Random Tangents for Discussion #1 ft. HampterHunter's Deep Thoughts

[HunterHampter]

'Everyone plays their own main character'

We've all heard about this at least once in SRP, and while yeah... theres no 'main character' in SchoolRP because everyone co-exists as inhabitants of Karakura,
I believe there is a sub-category of player owned characters that I would put in as 'Player Background Characters' (PBC as I will refer to them throughout this weird tangent), and these are characters that everyone or most of the server would look at and agree with one thing:

'There's nothing going on with this character'
​

And that intrigues me as a concept, a Character who can be as fleshed out and have rich deep lore, that ultimately is only seen as an inactive partaker of any interesting interaction's background. Someone that people look at and say 'This man is boring' and move on with what they're doing.

Of course people who go out of their way to learn this type of characters would get a bombshell of what they are in the deep storytelling aspect, but it does makes me think...
In an in-character perspective... A Character is a nobody until something interesting about them come to light to the Public, and if your character is the 'no speak till spoken to' type... you can develop them in a way that shook anyone who even dares to learn about them, while alive or even when they die, unknowingly to many.

isn't that kinda interesting? You can make a character that is considered a saint and a figure to look up to by one or two characters, but when they die only those two will be impacted, the city remains unbothered, as that character is simply nothing in the grand scheme of things.

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I'm not gonna point fingers on who have these type of characters cause respectfully, I think most of my characters are these people, minus the interesting lore.

But what do you guys think?​

 

[Mialyansa]

Yeah, I think you are right. But it is hard making the lore of your character public. Biographies are a good way to make your character known in an ooc environment but it also requires effort to make very attractive biographies.

I think that how much relevance the character has, comes from the players in the server knowing you. Having a consistent playtime and keeping up with your character's relationships, and keeping the friendships.

 

[HunterHampter]

Yeah, I think you are right. But it is hard making the lore of your character public. Biographies are a good way to make your character known in an ooc environment but it also requires effort to make very attractive biographies.

I think that how much relevance the character has, comes from the players in the server knowing you. Having a consistent playtime and keeping up with your character's relationships, and keeping the friendships.

Make sense... now that I think about it, holy shit i'm bad at making my characters hang out with their friends and relationships...

 

[Mialyansa]

Make sense... now that I think about it, holy shit i'm bad at making my characters hang out with their friends and relationships...

Sometimes it depends on how much time you can spend on playing srp and how good the timezones you have are.

 

[robinzee]

 

[SIMPL3Z]

What helps with being known is, sadly, a lot of OOC things: status, factions, friend groups, etc. A player who is more active on the server or in a more active timezone will always be 'more known' as they get to roleplay with more people and expand the scope of players they engage with. Plus a flashy biography might help, public lore will always boost it out in some way, especially if you already are well-known in the OOC environment. The OOC environment is a big part, if not bigger than the IC part.

Now I can go on a rant on how the IC part is still very affected by the OOC environment and how people who take the initiative with more extraverted characters can develop more than introverted characters, much like a 'speak only if spoken to' style but to save you some trouble: the IC environment is affected by OOC environment as much as its factors; someone with a flashy biography, a good looking skin, or maybe public lore documents or faction job position will have more IC interaction with a larger scope of players than your average [grade-12] — And whilst the style of the character is important, still there will always be 'boring' people which is a subjective term in and of itself, even if they have no public lore or a flashy biography, a good character description or anything; they might still not be 'boring'.

Their characters aren't background characters. They aren't boring. Truth be told, there are a lot of hidden gems of stories written and told out there which aren't 'known' — and that's because of that OOC environment. SRP is driven by friend groups; your friend group is your RP group. If you have a good and large friend group, perhaps branching off into multiple factions or even an entire faction, you'll prevail and continue to expand your horizon of people etc, etc. Though, there are smaller friend groups, of course. These might just be regular players, a close group of maybe five players who roleplay together very often together and maybe not so much with others. In that friend group is a rich story full of lore, which if no one dares to learn about will go unnoticed. And that's only logical, is it not?

This all is kind of just a reflection on life itself and the inner workings of our personal story. Sonder for once and apply this concept to these characters as well; there is no way you will ever get to learn every story, every lore interaction or unique thing about every character on the server. But each little Minecraft skin you walk by is a character with its own life, its own story, and its own ambition. — It's a reflection of how every human lives their own life, their own story, and experiences their things. You don't know all 8 billion humans on earth, yet each house you walk past is another set of stories you walk by.

As you said, if nothing interesting comes to light about these people/characters to the public, they might be a 'nobody' in your eyes, but they'll be someone in another person's eyes. That's just a dynamic of not just social hierarchy with status and reputation—take any famous person, for example—but the diversity and broad horizon of people/characters that there are; you will never know everyone and their story, only the people you come in contact with or go out of your way to meet; you take the initiative and show curiosity, which in a sense of SRP can be based on not just the social hierarchy of the OOC environment, but also again this subjective sense of 'boringness' — Only the ones that truly succeed do, scandalous things, make new inventions, or whatever it is, might be known by a wide spread of people (never everyone), but I guarantee there is a mailman out there somewhere with a more moving, inspiring and emotionally grasping life story than Beyonce.

So I wouldn't call them background characters. Because whilst there might be a main stage of our 'famous' characters, this so-called 'background' is just a story you haven't heard yet; a book you haven't started reading.