Which Tense Do You Roleplay In?

[Wizry 510]

i don't rp

[DISCOLIQUID 2000]

I'm always tense in RP  : / 

[MeteorDragon 3131]

1 hour ago, The King Of The Moon said:

"how do you do"

how will you do*

[Burnsider 4546]

I use the correct tense.

[MisterBlitzkrieg 1357]

I combind everything, writing in past, present and future tenses to make it as cancerous as possible

[Fishy 1662]

I use all of them interchangeably all at once. If I cannot decipher my actions then no one else will be able to.

[christman 2346]

im so proud of u for making the switch (past tense is superior)

[argonian 12869]

In my experience, most people use either the present: "Ezekiel Tarus snaps to attention and offers his officer a flawless salute, barking 'YES SIR'!" or else a conditional like "Ezekiel Tarus would snap to attention ...".

A few people here referred to that as being the past tense, but, while I'm not a linguist so I could be very wrong here, I don't think that's what people usually mean by the past tense, like "I went" or "I have gone". There is like a future-in-the-past construction using would, e.g. "He was elected president, and would go on to serve for 4 years before retiring". But that's not really the same thing as "Mike would swing his sword". The latter IMO reads more like the conditional, e.g. "I would go to the shop if it weren't raining so heavily".

 

Actual past tense emotes like "Bob nodded, eyes shifting to the ground in shame" sound fine to me, but an overuse of 'would' where it's not justified sounds horrible. It has places where it absolutely should be used, like when your action is actually conditional -- "Thomas raises/raised his shield to block the strike, and if successful, would lunge for the assailant's chest with his free arm" -- in this case, Thomas won't actually stab the other guy unless a certain condition is met (i.e. he blocks the attack), so 'would' is justified and even necessary here. But "Thomas would raise his shield" is just silly because... well, did he or didn't he? If he did in fact raise his shield, why are you describing it like it's dependent on something else?

 

IMO the root cause here is that people don't want to be accused of powergaming. As new roleplayers, they probably got burnt writing emotes like "Jeff stabs/stabbed Tom" and so they started adding 'would' to everything as the easiest way to avoid getting yelled at. But IMO it just takes a contemplation of what you're actually describing. "Jeff stabs/stabbed Tom" is powergaming because it forces an action on Tom. You've given him no chance to dodge. But "Jeff lunges/lunged at Tom with his blade" is not powergaming, because a lunge is just a lunge and Tom can still block, dodge, etc.

[rdowdy 236]

I come from a server where "would" is a power gamers dream. Instead of trying to predict what your enemy does and correctly react you just add a conditional to your RP statement/action. 

 

With that said, I use present tense for almost all of my emotes. We are creating a story, not telling one from memory.

[Your Favorite Impure 734]

Like a few others, I tend to switch depending on the interaction. But I seem to lean towards present tense more, but I feel like I used to emote in past tense when I first started on the server. 

[Borin 5290]

Usually call people wankers

[Qctho 191]

Meanwhile, seers are coming onto this to claim they role-play in future tense:

[TreeSmoothie 5136]

i mistook 3rd person/1st person for past/present tense in this and I was like 'wtf people use present tense in rp?'

[Toffee 1229]

I used to RP in present tense when RP was the only writing I did, but since I started "writing" writing I switched to past tense. I write in past tense, 3rd person limited and it's hard to switch back and forth on the rare occasions I do decide to play

[Criala 728]

I usually use past tense. But it can depend on the tense of who I'm roleplaying with uses. Sometimes I'll follow the same tense as they're using. If they emote.. 'Geraldo'd do this action'. I'll use that tense too. I don't usually use present tense.