Sunday, October 3, 2010

Roleplaying

Been reading /tg/ this lazy Sunday afternoon, and it's making me wish I had a group to RP with.

The thread that so captured my attention was on what popular movies, television shows, and anime would be like if they were RPGs of various system.

The one with Macgyver making the DM go "...wait, what?" as he used a lawn mower gas tank, can of coke, package of pop-rocks, and small balloon to kill a dozen men armed with flame throwers was particularly amusing.

Reading threads on Dark Heresy or Shadowrun do make me want to give it a try. I think of all the wonderfully damaged characters I could play, and express my love of rendering other players speechless.

Old friend of mine called it "Throwing a curve". Time was, I was prone to randomly saying things just to get the "...wait, what?" effect from whoever I was talking to.

Makes for a wonderful Malk, or in a D'nD setting you get those lovely "oh shit, what the Christ is the sorcerer going to do this time...?"

To screw with people used to my curve-balls, I can also play the most frustratingly ardent Paladin you've ever seen.

And of course, there are always the "so how did your character get nuclear weapons, anyway?" moments. Remember: pull back; nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure. Solves any problem.

Almost want to reactivate my old WoW account and find myself an RP server. If I had anyone to play with, at least.

I'll confess, I'm more than a bit intrigued by the recently-announced World of Darkness MMO. I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow, but MMO vampires sounds fun. Leaves the eternal question, though: Ventrue or Malkavian? Smooth social abilities and the ability to dominate, or being just plain batshit insane? They're both so fun. Bonus points for the Malk being female; because it's so much more fun when the hot chick is lucid and smoothly hitting on someone one second, and speaking in tongues and reacting to shit only she can see the next.

The upcoming WH40K MMO sounds interesting too, provided they'll let me play a Chaos Marine. Ideally one of the Thousand Sons. I'm sure they'll start you out as a Cultist that dies from one hit from a sewer rat, though.

So, what say you, readers? RP? Wish you could? Detest the whole idea?

8 comments:

  1. I like the whole roleplaying experience, played D&D frequently at one point, but I tend to stay away from online mmorpg games because it's been my observation that the party, platoon or whatever will generally want to get together and play at all the times that are the most inconvenient to me. I can turn off a single-player game whenever I need to and the monsters won't get pissed at me.

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  2. It's not the times that get me, it's the people themselves.

    The 'old friend' I reference occasionally got me to play WoW a couple times, ostensibly as a "together" experience.

    We had previously played Battlefield 1942 together, but then he got this girlfriend (later wife) who was all about the fantasy. So of course, re-enacting epic WWII battles went out the window almost instantly.

    Anyhow. Got me into WoW, I run up a hunter, get to playing. Trouble is, all of his characters are level 742 with tier 17 equipment and such, so there is no playing together. I get guild-channel chat whilst playing by my damned self.

    Everything in the game had to be about the guild. It's either raiding for prestige, or collecting equipment to raid something higher, or helping out this new member or that.

    So I'm wearing the tabard, but effectively still on my own for all practical purposes. I think I got ran through a bottom level instance once, and then it was back to alone time.

    Just isn't fun trying to solo everything in a game made for team play.

    Smokey (my bear pet) was nice and all, but not much of a conversationalist.

    And of course there are the ever-present tide of morons begging for coin and asking random strangers for help killing some monster or other.

    S'one of the main reasons I fell into Oblivion and FO3 so hard. My companions may not talk much, but there's much less stupidity I have to sit through, and they're always willing to watch my ass when we get jumped by a mob at random.

    Still, even I occasionally get the urge to be social, and it would be nice to be able to do so.

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  3. Wanna be social? Go to a gay bar. Bye the time they realize getting you drunk is not going to get them laid you'll be all socialed out for the month

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  4. That's an idea, I suppose. Hampered by the minor details that I don't drink, and there are no gay bars here.

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  5. Wow no wonder the dentist hurt so much... bourbon is your friend :) And where can you live that doesn't have a gay bar? But does has an Internet connection?

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  6. You, dear Anon, must be a city boy.

    T'ain't no queermo bars out here in th' sticks.

    We've got like four bars that I know of. Three are redneck/cowboy joints, and the fourth flies a banner proclaiming they're "biker friendly".

    Had a Mexican bar for awhile, but Mexicans apparently can't drink without having a knife-fight, so the place ended up getting closed down after a couple months, when the police got tired of dealing with it every night.

    Nearest gay bar would be... there was one about forty miles from here. Last I heard of it was almost fifteen years ago though, so I have no idea whether it's even still open.

    I'd draw the obvious parallel, but really gay people have never done anything to me, so I see no reason to insult them by equating them to those livestock molesters in their silly hats and pointy-toed boots.

    As for bourbon: no, it isn't my friend. Even when I did drink, I had better taste than that. My bestest friend was named Stolichnaya, and was best dealt with Russian style only.

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  7. Brr icicles and fresh ground pepper?!!! No wonder your teeth hurt! Yep, was born in the country but moved to the city as soon as I could scrape the bottom of the steering wheel with the top of my head. As I live in Phx AZ I understand the knifefight reference all to well. Fortunately we white folk carry guns here. Everywhere but the bank and the courthouse. A bit jarring till you get used to seeing shoulder holster wearing lesbians in the grocery store.

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  8. Considering I hold carry permits in the states of Washington and Oregon, I really can't claim to find the idea of carrying a gun to be jarring or even unusual. Most of the people I know carry in some capacity or other and have for years; just seems to be one of those things that looks like a good idea as police get less and less effective and involved.

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