Im putting this in rants because its a volatile subject, and/or I wont get my message across right.

I've been an rp'er almost ever since I first discovered the internet. First on various forums, emails, mIRC, and later in mmo's starting with Everquest. Needless to say when I first started I was young. Very very young.

One thing I have noticed as I've gotten older (and hopefully a little wiser!), is how the anonymity of the internet really skews or perception of one another, both in RP and Ooc interactions. On the internet we have no age, or gender, or nationality, other than the one we choose to present. In truth we dont know just who that person on the other side of that monitor is unless we've actually met them. I cant count the number of times I've been shocked to find out the person I've been chatting with who I was almost positive had to be at least 30 turned out to be 13, or a person who I'd swear was 13 was actually 30.

I was 10 years old when I first started rping online, back then you didnt hear much about the predators that lurked there and many parents didnt know or think that there could be a threat (The most mine told me was not to give out my name or adress). Needless to say my parents were shocked by some of the people I rp'd with when they checked the chat logs one day. At 10 years old I had no concept of innuendo and many of the slang words were lost on me. My point here is not so much that there's monsters on the internet (Everyone should know that by now), but that a single situation can be interpreted in two completely different ways (For me it was innocent fun, for some stranger it was something very dark).

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As I got older, and both my parents and I a tiny bit wiser, I also got more serious about rp. This was also about the time Everquest first came out. Suddenly I had a very visual representation of my character running about on my screen. Now instead of a random character who neither fit the setting or scene,my characters had background stories, and personality; they actually fit in the world I was playing (for the most part). While I knew I wasnt actually that character, I still gave myself into that character, many of those characters were simply me reskined. All of a sudden I was becoming involved emotionally with people; often times I was hurt, sometime I hurt others.

Looking back I can see that many of these situations could have easily been avoided if we had just talked about it beforehand. If I and those I played with had opened a line of ooc communication, and said: hey, are you ok with this?. If we had understood where each others boundaries are. Not just in matters of romance and sex, but also with such things as betrayal, abuse, torture, even death. All these things elicit very strong emotions, that's part of the fun of RP. The feel of the heart racing, the excitement, the fear, excileration or what have you. Just like in a good book or movie.

Often times in the heat of the moment we forget that there's another person on the other side of that monitor; we get so caught up in that moment that the boundary between reality and fantasy become blurred. We very much become our character, suddenly we are living that moment, and its not our characters emotions being played with, but ours.

This is the point were people get hurt, when our emotions become entangled with our characters; when, for example, the love our character feels for another's character gets tangled up with our own emotion. Rationally we may know that the other player doesnt actually love us (in a romantic manner), but emotionally we may very much feel that way. When things are going the way we like, we feel great, but when things take a turn for the worst (I.E. The other character dumped yours for someone else's), we are crushed. Angry and hurt we lash out at the other player, often ooc'ly. We drag others into our debate and a once close-nit community fractures.


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Eventually I found an rp community who I remained with for several years. In it, my experience as an rper grew in leaps and bounds. They had very strict guidelines for both IC and OOC. We also had guidelines detailing peoples limits on various subjects (relationships, violence, ect). They also taught me to make characters that weren't emotional clones of myself. Through them I learned the value of keeping an open line of ooc communication during emotionally intense situations.

I learned that I can still get that immersive "high" while still remaining grounded enough in reality to not get the emotions of myself and my character confused. It may sound overly complex but it wasn't.

While our characters were having a major fight over something, swords are being drawn and insults are flying. We're laughing it up on the ooc channel about what faces our characters are making. While Im getting excited and tensing up about the up comming battle, Im also laughing because someone said ooc'ly his character looks like they smashed their face against a window.

Overtime I saw that, in this community, drama didnt happen as often or was nearly as crippling as it was in other communities and guilds I had been in over the years. I saw that keeping open lines of ooc communication and knowing one anothers boundaries helped prevent so much unnecessary hurt and drama. As a community we became stronger, when drama did erupt (as it inevitably will when people interact with one another) we were able to work through and resolve it. We only lost those people who were completely unwilling or unable to resolve their problems.

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I guess what Im trying to say here is a lot of the problems I've seen cropping up lately on Order seem to be largely the results of people not talking to one another.

When we take the time to talk to one another, to make sure that all people involved with a particular situation are ok with how things are going; when we laugh and joke, and discuss other matters, insuring we stay grounded enough in reality that our emotions dont become completely entangled with our characters. We are preventing unnecessary drama from erupting. When we make the effort to do these things, we as a community, grow stronger.

Experienced/Older Rpers know how to keep their characters separate from their selves. Newer/younger/inexperienced Rpers don't always realize this. Often times the easiest character to create is an emotional (if somewhat idealized) clone of ourselves. It is the easiest character to slip into, because in some respects we already are that character. It is also the most dangerous character for the same reason, because we are rp'ing ourselves (even if it is an idealized version) we open ourselves to the risk of becoming emotionally compromised. We open ourselves to a wider possibility of being hurt unnecessarily, and as we fracture, we end up hurting those around us; eventually the situation snowballs and the community that we are apart of fractures.

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TL;DR and considerably less eloquent version:
Maybe if we started talking to one another we can avoid some of the unnecessary drama that seems to keep erupting. When Rping make sure you and the other

players involved are ok with whats going on, don't take for granted others are simply ok with what you have planed. Dont allow yourself to get so into your character that you can no longer tell the difference between the two.