Racial roleplay

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Delia
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#21 Post by Delia » Fri May 25, 2007 3:55 am

I was pleasantly surprised as I talked to various NPC's at Elvandar...try asking them about races for example, its sure to give people some direction :D
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#22 Post by Sairina » Fri May 25, 2007 2:57 pm

Nice :) They don't say anything about halflings, though - no reaction, not even "nothing to say about that" :(

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#23 Post by chara » Fri May 25, 2007 6:15 pm

Oops - just a little oversight. Should be fixed in most NPCs after reboot.

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#24 Post by eirikeld » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:20 am

Sorry to bump a stale thread, but I thought I could add a bit here...

It amazes me, just plain astounds me, that elves are out there fighting that often, let alone with such zeal. Think about it.... You could live *forever* if you were careful. Why would you even get near half way dead? There is so much more to lose! Yes, it is after all, your one and only life (unless the gods see fit to bring you back). However, that one life is expected to be measured in centuries, not years.

Just this fact alone makes elves alien to us, the human players. Alright, so we're here to RP, fine. What kinds of ways would this fundamental fact change things? An elf may visit an inn many days in a row, listening to a new skald, to form a first impression of them. Not a final one, like most of us would. Almost every aspect of life is changed by this single fact of elven existence. On the other hand, if you thought a rainy afternoon was boring, to an elf, they might pass the time watching the clouds for hours, looking for subtle changes in the color, density, or layering to learn that much more about weather.

Imagine living long enough that you could literally remember when a mountain range was a little bit taller, or when the vine that now covers a 10 story building first started growing.

I have been picking on the elves, but there are easy examples for the other races as well. I would imagine most dwarves had never visited the "surface world" as they call it, or had done so only sparingly. Imagine their surprise at their first sight of snow, or rain, or trees, or a cloudless night sky.

So, we think of humans. Your average, every day, race next door. So vanilla that there's nothing to start with for RP'ing the race right? Nonsense. As others have said, they have one of the best back stories in the game. Their creator was Death, their savior was War. They are a quarrelsome lot, carving out a home in a new land, and continuing to do so. If not by war, then by trade.

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#25 Post by Delia » Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:55 am

I can only say...I want to see more humans in the game! Its sometimes funny to check the who-list and see around ten elves and one of each other race at best. Well...I can't really complain playing an elf myself though :oops:

The point about combat was good.
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#26 Post by Olrane » Tue Jan 29, 2008 6:16 pm

Yeah, unfortunately many players of roleplaying games in general will be any race other than human in order to be something different.

Human pride! I almost always play humans because I like the culture. In my experience, human characters are naive, arrogant, and rash to a fault, as part of their short lifespans and their relative youth on Forostar. I don't see that as vanilla at all. Surely it plays out differently with other characters, and certain traits are more present and others less so.

I think that for anyone playing any character of any race, one of the most important things is to consider flaws for your character. Racism, greed, gluttony etc. are a great starting points. I think that's what's needed, an overall willingness of players to stick their characters' necks out. To have a character make stupid mistakes. There are plenty who do this well already, and I thank them for it. More strife is the health of the roleplay.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#27 Post by Liranne » Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:43 am

Hi, everyone! I hope this is the right forum for this as I have been very confused about racial roleplay in the MUD. I assumed the MUD was themed after Tolkien. For the younger set, the AD&D world of Faerun has extensive information about the races and racial dynamic. There is extensive information that is out there about what halfling, dwarves and elves are to be like. I think where alot of people have trouble with is that there is no in-game information regarding this and lot of people embracing modern ideals with little in-game/in-character consequences. I shouldn't say no but rather little in-game information. Will there be more extensive write-ups about races in the future?

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Re: Racial roleplay

#28 Post by Grindel » Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:13 am

There is another reason for bad racial RP, and that is money. My dwarf (dwarves are a great race in geas, try them!) is used to find elves (often even female ones) in the caves, digging for gold and gems. Tell me what you like, but this does look wrong when I picture it in my mind.

It is often said that there are enough ways to earn money, but when it comes to buying mounts or more, it most often means mining.

I as a player understand the need for money, but my char does not understand an elf doing this; plus it takes away lots of pvp-trade if everyone mines his/her own gems...

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Re: Racial roleplay

#29 Post by Delia » Thu Aug 21, 2008 3:09 am

Some of my (random)thoughts about Geas elves.

Made by Taniel in his image they are order made flesh. That is potentially living forever, unchanging. They have a fondness for enduring things and have manufactured crafts through the ages which has amassed into the splendour once witnessed in Eal-Deliah and in Elvandar today. Given the potential for everlasting life the perception of time is very different from the other shorter-lived races. This easily translates as mistrust and inability to understand the 'sudden moodswings' of other races. Some elves might not even see the trouble of befriending the other races as they'll die off in a blink of an eye anyway, better to keep council with your neighbour who'll be around indefinitely. Oh, and in a century or two he might even finish his masterpiece, isn't that something to look forward to?

The common elf is somewhat aloof and is prone to slight xenophobia. Even the lowliest of them carries a certain sense of pride in them even if that is not recognized. Other races can perceive him to be lacking discipline and being lazy as there is generally no need for a frantic pace in elven society. Even if the pace of things might seem lax the society's grip is tight and appreciated. Rare few have the sheer spite of going against the proper order of things such as trying to elevate their social status or influencing sudden changes in the society.

Not everyone does conform however and given the recent carefree and outgoing attitude of the elven youngsters the respectable(read older) part of the society sees an ignoble disease taking hold of the elven soul, possibly leading to the downfall of the once grand culture.
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Re: Racial roleplay

#30 Post by Liranne » Thu Aug 21, 2008 4:00 am

To Delia:
I think what you idea of elves compares to the Forgotten Realms elves. They called themselves 'The People' and yes, they are very insular, pro-elf. They differ from Tolkien elves in a few regards. I have always thought of Geas Elves more like Tolkien elves. Yes, haughty and arrogant because they know they are better than the average human, dwarf and halfling (whom they see as children). For the most part, they are lawful and good or at best neutral and good with the extreme outliers of any other alignment.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#31 Post by luminier » Thu Aug 21, 2008 5:23 pm

ya i agree with grindel. more power to delia for mining (you show those dwarf males who is boss!) but everytime i think of it, it is pretty funny. dwarves should mine, humans should too because well, both need to be draped in armour of course. tshaharks, well they are pretty much open to do anything as long as their brain can handle it. i think there should be another way to get -good- money. and it could probably stem from getting custom items again. if you want leather armours, you should have to provide the maker with quality leathers. this could also call for a boost in the armourstats of leathers made by custom makers that everyone has been asking for (i think).

but while i would like to see this, it really isn't all the imperative. i could live with female elves stealing all my gems and minerals but just make them open for public consumption (Delias Mineral and Gem Hut, anyone?)
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Re: Racial roleplay

#32 Post by Andreati » Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:33 pm

Money is money, be it real dough or coded gold. So, you might do something a little odd to get it--like diving in to a dumpster to get 100 Euros--but, it's money?

And, while I understand it might be a little odd to see female elves mining...isn't it also odd to see female elves fighting in general?

And hoorah for Andy, (possibly) the most racist (non-sathonite) human (currently) in the game!
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Re: Racial roleplay

#33 Post by Delia » Thu Aug 21, 2008 11:55 pm

The elven female...the proverbial maiden in distress or locked into a high tower just to make sure? I am not sure if the 'flowery damsel' hits the spot as the stereotypical Elvandar woman. Of course there is room for the princess to appear but a RACE of princesses? I doubt it.

Given how prominently they appear in the ranks of elven military it might not seem THAT odd that they'd participate in some other dirty jobs as well. A society needs its own artisans and internal suppliers after all so its somewhat weird to say that some races could mine but others could not. What would have become of the elves if they always depended on dwarven/human supplies and manufacture?

As for Delia, I find all the assumptions about her most entertaining :)
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Re: Racial roleplay

#34 Post by Liranne » Mon Aug 25, 2008 4:44 pm

I have a few question for the veteran players of the mud. do you consider this a rp encouraged, rp enforced or rpi mud? If so why?

As of late, elves seem to be the hot topic of the moment. How do you think the rp genre impacts racial role-play? Do players pick races for the perks (ex: elves can see in the dark so don't have to worry about having light sources, dwarven resistance to magick, Tshahark fighting ability etc) or for thematic reasons?

Reason I bring this up: I've played RPI's and it's hard playing the non-conformist. At best, you're an outsider with little support from imms and players. At worse, you're a walking target. Two muds that I can think of with very strong racial themes are Inferno and Armageddon. Each player was expected to read and understand the help file of their class, religion, race and prevailing culture. I believe it was Naga who stated a difficulty in playing the racist character and I must ask why this is so? Do the imms expect players to set the theme of the mud with certain limitations?

Secondly, race and faith. There's alot of perspectives regarding faith. Somehow one faith is being portrayed as a club newbies can join because others have been mean to them or that players want a non-confrontational faith ( I was under the understanding that this faith was anything but non-confrontational). I am wondering if there is a Zharkarin (sp?) dwarf that's ever been made and played. Let's use for example that one makes an elf and joins a neutral guild (Shao or Druids) can that elf acknowledge Taniel or must they eschew that part of their heritage?

In answering these questions, let's suspend the reasoning of 'wanting to play my character my way' for a moment.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#35 Post by luminier » Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:26 pm

this mud is roleplay enforced, and essentially, anyone can do anything as long as it is properly roleplayed. in all honesty if I understand your question, it is answered.
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Re: Racial roleplay

#36 Post by jezz » Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:22 pm

Hi Liranne,

As far as my experience in GEAS goes, I can tell that there will be no limitations to your rp in GEAS. You can be racist, sexist, sadomasochist or all together, as long as you keep the "insults" as part of your character and not OOC.

So far with Jezz I have met chars that openly consider females inferior, others that joked about a male darkelf mating with other males and of course, some of them disliked other races and even sometimes denied talking to one of them in disgust.

My suggestion is that you enjoy your rp but above all things, always keep your respect for the other players. Of course, you can unleash all your IC hate against the characters ;)

Of course, openly stating your racism for example, may lead you to become a walking target, but that's something you could handle IC.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#37 Post by tessa » Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:21 pm

Alright, I've tried to stay away from the forums for a while, but eh, I'll give in.

I would say it's a role-play enforced mud. Certainly not only encouraged, because wizards will whip down on anyone that tries to make role-play optional. But I wouldn't say it's RPI, because I've seen places like Armageddon and IMO it's quite a few levels higher than GEAS when it comes to roleplay depth.

This may be an old tune by now, but I think two major things that affect GEAS' roleplay is modern ethics and OOC feelings. By modern ethics, I mean things like equality, fairness, etc. From what I've seen on Armageddon, that's not the case. I've gotten the impression that racism and sexism can be very strong there, with people being beaten/enslaved/killed for race alone, or people with enough influence, contacts, or wealth being able to rise above some laws, or so forth. Definitely a game of survival of the strongest/smartest if I've seen one.

On GEAS, there's a lot of modern ethics. Racism and sexism seems to be shunned, despite being perfectly acceptable and even normal for GEAS (ie; check out some NPCs), because the players don't like it. Most people seem to follow the "let's be friends/nice to everyone!" theme which is common in the modern world, but not always practical for a more fantasy/medieval theme, which usually follow a tougher theme where you get only what you earn.

I've played both sides of the spectrum. While the "love everyone" characters tend to be more aesthetically pleasing, I've found the sexist/racist ones (ie, men are inferior, tshaharks are only good for slavework, half-elves are playthings that shouldn't be treated as people) as far more interesting to play and roleplay with.

But, it's hard to get into the more gritty roleplay due to point 2: OOC feelings. People seem to take some things on the game way too personally. People seem to think attacks on their characters are attacks on the player, or if a character does something a person doesn't like, not only is that character disliked by the person, but his player is disliked too.

Or, some decisions for characters seem to be affected not by how the character may feel, but how the player may feel. For instance, an OOC friend worships Bullworth the God and is in the Beerbubbles guild? Well, now that person wants his character to worship Bullworth and be in the Beerbubbles guild too. But the character doesn't really seem to have an IC motive for either, or doesn't even seem to fit the RP of a Bullworth follower, or a Beerbubbles guildmember.

Which leads into another thing I think GEAS may suffer from: player cliques. Maybe I'm pretentious, since I talk to few if any players of GEAS OOCly anymore, but I suspect there's a Taniel-player clique, and an Asral-player clique, and until recently, a Satho-player clique. I think this causes a lot of the OOC-related problems in the mud, as unified player communities seem to co-exist a lot better than a bunch of player-gangs fighting over the same territory/mud. Not to mention, it seems to cause people to make decisions based on the OOC feelings of the group, rather than the individual IC wants and needs of the character, despite collective plans of others.

Admittedly, I've been a part of a lot of the things I've explained above at some time or another. But, after getting myself out of OOC group circles/gossiping/plans of mud-domination, and after taking a few breaks from GEAS itself, I've realized the mud is much more enjoyable with the OOC elements taken out of the picture. There's an undescribable feeling of freedom to be able to make my char mean, or go against plans of others if it's something my character wanted to do, without fear of getting an IM message or OOC comment from the victim's player/s saying "Hey, why'd you do that? I thought we were friends!".

I don't know how much I could say to others, except an extension of what Jezz has said. RP your char how you like (as long as it fits the game lore at least, please no catgirls and such), remember to seperate characters from their players (sometimes those heartless bastard characters (jezz) have a nice and considerate player behind them (pojezz)), remember to seperate your own character from yourself (don't make your character hate character xxx for no reason other than because you oocly dislike that character/player), and last but not least, remember this is a game. And not just a game for you to get your kicks and giggles from, but a game where everyone is out to have fun. And remember that, while winning whatever can be fun, there's guys on that losing side. And also remember that losing isn't always the end of the world, nor is it a personal attack on you from whoever. Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some. But that doesn't mean you can't make the best of both, especially on a game. Loss can often develop a character even more than victory, and playing out a loss can often be enjoyable for both the losers and winners.

Oh, and last but not least, do remember that this is an RP mud, and not a FPS mud or something. While pvp is accepted and even encouraged, it's sometimes a bit much to go jump a single dude with 5 people with the intent to kill, and I would say fun is limited at best in one-sided odds. If you can capture a person and RP with them instead of kill them, please do. And if you can kill a guy with even-sided odds, please try. Perhaps sometimes the person may flee (maybe more people would stand their ground if they were RPed with and released than always killed) and you won't always win, but well.. as I said, there's more to the mud than just winning.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#38 Post by vurdijak » Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:57 pm

Did I miss something? What is an RPI?

Anyway, to answer your first question, I think this is an RP enforced mud, but that doesn't mean someone is going to strike down your character for ignoring the rest of the player base. Since the players here are generally pretty serious about their roleplay, I find real isolation to be nearly impossible. To me thats a good thing. I played a mud before with hardly anyone around. It sucks real bad. Someone will pry open that oyster eventually with their superior intellect and charm, and rightly so.

Question 2. Some people will pick a race for the 'perks'. Some others pick them to fill out a backstory they already created etc. Race selection is pretty important to being able to accomplish certain things. For instance, I would never make a tshahark 'mage' or scribe, or count on that char having any sort of mental capacity whatsoever. By the same token, it would be a long road to make an elf or halfling platemail wearing warrior. Halfing especially would be breathtakingly hard to pull off, if really possible at all.
I dont consider it wrong to consider racial attributes during race selection, or poor playership in any way.

Last part. I have seen characters of pretty much every race follow a broad spectrum of gods. Halflings can follow Sathonys. Some races tend to go certain directions, but going against the grain here is not something that other players will get angry about as long as its RPed out and has in game
rationale.

Racism has been a part of the game for a while. I got shunned before, for race, and it felt real nice as a player since it colored the world. Player cliques have been a part of the game for a while, but even though strength comes in numbers, so too comes added responsibility.

Yes there have been dwarves that followed Zhakrin. Several in my several years here. I think there is at least one active like that now.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#39 Post by tessa » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:59 am

RPI is roleplay-intensive or something. Basically it's a place where you'll find very in-depth roleplay everywhere, and little if any powergaming, hack-and-slashing, or so forth.

In an RPI mud, doing things like spending IC days in troll caves, clearing out every last troll, fearless of death, for the sake of "training" or "getting strong" as if it was as routine as taking out the trash would probably be considered rather insane, since it's nothing any ordinary person would do.

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Re: Racial roleplay

#40 Post by Liranne » Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:32 am

tessa wrote:In an RPI mud, doing things like spending IC days in troll caves, clearing out every last troll, fearless of death, for the sake of "training" or "getting strong" as if it was as routine as taking out the trash would probably be considered rather insane, since it's nothing any ordinary person would do.
This is also something that I have trouble with. I can powermud even though I prefer not to. But in a sense that every character is geared towards PvP, it's almost mandated that you buff your character.

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