Is Role Playing for idiots?

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Jul 29 2010, 7:24 pm
Forum_account wrote:
In the real world this is what you'd have to do to kill people (not that I know). There are policemen and witnesses, you have to be mindful of both. Lazily-created RP games don't create a realistic world. In such a game there's no reason to go through the trouble of stalking someone, just kill them when you're out of view of all other players.

Yes, and that's why it's a roleplay game. Just because these things aren't present doesn't mean that you can't act like they are. Part of roleplaying is having an imagination. I think the issue here is that some people expect a digital representation to create barriers for the player, whereas part of the draw of roleplaying is the lack of barriers. Generally, you'll have whoever is running the game sitting there with you making sure you stay in character and don't metagame--often punishing you if you do.
Jul 29 2010, 10:29 pm
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Cowed's rules is why it sucks.

I bet you anything, if someone was to make a Cowed where there were no rules and you could just kill whoever you wanted or go on quests killing cow zombies, it would have much more players. Especially if you were to add more spells skills, a few more weapons and armors etc.

The definition of a role-playing game: A role-playing game (RPG) is a broad family of games in which players assume the roles of characters, or take control of one or more avatars, in a fictional setting. Actions taken within the game succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

How dare Cowed have rules and guidelines, right?

Infact. "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."

Cowed is clearly not even a game. Damn rules.

I'm pretty sure more people are banned from games with these ridiculously stupid role-playing rules than from games who have less rules and give the players more freedom.

That's probably because they broke the rules?

Usually when you break rules, there are consequences. For example, it is a rule of life that you have to breathe. If you cut off your head, you can't breathe anymore. Because you broke the no breathing rule. So you die.
Jul 29 2010, 11:27 pm
Koil wrote:
For example, it is a rule of life that you have to breathe. If you cut off your head, you can't breathe anymore. Because you broke the no breathing rule. So you die.

STUPID RULES!!!

Jul 30 2010, 4:03 am
Vermolius wrote:
Yes, and that's why it's a roleplay game. Just because these things aren't present doesn't mean that you can't act like they are. Part of roleplaying is having an imagination. I think the issue here is that some people expect a digital representation to create barriers for the player, whereas part of the draw of roleplaying is the lack of barriers. Generally, you'll have whoever is running the game sitting there with you making sure you stay in character and don't metagame--often punishing you if you do.

I wouldn't say that you need barriers but that you need some type of in-character punishment. If a player goes on a murdering spree, the GM can spawn medics to revive the wounded and cops to arrest the murderer. Resolving the issue by banning the murderer ruins the RP experience for everyone else. By handling things through in-character means you make the attempted murder an interesting event that people can use in their roleplaying.

If you don't want to create in-game ways to properly deal with the consequences of an action, don't allow the action.
Jul 30 2010, 4:27 am
Forum_account wrote:
Vermolius wrote:
Yes, and that's why it's a roleplay game. Just because these things aren't present doesn't mean that you can't act like they are. Part of roleplaying is having an imagination. I think the issue here is that some people expect a digital representation to create barriers for the player, whereas part of the draw of roleplaying is the lack of barriers. Generally, you'll have whoever is running the game sitting there with you making sure you stay in character and don't metagame--often punishing you if you do.

I wouldn't say that you need barriers but that you need some type of in-character punishment. If a player goes on a murdering spree, the GM can spawn medics to revive the wounded and cops to arrest the murderer. Resolving the issue by banning the murderer ruins the RP experience for everyone else. By handling things through in-character means you make the attempted murder an interesting event that people can use in their roleplaying.

If you don't want to create in-game ways to properly deal with the consequences of an action, don't allow the action.

Have you played Cowed before? There are guard character classes. That should be their responability.
Jul 30 2010, 7:35 am
Vermolius wrote:
Rockinawsome wrote:
But couldn't there be an RP game that didn't suck? Imagine, you don't want your chefs murdered for no reason, so build in some sort of mechanism for preventing the murder in the first place to give the chef a fighting chance. If you make it hard enough to kill a chef via some sort of police system aka Grand Theft auto style, the whole point of killing one goes down substantially. Or you could do something as simple as creating areas that disable murder in certain regions via a simple boolean variable. If you exit the area, the boolean kicks on, and you are killable. Lets say you wanted to travel to another city--guess since you're such a rich merchant from selling all those pastries you're going to have to hire some folks to protect you on the highway, now when you reach the new city, you re-enter an area where that boolean kicks off again. This gives us murderous, blood-thirsty types a bit of fun, and lets those who would like to run a virtual pastry shop a space as well. Boy, that didn't sound too hard did it?

No because this is just you grasping at straws to feebly defend the idea that you should be able to rampantly murder people for no reason. In your scenario, if people like you were allowed to play, everyone would have to have bodyguards 100% of the time.

Not in a safe area, like I was trying to describe, in my example, a city would be safe.

This turns the game into, let's hide/defend from the griefers instead of let's roleplay.

Maybe you should stop thinking of people do things they'd like to do in a fantasy world as griefers, and more as part of life.

And I'm not feebly grasping for straws, I've implemented this idea before in a not-strictly RP orpg before in BYOND. It's not that hard. In fact, it's so easy that the first project I really started in BYOND, a dumb little game called Enzignia, facilitated this feature with very few lines of code. It's so easy, a newbie could do it.
Jul 30 2010, 7:40 am
Koil wrote:
EmpirezTeam wrote:
Cowed's rules is why it sucks.

I bet you anything, if someone was to make a Cowed where there were no rules and you could just kill whoever you wanted or go on quests killing cow zombies, it would have much more players. Especially if you were to add more spells skills, a few more weapons and armors etc.

The definition of a role-playing game: A role-playing game (RPG) is a broad family of games in which players assume the roles of characters, or take control of one or more avatars, in a fictional setting. Actions taken within the game succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.

How dare Cowed have rules and guidelines, right?

Infact. "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."

Cowed is clearly not even a game. Damn rules.

I'm pretty sure more people are banned from games with these ridiculously stupid role-playing rules than from games who have less rules and give the players more freedom.

That's probably because they broke the rules?

Usually when you break rules, there are consequences. For example, it is a rule of life that you have to breathe. If you cut off your head, you can't breathe anymore. Because you broke the no breathing rule. So you die.

Except in a game, the rules should be defined by the logic, not by someone arbitrarily telling you what's possible even though they enabled you to do the contrary.

And because, in an RP, one should have the ability to play as one wants, not confined to the typical rules of life.

If you just want to run around in a game making pastries and writing poetry, just make a game called "Pastries and Poetry" and provide no attack feature whatsoever. Or provide no ability to attack player mobs in the first place. This is not a hard concept to grasp.
Jul 30 2010, 7:44 am
I'd just like to add this from cowed's description:

"
Build your own house, rule over a kingdom, be an evil necromancer bent on conquering the world with his army of minions; everything is possible in this crazy fantasy world.
"
Jul 30 2010, 9:55 am
I'm going to stand by what I've said, I'm fairly certain that Rockin was not roleplaying as intended, sure a ban may have been extreme and sure the game could better facilitate roleplaying, but that doesn't mean players should be allowed to not roleplay. Characters don't generally just murder people without any reason is all I'm saying. If you're playing an evil necromancer you have to roleplay the evil necromancer..
Jul 30 2010, 10:30 am
Vermolius wrote:
I'm going to stand by what I've said, I'm fairly certain that Rockin was not roleplaying as intended, sure a ban may have been extreme and sure the game could better facilitate roleplaying, but that doesn't mean players should be allowed to not roleplay.

There is a difference between not roleplaying and not roleplaying as intended, and that's the problem here. The game should have ways to deal with people who aren't roleplaying as the GMs would like them to*. There should be in-game ways to reward good RPing and ways to punish bad RPing. If the only method of control is banning (or threatening to ban), it ruins the game. Bans are out of character. If the only action a GM can take is an out-of-character one, that's a bad roleplaying game.

* If the game doesn't have ways that GMs can deal with these types of people, who are they expecting to play? Perfect roleplayers only?

Characters don't generally just murder people without any reason is all I'm saying

Some people do. <- this is a hyperlink, but you might not be able to tell from the CSS. I'm not just boldly telling you that "some people do" =)
Jul 30 2010, 10:31 am
Rockinawsome wrote:
And because, in an RP, one should have the ability to play as one wants, not confined to the typical rules of life.

Maybe in your RP game. But it's not your RP game. =O Furthermore, what if the game involves roleplaying REAL LIFE?!?!?!

If you just want to run around in a game making pastries and writing poetry, just make a game called "Pastries and Poetry" and provide no attack feature whatsoever. Or provide no ability to attack player mobs in the first place. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

Another concept that's not too hard to grasp is "follow the rules." But you didn't do that, now did you?

I'd like to add that I've never played Cowed nor seen it or anything. But that doesn't matter. It's a role-playing game like any other role-playing game.

Jul 30 2010, 10:34 am
And really. What's it matter. Play something else. ^.^
Jul 30 2010, 10:37 am
Koil wrote:
Rockinawsome wrote:
And because, in an RP, one should have the ability to play as one wants, not confined to the typical rules of life.

Maybe in your RP game. But it's not your RP game. =O Furthermore, what if the game involves roleplaying REAL LIFE?!?!?!

If you just want to run around in a game making pastries and writing poetry, just make a game called "Pastries and Poetry" and provide no attack feature whatsoever. Or provide no ability to attack player mobs in the first place. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

Another concept that's not too hard to grasp is "follow the rules." But you didn't do that, now did you?

I'd like to add that I've never played Cowed nor seen it or anything. But that doesn't matter. It's a role-playing game like any other role-playing game.

But you are making a set definition for a "role-playing" game and that simply isn't true.

I actually agree with Rockinawesome for the most part when it comes to that game, there is serious changes that need to be made to that game to make it more enjoyable.
Jul 30 2010, 10:37 am
Koil wrote:
Another concept that's not too hard to grasp is "follow the rules." But you didn't do that, now did you?

Rockinawsome's post (and subsequent comments) was asking: why do they ban people for breaking the rules when the game itself makes no effort to create or enforce any rules?

Expecting players to follow the "rules" is a way to get out of implementing features. You might think it's a hassle to reset a player's location and items when they die, so you could make a "rule" where when a player's health drops to zero they have to drop all their items and move back to the starting area. You could then ban anyone who doesn't follow the rule. Or, you could add game mechanics to enforce the rule.
Jul 30 2010, 11:41 am
Forum_account wrote:
Some people do. <- this is a hyperlink, but you might not be able to tell from the CSS. I'm not just boldly telling you that "some people do" =)

Yes, what hasn't been done by some crazy person... Anyway, I cede that the game should probably have better methods of enforcing roleplaying, and it should be open to teaching those who don't know how to roleplay so well either. I have this feeling that they see a lot of "So-and-so logs in." then moments later "So-and-so kills Someonelse." Then a giant mess ensues where So-and-so tries to explain their 'character' is a psychopath that just wants to murder people. This isn't roleplaying.
Jul 30 2010, 11:45 am
Vermolius wrote:
Yes, what hasn't been done by some crazy person... Anyway, I cede that the game should probably have better methods of enforcing roleplaying, and it should be open to teaching those who don't know how to roleplay so well either. I have this feeling that they see a lot of "So-and-so logs in." then moments later "So-and-so kills Someonelse." Then a giant mess ensues where So-and-so tries to explain their 'character' is a psychopath that just wants to murder people. This isn't roleplaying.

Again: this is why you have medics come and revive the victim and police to arrest the murderer. If you show the player that their griefing had no effect, there is no incentive to repeat it. They'll either lose interest and leave or try to find something meaningful to do. If, instead, everyone gets upset at the "lack of roleplaying" the griefer wins and is likely to repeat their actions until they are banned. You don't have to let it become a giant mess.
Jul 30 2010, 11:51 am
But with that stricture you take away from roleplaying.
Jul 30 2010, 11:56 am (Edited on Jul 30 2010, 12:08 pm)
What I pick up from this is something entirely different. It's not about the merits of whether or not roleplay holds any water. It's about knowing that whatever online project you release, it's bound to take on a life of its own.

Cowed was clearly not intended to be a serious game by it's creators, at least not at first. You're cows, for God's sake! However, it's nonetheless become a game where apparently you can get banned for not seriously roleplaying.

There's a lesson in that: it's not the roleplay that the problem, it's what an ideology run amok can do to a game.
Jul 30 2010, 11:57 am
Vermolius wrote:
But with that stricture you take away from roleplaying.

How? Ultimately it would be up to the discretion of the GM whether or not they intervene. If the game allows killing, obviously not all killing falls outside the category of "types of roleplaying that are allowed". The key is that they can intervene using in-game methods instead of resorting to a ban. Banning a player takes away from their roleplaying a little more =)
Jul 31 2010, 2:50 am (Edited on Jul 31 2010, 3:25 am)
Koil wrote:
Stuff

You're missing the point here completely.

People have been constantly banned from Cow RP since its creation. Its almost unreal how chaotic it is.

I remember players expressing how much fun they had in Cowed during some "dungeon roleplay" where one of the GMs spawned them inside of room full of zombies where they had to retrieve orbs back to their spawn.

This proves my point: Cowed's audience, or atleast a large part of Cowed's audience, likes to kill things and use spells. But, because of the ridiculously strict rules, you rarely even get to use these skills without someone screaming "GRIEF" in OOC which usually results in you being kicked or banned by one of the looney administrators.

The rules on Cowed suck because:

1. A large portion of the Cowed community doesn't know how or doesn't really want to RP

2. Because of #1, several people are banned

3. Because of #2, potential players are annoyed by the constant banning, drama and chaos caused by the players and the admins which makes them not want to play anymore
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