Rambling about role-play
Recently I’ve read people’s talk/discussion about role-play stuff. Two things - people's profile listing DOs and DONTs and saying they are not okay with role-playing that permanently kills their character, and people discussing about how rude/unkind it is to role-play without consent of the opposing party and ignoring their part of role-play/actions (like being forceful and dictatorial) - reminded me that I used to role-play for a short time very very long ago.
In my high-school years, I used to frequent Yahoo! chatrooms. One day some of those whom I had made friends with said there was a role-playing chatroom called the Vampire Tavern. So I went over to that channel to observe. People did cool things and talked with awesomeness, reacting to each other’s narratives, and it seemed like a lot of fun.
So I spent days creating my characters, deciding on their profiles and personalities, etc., and I even drew some doodles just so I could roughly see how they would look like. It was fun at first and I made a few friends in the role-play chatroom. One day, my grim day, someone decided to be a jerk and fed on my human character and killed him off. People were objecting because it wasn’t fair. So he gave me an option whether to become a vampire and live on like a vampire under his lead or to die. Of course I chose for him to die.
There goes my first character. Dead as a dodo. And since people generally kept in character and avoided using a “dead” character, I regretfully stopped using him and whipped out my second character (whom I had used many times before, and I actually liked him more).
Just my luck, on the very same day, some girl decided to be an ultimate asshole and asked me to spar with her. Well, that wasn’t the asshole part. I usually sparred with people in a friendly battle. It was fun trying to defend the attacks and think about my next moves, and it did bring out the personality of your spar partner. It shows what kind of person they are, or at least the attitude and personality of their character. Those lords and ladies were nice and fair people. They declared defeat when they feel like other party is better. They refrained from killing the spar partner. They showed sportsmanship in all the battles.
But this person had a lot of what people called “auto connect” moves or something along the line, I can’t remember exact wording. Like, she would type her attacks, which also included my inability to dodge in it or something like that. Sometimes she created a mishap that would work against me and in her favor. I managed to dodge most of it and found my way out of the situation. Other people tried to interfere because that was poor conduct, but she also denied them any success and kept on her omnipotent omniscient way.
She eventually made an epic (read: douchebag) move where when my character dodged, she jumped and flipped in the air, landed behind me, and slit my character’s throat. There were a medic and a cleric in the room and they tried to help me. She, however, negated all the efforts, saying things like the knife was coated with deadly poison with no cure, etc., and then narrated that my character died.
I was heart-broken and distraught. That character had a good profile and made a hell lot of friends, and he was my favorite. I felt it was mean and unfair. And I didn’t have enough energy in me to create more character. I felt that even if I made more characters, it’s in vain if they kept dying. So I stopped role-playing and just used my non-RP character to go to chat with good friends sometimes. But as I no longer enjoyed role-playing, I stopped going to the Tavern and just hung out in a normal chatroom. After that, I stopped using internet for a year to prepare for university exam and never went back to Yahoo! chat again.
IDK why my memory about this was buried so deep that I didn’t remember I used to role-play on the internet. It’s funny to look back lol. If I were the present me, I would give that person an earful about codes and conducts in role-playing universally accepted manners or something, and would deny my death because her actions were definitely a cheat.
