Phrases similar to "You had some really poor RP" are pretty commonly heard, but without some agreed upon standard, that's a highly generalized comment, with ultimately little merit to it, because of it.

So,

1) how do you define role-play?


And a related bonus question (as in optional)

2) *how far can/should you go with IC anger/frustration?


* It's not like characters don't get upset IC.

Role playing to me is really just playing the role. The pet peeve I have with most people on an RP level is that I know I'm talking to the player. All of their comments are consistent with what the player, rather than the character, would believe.

It's called bleed-through in CF terms. I get that many people aren't playing for the RP but if I talk to your character and I get the opinion that I'm talking to a human playing a game rather than your character then it shouldn't surprise you that I don't envy or compliment your RP.

On the other board there was a thread about asking people things like "What path do you walk?" - which is blatant alignment fishing. I know why people do it (laziness and wanting to get free info) and I'm not crazy about it. That's an example of bleed-through. Your character would not ask me a stupid question like that, you as a player want to know my alignment so you know if I am going to attack you or not.

Edited to add:

As a player, I try to play an arch-type with my characters. The honorable paladin. The tree-hugging druid. Etc. Then - I try to pick a quirk or two to that. But one thing I try to do is focus on keeping my quirks and my RP as things that are for the benefit to the players. Visible. I'm a huge believer that if an RP treant falls in the woods and players don't notice it then it's worthless. So, basically, a combination of keeping it simple and some small amount of deviation from the norm but with a focus on trying to do that *really well* as best as I can.

>On the other board there was a thread about asking people
>things like "What path do you walk?" - which is blatant
>alignment fishing.

It is alignment fishing, but I don't see the problem. CF is more like gangland LA than the subburbs of Cincinnati. "Where you from?" is basically the same as "what path do you walk" and it's a conversation opener because it's critically imporant to know.

My problem your attitude is that you're basically trying to play a role (and I like your description and think you're a good RPer) in the real world rather than CF's world.

In the world of CF, alignment is a real thing. You have a gold aura, a red aura or neither, and characters can literally see that IC if they're attuned to it. Most adventurers can be expected to know where they stand. A character that doesn't recognize alignment is as preposterous as a character that doesn't believe in the gods. It just doesn't make sense to deny an in-game reality.

Getting back to the original point, you need to know someone's alignment when considering whether to join them on the road, and it makes perfect IC sense to ask that question bluntly, in most cases.

As you said, alignment is a fixed thing set by the world/gods or whatever your char believes. People who don't acknowledge alignment ICly are either stupid chars, insane chars, or has some very odd belif systems.

It's call immersion. If I'm a human warrior, son of the town guard, striving to join the Tribunal - why do I care that my aura is gold to a priest? I'm trying to have a dialog as my character and questions like, 'Do you walk the path of chaos?' breaks that immersion and in my brain translates to "What ethos and alignment are you, so I can tell if we're on the same team or not?"

So the problem is two fold:

1) By taking the blunt approach, we're not RP'ing. In fact, we're trying to avoid it and get right down to ranking goodness avoiding all that silly playing a role stuff.

2) I'm trying to interact with your character and certain phrases are player bleed-through. The alignment thing is one example, another example is a hero bard telling my warrior to 'go fight a bunch of X' to max out my defenses or a hero bard telling my invoker what spells to cast. Those are all immersion breaking things and while I wouldn't like, hate-spam your death thread over it I tend to look at it as 'bleh' sort of RP.

Ask someone to rank. They say yes. You want to find out if they are a goodie. Ask them 'Will killing elves be a problem?'.

Ask someone to rank. They say yes. You want to find out if they are evil. Ask them 'Right before we go rank, we need to gather some gold to give to the orphans of Balator' (or something suitably floofi).

It takes SLIGHTLY more effort than 'Do you have a red aura?' or 'Are you of the Light?' and makes a big difference IMHO.

Ok. I'm curious, how does your character act when the GAME tells you that you can't group with the guy you wanted to?

By talking about what we were going to do after joining forces, over the last 12 years I've never had a situation where the hard coded 'can't group' code has kicked in.

Pragmatically speaking, this is MHO:

At its most basic level, accepting a character-based handicap and following through on it. So if you decide to join Empire, you don't kill in town, period. Or if you're a BattleRager, you don't look for reasons to kill non-mages. Or maybe you're a hard core good-align and you won't kill sentient mobs. And so on. Sacrificing opportunities to PK or explore or whatever, or purposefully putting yourself in danger, is the foundation of RP, IMO, and it's surprising how many people don't do it because that's where a lot of the challenge in CF comes from. I think you can have a memorable character just by doing this if you combine it with an impact through PK or cabal play.

Beyond that, character quirks that stand out. This can be something like zealously following a religion - so you're not just deadly storm shaman fortie, you're storm shaman fortie that's often preaching Baerinika dogma and praising her when good things happen and asking for her guidance before stepping into the veil of shadow.

And beyond that, accents.

>1) how do you define role-play?

Behavior in CF that is immersive, realistic to the setting, and makes the game more fun for everyone. If you're a villager saccing everyone you kill's magic items, that's perfectly immersive and a very realistic assessment of the character, but doesn't really make the game more fun for anybody except possibly you. Furthermore, there have been plenty of really good villagers who didn't bother sacrificing magic items, so it's not like its a required tenet of your character to be successful or interesting. You just added that do grief people - it's not really RP.

>2) *how far can/should you go with IC anger/frustration?

As far as you want to push it without making the game less fun for everybody. Here your mileage probably varies. Personally, I try to avoid bitching about gangs and looting, but am perfectly okay with bitching about irritating behavioral quirks, like gnome murder shifters who attack everyone in sight.

My own humble opinion of RP:
Role play in Carrion Fields, as sponsored by the (awesome) immstaff,
has a particular meaning which is distinct from tabletop and other online RP games. It means: Staying consistently IC, in-character, according to the background, values, and style of the character. It allows general game mechanic knowledge to be used by the same player between characters, but not specific actions, information, or events observed by two different characters.

It has no meaning outside of In-Character inside the game, so someone playing an orc who utilizes an OOC game bug to force a character to die, or who trolls and flames on the forums (yes, even the goodbye threads) "because I'm chaotic evil" isn't utilizing good RP.

The standards by which in-characterness is measured seem to be something like
1.consistency, consistency, consistency in speech, style, overall values
2. coherency
3. interestingness
4. reasonable and interesting evolution of the character, given the initial starting point
5. How much fun or how much cool ambience the character contributes to the medieval fantasy environment of Carrion Fields to other observers, including both other players and immortals.

An orc who is unintelligible but seems to be otherwise acting like within the spectrum of an orc gets recognition for consistency. An orc who is usually only grunts but tells a dark-elf shaman "I love it when it comes together like that!" when they summon/bash a paladin loses recognition for consistency. And really, you only have to do that once or twice for people, both players and immortals, to have a bad impression of that character's RP, according to the most important standard of consistency.

So the question becomes: consistency according to what? And the answer is: the attitudes, style, and goals of the character. These are communicated by
1. general background, history and actions of the character
2. Role chapters

The more a character diverges from the 'run of the mill,' the more highly valued role chapters are for a coherent statement of that character's intentions and background BEFORE it acts weirdly, so that the standards by which it is meeting consistency can be judged.

The standard of "what's fun for the players and the immortals" can't be discounted. Given two consistent, coherent, interesting characters, the one who is more fun to interact with and watch will be considered to have the better roleplay. Ultimately, this standard of fun is the fundamental principle of the game as by the immortals: if something is really annoying and unfun then it tends to be unappreciated or even deprecated even if it is consistent and coherent.

>>2) *how far can/should you go with IC anger/frustration?
As far as it should consistently go, GIVEN THE ORIGINAL STYLE, GOALS, AND VALUES OF THE CHARACTER AND THE STANDARDS OF ROLEPLAY, AND THE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE GAME ENVIRONMENT AND THE RULES, AND THE "ZEROTH LAW" WHICH IS THAT THE GAME SHOULD BE REASONABLY FUN FOR EVERYONE (INCLUDING IMMS) WITHOUT HARASSMENT.

>Phrases similar to "You had some really poor RP" are pretty
>commonly heard, but without some agreed upon standard, that's
>a highly generalized comment, with ultimately little merit to
>it, because of it.
>
>So,
>
>1) how do you define role-play?
>
I would define roleplay as the full development of a character background including things like speech patterns, ticks, eye color, reactions to basic questions, family values etc (I think there's an anchored topic about this that is very nice)... prior to rolling my character and then after rolling my character putting my predesigned thoughts into place while simultaneously adapting my specific character map based on the interactions I have with other characters. I think the most important part of roleplaying that is often missed is you should not be roleplaying at another character but with them. If your character cannot adapt to its world at that given time, then it has lost. Even certain personality quirks of my own immortal have developed based on my interactions with mortals as well as public interactions with immortals.
>
>And a related bonus question (as in optional)
>
>2) *how far can/should you go with IC anger/frustration?
>
It seems this is an easy answer... death. While death is common place in CF it's still a crazy act to do and shouldn't be taken lightly. In fact many fortress characters have often roleplayed the burdens of having to kill others simply because they are evil. Taking that to the next level, if you were in say Nexus and you were frustrated with another Nexun, could you kill them? On the same note, it seems like an evil character wouldn't hesitate to eliminate an annoyance.
>
>* It's not like characters don't get upset IC.

1) how do you define role-play?

Playing someone in a way that makes the character feel like a real person, given his intended persona, race and background. That may be presented through a highly poetic speech, a refined one for a lordly type, but equally a rough-around-the-edges street slang for a thug type.

(Almost?) No one really speaks like Shakespearean texts, so that can't be expected as norm.


2) how far can/should you go with IC anger/frustration?

Player to player respect should be the goal here.Hold grudges and execute them, silently or openly, but don't go berserk on some OOC tirade.