LESSON Roleplay Faux Pas: The Butt-er In-er

Diana

LOOK HOW CALM SHE IS
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  1. Not accepting invites at this time
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
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10AM - 10PM Daily
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Preferred Character Gender
  1. Female
Genres
Romance, Supernatural, Fantasy, Thriller, Space Exploration, Slice of Life
Today we're going to talk about a Roleplay "Faux Pas". Meaning, little things that are kind of rude and aren't good to do when you're roleplaying.

Our first chat is about The Butt-er In-er.

Here you are playing Jerry. Jerry is getting in to a fight with Bob. You're about to have this great fight scene back and forth. Suddenly, here comes Frank. Frank butts in by getting in the middle of your fight. Maybe he's trying to stop it, or maybe he's trying to "help fight". Either way, Frank totally ruined your moment.

Maybe you're playing Stacy. Stacy is about to get a LOVE YOU from Stan. It's this quiet romantic scene you've been building up to. Along comes Jess and Jill, suddenly having a vampire fight and crashing in to your scene. They thought it would be cool. And now you're forced to drop the scene you were building so you can react to the new events.

Or you could be Steve. Steve has his sword ready and he's about to rescue Daisy from a beast. But then Kevin comes flying in on his dragon and saves the day first. Kevin stole your thunder.

Yet, you could be Anna. Anna just pulled off a sweet move by jumping in front of a spell. Anna needs a kiss from her true love Mike to bring her back to life, and give the scene some dramatic meaning. But Abel shows up and heals her before the good stuff happened.

"Butting In" means crashing someone else's moment and stealing their thunder.

How do you know when you're butting in? Pay attention to the scene. If people have been setting something up between specific characters, obviously it'd be rude to jump from one location to another just to get in the middle of it.

When in doubt, if you see a fight scene going on, or something really dramatic. ASK! Those people might be trying to "display" an important character trait with that moment.

When is it GOOD to butt in? If a roleplay has gotten "stuck" because one of the characters hasn't posted, butting in can help save the scene! You can get someone out of a situation when they're trapped unable to post without their playing partner. :D Other scenes ripe for butting in to are mass battle scenes, where aaaalll the characters need to work together in order to fight something!

So when you're roleplaying in a group, be mindful of the story! Eventually you pickup on when it's a good time to get in the middle of something, and when you need to hold back a bit to let other players get their moment too!