I thought, we all might have problems. We might have an idea, but would it be possible back then? Is my idea for this char really good? I figured, this wouldn’t fit the other topics, since this is about RPing problems.[li]
I have a question to begin: Would it be too far if I made Maria, a proud polish patriot have a few russian traits like the love for tea or (as I read) slight troubles with punctuality?
Not at all. Firstly, It is Your character, so if You think this will match her, then just play it this way. Also, all people are different., so Maria can love tea right? But for me it is more of the England than Poland trait. :)
I have slight problems with punctuality, and I don’t have a drop of Russian in me (though I have plenty of Polish in me) :P
The tea thing maybe you could RP as her having been in London long enough to have acquired a liking for it.
Also, you don’t need to run individual character traits by us. I only spoke out against the Jewish thing because being Polish seems to be a HUGE part of Maria’s character and turning her into a member of a completely different ethnic group didn’t fit.
edited by Kukapetal on 6/24/2016
True… przypomnij mi o tym, żebym poczytał jak ludzie żyli 126? Lat temu. Or remind me to read how people lived 126 years ago. I might think much to modern. Like not thinking of jews as an ethnic group but a religion.
Jezeli potrzebujesz pomocy w tym zakresie, to mogę pomóc ;)
Niech pije herbatę ze szklanek bez ucha, nie ma nic bardziej polskiego. :P[li]
[quote=Professor Sketch]As a Russian, I, personally, don’t support the stereotyping, but then again, neither of those stereotypes are true. My family likes tea, but I always assumed it was just something popular all over Europe and found it to be something very stereotypical of England, and as for lack of punctuality I have no idea where you got that from. So, sure, I don’t see why a Polish person couldn’t like tea, or always be late for appointments. Also, Jews still are an ethnic group, and a religion - my half-brother’s father is a Russian Jew.
edited by Professor Sketch on 6/24/2016[/quote]
[li]
To the time, I found it here (and considered it quite funny too… although, given you can find all, possibly not true things on the internet…)
And tea… I think coffee is more popular in germany. And I thought: Muslims- religion, christsreligion, so I beleft it was similar with the rest…[/li][li]
edited by Rysiek on 6/24/2016
Jews are somewhat unique because they were kicked out of their homeland in the Middle East and sent to Europe, where they formed communities. So their religion and ethnicity were pretty much tied together.
It wasn’t only the Jews for whom religion and ethnicity were inextricably linked. Even a free thinking, atheist Pole would have identified as Catholic, if only to know where he was going to be married and buried. If a Polish person converted to Protestantism he would have been thought of as becoming "Germanized" on some level, since Germans in Eastern Europe identified as Protestant.
Incidentally, if you really want to play up a Polish or Russian background with a beverage, kvass would be a much more exotic and characteristically Eastern European beverage.
It’s generally a common thing for role-players to treat a character’s nationality as a character trait rather than a background thing, however I see it as a harmful thing both as a roleplaying device and as a perpetuation of stereotyping. If we make a character and refer to it as "the Canadian Banker" instead of as "The Reluctant Banker" or even just "The Banker", we’re leaving it open for them to be defined by the circumstances of their birth, which is heinous.
I mean, Eli Lowe is Russian but he doesn’t mention it every second sentence. He’s also bisexual and very mentally unhealthy, suffering from a lot of things that don’t exist yet and one thing that never has.
None of these things generally come up, yet they influence a lot of his personality behind the scenes without ever coming to the foreground.
Then there is Ezekiel, who is literally a corpse puppeted by a sentient fungal colony… Actually, he might be a bad example.
edited by The Absurd Rogue on 6/25/2016
I started role playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in 1997 when I was a sophomore in high school. Without exception my early characters were silly, two dimensional stereotypical chowder heads. Which is all to say that we all have to start somewhere. ;)
Of course, and the difficulty and challenge of roleplaying stems from asking a person who doesn’t exist except in your brain hole: “what do?”
Stereotypes always make that question super easy to answer. But what I’ve seen mostly from advanced role-players is that they don’t make characters, they make people who, unfortunately or not, don’t exist.
I think we can all agree that the real issue is there’s too much focus on a character’s ethnic background and nothing focusing on any other characteristic traits. So here’s a few links to fix that:
Q&A development sheet or the WWYD or What Would You Do? of character development. You don’t have to answer all of the questions but it gives a rough idea of where your character stands on certain situations.
Abridged version of Q&A, for the lazy ones among us.
Backstory. How does it effect their traits and why.
Long list for everything you ever needed to know on making an OC. In case you feel like starting over from scratch or want to dive into more than just character traits.
But from my own personal experience, I tend to write with the WWYD method. With the background and experience in mind, I just think of whether or not a situation will have a negative/positive effect on my character. Ex: ‘Amelia had this happen to her, therefore she’ll be repulsed by it.’ etc. Also never write thinking you’ll exposit everything about your character in one breath. Realistically would you or even a stranger tell you about their whole life story? No. Things that effect your character will come out in increments and be revealed over time.
If I may, I have two questions concerning RP in FL.
The first, how to deal with time? Sometimes I play different scenes with different players at the same time. Player 1 can only send a message a day, the other, with whom I started later, ends sooner because player 2 can play several messages a day. Yet the end result of the scene with player 1 would have cause a vastly different scene with player 2 then the one we played. I run in these back to the future conundrums quite a lot.
The second, is there a way to play a scene with more than one player using the message system?
The second is a hard and unfortunate “no”, unless you get some unconventional systems in there.
The first, however, I really need some opinions on. Because it feels like “Ask the Charatcer” is non-canon and omniscient, whereas the courtroom thing and Lamia’s Inflammatory Salon seemed to occur within hours of eachother.
Heh, as old school as it is, AOL instant messenger is really useful for role-playing.
It IS hard sometimes… e.g. I RP sometimes where Maria was just plain… serious instead of like mostly happy. Another time, I RP… two months ago. You have to remember.[li]
[quote=Gideon]If I may, I have two questions concerning RP in FL.
The first, how to deal with time? Sometimes I play different scenes with different players at the same time. Player 1 can only send a message a day, the other, with whom I started later, ends sooner because player 2 can play several messages a day. Yet the end result of the scene with player 1 would have cause a vastly different scene with player 2 then the one we played. I run in these back to the future conundrums quite a lot.
The second, is there a way to play a scene with more than one player using the message system?[/quote]
I personally try to avoid roleplaying one scene out like that. But if that is how you personally like to roleplay than you do have options depending on the situation and it’s different results. If it’s for shipping purposes however, I’d discuss things with both roleplayers before going any further.
And I wish there was a way to contact multiple roleplayers via messaging here. As it stands now, you’ll have to post a thread here or if you prefer something private than there’s a ton of messaging boards online to do so. Even Skype or Tumblr could be a quick solution if needed.
Edit: I missed the responses before. 1. Seeing AOL messenger being mentioned made me feel so old. 2. I always saw the Ask A Character as a non-canon way to peek at the way everyone’s characters work as well as an aid to help develop them if anyone’s stuck.
edited by Amelia Syrus on 6/25/2016
[quote=Rysiek]It IS hard sometimes… e.g. I RP sometimes where Maria was just plain… serious instead of like mostly happy. Another time, I RP… two months ago. You have to remember.[quote/]
Honestly though, you’ve deepened Maria’s character a lot through the last few months. Exposition is a natural thing to want to do, believe me I know, but it is also the most fearsome enemy for novelists. Plague of Gripes did a video on the subject actually… But he is super vulgar so he might not be the best person to reference here.