S
Saito Hajime
Guest
Original poster
So this is a problem about roleplaying to a certain degree, but more about the players than the characters. See, I haven't been RPing as long as some, but I've been in enough RPs to see some different behavior. First of all, I'm sure you've seen the odd person that takes things that happen IC personally, yes? Someone that acts like an insult to their character is directed at them, or treats their IC partner as though they're really in a relationship. And of course, you probably write that off as silly, because it's not meant to be personal, and just because two characters romance each other doesn't mean the players have to have some kind of special relationship. However, I've always felt there is a link between how things play out IC and how people think about the other players OOC. Maybe not quite the same as I've described so far, but bear with me;
I've seen a lot of characters I think of as "generic good guys". Surely you must have seen a CS before where the personality is basically "A nice person, but gets serious when they need to be", or something to that effect? And these characters, they're often everyone's best friend, engaging in the most typical cliches of friendship with all the other characters. Except, sometimes there's a person that gets isolated from all this good will (and no, I'm not talking about myself in this example). Imagine if you will, there's an RP where there's one of these guys that's described as real nice and friendly and bubbly, and one day he comes across a character that's gone kind of nuts. Dude's been tortured, and is hallucinating and ranting and raving and whatever. What does our nice guy do? He tells the other character to shut up and stop being a psychopath of course. I can't remember exactly how it played out of course, because this was a while ago, but I do remember that this character was exceptionally nasty to this one other character that had done nothing other than be mildly annoying. Maybe it's just me, but it seems a little odd that such a nice guy™ would just decide to be a dick all of a sudden.
But the clincher was that I knew for a fact the player of nice guy™ hated the guts of the player of the bonkers character. Again, maybe it's just me, but I think that might have had a part in such a sudden twist of character.
Of course, there's more than enough people that play characters that are less than nice. Maybe they're an outright asshole, or maybe they're just a bit standoffish; point is they're a person that doesn't provoke the best of responses. More often than not, when I've played such a character, they're basically universally hated. And that makes sense, because they're not nice people and you expect someone to hate them. But then, there's the people that play douchebags that manage to command respect and adoration in spite of being exceptionally cruel and nasty. In this example, we had another nice person that was under the command of a complete dick. I know when I have characters described as nice interacting with characters of mine that are douchebags, they usually stand up to them and tell them how they're so wrong about how they do things. But this nice person, they decided to basically submit to this vile leader of their's and try to be their friend. I've been in countless situations were some vaguely nice character will just outright disrespect and defy a character of mine that is vaguely nasty, but here I am, watching as the generic nice person™ tries to make the douchebag their friend. Experience tells me this shouldn't be happening, but apparently it does when it's not me playing the asshole.
The players behind these characters didn't know each other at first, but they did become friends after that, almost in unison with their characters. One thing that I do know was that the person playing the asshole character was in a position of power in the RP, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was just flat out bootlicking.
Now I know what you're thinking; maybe you're just reading into things too much. Maybe you're just being paranoid. Maybe these people had really good IC reasons for doing what they did and you just didn't pay attention. Well, maybe. But what I do know is that I've almost universally observed people being treated differently in similar situations. If there's a golden explanation for why I've misunderstood how this stuff occurs, please tell me, I would love to know. I just can't get over the fact that I feel like I've been treated differently from other people.
So please, tell me; am I insane? Am I reading into it too much? Do I have a point? It is possible for me to tell if it's really about me and that I'm not just misunderstanding?
I've seen a lot of characters I think of as "generic good guys". Surely you must have seen a CS before where the personality is basically "A nice person, but gets serious when they need to be", or something to that effect? And these characters, they're often everyone's best friend, engaging in the most typical cliches of friendship with all the other characters. Except, sometimes there's a person that gets isolated from all this good will (and no, I'm not talking about myself in this example). Imagine if you will, there's an RP where there's one of these guys that's described as real nice and friendly and bubbly, and one day he comes across a character that's gone kind of nuts. Dude's been tortured, and is hallucinating and ranting and raving and whatever. What does our nice guy do? He tells the other character to shut up and stop being a psychopath of course. I can't remember exactly how it played out of course, because this was a while ago, but I do remember that this character was exceptionally nasty to this one other character that had done nothing other than be mildly annoying. Maybe it's just me, but it seems a little odd that such a nice guy™ would just decide to be a dick all of a sudden.
But the clincher was that I knew for a fact the player of nice guy™ hated the guts of the player of the bonkers character. Again, maybe it's just me, but I think that might have had a part in such a sudden twist of character.
Of course, there's more than enough people that play characters that are less than nice. Maybe they're an outright asshole, or maybe they're just a bit standoffish; point is they're a person that doesn't provoke the best of responses. More often than not, when I've played such a character, they're basically universally hated. And that makes sense, because they're not nice people and you expect someone to hate them. But then, there's the people that play douchebags that manage to command respect and adoration in spite of being exceptionally cruel and nasty. In this example, we had another nice person that was under the command of a complete dick. I know when I have characters described as nice interacting with characters of mine that are douchebags, they usually stand up to them and tell them how they're so wrong about how they do things. But this nice person, they decided to basically submit to this vile leader of their's and try to be their friend. I've been in countless situations were some vaguely nice character will just outright disrespect and defy a character of mine that is vaguely nasty, but here I am, watching as the generic nice person™ tries to make the douchebag their friend. Experience tells me this shouldn't be happening, but apparently it does when it's not me playing the asshole.
The players behind these characters didn't know each other at first, but they did become friends after that, almost in unison with their characters. One thing that I do know was that the person playing the asshole character was in a position of power in the RP, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was just flat out bootlicking.
Now I know what you're thinking; maybe you're just reading into things too much. Maybe you're just being paranoid. Maybe these people had really good IC reasons for doing what they did and you just didn't pay attention. Well, maybe. But what I do know is that I've almost universally observed people being treated differently in similar situations. If there's a golden explanation for why I've misunderstood how this stuff occurs, please tell me, I would love to know. I just can't get over the fact that I feel like I've been treated differently from other people.
So please, tell me; am I insane? Am I reading into it too much? Do I have a point? It is possible for me to tell if it's really about me and that I'm not just misunderstanding?