Allergic to RP

Not really, but it just seemed like a good heading.

The City of Heroes boards was sporting a thread on "Hatred and Roleplaying," which had an interesting premise, but shortly devolved into pointless crosstalk where everyone has already made up their minds and aren't interested in actual discussion. So my impulsive urge to revive my forum avatar in order to partcipate died fairly stillborn.

But I'm still intrigued by the underlying question. "Why do MMO players tend to make fun of RPers?" The OP then used to it convey his rather complex roundabout hypothesis that the people who scream the loudest about gays are themselves closet homosexuals (oh wait, I meant RPing and closet roleplayers.) Which doesn't really fit Occam's Razor to me.

One of the generalizations was touched on. The association that "all" RPers are E-RPers. Or at least the assumption that the only weird people who would use the /emote command are likely to also accidentally xchan or mistell (sidetrek: now that's another interesting thing to explore, the use of xchan, mischan or mistells - was there a historical development semantics-wise?) a really embarassing conversation involving someone else's naughty bits. At which point, cultural mores about sex take over regarding people's behavior ("freakish," "weird," "keep it private," whatever), and which are then applied with a broad tar brush to all RPers.

Surely that's not all of it.


There's a generalization that RPers are bad 'actual-game' players. This is not a new generalization. It's been extant since MUDs. It probably stems from the grain of truth regarding player motivations. A Socializer interested in interacting with others may not have a strong Achiever need to excel following the rules and reward structure set up by the game. As a result, less urgent focus on min-maxing or perfect performance, etc. There are, of course, exceptions - who often shut people up in a spectacular manner by trouncing them with their ability, but it's sort of like the generalization about gamer girls (being whiny healer drama queens, until you meet the odd ones out.) Ie. possibly 60-70% true, if I were to pluck a number from the air - a majority holds true, but there's still a significant minority who don't fit the mold.

I don't know. I find myself in an odd straddling situation here. I've RPed (on a MUD at any rate, and even explored the concept of MUSHes.) I used to like reading RP logs. I probably still would, except I can't find any still generated and published, let alone good quality ones. I would be happy to be a tabletop roleplayer, except I can't find people nor time, and I probably am in the 0.1% of the population to make a hobby of collecting roleplaying manuals and game books (though it's gone virtual nowadays. I can only fit so many Billy bookcases in my room.)

Nowadays I also find myself quite ready to make fun of RPers. In a general sense, mind you. I don't mind the person behind the character, I had plenty of RPer friends once upon a time. Nor would I be so crass as to do it in public. It's more of finding the -activity- quite silly? I find it hard to put into words.

There is the practicality aspect of it. This may be a personal thing, but the idea of being an avatar in a three dimensional world, yet typing into a teeny tiny chat channel in order to RP seems both ridiculous and archaic. It was okay in MUDs and MUSHes, where world is composed of text and words are the medium by which both commands and environment are represented. When you emote in a MUD or MUSH, you alter more than you do in an MMO, where an emote triggers either a wisp of words that scroll in a tiny chat window, a speech bubble if you're lucky, or a canned animation. It is so much harder to self-express in the typical MMO setting.

Use your imagination! Some people argue. At which point, I then ask, if I'm using my imagination this much, I could RP on a forums message board, or just go ahead and write fanfiction or ordinary fiction. Both of which utilize a more 'word' medium over that of 'polygons.' Or I could use a software better built for the purposes of RP, such as those that facilitate tabletop roleplaying, or multiplayer ones like Neverwinter Nights, or even Minecraft, which allows a player or GM to alter the world more readily than a stock MMO.

Then there's the people and drama aspect of RPers that leap readily to mind when I hear the word.

It's amazing how much people like to squabble, and how much conflict and drama gets created in the midst of RPing. I'm not precisely sure why. Some people are naturally drama queens and like attention. Some people crave power, or love to manipulate others. Somehow the RP arena is a phenomenal draw for those who love to play games with words. Sometimes IC mixes with OOC because once you start mucking around with people's emotions, it's hard to maintain degrees of separation between player and character feelings, and everything becomes just people.

Then there's the fact that everyone has slightly different tastes when it comes to roleplaying, and it's all a big compromise until someone can't take it anymore and explodes on someone else for 'not doing it right' or as expected. (Which ironically, is not limited to RP. See ragequits in dungeons and raids. Human interaction thing, I guess.)

So what you get are tribal cliques of people who clump together in little circles looking inward and (not to be too vulgar, but I can't resist) wanking off to their own little beats of the drum. In other words, self-selected in-groups and out-groups.

Is it any wonder that both sides don't like each other? It triggers all our human (or I should say, ape or primate) instincts. Outsiders, not-us, alien, bad. Eeek eek, ook ook, akk ahhhk.

And I could probably say the same thing for raiders also. Tribal cliques clumped in their own circles, with supremacist views. Except they act more like fascists than hippies, so there's less ridicule and more hate for the 'elitists' who couldn't care less because they're so certain of themselves anyway.

Or PvPers. Who also have their own cliques. But they are like gangsters in that their cliques will band together like brothers and harass everybody else. And -want- to be hated.

Perhaps ridicule is not such a bad thing after all. Maybe it actually implies a certain 'omega male' sort of tolerance. We may make fun of you, but we still like you, you're pretty harmless, that kind of a deal. And you're still part of the pack.