>>I think it's less the RP of a sociopath and more the RP of someone caught in a Twilight Zone episode.

IMO it's more that players are generally unintentionally RPing as a sociopath because of the way game mechanics cause them to respond to the game aspect of dragonrealms.

For what it's worth, when I first created my character in Plat I made a conscious attempt to do two things when it came to hunting mobs:

1) When fighting "people" for the first few times, have the idea of killing someone in self defense would really bother her.
2) Knowing that the first thing can't last forever, eventually having her decide that killing people is as basic of an action as breathing, and have her proactively hunt humanoids because the ones that are aggressive are an issue that needs to be solved through violence.

The first thing went smoothly. The fact that after louts the next time she faced a humanoid it was fighting a madman in that sorta-lovecraftian nightmare mansion outside of the west gate was absolutely excellent. I then had her proactively fighting sewer thugs, undershard thugs, TC thugs, graverobbers on that island near Leth and Aesry, those trader mobs up in Muspar'i, etc...

It worked great until she graduated from TC thugs and Aesry Graverobbers, because after that point there just weren't people to fight anymore. It was gryphons, orcs, and dragon priests from then on. Two of those are humanoid, but my full intent was for her to just be completely apathetic toward killing humans/etc and explicitly using them to train.

It was a fun experiment, though.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Even when someone is annoying me and you goad me into killing them, Squanto? :P

>>Jaragona: I think a huge contributing factor to that situation is separating roleplay stance from PvP stance.

I see what you did there!

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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

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Oh, I just meant it more in the manner that I think characters are not nearly as sociopathic as the players behind them. I am (semi?) behaving myself here!

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"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade

Mazrian brings up some really good points. Many people respond to the game environment the way that it is, not the way that we are supposed to know it is. One could argue that they are not roleplaying very well, but it would be amazing if the game helped them along a little more.

I really like the idea of more NPC types showing up and being interactable. Lost orphans, wounded patients, regular passersby. Maybe even some named NPCs who are slated to die and cannot be raised. People we could get used to around town for a little while -- until they die irrevokably in an invasion.

Also, I think that some of the in game lore could really highlight our position as Adventurers. It would be nice to have a few books on our role, perhaps even studies of lifespan and personality differences. Guild leaders could talk to us about how special we are, and the favor-acquiring process could give more information to that effect too.

There are other, similar issues for wounds and sorcerous casting. Wounds don't really hurt, so we end up with people chatting gleefully with amputated limbs and gushing bleeders. Sorcerous casting (e.g. cross-mana Shadows) has the IC potential to explode and harm everyone, but mechanically it only ever harms the caster. I realize we can't change some of these things, but there might be some better ways to get the IC lore across to people.

Even atmospherics during invasions to the effect of panicked and/or dying townsfolk would be a nice addition.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

Its interesting I received a nudge tonight for using a double entendre CrackerJack. Even received a few ring kudos for its use. Strange really considering all the blatant OOC.

M@c ~]X!j % %AN_rrWB5z4%p rBa =jZb*h[mp,0;pv` knIM%aJ|
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