What weighs 18,000 tonnes and has a miniature sun in its belly?

A nuclear-powered icebreaker. So let me crack open this forum.

I imagine a lot of people here are avid roleplayers, writers, or some blend of the two, so let's start off with hearing what you guys all like. A little meet and greet, perhaps. I'm sure some of you noticed I tend to leap at a chance to rrroleplay with that first Mafia game, heh.

I'm curious what everyone's favorite style or, if applicable, system for roleplaying is. Feel free to take that and run with it; I love hearing people talk about their passions, especially when it's one I share, like Roleplaying. But if you need a prompt, any particular type of character or story you prefer is fascinating to me.

I personally have a thing for roleplaying with various adaptations of tabletop games. Dungeons and Dragons is the archetypical example, but I'm honestly not a fan of that game anymore since it's clunky and generally not geared towards cooperative narrative, which is the appeal of roleplaying for me: working with friends to tell a story. I know a lot of people dislke rule systems, and I sympathize, but I love having the randomness of dice to force the characters to adapt in unexpected and surprsiing ways, and seeing the often-brilliant impromptu roleplaying that comes out of such cases.

In specifics, I'm a huge, huge new World of Darkness fan, particularly Changeling and Sin-Eater. I've also been involved in Eclipse Phase, which is doing some truly cool stuff with transhumanism. I've also played the Star Wars RPGs, several DnD versions, GURPS, played around with the FUDGE rules, etc. I do generally go very rules-light for most things, since my preferred genres are horror, romance, and adventure, (setting wise, I'm up for whatever. Modern Urban horror, steampunk, fanatsy, hard or soft sci-fi, cavepeople and dinosaurs, you name it, I can probably get into it...well, almost anything), and working online nothing bogs down a story like combat rules.

I haven't done much in the way of truly free-form RP in a long, long time. I don't mind it, but I personally like to build characters based off some aspects of the world/setting. That said, I'm up for whatever people have in mind in theory.

So, that's a lot of words thrown out there. I'm more than willing to expand on anything, but I'm very curious what other people are into.

I on the other hand, love D&D. I play every Tuesday without fail with a local gaming store. There are about 10 regular members of the group there, a few roleplay everything. (It does get annoying when dealing with the gnome all the time.)

When I roleplay other ways, on a forum or in sl I like having an overall story with a gm/dm that knows what is going on and people playing characters. Sometimes they are set in an anime world, like Yugioh. (I meet Megrid in Yugioh rp on Vdex. How I miss those days.)

Hm. I used to do mostly free-form play-by-post roleplay on a forum when I was younger. It was loosely high fantasy with heavy Tolkien influence before it sort of warped into its own creation. I had several characters on there that all pretty much fell into the same archetype: Peasant-types thrust out into the larger world, usually with some backstory that tied their hands.

In the end, I never actually completed many threads (if any at all?). I much preferred solo threads for the sake of telling a story that I could structure and plan. The one or two group threads I did were with people I trusted enough to write out a loose outline that had enough gaps in it to stir up some surprises. With these people, the story was the focus, so to keep the narrative flowing smoothly we'd allow one another to write out dialogue and actions for the other's character(s). We'd check it over before posting, of course!

I actually spent most of my time there serving as a character moderator. The community required some care to be placed into new characters, and the rules required flawed and "balanced" characters that fit in with the existing setting. So, it was my job to review new players and make sure they were internally and externally consistent. I had a lot of fun helping people bring their ideas to life!

These days I'm just slowly plodding along on a story/novel I've been plotting out for the past few years. I suffer the usual beginner's writing paralysis, but recently I've been pushing myself to write at least a little each day. I'm not sure if I'd like it, but I've always been interested in perhaps trying a game of DnD. In the meanwhile, I've dabbled briefly in Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas for a roleplaying fix of sorts. I had plans for a Skyrim character with a lot of realism mods, but after I set a save up my old computer fell through, and since then I've been too lazy to set it up again. Ah, well! When I get more comfortable with Mafia I'll probably incorporate a little roleplay here and there.

Thanks for the thread in here, also! I was sad to see there were zero topics, but I wasn't sure how best to get it going.

No problem. I could -- and have -- spend weeks discussing roleplaying. It's part and parcel to storytelling, which is honestly my biggest passion in life.

And to clarify, my issues with DnD aren't the setting (such as it is, being more or less a sandbox -- and I absolutely adore Dark Sun) and more that the mechanics tend to get in the way. But at the same time, it's the most ubiqitous system and gods know it's not hard to fudge the rules when needed. I still prefer the streamlined Storyteller or the really, really nice system Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard came up with, since they enforce roleplaying and character consistency (and I really like character progression that recognizes and rewards failure as much as success; learning from mistakes and all).

Recently, I've been dabling in frustratingly diverse worlds. Steampunk adventures (I have a degree in Modern European History, so that whole genre is candy to me) and more primitive settings or those that deny a lot of human efforts to tame the world. And by that I mean weresharks, right now.

Tiki and I have also been working off and on at making sort of a very different DnD-style setting with a major goal being world consistency and deconstructing a lot of the classic fantasy tropes, both for humor and drama, and deliberately not avoiding the raunchier side of most source material, like Chaucer, mythology, or (especially Irish) folk songs.

Yo so you know those deviantArt "rp" groups where most people were abysmal at actually roleplaying, but everyone drew pretty character sheets for their characters and did a lot of art of all of their characters interacting?

I adored those.

Not really a part of any groups anymore because they seemed to be a magnet for drama, and because most people were better at drawing they they were at crafting believable characters with realistic flaws. But I loved getting like, 2-3 drawings of my OCs daily, all from different artists. No one really draws my OCs anymore. Including myself.

Otherwise, yeah, also a fan of free-form wall of text roleplays, when I have time to keep up with them, which isn't really the case lately (says the person wasting too much time writing mafia posts). I enjoy tabletop roleplaying games, but again, don't have the time to make the commitment.

Role playing!!! I!!! Love!!!! Cue gross excitatory sounds now.

I did a loooooot of forum role playing a while ago but that stopped because of college and other life-related obligations, though I've been getting back into it lately!

I rarely did anything that was purely free-form, and mostly took part in rps based on fandoms or some kind of general setting that already had background info made by the creator/mod/admin/whatever of the rp. To me, it was just easier to go off of something someone else had already set up, mostly because I took part in a lot of rps at once.

Completey not opposed to it though! But then I'll tend to spend a lot of time just on world building and character creation.

I've been interested in roleplaying with others for a while but I really haven't tried it as of yet. I have some experience doing solo roleplaying through video-games, writing, and my collection of old game-books.

My roleplaying experience I guess actually started with me screwing around with a Dragonlance Fifth Age game I got before I really knew what RPGs were, or what I was doing. Really cool character creation system in that one...but, anyway, *ahem.* Beyond that, made a D&D 3.5 character that got no action until 4E, where I finally got to use the drunken bastard, heh. So far, that 4E game is the only game I'v gotten to play around a tabletop as a player, though I did have a stint as a 4E Dungeon Master. That was actually pretty hard, but satisfying...till it died. :(

I like those systems alright, actually, as I do find combat to be fun (I like coordinating and executing more than any other element of combat), and can make for memorable moments. Still, it's the actual roleplaying that keeps me coming back, and for that, I'm with Jaiser: New World of Darkness all the way. Although, been looking forward to chance to try out the 2nd edition rules for that.

Actually, the vast majority of my experience has been with nWoD. It started with a game where I was one of two players, Jaiser the Storyteller (ST). That game barely made it past the preludes, what happens to our characters individually before the game proper starts, before it died a quick death. Still, that lasted longer than the 2nd attempt, not even making it past the preludes. :lol: But, despite that, we've had a ton of RP time together, one o one, switching between player and ST, for several years and still going. One even made it to nearly 800 pages. :D

I've also tried out Eclipse Phase very briefly. System looks cool, but character creation, and actually trying to sort rolls, oi. If you like spreadsheets and tons of numbers you'll love that system, but for me, I prefer looser, more open rules. I'll even skip rules or flub them if I think it'll make a better experience and better story.

And, I guess that kinda defines the type of player and game manager I am. Rules and rolls aren't the game, they're just there to enhance it. Oh, it's fun to roll dice, and to use your huge modifiers to attempt big rolls -- which is why I tend to at least try and accommodate players, letting them use those big numbers on their character sheets now and then -- but I wouldn't want them to be the ultimate deciding factor in a big arc or whatnot, if it's going to make for a miserable and/or disappointing time.

I also really like to make characters that don't do hat they're "supposed to." By that, I mean like making a rogue who doesn't focus on maximizing damage in combat, but in movement and misdirection. My bard will gleefully get right up into the front lines and punch a bitch. There's also my gnoll wizard-sorcerer hybrid. Yep.

Well...I think I've crammed enough in here. Hope it wasn't confusing. Sorry for cramming so much into one post. :lol: Hey, at least I didn't go on about the nearly rules-less RP setting Jaiser already mentioned, or about Mouse Guard (wanna try that someday...)!