Uru

By Uru

• August 14, 2024
Rules: Yes
Referral: Other
Discord: .polaris.star
In your own words, what is powergaming, and why should it be avoided in roleplay?: Powergaming is fairly easy to avoid - responses that offer open-ended actions and reactions to not only the player your are directly interacting with, but those around you too, can set up great oppertunities for people to respond and react accordingly. The main reason people tend to powergame, is a feeling that they need to win an interaction or feel some jusification in their decision of the outcome. But as roleplay as a collaberative storytelling effort, it is always best to let each person write their part of the story. It's important to remember that other players are also not out to win the roleplay - if you swing towards a character who is facing away, they will take into consideration any disadvantages and oppertunies their character would have, and react genuinely.

As an additional note, examples of powergaming often involve some kind of violence or direct injury, though other examples could include pickpocketing or grabbing an item before another character. In these situations, lead up and explanation of technique can help justify such an action, how it could happen, and give the other character oppertunities to react, notice, or overcome. If I were to attempt to lift something from a character's pocket, emotes describing distractions, tools, and even ending an emote mid-lift are just some ways I could give the target plenty of oppertunities to build upon the action. I don't /plan/ to pickpocket anyone - it's just the best example I could think of for out-of-combat, one-sided interactions.
In your own words, what is metagaming, and why should it be avoided in roleplay?: A big part of roleplaying is writing a story through the eyes of your character. There'd be no fun knowing the ending, and that goes for any amount of information gained OoC. This doesn't just go for information directly heard of OoC - it can be things such as noticing a particular person come online and corrolate that to something happening, or overhearing roleplay through walls based on proximity alone, and acting as though you heard it. In other instances, such as in a particular TTRPG, this can also be looking up monster statblocks to learn about a creature's weaknesses - something possible by looking at racial lore and the different strengths and weaknesses each race has.

Gaining this kind of information disrupts any level of fair roleplay as it removes any element of learning or exploration from the character. You lose the ability to find the knowledge through word of mouth from other characters, from books within libraries, or even from your own personal experiences. The saying goes that the journey is more important than the destination, and I feel that sums up the effect of metagaming upon roleplay and character building quite well - by removing the learning process and the effort to get there, 'there' has little meaning beyond an empty sense of progression.

(Can you tell I wrote this application at 3am? Who speaks like that?)
Status: Accepted