Lessons Learned on Sabbatical

[Acolyte]

Much like the Amish and the Mormons, I underwent a great roleplay journey once I came of age.

First, I visited Guild Wars 2, because my brother played it. It was fun. Then I got into the roleplay community, and was immediately weirded out by two things: the first, people with an odd dysphoric relationship with their characters.

"Well, I just don't know what Sally would think about that..."

Yes. Yes, you would, because you are Sally. Roleplay is improvised, sure, but Sally is not a complete third party who you sometimes have tea with but haven't really seen since graduation. This occurred in all but three people who I befriended, on even a short-term basis, in the community. Consequently, OOC interaction got really weird really fast.

I then visited ESO because Steam supersale and why not? The second issue I mentioned above applies in spades here: people are incredible divas with their characters. Like, unfathomably dramatic. Take the following post as an example:

I need to admit something right off the bat, guys. I was really excited to get into the Morrowind RP scene. I joined the website, I started looking for guilds.

But then I saw this.



Admittedly I have lurked the TESO-RP forums, looking for a community that offered wonderful roleplay and people, but I cannot believe this is how some communities work. What I’ve seen is more akin to a legal contract, with terms, conditions, and signatures.

Why do certain people think they’re entitled to create contracts for the rest of the community to follow? And for land ownership? Come on guys, there was a thread about the concept of ownership and why it cannot work! Intellectual property owned by Zenimax includes everything we see in game: items, characters, and land.

(snip)

At the risk of bringing up a legal and/or ethical debate guys, how do you feel about this? I don't want to invite arguments or anything, but this is concerning.

Now, coming from Disco, this seemed like par for the course. Some kind of IC document to enhance roleplay? Sure! Why not? We have relocation contracts, ceasefires, material exchanges, planetary construction contracts -- almost all of which take place in our imagination except the actual in-game shipping of goods and in-character consequences of treaties (which are usually totally implausible IC! The Rogues and Xenos banding together against the Gauls? Never! Not by static game lore, anyway).

This did not prove to be the case with the righteous, high-horsed majority of the community, who took up arms in protest to this little artifact of roleplay immersion. Indeed, viva la proletariot seemed to be the rallying cry, as people became outraged that anybody would dare stake an in-character claim! Zenimax owns all of that! Players can't own plots, it's all common property!

Appeals to "You know, if somebody does something you dislike regarding the ownership of a location, you can just ignore them" failed, and the poster of the document continued to #feelthebern of communal ownership.

TLDR: I love you, Disco. I love the vastly more mature and flexible community. I love that type-B personalities seem to prevail and everybody is accepting of one another's RP. I mean, the ESO/GW2 RP communities are more likely to flame out a BSG port, but us? We just hugged them, and told them our ways, and gently eased them into the more lore-friendly CR. And that's what makes you all fantastic.

I love that you make it work instead of just yelling about it like a SJW on Facebook, and I love that the fun of everybody takes front seat to the fun of your character, the God-king of Mars who has slain 10,000 vampires with his innovative garlic gun, and what? You invented the garlic gun? FU, I did, it's canon now, eat it.

I just wanted to share and come home <3
Hi, Disco

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I've seen it all, man.