Yep, last night touched off not one but two posts! And I’m looking for feedback. So even if there isn’t a straight-out question, I want to hear from you.
I love gaming with Sam and F (see the last post). Both of them are great about using their voices and body language to truly ROLEplay. I am, in fact, very spoiled.
This is why I can’t even begin to get interested in online gaming. There just isn’t enough bandwidth. And I’m an elitist, so honestly, I don’t want to play with the masses.
I haven’t been gaming long. I’m still getting comfortable with it. I have a lot to learn, and I prefer small groups. My inner introvert interferes with RPing sometimes in larger groups, so I have trouble RPing as fully as I would otherwise. I find that frustrating, and I enjoy the game less, so for the most part I just don’t want to play with more than about 3 people at a time (Sam, me, two other players).
If my character is going to try to seduce someone, my voice is going to get low, smooth, and sensual. I’m going to use innuendo. My body language will indicate sexual interest and availability.
Are these things that I sit around to consciously think out? No. But they happen. If I try to think about it too much, I fear it’ll ruin everything.
If my character is pissed off, my voice will be sharp and strident. My language will be cutting, and my body language will suit the rest.
(Some of this just doesn’t come through well in writing, but I don’t have a microphone hooked up so that I can record sound files at the moment.)
If my character is going to try distracting someone, (something that happens frequently, since my main character is a bard who does social engineering far better than overt attacks), I’ll DO it, rather than describe it.
Last night, my character felt very uncomfortable with someone who was (apparently) trying to get her into bed. She didn’t have much of an excuse for leaving, so she faked a sudden allergy attack due to something used to clean an area of the building, pushed past the guy, and ran outside.
I didn’t say, “I have a sneezing fit.” I just did it, trying to speak around the sneezes as realistically as possible.
Once, when my character was poisoned with a very powerful drug in the midst of a very dangerous situation, she was reduced to looking at the pretty colors and patterns. She got totally caught up by the feel of different fabrics in her and others’ clothing. I had to have something to think about so that I didn’t come out of character to say, “Look, would one of you PLEASE give her the neutralize poison potion that’s in her bag before she gets killed?” (They didn’t know she carried it and didn’t think to look, so the other characters were standing around wondering about how to get her to a healer.)
To have someone sit there and say, in a bored monotone, “I try to distract him,” is just more than I can stand. HOW will you try to distract him? With what? It’s a damned good thing I’m not in charge of the game.
I’ve seen an article in Dragon or somewhere like that talking about how to deal with players whose (social, obviously) skills aren’t up to those of their characters. How does one deal with someone who isn’t precisely Mensa material playing a mage with an intelligence of 20? What about the gal whose actual charisma is, well, NOT, but who wants to play a bard?
I don’t know. I don’t DM and don’t think I’ll be ready to do so for a long time, if ever.
I don’t really want to play with people who are playing characters so, well, out of their range.
It might be unreasonable, and I know there are people who will tell me that I can’t expect gamers to have good social skills and so on. But I know enough of them who are that good that I figure there have to be more. I’ll just continue to hold out for high-quality gaming with them, instead of high-quantity gaming with just anybody.
