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Bookwyrm
Great Reader
USA
4740 Posts |
 Posted - 21 Apr 2003 : 07:52:38
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Following off of some comments in House Rules, I'd like to ask a few questions:
How in character do your games get? Are any costumes or props involved?
Have you had any experience with people who were in character too much? Or even the opposite, those who were too out of character? When is it a case of "enough's enough"?
How far should such things go before they become ligitimate targets for the anti-RPG extremists?
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Hell hath no fury like all of Candlekeep rising in defense of one of its own.
Download the brickfilm masterpiece by Leftfield Studios! See this page for more. |
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zemd
Master of Realmslore
France
1103 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2003 : 13:42:31
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During my campaign, we don't disguise ourselves. I never dealt with persons playing too much in character, but newbie often play too much out of character (intimidated, incomprehension,...)
During the games i play, we try to speak each others as if we were ou characters. |
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Mournblade
Master of Realmslore
USA
1287 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2003 : 17:18:25
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As both a table top roleplayer, live action roleplayer, and historical re-enactor, I tend to think INCHARACTER and playing INCHARACTER is the most important thing. For me, the INCHARACTER mode lasts for the game session not beyond. Once the game session ends, being In character is just annoying. I know several people, especially live action roleplayers, that stay in character ALL THE TIME. I met one guy from a LARP (Live Action Roleplayer) to go see SPIDER MAN. I had a couple of my friends with me, and this tool WORE HIS ELF EARS, ANd introduced himself as GIlarond. Yeah well I don't hang out with this guy alot anymore. He is also 33. How very very sad.
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A wizard is Never late Frodo Baggins. Nor is he Early. A wizard arrives precisely when he means to... |
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branmakmuffin
Senior Scribe
USA
428 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2003 : 18:46:45
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mournblade94:
quote:
As both a table top roleplayer, live action roleplayer, and historical re-enactor, I tend to think INCHARACTER and playing INCHARACTER is the most important thing. For me, the INCHARACTER mode lasts for the game session not beyond. Once the game session ends, being In character is just annoying. I know several people, especially live action roleplayers, that stay in character ALL THE TIME. I met one guy from a LARP (Live Action Roleplayer) to go see SPIDER MAN. I had a couple of my friends with me, and this tool WORE HIS ELF EARS, ANd introduced himself as GIlarond. Yeah well I don't hang out with this guy alot anymore. He is also 33. How very very sad.
Of course, you neglected to mention you and your friends were dressed as Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus and Venom.  |
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Mournblade
Master of Realmslore
USA
1287 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2003 : 20:54:20
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OK OK!!!
I went to Phantom Menace as Qui-Gon Jin. BUt I was waiting for that movie since I was 11 years old. And then my hopes were all shattered, for the mighty Lucas has fallen, and his myths are not more than childish videogames now  BUT LO! Ahead in the Darkness! The light! It is Peter Jackson!!! And the Hopes return... Even greater this time.
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A wizard is Never late Frodo Baggins. Nor is he Early. A wizard arrives precisely when he means to... |
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MelkorUnchained
Acolyte
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2003 : 00:54:29
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Well, I'm pretty new to this, so the problem I've had is that people stay in character, but make their in-game personas almost exact duplicates of themselves. The only exception is that guy that played a very very old Mage who was on like level with the other players because he was senile, had forgotten how to cast spells and kept forgetting what was going on.
BTW Peter Jackson!? His first movie was, I admit, really good, but I absolutely loaths Two Towers... |
"Your saying I could dodge arrows?"
"No, I'm saying that when your ready, you won't have to." |
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Mournblade
Master of Realmslore
USA
1287 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2003 : 01:31:27
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BTW Peter Jackson!? His first movie was, I admit, really good, but I absolutely loaths Two Towers...
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Well Morgoth, er sorry Melkor, I can see you are a purist. I have never held movies to the standard that they must be perfect renditions of the book. In fact that is nearly impossible since they are two different artforms. I am quite the Tolkein worshipper but I accepted most of the alternate interpretations that Pete Jackson did.
Even Faramir, though after second thought, he actually wasn't that far off of character <dodges boot from Melkor>. The elves at Helm's deep was unforseen, and probably not good, but I still thought it was cool <dodges anvil from Melkor>
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A wizard is Never late Frodo Baggins. Nor is he Early. A wizard arrives precisely when he means to... |
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KlarthAilerion
Acolyte
49 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2003 : 01:38:53
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| as a rule during our sessions, if the player is taking some action or discussing thoughts on some event from the perspective of his/her character then they should act "in character" and they should otherwise act like themselves. I personally couldn't care if Michi the dwarf doesn't like pizza with pepperoni, but if "Brandon" doesn't like pizza with pepperoni then we can figure something out to get him some food. |
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MelkorUnchained
Acolyte
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - 22 Apr 2003 : 04:06:09
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quote:
Even Faramir, though after second thought, he actually wasn't that far off of character <dodges boot from Melkor>. The elves at Helm's deep was unforseen, and probably not good, but I still thought it was cool <dodges anvil from Melkor>
lol Mournblade... Well, since we've come so far off topic already, I see no harm in talking about LOTR a little.
I never really considored myself a purist, and when the first movie came out, I even liked some of the changes Peter Jackson made, such as the insersion of Lurtz, making Saruman seem more dominated by Sauron, and even the spawning orcs (c'mon, you gotta admit, that was cool). I went into the movie expecting to see this horribly crappy hollywood rambo-esqe hack n' slash movie that reduced characters like Aragoron and Gandalf to mere stereotypes. When I came out I was pleasantly surprised. I even think that some parts of that movie transcend the common, and enter the sublime, like when Gandalf yells "YOU CANNOT PASS!" and when Frodo rescues Sam from drowning at the end, not to mention the kicking "Orthanc" music, which is the best "evil army" music since the Imperial March from Star Wars. Seeing as how the first movie was such a masterpiece, in my opinion (as is all of this-feel free to disagree), I felt that expecting Jackson to make a movie almost as good or better than Fellowship was not that far-fetched.
I fell victom to hype.
When the last preview ended, and the Khazad Dum scene played, this time from a different perspective, I was breathless in my seat. When Gandalf and Durin's Bane fell like Lucifer and Micheal down into the Abyss, I almost wet my pants. When that scene was over, and it went back to Frodo, I turned to my best friend, and we both said at the exact same time, nodding our heads slowly,"wow."
Then we are treated to some Gollum action, which was good, no great, but since that particular part was not one of my favorite scenes (strangely enough, most Tolkien fans love the taming of Smeagol, I don't think Frodo's story gets kickin' till Faramir)it wasn't a big deal. But when Aragon's scenes started, and the camera panned out over Rohan, I instantly knew something was wrong with this movie: why are the grassy yellow fields of Rohan so... barren and rocky? Oh well, I thought, this is just the way Peter Jackson imagined it, I can live with him having a different interpretation. So the movie played on...
and on... and on... and on...
Some 292 hours later, my buttocks being completely sore from the sheer exhaustion of sitting, and my brain hopped up on literatlly gallons of cokes, I knew that there was something dreadfully wrong with this movie. Starting with the "excerscism of Theodin, the movie went waaaay down hill. It hit rock bottom with the orcs who looked pranced around gleefully as they ran and pillaged, not to mention the random little red-haired kids that seemed to appear in every Rohan scene. Agent Smit- I mean Elrond gave a speech about how makind is not a race, but a disease. Liv Tyler ate of interminable amounts of time. The wargs were kind of cool, but I didn't think the Aragorn fake death was necessary. Sauron didn't have any cool Lidless Eye cameos like in the first movie, the Ents were just plain pointless except as a plot device, not to mention the fact that they came across as lazy cowards. Merry and Pipin served no porpose in their entire 17 hours of endless screentime but to bring the Ents into the movie, who in turn did do something, but by the time they did, I had lost all will to watch the movie, let alone live.
And Helm's Deep was just Viggo smashing a bunch of copy/pasted manachins a thousand, million, trillion times over. The poor Uruks, they were so pitifly hopeless at fighting that I felt sorry for them. I mean, they carried ten-foot pikes and yet they couldn't find a way to even attempt to scewer anyone but Haldir, the Lothlorian Elf who somehow commanded Elronds men (Mystra help us!).
Actually, I had no problem with Faramir, they just made what was a mental struggle in the book more visible. The end results are both the same= Faramir is tempted, but he does the right thing in the end. It's just that it takes him longer in the movie, which is actually the only way they could do it in this medium, because they said that they Ring was so powerfull so many times, they would have been breaking their own rules to have Faramir just "pass it by" so easily.
Anyway, I guess I have ranted, so please forgive me... I don't know if any of this will make sense by the time to preview it, and I don't plan to spend half an hour revising it. Hopefully I've outlined why I didn't like TT without sounding like an arrogant, creativity-bashing fanatic...
By the way Mournblade, since it's late I'm not going to post on that other topic I ran into you on, so I'll say it here. Thanks for the help with the miniatures, I did what you said, about getting some hex maps (I printed off some blank ones from the internet) and doing some mock battles based off the ones outlined in the sourcebooks. Now I think I have a much better grip on how combat works. Thanks a million. |
"Your saying I could dodge arrows?"
"No, I'm saying that when your ready, you won't have to." |
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Yasraena
Senior Scribe
USA
388 Posts |
Posted - 30 Apr 2003 : 22:08:07
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In my group, we tend to stay IC whenever we're playing. No costumes or props or anything like that, just talking/speaking/acting while were at the table. If we're taking a break for dinner or something, then it's definitely OOC. Anyone who stays IC when they're not gaming has some serious issues that go beyond the scope of this discussion.  As Mournblade said: Sad, very sad. They are the ones who the Anti-RPGer's have a legitimate problem with. If it weren't for them, I think this hobby would have a lot fewer negative conotations associated with it.
I have to say Mournblade, that you seem to be in the minority of LARPers that can actually separate fantasy from reality. I'm actually a bit surprised that you're involved with LARPing considering your disdain for the wannabe goths of Vampire. In my experience, the two are almost identical in their 'enthusiasm' for the hobby. Basically just going WAY too far with it. But I'm glad to see at least you know the difference!  |
"Nindyn vel'uss malar verin z'klaen tlu kyone ulu naut doera nindel vel'bolen nind malar."
Yasraena T'Sarran
Harper of Silverymoon |
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Mournblade
Master of Realmslore
USA
1287 Posts |
Posted - 30 Apr 2003 : 22:48:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Yasraena
In my group, we tend to stay IC whenever we're playing. No costumes or props or anything like that, just talking/speaking/acting while were at the table. If we're taking a break for dinner or something, then it's definitely OOC. Anyone who stays IC when they're not gaming has some serious issues that go beyond the scope of this discussion. As Mournblade said: Sad, very sad. They are the ones who the Anti-RPGer's have a legitimate problem with. If it weren't for them, I think this hobby would have a lot fewer negative conotations associated with it.
I have to say Mournblade, that you seem to be in the minority of LARPers that can actually separate fantasy from reality. I'm actually a bit surprised that you're involved with LARPing considering your disdain for the wannabe goths of Vampire. In my experience, the two are almost identical in their 'enthusiasm' for the hobby. Basically just going WAY too far with it. But I'm glad to see at least you know the difference!
Well Yasraena, I have ALSO found that I am indeed in the minority. I love the hobby I am in, but inorder for me to enjoy it and not get cynical I have to accept everyone. There are PLENTY vampire goths that play and they are all trying to play gothic character types, but the funny thing is none of them can play vampires in my larp. I have a majour pet peeve with vamps, but that doesn't stop me from associating with and even liking INDIVIDUAL depressed goths I just think the group as a whole is annoying. TRUST me I have been out to bars with some of these people only to be extremely embarassed when they start acting like their character in the bar
I like the LARP I play alot, and the Larpers I am friends with are generally well adjusted. I accept the ones that aren't for my sanity:)
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A wizard is Never late Frodo Baggins. Nor is he Early. A wizard arrives precisely when he means to... |
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Yasraena
Senior Scribe
USA
388 Posts |
Posted - 02 May 2003 : 06:35:09
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Originally posted by mournblade94
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I have a majour pet peeve with vamps, but that doesn't stop me from associating with and even liking INDIVIDUAL depressed goths.
Oh absolutely. I have a few friends who are into the gothic scene. Not ALL goths are losers (just the majority of them ).
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TRUST me I have been out to bars with some of these people only to be extremely embarassed when they start acting like their character in the bar
HAHAHAHA! Man, I think I'd pay money to see that. It's one thing at a convention or similar, but at bar? Hooo boy. I'd LOVE to see these jokers at at some of the bars my band has played in. |
"Nindyn vel'uss malar verin z'klaen tlu kyone ulu naut doera nindel vel'bolen nind malar."
Yasraena T'Sarran
Harper of Silverymoon |
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Edain Shadowstar
Senior Scribe
USA
455 Posts |
Posted - 02 May 2003 : 07:07:41
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As far as in-character gaming goes, we typically speak predominately in-character during sessions, although I must admit we have never had anyone wear a constume (unless you count the time one of my firneds lost a bet...well, let's not go there). Frankly, it's all in good fun, and so I've never had to disavow all knowledge of their existance at a bar before, well not at least for talking in-character. I have never experienced a situation when some has gone too out of character, but I am pretty forgiving, so long as they do not break the rhythm of the game.
Now, there was some mention of the LOTR movies. First let me say, right on Melkor (at least you didn't use Morgoth, or I would have to smite you...long story) The Two Towers dragged on and on and on after the begining, at least for me. Now, I won't go off on this one, I have had my moments for the movie on other message boards, but it could have been much better. The curses of making a classic book into a movie. |
Edain Shadowstar
Archwizard of Rel Astra and Waterdeep
"Mmm…pie…"
- Gaius Solarian, Captain General |
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In-character versus out-of-character
