Story The Ice Breaker - About You

[Ignitedstar]

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If you've ever gone to a meeting, chances our the first thing your meeting group does is the "Ice Breaker". It's a passively forceful way of bringing people together and forcing them to introduce themselves so everyone is more comfortable with each other. It's also a great way to introduce yourself to the staff you haven't met or will not meet due to schedules. This way, everyone kinda knows each other. For this Ice Breaker, just say stuff about yourself as a roleplayer, a writer, and/or a reader. You can also write down other things, if you wish. I will be the example. I am sensitive guy who likes getting suckered into romances, be it played for drama or comedy. It is difficult for me to write serious and dark genres, because I believe that everyone has a life that is filled with happiness in some shape or form. "Empathy" and "Sympathy" are my tag lines. My favorite kind of character is one who has lost love (of any kind) and is trying to find it again. Or never had it and is trying it to obtain it. These base traits plus anything else works wonders into my heart. I think it's because this happens to us all of the time. Hmm... but when I write characters this way, are they not serious and dark in themselves? I don't read other stories too much because I often feel that I must analyze and steal what they made work for my own works. It is almost a corruption that I do not like whatsoever, so reading other peoples' works makes me feel like a bad person. However, a true professional will always read other material and wonder if they can make it work, too. So yes, I am being a hypocrite of varying degrees. Roleplaying... I usually have a female character because "there aren't enough girls in this story!" is what you may often find me saying. Either gender is fine for me and I have enough experience and confidence to say that I can roleplay almost any kind of character. I do NOT like plot-based roleplays. Character-based roleplays have really touched me, because if the characters that we make are not any good, why read a story? This also explains why I have no participated in any RPs here, yet. I can do text roleplaying, but paradoxically I cannot act for the life of me.


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[Paeniteo Azrael]

Oh well this is interesting... I guess I'll go next!


Contrary to yourself I enjoy the darker and more serious characters. I enjoy giving my characters a tragic backstory, perhaps a murdered family or lost lover or destroyed country. One of my favorite backgrounds is that in Shadowrun, simply because it offers up such a chance for tragedy. Like yourself, though, I do enjoy romances (can't stand them in real life RP though.... feels odd, but in text its interesting), and my characters are always compassionate (one trick pony I suppose), although they can put up a gruff or rude exterior face.


I do enjoy reading other's stories. When making up a campaign I tend to modify and steal stuff from other stories (in my Shadowrun campaign, for instance, my characters are going to be manipulated/working for an AI, with a twist; being that there are actually two AIs who are anything but friendly with each other, Neuromancer with a Lime twist anyone?). I am actually pretty good at inventing my own backstories for characters, as I have quite the imagination. My favorite part of making a character, is in fact, visualizing them in my mind and watching their life experiences from my own perspective. Playing God is so much fun.


Like yourself, I do enjoy character driven roleplay's. In my campaign, although there is an overarching plot, the plot is made more by the personalities of the antagonists and how they mesh with the personalities of the players. I'm the type of person who would forego the efficient and powerful character to play the one that I feel is interesting. I generally play male characters, although I'm playing a female character in Kaji's RP and in a Shadowrun PbP on that forum. I have no problem playing female characters in post/chat games, but I don't like playing a female character in real life.


Regarding romances: I have no care what sexes are involved, but I find it awkward to do at a table-session. On the other hand, by post or chat, I find it fun.


Apparently I can act just fine, although I have no opinion on my own acting ability.

 

[Pineapple]

Hey everyone, I'm a talking fruit.


I find RP’ing to be quite enjoyable and fun. I like both post by post, and PnP/Chat based ones as well, though I'm much more picky about PnP/Chat RP's than post by post. Ah well. I run 2.5 RP's here, Extinction, a Chat and potential post by post RP (want to build an interest first) and Plunder, a character driven post by post pirate themed RP. I would suggest taking a look at the extinction and plunder post by posts if that’s your thing, they will be very character driven.


I do almost all my RP’ing with Miz. In Extinction he is my co-creator, and in plunder I am his. Though, as to be expected he's trying to claw his way up higher and become the main creator for the extinction post by post. I’m on to you Miz. Not to say I'm against working with others, but I would probably be more hesitant to, because I don’t know how well the person may respond to things. I can read Miz like a book


-> Actually it was my idea originally for an Extinction post by post - Miz


I enjoy reading, usually. I like characters to have sustenance, and want them to overcome challenges and hardships, but I hate when they dwell on them for excessive periods of time. I don’t often write stories, I used to, but I just don’t find it as fun as RP's... I just like the collaboration that comes with it. As for RP's I to enjoy character based ones, but I must say, without any plot, (not one that shots up at every turn mind you, but just a reason for characters to work together and explore) most RP's will fail.

 

[Ignitedstar]

A plot being character-driven does not necessarily mean that it is only about the characters and they get nowhere. Hmm, how to explain this... any kind of plot slides side to side on a scale. You can tell that a writer is working hard on the progression of the story when they are balancing the scale by going by left and right constantly and not staying in the static middle. Usually the beginning and end of the story end up the middle.


One side of that scale demands that events are pretty much out of the characters' control and it just keeps on moving, leaving a lot of people behind. In-story, this could be really bad because characters will be at places they shouldn't be, but let's stay on topic about out-of-story. People who RP and fall into this situation lose the motivation because there's a lot to catch up and were not part of it. It brings up the wonder about why a person bothered to create a person who just going to fall behind in the story, because as authors collaborating we all want to treat our characters as the main character (which is not possible-- we can talk about this too if anyone would like). For future reference, I'm going to call this side A.


The other end of the scale makes it more free-form where characters have control of the plot. For example, character X goes to find his long lost sister and his adventure is detailed from there on. In-story, this adds personality and an active side story to a character. Out-of-story, the RPer who controls this character can be more imaginative and create their own path. Striking the balance here is very important, though. If they go too far, the character wanders off and is probably no longer part of the central plot and they fade into the background and eventually sort of disappear. If they don't go far enough, the character's individual development becomes a shoddily done job. Neither makes a reader happy. This will be side B for future reference. The former is when a character is basically demoted to extra or put on a bus, while the latter is giving a character a freudian excuse, making readers wonder why the writer even bothered to make anyone sympathize with something so shallow.


The reason why I am using a scale as the metaphor is because the farther you go to one side, the harder it is to get back to the middle without utterly destroying everything.


When I say that I like character-driven stories, I'll admit that I am lying on a bias, because I am used to reading and/or being a part of RPs where they are heavily on side A. Side B seems to get neglected more often and I can understand why, because RPers are not sure what they can and cannot get away with. Less experienced RPers may think that a good backstory is excellent character material-- and most likely it is, but a character's backstory and the character's development are often confused with each other. They are definitely not the same thing. Backstory is who they used to be. Development is who they change into. Completely opposite directions. As one of my older sisters once put it, "everyone has their sob story, but how they change because of it matters now and in the future, where it counts."


The nice thing about a character-driven plot (or really, a sub-plot) is that you can go back to it anytime you want. If you try to finish it when it's brought up and it's a pretty big sub-plot, things get messy. Maybe this is the term I'm looking for: Plot management is something more RPers and writers in general should practice.

 

[Pineapple]

I have to say it’s very important to weave between both sides, There must be points in a RP where you need to progress a storyline, and there must be points where you have freedom to do as you see fit based on your character. Really, this is basically a view similar to Law/Chaos. This even comes back around to video games, there are free roaming games – sandbox games, and there are strict liner games as well. It does come down to a personal level, which you prefer.


I do fully agree with your points on character back story and character development. For plunder, each character should have a deep history, as part of plunder is flashback threads, where you RP your past self. This is a very fun way to show how your character used to be verses currently. All my characters used to be much different then who they currently are, and perhaps the best example of this is one of Miz’s characters, which I won’t discuss, because it’s not my place to do so. Regardless, a character that doesn’t evolve makes Darwin cry.


On the topic of Main Characters of an RP – yes, I will say that all people should see their character as a main character. You are role-playing from your characters perspective, so they are the main character to themselves. Think of your own life; are you just a side character? Hardly, you are the main character! But Main character does not equal the center of attention across the entire RP.

 

[Paeniteo Azrael]

On the topic of Main Characters of an RP – yes, I will say that all people should see their character as a main character. You are role-playing from your characters perspective, so they are the main character to themselves. Think of your own life; are you just a side character? Hardly, you are the main character! But Main character does not equal the center of attention across the entire RP.

If the concept of Quantum Immortality is even someone accurate, then not only are you the main character of your own story, the whole universe that you're involved in revolves around your life! Whoo weird physics!


Aside from that joke, I agree that the PCs are main characters. Your average story has more than one character; i.e. in LOTR, you have Sam and Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn (in the movies), and the rest of the "main group" of people in the book. They're all equally important and powerful characters, although the story would not be possible without one of them, perhaps in a good roleplaying experience, it would not be possible to have the same story without one of the players in your group...

 

[Ignitedstar]

Ah, definitely. I have participated in many RPs where characters engage with each other so well that when one person has to leave, the roleplay falls apart because the person who had that character was so essential to the story. Definitely a case of not being able to continue without someone.

 

[Pineapple]

yes, you need very good character interactino to make a RP work. I'm sure you've seeen RP's where peopel only fight and avoid making friendlynessity (fruitopian word) Those RP's die fast, beucase there is no meaningful character interaction to see. I would much rather read 3 pages of characters interacting meaning fully, but no plot development, then 3 pages of plot development but no character interaction.


no too say the first option there was good - just prefered.