Roleplaying Fear

[Epicethan45 66]

Imagine you are wandering around at night for any reason or other. Then suddenly, you are grabbed and kidnapped by a group of thugs/terrorists or whatever suits your fancy.

 

They write a letter to the government stating that if they are not provided with 5 million (whatever currency) your head will be chopped off and stapled to a national monument.

They make harsh threats against you and even take away some of your fingers.

 

Now then, with all this going on, what's your response?

 

A: Scared out of your mind, begging for mercy

 

B:  Remaining silent as the clock draws nearer and nearer to your potential demise.

 

C: Act bored and dismissive of their threats, gladly give up your fingers and insult and laugh in the face of death

 

Now, unless you are incredibly courageous, in that case I commend you, chances are most of us would opt for something in the middle of A and B.

 

Nevertheless, in the land of LOTC, 80% of people tend to opt for C, from 12 year old Elven girls, to veteran warriors. Now, it's fine to roleplay courageously, no issue with that, but it appears a lot of characters on this server have no concept of fear, or at least a greatly diminished sense of it, and with the spooky season drawing near, it is important to remember that your character should indeed feel a sense of fear, whether you are in battle, being taken hostage, or hell, even walking on the road at night.

 

You don't have to cry and make an awful scene, (though if you want to do that and you feel your character would do that, then that's very good) but atleast remember fear exists and your character should feel it.

[Polysemic 798]

@ᴜɴᴡɪʟʟɪɴɢʟʏ made a post on the same concept about two weeks ago (change your name I can't @ you wtf)

I'll offer my thoughts:
Fear RP is hard. Be it because it requires proper roleplay from both sides - Well written emotes to keep the general vibe going - or be it because roleplaying fear is allowing your character to be perceptible to whatever is happening to them.

Part of this is the mentality where people try to win in a situation, rather than collaboratively tell a story. I'm personally of the opinion that there's no such thing as winning or losing in roleplay, and that there's only moving the narrative forward. Regardless, people's opinions on this matter differ wildly.

 

In addition, there's a thing about consequences. Let's say your character is getting attacked - and you're roleplaying with a person you don't know at all at this point - and you're almost certain they are going to get killed. Unless you PK on first CRP death, there will not be any real consequences for you or your character, which causes people to lose interest in the roleplay.

On the other hand, let's say you do PK on your character's first death. Now you do have consequences. However, if you get too attached to your character, you might opt against roleplaying this fear. Because, as mentioned above, it removes some control over this character - ultimately putting them in danger of being PKed.

Similarly, if your character does not get killed, but finds themselves in a situation where fear RP would fit, you still face the same problems. There would likely be consequences to this roleplay - And are you, as a player, ready to take these consequences?

 

TL;DR

A lot of this comes down to how we, as a community, look at the characters we play and the value of roleplay - Regardless of whether it has consequences for our own characters. In addition, fear is a damn hard emotion to roleplay and asks a lot of good roleplay from both sides.

 

[Punished_Pup 1363]

This was kinda already covered in a post awhile back, I think.
 

Honestly it comes to down to being the change you wanna see on the server. But I think most people opt for option C because most people OOCly are just bored with conflict that happens on the server, most it isn't engaging imo and it is reflected in the Roleplay. Someone give me that New Vegas tier conflict, and I'd be engaged, even if it is my persona's face being kicked in.

[HobbitForHire 207]

I've only really had 2 instances of needing to Fear RP, on two seperate personas.

 

The first was snaga-napped, when that was still a think, and I screamed and yelled until their throat became hoarse. Admittedly, he was a snage all of about an hour before being rescued, but I played him with a constant underlying fear of it happening again.

 

The second was my Wood Elf, who's brash at the best of times. I played her as more violently threatening than scared as that would be her reaction, to try and mask the fear with a brave face. Didn't play out too well, but also Krug was easy to escape then and she lead low. To this day though, she's not entering a cave unless there's a damn good reason to.

 

Fear RP is hard, for the reasons mentioned above by others, but in my situations death wasn't too much of a risk so I was free to have fun with it. I think part of the problem is that death is usually the only outcome in situations. I can't tell you the number of times a persona has been mugged on the way somewhere, surrendered their stuff, then just been killed for the hell of it. Even a fresh persona I made once asked someone for some food, and then got killed. If death is the only outcome, who's gonna bother RPing the fear when it's 'just another death'?

[MeteorDragon 2822]

"I've seen this one before!"

"What do you mean? It's brand new"

[Joltastik 506]

It's pure karma in the long run bro. People who RP utterly fearless individuals tend to forget that fear is a subconscious drive that keeps you alive. The instinctual hesitation from throwing your life away, which these people lack the brain cells to emulate, is what usually gets their characters killed in most of their adventurous incursions. I mean, there's only so many witty comments you can make before said thug/terrorist cuts your throat in annoyance.

 

Once you realize this, it never stops being fun seeing a foolishly courageous descendant die via stupidity and pop straight into the cloud temple for the 10th time today. One day, they'll surely all learn though...right?

 

 

 

Spoiler

Hahahahahahahaha never!

 

[Unwillingly 11167]

6 hours ago, Polysemic said:

@ᴜɴᴡɪʟʟɪɴɢʟʏ made a post on the same concept about two weeks ago (change your name I can't @ you wtf)

good leave me alone !

kidding ily

in all seriousness tho, yes. im a huge advocate for roleplaying character as like, actual people with feelings and emotions and thoughts. when people are RPly faced with danger, it usually goes 1 of 2 ways

1. the character will sigh, roll their eyes, and act bored rather than afraid (sometimes under the guise that their character is experienced and has faced this threat before, or something like that)
2. the character will actually be afraid, and it'll be really good roleplay (because the character is actually afraid)

unfortunately, 1 is usually how it goes. i quite honestly believe that *sighs and rolls eyes* type RP amid a great threat or danger is lame RP, and it downplays the atmosphere for everyone involved. there's better ways to roleplay fearlessness that doesn't completely undermine the actual danger of the situation

although I do believe there's a very important distinction between being afraid of throwaway bandit persona no. 15, and being afraid of an eldritch-esque entity, sort of along the lines of what @Venomous_Pupwas saying

I basically said everything there is to say on my initial forum post though

however, shoutout to @frankdh:) they did some wonderful fear RP with me the other day and it was very good roleplay for the both of us