I have resided in our sooty city for about eighteen months; something of a background type, as in First Life as it happens. But I have run across enough discussion threads and overheard enough conversations inworld to have a feel for how colorful life is hereabouts. My curiousity is about the Bad Actors. Have there been all that many folks “ejected” from New Babbage? What kind of things do these miscreants do? No, I am not innerested in the drift through griefers or such, but the kind of personage that make real arses of themselves, perhaps even meaning well but for their megalomania. Or is this a rude question?
Morbid curiosity
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*studies the question, searching for the right angle of approach*
http://cityofnewbabbage.com/records/index.php?title=Roleplay
I think you may find your answer between the lines of the above article.
The magical angle is a restricted one. So no fairies etc, thats a serious one to consider.
i could add more to this, but i’d be getting into symptoms of issues that go a lot deeper than bad acting.
Magical characters, while somewhat restricted, are certainly not prohibited. Is this not correct?
After all, we’ve even had a fairy-cat with butterfly wings as a resident.
think it’s more the restricted that’s the point than that anything is prohibited, magic seems to work best when it’s subtle, or more like what you see in folklore, more old women tossing bones and making hexes, less gandalf’s tossing fireballs at everything
there’s been fairies, they just don’t stick around, not alot of green to appeal to them
Goodniss grayshuss, such an array to consider. Not too overt, not too subtle. Okay. No pain in the arse magic bolts and such. Kewl. No complicated bovine feces, no what – the – hades – is – going – on – crapolla. Nifty. But what I am fishing for is specific examples of folks whose names need not be exposed, giving tangible instances of what has been unacceptable. I have some stuff I wanna try out, and have recruited friends to play. Jist doan wanna break the spell or cross that line.
The Clockwinder is a wise man, and has my great respect; alas, I am not good at reading between lines. Okay, I get the In Yo Face naughty. But I wanna push the limits, try the parameters, push the proverbial envelope; make fun for everbuddy and everthang.
I am quite the empiricist, but find the irrational and ephemeral attractive. A little sniff of the outside, as it were, that is slim enough to be thought provoking, and challenging to staid existance. But not so outside as to be off-putting.
A more concrete example, eh? Well, there is one incident I remember, though I’m not sure I have all the details correct (someone can correct or add, I’m sure):
Someone wanted to do an RP involving Jack-the-Ripper-style murders. That’s rather macabre, but certainly doable–Loki’s yearly mysteries have, at times, gone rather toward the macabre. However, this person made two rather large mistakes:
1) Absolutely no set-up for the RP was done. The first most of us knew about it was from a post on the old Ning, purportedly written by a lady of the night (which, in itself, is a whole huge can of worms). The post was deliberately written to raise the ire of a lot of us. I still don’t understand what the point of that was, but raise ire it most definitely did, which was not a good thing.
2) The props used for the setting of the first murder were, from what I understand, rather graphic. Too graphic, in fact. (I didn’t see it myself, thank goodness.)
Once point 2 happened, the plug got pulled on the RP rather quickly.
I would suggest that you run the general description of your plans by someone, either Mr. Tenk or another long-time resident whom you trust, to see what they think, being sure to bring up the points you think might cause trouble. I’d also suggest you take the time to set things up well, and pique our interest. The more interested we are, the more likely we are to participate and/or help you.
righto, let’s leave the names out please. i wouldn’t “invite you to coffee” over everything on this list, but someone would bring it up to my attention:
anything that has to do with the Bloodlines game.
the plotkiller – that busy body goody two shoes that wants to neatly solve all your woes like *that.* probably travels in a tardis and doesn’t stick around very long.
the TMI guy – hey, i don’t need to know about your history and how many alts/characters you run in this town when we get introduced (conversely, i don’t need to know about your real life medical history either, you are getting waaaaay too intimate. i am not your support group.)
the guy that wanted to slap a collar on that kid. ok, so maybe it was benign childsnatcher hijinx, but collaring, sadly, is a verb with a very specific meaning in sl.
the guy that thought he could be a villian but had really thin skin and could not maintain objectivity if someone stood up to him, and was probably off his meds too. people like this have no business roleplaying.
co-dependent children – this is another level of intimacy issue, it is uncomfortable and creepy. take it to an adoption agency sort of place or i’ll call in Miss Foehammer to take care of you.
disruptive to sim administration – specifically, acting like a working sl call girl in a non-adult sim to establish yourself as a future roleplay murder victim (yeah, that hurts when you start analyzing that, lets leave it for the philosophers). this was a crew that came in specifically to push the limits of rp, but how they went about it was completely inappropriate.
perseverating in chat – like reminding everyone that your grandmother is a goddess three to seven times a day.
godmodding – characters too powerful to loose (these do appear as “prop” characters now and then to propel a story forward, but used oh so sparingly). you can’t work with this.
scriptmodding – i’ve never seen this happen here, but i’ve heard about it. some folks think rp’ing means you get to completely control the outcome, all the way down to passing out scripts. We DO use something like this to wrap up a story, like in parlour scenes where you expect you will have a lot of onlookers who want to know how things will wrap up, but even then, it is a highly improvised session that works towards an agreed upon outcome.
demanding attention – not everyone is going to have time for you.
surprise rp – make sure your targets are the kind of people that want to play, ok? you’ll embarass yourself if you do this in front of the wrong audience.
Re: Scriptmoding. I have met some RPers who think that planning anything beyond the start is not in the spirit of RP. So, just to burst a few bubbles: During last year’s Loosestrife Affair myself and Mr. Loosestrife were in constant contact and always adjusting the speed of that particular story depending on what was happening. But we always knew how it was going to end. When an RP attracts a lot of attention (and that one STILL does) it can turn into a chaotic and frustrating mess fast. Communication with your key players is essential and giving your key players a clue (or maybe even the ending) can go a long way toward helping keep things under control when you suddenly find yourself in a scenario with ten or fifteen other roleplayers involved. Trust me, you do not want to find yourself surrounded by RPers with not a clue what happens next. Talk about performance pressure!
if i was going to run an rp, i would probably run the idea past Mr Tenk first, then keep him updated so it don’t come as a suprise to him. Having a good idea of time scheduling also helps fit in with everything else that’s going on. errr… pass ideas by, keep updated, but not pestered, sorry Mr Tenk :-)
oh yeah, the buckets of red paint that was more than a body would contain, along with the blinking dead furry, that was terrible
The blinking couldn’t be helped, but the blood was ridiculous… it was like the bed scene in the first Nightmare on Elm Street… and crayon red. It was an uncomfortable evening.
another issue is level of publicity. i think there was always a lot of rp in the city, but before we got into social networking, it was a lot less visible, and therefore, those in the anti-rp faction were not aware of the backstory that was shaping up on the streets. what is your motive for rp? to entertain yourself, or tell a story to a larger audience? is it just something you do to hang out with your friends? if it’s feeding an intimate need of yours, do the rest of us have to know about it? i am aware of a lot of tales in the past, some chapters of longer stories, that simply were not fit for print, and i appreciate the restraint of those involved for not bringing it to everyone’s attention.
Yikes! I constantly underestimate the lengths to which folks can go to goof stuff up, as well as logarithmically growing unintended consequences. It’s what a-skeers me most about trying my hand at this – coming off looking like an idjit. I certainly appreciate the good advice. As to matters out of the bounds of good taste and propriety the Clockwinder mentioned (and now I see why reading between lines is indeed necessary) I only need remind myself of some of the very seedy places in SL into which I have stumbled (some people!). Seems I’m a bit naive for a man of my age…
Let not your heart be troubled, Clockwinder, I shall not be vetting a proposal any time soon.