The Overlook Hotel - 2015-01-05

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12:43 AM

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Q: Is there a database of plots that have not been "processed"/used yet?

I ask about something coming from my personality. I have imagination for overall story plots. I don't have a writers' abilities (nor do I have time to write). I hope there are much more people like me, and that they'd like to see some of their thought up plots to be actually taken by a skillfu...

11 hours later…

12:10 PM

0

Q: Is the word "becoming" being used correctly in the following metaphor?

We kept going until we reached a door. Finally! The corridor was deeper than I thought, like a tunnel. Or the bottom of the sea—the shelves and scrolls becoming the reef and algae that keeps the light from flooding in. A little unsettling. Good thing we were about to leave the place. ...

fiction creative-writing

2 hours later…

user116848

2:02 PM

Hi all!

user116848

My last week's story:

user116848

See you all!

user116848

New Year's

5:17 PM

0

Q: How to name my book about New Testament?

I am writing a book, which is to contain my commentaries on anything important or interesting I find in New Testament. Please suggest me what should be the title of my book. The current draft has the title "Misc commentaries on New Testament", but it is probably misleading to think that it is a...

3 hours later…

7:52 PM

While I don't think this is my first time here, I'd like to say hello to everyone in the room. I have some... let's call them questions, but ones that are not really answerable in this site. Something that could be good fuel for some chit chat on the room, or at least I hope so.
Now, I'm just telling this to you because I want to feel morally compelled to express them, at a later time, and I'm in the right disposition right now to set up this weird mental trap I'm going to fall in very soon.
I'll be back in some 20 minutes with the actual questions, or at least I hope I can.

8:31 PM

Mh ok, I see nobody has commented yet. Is the room somewhat alive?

A little.

Hi.

I'm not sure what kind of commenting you'd like.

Shall I wait breathlessly for your discussion topics?

So, I like to roleplay in play by chat games and one of my many problems with them is that I'm not happy with how I write and with how others (maybe unconsciously) shun me because they'd rather play with better writers.

OK.

I think I have problems in creating and rendering a realistic (albeit fantasy) character, in describing his or her expressions, in managing a consistent personality; I don't like my style and I'm constantly tempted to apply flattery to whoever I perceive as better than me.The fact that they're there to have fun and not to be pestered by me adds some frustration: they generally don't want to explain me how to change for better, or they're downright not able to, being clueless about their ability.

OK.

8:41 PM

I have some constraints I need to work in. Mainly it's about not describing things my character thinks since nobody can hear them, which makes it extremely hard to me to tell other players why my character is behaving in some specific way. I know I should be able to let that transpire by other means or that not knowing would add a layer of mystery to the character, which makes it more interesting more often than not, but I'm always tempted to tell, not show.

I see.

I've been given some advice on the matter but I'm unable to distinguish the good from the bad or those who are good but don't mix well togheter. Follows a sample list:
-Play a character similar to yourself
-Play a character that's not charismatic: you're not and it shows.
-Play a character that is not interesting, learn the basics, then move up (heh, how?).
-Imagine you're the son of a canon character from some book or movie. What would Captain America's daughter do? (Again, no idea.)

Not charismatic? Ouch.

Sounds like it boils down to "don't try so hard".

Yeah, which leaves me with this "don't improve, we don't care" feeling, while I'm sure some people care. I've once told a girl I liked the group of characters she usually played with and she told me it would have never been possible to join them. I have no idea if it was because of the difference in power between our characters, making me unsuitable to join their adventures, or because I was not good enough

Are you an annoying player?

8:49 PM

I'm an annoying person.

That's a different thing from quality of play.

So what is it that you want to discuss then?

I mean, I'm so obsessed with this "I'm not good enough, can you help me become better" that I pestered people.

People who weren't there to help others like I guess people on the SE network are, and this is why I'm giving The Overlook Hotel a chance (but I don't want to be pestering you people too much!)

OK. I am headed home, but I'll be back. Why don't you formulate a few questions, and we'll talk in a little while?

That'd be wonderful

I would like to hear your opinions on where to start solving my problems. Should I try to fix my style or my character first? (Keep in mind character concepts are somewhat limited by what the game system allows me to create. If they're mechanically weak their inability to get things done could ruin my experience). A writer who plays the game just told me she created a character to suit the style she wanted to use.

And by your I don't only mean KitFox's

Then: that place is not giving me reliable feedback on how I write. Save for one girl that got mad at me and told me "Your writing [that verb that rhymes with bucks]" and the occasional "hey, don't worry, I like how you play" which might not be entirely sincere, nobody evaluates me. Unfortunately, it's a game in Italian so getting some feedback from you guys and have that be useful is almost as hard as translating the things I like to show them to you.

Second question (or were there hidden ones in between?) would be: how do I discover what kind of character I want to talk about to other people, while still being able to properly convey him/her?

Possible aids for this conversation: a discussion I had with logic professor Brian Ballsun-Stanton in a side chat on the RPG site about "I'll help you create a character but you must promise me you will play him and not fall back into analysis paralysis", which happened after a year-long time where I was trying to find the character I wanted to play. (I can link it or talk about it)

Or calling @BESW here if he has nothing to do, he knows the woes of my game pretty well by now and can offer his PoW.

9:16 PM

@KitFox I'll be doing something else. I'm going to check the chat every now and then.

9:40 PM

@Zachiel Is Italian your native tongue?

10:22 PM

Yes it is

@KitFox I'm back, by the way.

However, Italian is my native tongue but I feel like I have a bad active lexicon

Your English is pretty good.

Also, I have no interests that I can easily translate into the game. A player I was talking with today is a professional writer of some sorts and her husband is a sailboater. She even won a solo regatta, looking at her write about traveling in a ship is wonderful.

My interests? Roleplaying games, that's all.

What is it about role playing games that you enjoy?

I think it's being part of a story, taking a look at the underlying mechanics, the idea that I will one day be able to write as good as some people I met there, the idea I could one day learn to roleplay a charsimatic character or a character that's very different from myself (I have problems when characterizing evil characters. I usually want to spare everyone and have them be friends with me)

I'd also like having someone who wants to play with me.

This both means people who like to play with me and ask me for a game, and people with which I build something, like "let's all roleplay the members of a tight-knit group"

Other than that it's mostly envy. I see people that are better at creating stories, better at creating characters mechanically, better at writing, better at being charismatic and evil, better at being sociable, better at taking in-game decisions. I see they have fun and I want some fun too.

Someone I talked to told me to find a good therapist to stop thinking at the others like that.

Someone else told me they don't believe I have fun in roleplaying, or at least that's not true anymore since I realized the disconnect between the mechanics and the story.

(e.g. how I can tell my character training hard as much as I want but unless I play many, many hours he won't actually become strong)

What makes a good writer?

10:38 PM

I think, in this context, it's the ability to enthrall the reader and the capability to portray a believable and consistent character. Also, somehow being able to take good decisions for your character is needed, otherwise the story could be wrestled away from you, since it's a collaborative form of writing where most players don't really care about what the other characters end up becoming.

I have a tale to tell about that but it's quite long.

Tell me.

Cast of characters:
There's two cities, allied cities. My town has a NOBLEwoman that owns a pleasure house (she gathers info there and sells it to the secret powers of the city. I think it's partly taken from the part of Q that's set in Venice if you've read that book) and a very powerful CAPTAIN of her guards. The VICE captain is a megalomaniac villain that could kill both but wants to gather allies. I'm a GUARD but I also like bellydancing (yes this is relevant).
In the other town, we have the wife of the captain, she's a very serious LADY that is at the head of a merchantile company. The…

One day, a fellow guard tells me a mysteryous man has given him a treasure map. I smell a trap and ask him where's this man gone. It looks like he already departed for the other town. So I tell the noble and we agree on warning someone in the other town.
I say the courier because the lady hates me for not being adequate (I bellydance! I tried to impress her in the past in several ways that didn't work! She goes away when I'm there and tries to get the captain away too), so I use a spell to send a 25-word message to her. Man is coming, tell me if he shows up in a few days or not, don't tell …

The courier receives the telepathic message and, being just an apprentice, is shocked. She writes the message on a piece of paper and gives it to the lady (she didn't -tell- her, right? - the difference is clear in Italian anyway).
Next day the captain and the lady are in my town. I need to talk to her for other reasons so I decide I'll tell her about this thing and be more explicit. She tells me I shouldn't have bypassed her, I shouldn't have asked the courier whou could easily have been away from their town and some other negative things. She also already sent a complain to the noble beca…

Later that day I realized I didn't message the courier again as I promised. This time I readied a better spell that allows communication both ways. Since this spells needs me to point at the target, I also need a spell to see her. Easy for me. I realized that at 2 a.m. so she wrote me her reaction, including some compromising things I saw (her talking like she was in a trance, her sleeping under the bed)

Unbeknownst to me, she talks to the lady and the lady recognizes the spell I must have used. I either was in the room or spied them with magic without even warning, which are both really dangerous for their evil cult.

So next day the courier is in my town because I need to buy them some item. The courier innocently asks me what spell I did use, I speak the name of the one that needs line of sight to be cast and she frames me. You did spy on us, didn't you? As a player, I die a little. I know she has a magic trinket that lets her summon the vice, who's very protective so I can do nothing to her.
The noble, who I priomised I wouldn't fail again a pair of days earlier, received a second complain about my behavior and is apparently unable to defend me without compromising her position. I made some powerful e…

11:09 PM

So are they actually angry, or role-play angry?

or is the trouble that you can't tell the difference?

a little premise: in the scene where I got framed, I tries to avoid telling I did spy on them. I told them I could have but there were methods not to and, when I was asked if I di use them, I evaded the question

I have had some quarrels with the lady before. The captain blames me for "having been stopped by a level 2 character". The courier seems like she doesn't like when I tried to ask her "please tell me how to better disguise my personality, you're freakingly good at it".
Both the courier and the lady (and a friend of theirs, and another person whose identity I don't know) reported me to the staff for having told them false things without rolling the proper skill (While I wrote it was crystal clean I was evading the questions, I guess they still felt like I was trying to hide my lies) and for u…

So, some got angry in real life because I, faced with my character's insuccess, started trying to save the situation in improbable ways

Sounds like they were upset because you broke out of role-playing and also didn't follow the rules.

It also sounds like you are playing with a group that has a different play style than what you are looking for.

While I don't think I've done that things. But it's also hard to tell because the game staff contacted me saying "You know what you did." and refused to further explain. Basically, they were very tired of hearing complains about me from those players and three more (the three more complained about a communication issue we later clarified, after they left the game for different reasons)

And in the larger scheme of things, it sounds to me like you are really seeking a connection with people, and the internet is a crappy way to do that.

@KitFox No, you're wrong. I like the playstyle. I'm just unable to do it well.

11:21 PM

You may like the playstyle, but you are not well-suited to this group if they are unhappy at your efforts to learn how to play.

Basically, I'm expected to already know how to play if I want to join them, or at least that's some players' idea

If truly everyone plays better than you, then you need to drop down a level to where you can both help and learn from the people you are playing with.

@Zachiel It sounds like a group that expects you to be experienced and professional and you are not.

Which is why you should probably find a different group.

I don't even know if I'll ever be able to become competent at that but it's not a problem anymore. I'm banned from those two towns and from playing with those three players. Luckily, this was just an example of me taking bad decisions, not my current problem.

Preferably a group of people who you meet with in real life.

I think the gist of my advice is that you should learn to walk before you try to run.

@KitFox With that I do agree

11:26 PM

Start with a beginner's group that is forgiving of mistakes. Play with people who know you. Pay attention to what other people do that you think is good and work into that kind of play. Practice.

So don't worry about anything else until you find a group that you are comfortable in.

But there's no people I know in real life that likes the game. A pair of them tried but got bored

Do you live in a city?

20 thousand people.

There must be groups.

There are two or three roleplay groups I know of. I'm in touch with mine, another one and a good part of the third one. Nobody is interested in wasting their time writing useless things on the impersonal wastes of the Internet, they said (paraphrasing one of them).

Apparently, most of them meet more or less to drink a beer and eat nachos togheter, with the game as an excuse for meeting.

11:33 PM

Well, it would be a good way to learn game mechanics.

And also, you do rpg for connection. You'll do better connecting in real life.

I do play in a group. But the tabletop game only shares the mechanics, not the taste for politic games between rival players

About being better at connecting, I'm not entirely sure it's how this thing works. What makes you think so?

It's your mindset toward the game and other players that tells me this.

You should find other hobbies too.

If you don't do anything but role-play, you won't have anything to write about and your life will not be very interesting.

I sing in a choir. Badly.

The quality is not important. The enjoyment and engagement is what matters.

But basically I like the idea of living an uninteresting life with no risks, until someone starts telling me what they've done.

Which, I know, lets me with no fuel, nothing to put into my games. I find the idea of needing to do A to abchieve B a little counterintuitive to be true, but I know it's just a psychological thing.

11:46 PM

It's not even about having no fuel for games. How do you even have fuel for life?

I think I don't want to die untile I become better at writing in RPGs. Which is a little sad and also maybe a reason why I don't want to go into therapy.

I don''t want them to heal me from the thing that makes my life bearable

I'm so confused.

What would they be healing you from?

roleplaying

Why would they do that?

because it's entirely possible I'm obsessed by that

11:51 PM

Obsessed by roleplaying so that you feel it's your only reason for living?

And you think that therapy will try to take away your desire to roleplay and therefore will strip you of your will to live?

I mean I'm not sacrificing work hours or sleep or going out with "friends" to play but ther's not much else that I crave for. Except maybe some dish.

What's "dish"?

ok, mistranslation. Food. How do you call the food that's on a dish?

A dish. But that would imply something specific.

A salmon dish or a veggie dish, for example.

Otherwise, maybe gossip. Oh, dish, please. I want to hear all about it.

Like "dish out", to give out or serve.

There are some dishes I really like. Bolonnaise lasagne. Pizza. Roasted pig with milk sauce.

11:55 PM

So "except maybe certain dishes".

I think.

Ok

So if you know that doing other things would improve your roleplaying, why not do that?

Also, therapy won't "cure" you of roleplaying unless you want it too. Roleplaying is often used therapeutically, and therapy certainly won't focus on making you lose your interest in living.

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Jan '155

The Overlook Hotel

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