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Village Square / A Shoutout To All SL Roleplayers
« on: August 16, 2014, 10:40:51 PM »
I suppose I should start by introducing myself. Hello. Some of you may know me by my handle of Lilienne (Or, even older, Zeromi). Some of you may know me as Mitsuki. Other yet, may not know me at all, which is fair enough.
So behind these characters is a real person, just as you, who is reading this now, is a real person. Maybe I can appeal to that, maybe I can't, but either way, allow me to explain why I'm writing this post today. You see, I've been an active roleplayer for ten years. I started on a different server, before Shinobi Legends even came to existence. Now, I was not very good starting out, of course. I never had an issue with my spelling or grammar, and I did learn to emote and use color before I began posing as a character. However, I had a lot of problems, myself. I originally had overpowered characters, an insane background that made no real sense and was more of a trophy shining than an actual story that revealed motives and drive, and I lacked any initiative to get involved in a larger story. I quickly got tired of being relatively alone and ignored, so I left. Also, back then, your title meant more than your writing and story-telling. That ended up changing, but more on that later.
So I spent some time drifting around different sites to varying degrees. Some of them had roleplay focus, others didn't. I got older, and I matured as well, and I spent less time trying to throw together a really cool, powerful character, and more time in creating the mold that could lead into one. I started taking pride in them, shaping them with real motives, strengths, weaknesses, and made them flexible enough to change, but stoic enough in their beliefs to maintain who they are at core. Characters stopped just being an escape from whatever life was dishing out; they became a living, breathing story in their own right. Villain or hero, they were their own people.
Which brings me to today. Recently, I have come back to SL, and I've returned to that old site I quit eight years prior. I revived my characters in the former, and made an entirely new one in the latter. I become my characters when I immerse myself into that role; they do not become me. They do not become what I want to become, that I wished to become. They are still, at core, just people, not machines in which to reflect how impressive my characters' skills are. That's not what defines a person, and thus, they cannot define my characters. When it is time to play a role, I take this very seriously. My problems cannot be reflected in that character. By no means am I saying that all of you should treat it to the degree I do, or that real life should be completely ignored when you are in character, because at the end of the day, we're still human. A bit of us will leak through.
However, the issue I see is that it leaks through TOO MUCH. All the in-fighting and bickering stems from a few core problems, that I wish to help eliminate for good. It's been far, far too long on far, far too active a site not to develop some ground rules. My take on how things should be redone is far and away to an extreme, but again, that is only because I am very serious about developing a world that deserves to be enjoyed by everyone. I understand, however, that some of what I am about to say is, perhaps, harsh, offensive, or 'going too far' but we can come up with a far less severe set of rules as a whole. But there should definitely be some.
So my first suggestion would be to wipe all characters, in roleplay sense, clean. Obviously, I do not mean the resets, titles, etc. Just the story. Gone. No one has any powers, we all start from scratch. This is, in my opinion, the best thing we can do. However, I also know that this is a really extreme scenario, and that other things, like scaling down existing characters, or setting them to characters who will be created after a certain point, are options. The idea of starting a whole new story is appealing to me, but take that as you will.
My next point would be to set a limit on the Kekkei Genkai. One. ONE PER PERSON. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS. On this rule, I stand completely firm. Also, if you wish to have sage mode later, take that into account, because you're getting ONLY that, and you will be roleplaying someone with no other unique bloodline limits until you reach this. No Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, unless you have legitimately, AND PUBLICLY, performed a transplant by a blood member of your family. No random eye transplants. No Rinnegan through implants or weird, 'I just woke up with it' mumbo-jumbo. These eyes are supposed to be treasured; the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths, and thus, it should be treated as such. My suggestion is we appoint these to ONE person. Just one. How they obtain it is a different matter, but there should be no other user but one person. And no, I do not give a damn how Madara got his, because he's a crap character to begin with when he was finally introduced outside of existence in legend, and is an example of what not to roleplay. You are not Madara. Your character is not Madara. And everyone trying to emulate someone with this much power makes none of you unique.
No non-Naruto abilities. None. This shouldn't even be a point I have to bring up, but for some reason, it is. If you want to be taken seriously, and want people to include you in a bigger part of the story, then at least try to look like you know what you're doing. I have no problems with people having other personal pleasures, but be reasonable. This is the Naruto world. Not the Bleach world. Not the Dragonball Z world. Not Twilight. This is Naruto. This does not mean, of course, you can't make stuff up; on the contrary, unique, custom jutsus are great. Have a theme to represent your character, as long as it's within reason.
So, the last point I will make is how we handle the story itself. Most of you just call it Voiding. I call it 'you no longer have the right to roleplay anymore'. Again, I am being harsh, but this is my personal opinion on how you handle this situation. Why do I feel like that? Because it means you, AS A PLAYER, are obviously not ready to handle the social aspect that goes into a collective story. No, you won't get your way all the time. Suck it up. When you get into a role, you are essentially saying you accept the consequences that come with the unwritten rules. Pulling your character out because you can't handle it, or have some issue with this person in real life, or other nonsense means you should not be participating in the story. You are bringing nothing anyway, so stay out of it. It's no fun to participate with you, and that's what it comes down to. We all want to have fun, but that means not being selfish, and forcing the story to go the way YOU want it to. There are other people here who have come to be a part of that story, too. None of us have complete say in what happens to our characters, but that's kind of the point. The suspense, the surprise. The story is interactive, and if you cannot interact, then simply stay out, saving yourself, and the rest of us, further complications. Or, putting it more nicely, if you can't deal with your character suddenly dying, then maybe you should save yourself a headache.
That's just what I have come up with, but if there's anything more, please, feel free to throw it in. And no personal attacks on each other, please. The point is to help that attitude dissipate, because there's enough out of character fighting as it is. If you have something to say, be mature about it. Again, what I have written are merely suggestions, and can be discussed further on how we, as a community, want to go about a game-wide change in the roleplay, but I would like to make it that way; game-wide. I apologize if it's a long read, but this is something very important to me, and I hope you all take pride enough in your own characters that is important to you, too.
-M
So behind these characters is a real person, just as you, who is reading this now, is a real person. Maybe I can appeal to that, maybe I can't, but either way, allow me to explain why I'm writing this post today. You see, I've been an active roleplayer for ten years. I started on a different server, before Shinobi Legends even came to existence. Now, I was not very good starting out, of course. I never had an issue with my spelling or grammar, and I did learn to emote and use color before I began posing as a character. However, I had a lot of problems, myself. I originally had overpowered characters, an insane background that made no real sense and was more of a trophy shining than an actual story that revealed motives and drive, and I lacked any initiative to get involved in a larger story. I quickly got tired of being relatively alone and ignored, so I left. Also, back then, your title meant more than your writing and story-telling. That ended up changing, but more on that later.
So I spent some time drifting around different sites to varying degrees. Some of them had roleplay focus, others didn't. I got older, and I matured as well, and I spent less time trying to throw together a really cool, powerful character, and more time in creating the mold that could lead into one. I started taking pride in them, shaping them with real motives, strengths, weaknesses, and made them flexible enough to change, but stoic enough in their beliefs to maintain who they are at core. Characters stopped just being an escape from whatever life was dishing out; they became a living, breathing story in their own right. Villain or hero, they were their own people.
Which brings me to today. Recently, I have come back to SL, and I've returned to that old site I quit eight years prior. I revived my characters in the former, and made an entirely new one in the latter. I become my characters when I immerse myself into that role; they do not become me. They do not become what I want to become, that I wished to become. They are still, at core, just people, not machines in which to reflect how impressive my characters' skills are. That's not what defines a person, and thus, they cannot define my characters. When it is time to play a role, I take this very seriously. My problems cannot be reflected in that character. By no means am I saying that all of you should treat it to the degree I do, or that real life should be completely ignored when you are in character, because at the end of the day, we're still human. A bit of us will leak through.
However, the issue I see is that it leaks through TOO MUCH. All the in-fighting and bickering stems from a few core problems, that I wish to help eliminate for good. It's been far, far too long on far, far too active a site not to develop some ground rules. My take on how things should be redone is far and away to an extreme, but again, that is only because I am very serious about developing a world that deserves to be enjoyed by everyone. I understand, however, that some of what I am about to say is, perhaps, harsh, offensive, or 'going too far' but we can come up with a far less severe set of rules as a whole. But there should definitely be some.
So my first suggestion would be to wipe all characters, in roleplay sense, clean. Obviously, I do not mean the resets, titles, etc. Just the story. Gone. No one has any powers, we all start from scratch. This is, in my opinion, the best thing we can do. However, I also know that this is a really extreme scenario, and that other things, like scaling down existing characters, or setting them to characters who will be created after a certain point, are options. The idea of starting a whole new story is appealing to me, but take that as you will.
My next point would be to set a limit on the Kekkei Genkai. One. ONE PER PERSON. PERIOD. NO EXCEPTIONS. On this rule, I stand completely firm. Also, if you wish to have sage mode later, take that into account, because you're getting ONLY that, and you will be roleplaying someone with no other unique bloodline limits until you reach this. No Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan, unless you have legitimately, AND PUBLICLY, performed a transplant by a blood member of your family. No random eye transplants. No Rinnegan through implants or weird, 'I just woke up with it' mumbo-jumbo. These eyes are supposed to be treasured; the eyes of the Sage of Six Paths, and thus, it should be treated as such. My suggestion is we appoint these to ONE person. Just one. How they obtain it is a different matter, but there should be no other user but one person. And no, I do not give a damn how Madara got his, because he's a crap character to begin with when he was finally introduced outside of existence in legend, and is an example of what not to roleplay. You are not Madara. Your character is not Madara. And everyone trying to emulate someone with this much power makes none of you unique.
No non-Naruto abilities. None. This shouldn't even be a point I have to bring up, but for some reason, it is. If you want to be taken seriously, and want people to include you in a bigger part of the story, then at least try to look like you know what you're doing. I have no problems with people having other personal pleasures, but be reasonable. This is the Naruto world. Not the Bleach world. Not the Dragonball Z world. Not Twilight. This is Naruto. This does not mean, of course, you can't make stuff up; on the contrary, unique, custom jutsus are great. Have a theme to represent your character, as long as it's within reason.
So, the last point I will make is how we handle the story itself. Most of you just call it Voiding. I call it 'you no longer have the right to roleplay anymore'. Again, I am being harsh, but this is my personal opinion on how you handle this situation. Why do I feel like that? Because it means you, AS A PLAYER, are obviously not ready to handle the social aspect that goes into a collective story. No, you won't get your way all the time. Suck it up. When you get into a role, you are essentially saying you accept the consequences that come with the unwritten rules. Pulling your character out because you can't handle it, or have some issue with this person in real life, or other nonsense means you should not be participating in the story. You are bringing nothing anyway, so stay out of it. It's no fun to participate with you, and that's what it comes down to. We all want to have fun, but that means not being selfish, and forcing the story to go the way YOU want it to. There are other people here who have come to be a part of that story, too. None of us have complete say in what happens to our characters, but that's kind of the point. The suspense, the surprise. The story is interactive, and if you cannot interact, then simply stay out, saving yourself, and the rest of us, further complications. Or, putting it more nicely, if you can't deal with your character suddenly dying, then maybe you should save yourself a headache.
That's just what I have come up with, but if there's anything more, please, feel free to throw it in. And no personal attacks on each other, please. The point is to help that attitude dissipate, because there's enough out of character fighting as it is. If you have something to say, be mature about it. Again, what I have written are merely suggestions, and can be discussed further on how we, as a community, want to go about a game-wide change in the roleplay, but I would like to make it that way; game-wide. I apologize if it's a long read, but this is something very important to me, and I hope you all take pride enough in your own characters that is important to you, too.
-M