died, others say he found a woman and lived the rest of his days drinking win and sharing tales of his adventures.
Ezmerelda hasn't been seen around these parts in years... but she has been seen by her lover Peregrin Burns... who has recently come to the lands with a mission from the youngest sister.. but what that is.. I can't even say

of course some of these characters have been deleted and some replaced and so on, but I have made sure that at some point... as impossible as it is IG my characters have impacted each others lives either directly or indirectly in a way that informs me at any given point how their would react/feel etc.

[Kat Asherstone]

unless you yourself have a multiple personality disorder and can shift through them at will.

I've sometimes wondered about this myself.

[Glarundis]

check this out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteronym_%28literature%29

[Charha]

Woah, hey. I can't believe I didn't even notice this topic before we got to page 7.

I hope we aren't die-hard-seriously talking about "alignments" and roleplaying in the same context. Alignments are my pet peeve. Good RP is about being aware of your character's motives and understanding how his or her choices, great and small, are affected by factors such as his or her personality, upbringing, environment and the opinions of other people - to mention a few. Good roleplaying is about getting under the skin of your character so you can intuitively and spontaneously think and act the way he or she would.

Alignments such as "lawful" or "chaotic" are a superficial method for the easy categorization of personality types within game systems where good and evil are predefined, absolute measures. They offer a pretty okay guideline for making a rough draft for your character, but the longer you roleplay a certain character, the less you should pay attention to any kind of system that potentially restricts the character's development.

That being out of the way, I understand it can be annoying when people don't care about their characters and they simply forget some pretty important key issues concerning their character's life choices and such... But on the other hand, is that a really that big of an issue? There are many people who like UO simply because of the game mechanics. As long as they don't actually stop us roleplayers from roleplaying our characters, we probably shouldn't try to coerce them into writing fiction and stuff our own agenda down their throats.

While I feel it would be a really bad idea to punish people for "bad" RP by skill loss or whatever, I think good RP is definitely worth rewarding with friendly pats on the back - and why not even by GM created events and little in game props? For example, if people decide to set up RP event, it would be nice if they could hire a GM for special effects and extra touches. Especially when it comes to game environments (where people are supposed to enjoy themselves) the carrot is preferable to the stick.

[Kat Asherstone]

Alignments such as "lawful" or "chaotic" are a superficial method for the easy categorization of personality types within game systems where good and evil are predefined, absolute measures. .

"Good" "Evil" semantical things that to each player may or may not mean the same thing... but from the perspective of the characters themselves they "are" the same.... what is "evil" one day to a character is "evil" the next day and "good" is "good"
Alignment is usually placed as character vs society, fight for or against the system, a duality type thing that gives the appearance of black and white... it's like Aristotle in the Nichomacean Ethics when he discusses when something is "good" and when its "bad"

Good- the goal is reached
Bad - failure to reach the goal

same basic concept, when you say "evil" you are implying some kind of moral or philosophical "value"... instead the "value" is determined by the player, what is "good" for the "bad" guy is normally "bad" for the "good" guy...

Chaos and Lawful the words themselves don't change meaning, it's what people use them to imply that changes.
Kind of like in War