The line is there. It's visible to pretty much everyone but the person making the character, unless they're a selfish ass who's hoping to get away with whatever they can.
Making tribute characters is fine. It's roleplay, and sometimes beginners need some training wheels to work from. We all started somewhere, and playing a familiar concept can be a great way to getting your RP toes wet.
But outright character IP theft is a big no-no. You may as well just be playing that character, and not trying to hide it under a coat of gaudy paint and poorly Bedazzled™ faux-rhinestones. People will ultimately know, and you'll just look like an ass.
An example:
- A British woman of aristocratic blood named Victoria Devonshire, with dark hair who specializes in Egyptology and runs afoul of a sect of Set-worshiping crazies.
OR
- A British woman of aristocratic blood named Lana Croft, with brown hair and an immense set of hooters who specializes in looting burial sites and runs afoul of whatever villain-of-the-month she can.
The first seems perfectly acceptable, right? You can see where the player was influenced by the "Tomb Raider" series, and wanted to take their own hack at it. That's a tribute character, where you can see echoes of some other source, but it's not a direct rip-off. The second is just a plain theft, with a letter change to try and fool the inattentive.
Where it gets REALLY messy is when one player is making a tribute of another player's character. Maybe Player A just really liked Player B's concept, or B stopped playing the character and A wanted to try the concept for themselves. Using the aforementioned formula for developing the new character is fine; people familiar with the source would probably see the similarities, but your average player won't know a thing.
But the second example often rears its ugly head. Things are snatched that oughtn't be, or worse yet, Player B is totally unaware of what A has done, because A never asked for permission.
That's a personal peeve -- doing something in RP, in regards to another's character, without making sure the other player is aware/consents to the action. Consentism in RP is a topic for another day, but in this instance you are toying with the heart and soul of another person's creation. I'm sure you would hate to know someone ripped off a concept you spent so much time creating and building up. Why would you do it to someone else?
Brought to you by some daffy bitch I spotted earlier today in game.
There's a quote somewhere, that if you have to tell everyone how bad-ass you are, you really aren't. If people have to be told how hard you are, then something's grossly out of place.
The same goes with RP. If you have to toot your own horn about some of your characters, what does that tell the people around you? Rather than letting them develop their own conclusions about your character, you're busily extolling their virtues from the creator's standpoint. And really, most every player is going to be proud of their character/s. It's how the creative urge functions.
However, it dilutes any possible good facets of your character if you're pointing them out to everyone. You're not giving the determination to the audience you're playing at, you're dictating it. You have stolen the person's opinion and obliquely replaced it with your own.
No one likes that.
People definitely prefer coming to their own conclusions about a character. And one of the most flattering things that can happen in roleplay is having another player come to you and compliment you on your creation. Out of the blue. Without grenade-fishing for compliments. When you have people giving you positive feedback, without asking, you've done something well.
But not that sycophantic bullshit. I'm talking real constructive feedback, not the "OMG ur toon is so cool and pretty!" crap that gets thrown around. The Polite Gopher™ shit doesn't count either, because that gets nauseating after about three seconds.
Don't fucking strain your arm patting yourself on the back. You just come off as some kind of drooling, attention-seeking lackwit.
Which strolls us into what I was originally going to rant about in this post -- throwing your Out of Character "resume" out there. Okay, so you've been roleplaying in some capacity for nigh-on twenty years. Congratulations. That doesn't necessarily tell me you've been doing GOOD roleplay for that long. In fact, what that tells me, personally, is that you likely have some horrible RP habits ingrained in you, and you will take any kind of constructive criticism poorly.
A player could have barely a year of roleplay experience under their belt, and they could be playing an exceptionally detailed and well thought out character. And that aforementioned 20-year vet could have a Chaotic Good "unholy" cyborg that can somehow infect/kill others with some sort of controlling power/energy/Godfuckingknowswhat. Chaotic. Good. Unholy. Do you even know the meaning of those words you've just strung together?
Talking about how awesome you are, as a player, is just as bad as pimping your character. Telling everyone about how much you know about X game system, or that you've been playing Y MMO since it first came out, means precisely dick. You could have read the core book from cover to cover, and memorized everything, but it still means shit. Executing that knowledge in being a considerate, thoughtful and evocative player is a horse of an entirely different color.
You may have the years, but you may also have the bad habits. I saw this immediately when "has taken on groups of heroes and won" appeared in the biography. What does that really tell someone? Does that let them know anything about the character, or that you are an inherent braggart who probably "likes" your own posts on Facebook? It tells me that you are likely not going to change any bad habits you've accumulated over the years, and any attempt on my part to help make your character better is going to be met with arrogance and a big fucking brick wall.
Listing off your player-resume in your character bio is just going to make me want to avoid you. Nevermind that the character you describe in that description sounds like it needs to have a wad of C-4 jammed up its vag and detonated. With a localized EMP burst, just to make sure all the inorganic parts are fried and useless.
If you're just dying to tell people how long you've been RPing, stop and ask yourself why. What does it matter to the roleplay? Does it enhance anything? Are you just looking to be impressive and come off as some kind of alpha dog? Do you want to lord that experience over players and control the outcome of the encounter?
To me, it just means you're asking for five across the face, and to go sit in the corner and think about what you've just done. I sit back and think to myself, "If that person had a Sassy Gay Friend, what would he tell them?"
Granted, this blog is for rants. Sometimes, things pop up that I have nothing constructive for. Some shit just tweaks my nose the wrong way and incites the rage. Sound-Offs are going to be my soap boxes for going off on shit, without any kind of helpful addenda.
FUCKERS WITH WHITE HAIR
What is the goddamn point? I've recently started playing "The Secret World," a MMORPG based in the modern age with some Lovecraftian twists. It's an alternate universe, but still thoroughly modern as much as 2012 can be.
I have spotted over 25 characters with white hair. I used to have a Post-It™ note on my desk with a fucking tally of every goddamn white-haired character I spotted.
These are not old people. In fact, the lone exception to the hair-color-rage was a noticeably older gent. He escaped the tally because he was old. Every other fucker who got marked down was a fucking youngster with fucking white hair.
I don't fucking get it. The genetic frequency of naturally-occurring white hair is rare as hell. Albinism is not as frequent as people might think, and I doubt a one of those dicey calf-mongers would own up to their character being albino. Being albino isn't sexy, you know.
African-American, and albino, models Shaun Ross and Diandra Forrest
Shit, go cruise over to this Wikipedia article to see what pop culture thinks about albinism.
No, they picked fucking white hair to be "unique". And would likely argue that white hair is naturally-occurring. Sure. If you have premature aging, a melanin disorder, or you see a fucking stylist every goddamn week. But the thing of it is, even if you find a legit way to make white hair, it's not really white. Bleaching your hair every fucking week to get your roots is also very unhealthy for your hair, and you may as well just cut all that crap off before it becomes straw jutting out of your head.
So unless your character is an albino, had a genetic disorder, is an alien or other non-human without certain colorations, get off your unique little chair and change that fucking hair color. You look like a tool. Top it off with a scene kid hair cut, some pseudo-punk attire, and throw it off a fucking bridge. You are an irritating pest. I don't care how you role-play, if you don't have a good goddamn reason for your character to have white hair aside from "I thought it was cool/looks neat/awesome", fuck you.
I will continue to sit here in my angry chair and glare at every bastard I see with stupid hair. No, you can't change my mind, I am old and opinionated.
I've mentioned it a few times already, so I figured I'd get to the meat and potatoes of shit that bothers me.
RESEARCH (or, shit some people just don't understand to do).
Now, I'm not saying that people should have a degree in the things they are playing for their character. I don't expect a person playing a mechanic to know the difference between a resonator and a catalytic converter. Nor do I expect for a person to be fully versed in the vast variety of ammunition available on (or off!) the market. People role-playing lawyers should not need to pass the bar. Pretendy soldiers don't need to be military veterans.
But you should have enough passing knowledge to sell the concept. Take a few extra minutes from your day to look things up. Find reliable sources you can refer to, so your character can sound like they know what they're talking about. And no matter what, if someone offers knowledge (and aren't a fucking cockwagon about it), accept that! There will likely be people out there who actually know the things your character does, and it behooves you as a player to take advantage of that information.
It hearkens back to what I said regarding accents; if you do enough research, you can get close enough to the accent that it's not annoying. If a native speaker gives you advice on how to make it more authentic, take it!
If you're playing a character of a different nationality than yourself, dig a little into the area they're from. People bitch about Hollywood actors of an ethnicity other than the characters they portray fucking things up (see Racebending.com for better information on this topic). I mean, David Carradine was a great actor, but he wasn't an Asian. I'm assuming the writers of the series "Kung Fu" did their research to help a white man play a Chinese native. If you as a player don't know the differences inherent between, say, a Londoner and a Glaswegian, go Google that motherfucker up. Find the slang and idiosyncrasies common to the nationality.
Heck, even if you're an American playing someone from a different state than your own, look into it. Otherwise, how would you know, as a New Yorker, that folks down in Georgia call everything soda-like a coke?
Research goes a long way towards making a mediocre concept great. Finding little tidbits to flesh out your creation will turn it from just another set of tropes to something that stands out on its own. While tropes may be useful in helping others understand a bit about your character, being able to rattle off a gigantic list of tropes to describe your character is generally not good. That's not a real person, at that point, it's a fucking anime character, unless your game of choice is based off anime. Even then, that's a two-dimensional piece of fluff that gets boring very quickly.
Research gives you the ability to know enough about something to sell it, and selling the character is half the work necessary for role-play. You could have a concept that's ripe for abuse, but if you can find a way to pass it off believably it can downslide back into reality. If you can stud your literary sculpture with nuggets of truth, your audience will have a better appreciation of it.
I had originally wanted to throw an "Avenger" clip in there, of the by-play between Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, but alas. Maybe when the film comes out and the clips flood YouTube, I'll update.
Anyone who knows Marvel Comics knows Iron Man. We know that Tony Stark was a child prodigy, a brilliant engineer, and a lush. What made the casting of Robert Downey Jr. absolutely perfect for the role was that he sold it. Even before he was cast, he sold it, because he was pretty much all of the above (replace "child prodigy" with "child actor", if you will). He may not know all the tech-lingo Stark throws around in his films, but the writers have done enough research to provide him with what to say to sell it. We can watch his films and accept him as a billionaire playboy philanthropist, because the writers, and maybe even the actor, did their research enough to put the right words in his mouth.
Unlike Natalie Portman in "Thor". She's a great actress, but she didn't quite sell me on the idea she was playing an astrophysicist. That could also just be me, so if you can find a way to help me grasp her as an astrophysicist, help me out.
Now, what if you're playing something that has no correlation to real world topics? Improvise. There are plenty of articles on Tolkien's creatures, for example, that you can parse enough together to portray a good elf. Finding pieces about various kinds of magic, either "real world" magic, or from role-playing games, will help you put forth a decent mage. But if you can't find anything to substantiate your character concept, make shit up.
J.K Rowling did it best with her "Harry Potter" series.
She concocted pretty much everything for the series (Yes, I know, Harry and Tim Hunter have a lot in common, but I blame the Pancamo Satellite for that. J.K has disavowed any knowledge of Neil Gaiman's stellar work with his boy wizard). She sells her world with what she provides to her readers, and she does it well.
But if you're creating something that has roots in history, do your research! Find out what sorts of creatures existed in the Celtic mythos. Delve into Greek classics to find more on Amazons. Page through material on the Aztecs for rituals.
With the Internet around, players have no excuses for not looking up things for their characters. Sheer laziness does not an excellent concept make. Those folks end up with impossibly cliched and awful creations, or at the very worst, unbelievable Mary Sues. No one likes a Mary Sue.
You owe it to yourself as a player to find out whatever you can to make your character a living, breathing thing. You owe it to your friends, and fellow players, to dedicate a little of yourself to making their experience just as fun as yours. It is incredibly rude, and not to mention a disservice, to fumble along like a drunk co-ed trying to give her date a blow job in the back of a Pinto in regards to talking the talk. Collect your sources. Read a few articles. Find a decent book on the subject matter. Broaden your horizons, or be a true baller and sell that shit like tail on Hollywood Boulevard.
Let's talk about this thing we call the fourth wall, ladies and germs.
Common throughout most media, the fourth wall exists to separate the fantastic from reality. It's the indelible boundary between the pretend and the truth, and it's an infallible source. It's a construct both necessary and instinctive. Since the dawn of a person's ability to conceive fantasy, it's there. Granted, as children, it's a malleable thing, but as we age it becomes the solid barrier it's supposed to be.
There are few instances where "breaking the fourth wall" makes any kind of sense. Deadpool, the Marvel Comics character, is a notorious breaker of walls; in fact, it was one of his schticks. The film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is another example of the loose adherence of fourth wallness. Eddie Murphy is also a culprit in several of his earlier films.
What makes these examples acceptable is that it's used sporadically, and artistically. It's not jarring; rather it can add to the entertainment value of the particular source. Would "Ferris Bueller" be as funny, if Matthew Broderick didn't directly address the audience? I doubt it. He takes us from a group of passive observers, to active tag-alongs in his adventures. It creates a firm emotional bond with the character, which in turn creates a more enjoyable movie experience.
He can get away with it. And he does.
But in role playing, busting through the fourth wall is generally bad fucking etiquette. Its primary purpose in RP is to distinguish between In-Character and Out-of-Character interactions. It keeps confidential character information unknown until certain criterion are met. It allows people to play something anathema to themselves in a safe environment. It's also supposed to keep drama at bay.
Running into a person who doesn't have a firm concept of the separation of IC and OOC is a chore, and generally an awful experience. He is the person who thinks his character is God's gift, so how dare you react poorly to his boorish personality. She is the player who thinks her character is the hottest, most attractive woman in the world, so therefore you must be completely fucked-up to not fall ass-over-tea kettle in love with her. These are players who are experiencing life vicariously through their pretendy fun-times extracurricular hobby, and are instead treating it as SO IMPORTANT rather than the hobby it's supposed to be.
They are people who will make it their personal goal to try and explode into drama if you don't agree on their characters. Some of these cuntweasels will go so far as to start shit OOC simply to get back at you. Their ability to discern the walls between reality and fiction are so distorted, they should not actually be role playing. I may not be a psychologist, but I know that it is not a sane person who blurs the lines between what's real and what isn't.
Through their inability to accept the fourth wall and behave maturely, they create a swarm of drama that is difficult to defuse. Part of that is that they feel justified in taking their hurt feelings out on other people, simply because they said something insulting about the character, or didn't give it the respect they think it deserves, or they were laughed out of a scene for being utterly ridiculous. So, they will now spend precious time concocting schemes, rumor milling, and basically behaving like a douchenozzle because they feel slighted.
Had said player been of a stable mindset, and mature personality, any discrepancies could be civilly addressed with the other party. Misunderstandings could be cleared, and everyone could go back to enjoying the game. Unfortunately, the faulty wiring in the headmeat of the player has made such considerate methods of problem-solving moot. Nothing but the utter ruination of the offending party will salve the injured player's ego. And really, is it worth it?
These people make role playing tedious and terrible. They can exist wherever role playing can happen -- table top, LARP, MMORPGs, and their abilities to behave poorly are not subject to which medium it comes in. Real-life acquaintances can be just as prone to fuckassery as internet ones; the only leg-up the internet ones have are the inherent caveats of anonymity the internet has. That, for some astounding reason, seems to really bring out the worst in people.
It's all right to occasionally get upset if something negative happens in play. The thing that matters is how you handle it. The majority of the time, simply talking to the other player will clear up problems. If feelings are so sour so as to make that impossible at the time, find a neutral third party to help mediate the issue, or take a few days to chill out. Taking it to extremes, though, is never the answer. And exploding into a drama ball that shames teenage girls in its sheer stupidity is never going to solve the problems. It's just going to cause more of them.
And all the other people, who are considerate enough to uphold the fourth wall, will think you're nothing more than some gibbering moron who likely still lives with your parents and never really grew up. So, fourth wall breakers, grow the fuck up, or get some goddamn help. No one wants to play with someone who can't separate what happens to their fictional persona, and what happens in real life.
As a female gamer, few things gall me as much as watching a female character parade around like some Disney Princess. You know the type -- pretty, talented, and ultimately just a victim. She talks the talk, but when it comes right down to it, she's bound and gagged and in desperate need of a rescue.
Thus the tag "Damsel in Distress," or as I like to call them, "DiD"s. Your typical DiD is a younger woman, either late teens or early 20s, who seems fairly run of the mill. She may be powered, she may be normal, she may have some kind of paranormal talents. She may be a Mary Sue (a topic for another time), but one thing for sure about this character, she gets into trouble too damn easy.
She may simply be at a club, chatting with people when suddenly --! Kidnapping. The perp changes dependent on the genre of RP, but it's generally a dude, and he's usually the sort who like pretending he's a dominant. The DiD goes along with it. What choice does she have? (Yet another topic for another time.)
She'll get rescued, eventually, and everything will return to normal. Until the same sort of situation crops up again. And again. And again.
Mind you, the distress could also be any number of things, aside from kidnapping. She could be a super-empath, stuck feeling all the awful things around her. She could be a scrappy fighter who just has the worst luck in the world and forever loses. The ground point is that she needs to be rescued from whatever scrape she gets herself into, and after a few instances, it gets to be fucking annoying.
One would assume that in our modern feminist-powered environment, players would like to gallivant with a female character who can get herself out of trouble. What gives with the constant victimization?
It could be the attention it garners the character. I'd say that takes main stage, given the proclivity of distresses said damsel immerses herself in.
What's worse than a DiD? The DiD(iD) -- the Damsel in Distress (in Disguise). These sorts you see just as much, and they're just as cloying. They give all the impressions of being an empowered woman who can handle herself, but she's really not. At the end of the day, for all her super powers or paramilitary training, she's going to get captured and require a rescue. She talks the talk, and she walks it, but then she trips onto her ass and stares imploringly at her significant other to come do the daring-dos and make with the saving.
There is only one character I can think of who can give off the DiD vibe, and not be totally obnoxious. This (dubious) honor belongs to Empowered, of Adam Warren's graphic novel series of the same name (find it at your local comic store, or other purveyors of illustrated awesome).
I love Emp. I enjoy this series with all the girly delight that can come from the satirical adventures of a girl who just wanted to be a superhero. The origins of the character may be nefarious (she began life as a series of bondage pin-ups for a client Warren was working for), but over the course of the books, Warren has turned her into more than just a DiD.
Emp is, at the end of the day, just a normal young woman. Her powers, when they function, come from her woefully delicate super-suit. One of the running gags is that the thing can tear at the tiniest provocation. When it's intact, though, it grants her several powers that qualify her as super.
As you can see from the picture above, she gets tied up a lot. It's part of the charm of the series. But didn't you just ramble for several paragraphs about how much you hate damsels in distress? Yeah, I did. The difference here, between Emp and other frequently-captured heroines, is that Emp grows out of it. Through her own ingenuity and intelligence, she can find ways out. And she continues to have the pluck to put on her super-suit (which often in the cause of her frequent bindings) and fight the good fight.
Emp is a fantastic character because she is realistic (inasmuch as one can be in a comic book), and her situations are not based on the want of attention. She is a neophyte superhero trying her very damnedest to make it in a world full of Sistah Spookies and Major Havocs and Willy Petes. She is a fettered heroine who finds a way to succeed, when all the odds are stacked against her.
While the role-playing world may teem with DiD(iD)s, we can only hope that the future brings fewer of them. That for every so-called plucky heroine who can't seem to keep her fucking mouth shut and gets herself into clinches she can't get herself out of, there will be women who don't let that sort of shit deter them.
Hopefully, for every stupid bitch who Disney Princesses her way through her character life-span, we can get some balls-out chicks who rescue themselves, and likely the male protagonist. Like so:
One thing you'll see consistently throughout this blog is my (pressing) insisting that people who create characters to Do Their Research. That'll be a separate post; today I wanted to poke at something that's been bugging me for the past few days.
TOO MANY PEOPLE USE/WRITE SHITTY ACCENTS.
I understand that attaching an accent to your character brings more life and depth to him, but for the love of God, spend a few minutes digging through YouTube or something to listen to what they sound like. There is nothing more grating than listening to someone butcher a Cockney accent, or type out a terrible bastardization of a German accent.
British accents abound, and in visual media, producing them appropriately can be a challenge to people who don't actually speak with one. To the American public, the accents from over the Pond are charming and "cute" (see the film "Love Actually" for the tongue-in-cheek example). We think of cool characters like John Constantine, or Brad Pitt's Pikey from "Snatch." Michael Caine, James Bond, Wee Hughie; the list abounds with real-life and fictional examples of British accents in all their colors and facets. And, like an uncouth Yank, I'm including all the areas of the Isles -- Scotland, Ireland and Wales. It's easier to type, although lumping them all together is a grievous sin and would get me a sound beating.
In role-play, the players in table-top and LARP games who abuse foreign accents and few and far between, so I can't really pick at them. But in written RP, they are proliferate and often loud eyesores. If you've spent any time in a forum, or online game, I can bet you dollars to donuts you've seen them. The apostrophe-happy, clipped consonant-wielding Anglophiles who lose whatever it is they're trying to convey in a string of broken sentences. They think they're hip. They're obviously busting out the South End and "keeping it real."
You want to hit them with a two by four. That's okay, I do too, don't worry about it.
I'm not saying everyone who types with an accent is committing sins against humanity; there are the people who Do Their Research, and take the time to understand what it is they're trying to sound like. They've listened to Catherine Zeta-Jones, or Daniel Craig, and they know where to clip their words. They are judicious with their apostrophes, and take into account the other person they're playing with may not have English as their primary spoken language.
But German accents, they seem to get dragged through the mud and abused like gingers left and right. German accents are cool, too -- look at Hans Landa. Nazi, psychopath, but he sounds awesome. And it's that awesome that suggests to people that, they too, could be cool with a German accent. What they don't pick up, however, is the appropriate way of utilizing that accent.
It's a particular pet peeve of mine because I took German for so many years (high school and college). I may not fluently speak the language, but I know enough to know when people are taking a cudgel to it. And GOOD SWEET JESUS, is that shit irritating!
For example -- I have run across two players in "City of Heroes" (you'll see that game bandied about a lot, too) who use German accents for their characters, and every time I see it, I want to scream at them. It's as if they've never, ever bothered to listen to a German native speaking English. They've never seen the newer "Inglorious Basterds," or even "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." They have taken what they assume is the legitimate accent, and trashed it all to fuck.
To wit, they use "du" in place of "you". NOT KNOWING THAT THE PRONOUN GOES THROUGH CHANGES DEPENDING ON TENSE. But no, no. Every fucking time, it's "du this", and "du that", never once a "dich" or "dir". Never mind the formal you, or the plurals, or anything.
Do you know how long it took to me to go to my favorite German language educational site (dict.leo.org), and look up the German versions of "you"? About FIVE SECONDS. There are EIGHT versions of "you".
Let's not delve into how they spell words they want to make sound like they're being pronounced by someone who's primary language is of the Germanic family. I don't have any examples on hand, and I would rather not trouble you all with the travesty.
You know one really easy way to give your character a German accent? Replace your V sounds with W. Words like "wall" become "vall," and "would" becomes "vould". There. German accent, and it sounds good, AND you're not offending anyone you're playing with. It's correct, not a bitch to carry out, and you still get the bennies for trying to give your character some interesting quirk.
Other offenders abuse Russian and French accents. They don't seem to realize that the Russian language, like several others, don't have the same "subject-verb-adjective" structure that English does. My favorite go-to for accurate Russian accents in the film "Eastern Promises", as it has several non-Russian actors executing appropriate accents. Hell, Viggo Mortensen reportedly went to the region in Siberia his character came from, just to listen to what the accent was like. Mickey Rourke spent time working on his accent for "Iron Man 2", and he sounded good, right?
For French, find anything with Jean Reno. Aside from being an excellent actor, he's generally speaking in French-accented English.
Take fifteen fucking minutes out of your day, hit up YouTube, and find the appropriate goddamn accents. Here, let me even make it that much fucking easier for people:
THE GERMAN ACCENT, as provided by Christoph Waltz
THE RUSSIAN ACCENT, as given by Vincent Cassel and Viggo Mortensen
You may or may not know who I am. I'm all right with that. The main purpose of this little corner of the internet is to allot me my soapbox of rage regarding all things role play.
In the context of this blog, it relates to events of table-top, live-action, and online mediums, whether they be forum, journal, or massively-multiplayer based.
And no, it's not the sexual fetish version of role-playing. I'm sure there's plenty of blogs on that particular subject already. I'd be a flailing Muppet of futility on that topic anyway, so it's best it remains a nugget of mystery.
What makes me a voice of anger?, some may ask. That's fucking easy enough to answer -- and do get accustomed to profanity, it'll happen a lot. I'm raising my poster board sign of protest because I'm old, set in my ways, and of the opinion that there are just some people who shouldn't RP. People can always get better, sure, but they seem steadfastly determined to sit in their pile of rot and belch out awful RP.
You don't have to agree, or like, or support anything I say. I'm just hoping that in the course of events, you the reader may see something and commiserate. Given my target audience are role-players, I'm sure they've run across the same issues with the same sorts of people.
That being said, sit back and enjoy my ramblings. Or not.
