Finding interactive roleplay
May 2nd, 2008 by Eve
How do I find interactive roleplay?
Interact!
Try making the first move. Be social. Even if it’s contrary to your character’s nature to be talkative and social, you can still find ways to be engaging. If you wouldn’t want to hang out with a bored, angry, sullen or hostile emo-tard, why should anyone else?
Bait the hook.
Direct specific actions and comments to specific characters. Your character may look like the most interesting in the room, but if you don’t drop anything specific for people to bite at, you’re going to spending a lot of time roleplaying with yourself. I am sure that those who keep score consider introverted narration “good form.” However, self-indulgent innuendo does not encourage many people to roleplay with you.
Invite responses.
Leave your actions and dialogue open-ended. Make sure you’re giving your partner (or the rest of the room) something tangible they can respond and react to.
Be respectful.
If you have to snipe at someone else’s character, show enough respect to give them something direct to react to. While some people think sneaking subtle insults, general hostility, or vague thought-sniping into their narrative makes their characters look cool, there are very few players who want to deal with that sort of grief from a stranger, even on the best of nights.
Keep trying.
Don’t give up the first time your character doesn’t receive the acclaim you expect. Or the second time. Or the third. The other player might be AFK or busy with IMs, your sends might have disappeared in a fast-scrolling room, or they might just not want to roleplay with you at the moment. Either way, persistence will pay off.
This rant brought to you by last night’s roleplay in the Red Dragon Inn and a generation of boozehounding drama queens. I’d like to know — what works for you when you’re trying to find roleplay?
Good advice, particularly about inviting responses, being respectful.
When I try to find roleplay I throw out open emotes that people can choose to respond to, whether it’s fiddling with some strange device or staring across the room. Sitting in the corner brooding isn’t very inviting.
I had to deal with a scene a couple nights ago with a character who’s been constantly insulting my character’s associates to her (usually derailing into some OOC insults about the players of those other characters, so *WARNING SIGN THERE*, no doubt), and when I took my character off, he complained OOC that I never RPd with him for very long.
He didn’t seem to “get it” when I asked him if he knew anyone IRL who would want to be around someone who did nothing but insult one’s friends and family.
On sniping, there were some discussions a while back elsewhere that had some people absolutely unable to understand why narrative sniping doesn’t really create roleplay or incite metagaming, and apparently unable to wonder why they should only send stuff to the screen that is playable or actively moves a scene forward. That might be something to flesh out more… Although I will admit to engaging in sniping with people to tease people I regularly play with.