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This is a bit of a personal rant meant to expose what I think is some useful information with regards to long term roleplay investment between individuals. A lot of these opinions might not rub well with everyone, and some of my conclusions might be antithetical to what a lot of the readers tell themselves, or have concluded themselves. Still, if some people might take some hints or lessons from my rant, I would consider that an objective for its writing, as long as we can all agree to consider this whole rant a potentially flawed personal opinion, not an officially sanctioned policy.
The Premise
In personal circles, the concept of Personal Roleplay Value has recently become a topic of conversation again. Frequently it looks along the lines of "Oh but look who is around, everyone is so boring", or something along those lines, the usual elitism or pretentiousness that one subclass of roleplayers is somehow worse or better than the other, and that an individual is somehow not up to standards to engage with. The reality I've always found that these statements propose half truths. While elitism is a reprehensible perspective, they have a core of truth. While pretense is an excess of pride in one's own ability, they have a core of sensible fact. The half truth comes into play however, in that those who consider themselves more advanced, are in fact often boring to the ones that consider themselves more advanced than those. Furthermore, the reason why others might be perceived as boring or not worth investing in, is because the actor is not being provided the right narrative to play in to. It's actually surprising how much of this can be looped back to movie directing and screenwriting theory, but we'll get back to that later. First, let's tackle some minor points.
It should be mentioned that before we begin, my rant is mostly if not entirely aimed at roleplay in a setting of dialogue between Player A and Player B, and maybe Player C. It is not aimed at event/activity based roleplay like a gang base raid, or a major law bust on a Noble House. By definition, scenes with action are always entertaining to all sides because the action is self propelling. This thread is purely about what I think makes for good 1 on 1 conversation roleplay, and what people can generally do to improve their dialogue roleplay to not appear like an Oblivion NPC.
Minor Points of Quality of Life Roleplay
Quality of Life Roleplay is the kind of roleplay that you can do something with. With "doing something" it means "being able to further the conversation in a fluid and natural feeling way, or to take actions to further one's own narrative". A great example of a Quality of life roleplay response would be seen below, color coded with colors because it will be referred to in other text points:
There is however a massive flaw with the above rhetoric, and that is ultimately Narrative, or "Why are we even having this conversation". Dialogue is an action that is almost entirely subservient to Plot. Plot, Narrative, basically the same, the latter is just a more fancy way of wording the former. Dialogue in a 1 on 1 setting can feel so much more powerful and noteworthy than group dialogue, because group dialogue (unless it is explicitly for planning something for example) tends to not really follow a plot. It's just dialogue for the sake of dialogue, a reason why many nobles complain that the noble lounge or balls are boring. There is no underpinning reason for the majority of the dialogue there. You could set yourself micro goals during group dialogue, in trying to figure more about the inner workings of specific individuals by posing them situations or questions pertaining to ideology that are more cleverly disguised as regular questions.
Still, this thread is more about 1 on 1 dialogue, less about group dialogue. A conversation between two characters over the span of three hours can be massive, but the characters could have really said nothing at all in that time period, which makes the roleplay feel so-so, especially if the dialogue was poor quality. Ask yourself after a serious bout of 1 on 1 dialogue:
Plot between two characters is a clear intention to achieve a certain state or goal through another character for your own character after an unspecified amount of time. A good way to find interest in other characters is to set yourself goals for each character you meet, that you know you won't achieve in a single sitting of roleplay, and that you know might even fail. Having goals gives you something to work towards, and allows you to formulate a Plot for yourself. This is what I did for Cedric, I have a plot that I specifically aim to achieve with Arthane (in fact, it has multiple plot endings that I consider all viable, depending on diverging points in roleplay). The fact that the roleplay we have each time makes me feel like my character's Plot is progressing, is making me want to do it again, and again, and again. It's entertaining, it's motivating, and I am experiencing a "leveling game" where I'm making progress.
This is likely where Bagley_'s motivation problem lies, in the fact that I have a Plot, and he knows of this Plot OOC, but he has no Plot of his own to pursue. He is just an actor in my Plot. It might actually be worthwhile to discuss your Plots with other players, even if that means spoiling the potential outcome, to ensure all parties are comfortable with what is being suggested, and to ensure that all parties are willing to engage in the Plot, but that is a whole different cup of tea from the subject at hand. In our current scenario, Cedric Kade has a Plot towards Arthane of Brilonde, but Arthane of Brilonde does not have a Plot towards Cedric Kade. This means for Bagley_ that while my roleplay dialogue may be good enough to keep him going for 3 hours, it means that ultimately, the roleplay doesn't leave him "wanting". After about 3 hours of dialogue that left no major imprint on him, why should he want to sit through another 3 hours if he might as well play APEX instead? At least in APEX he is improving his skills and ratings. Roleplay dialogue is just that, dialogue.
It is important for all parties to have long term Plots when engaging with one another. It is not sufficient for Bagley_'s character to simply act in my desired Plot, when that Plot leaves him indifferent. He needs to actually want to engage in a Plot of his own in order for the roleplay to become "wanted", after which both Plots can derive furthering from each other's motivation to push forward. It is possible for these plots to be the same, maybe they are even opposing each other, or maybe they have nothing to do with each other. The context of the Plot doesn't really matter, as long as the dialogue can be applied to further the Plot (or the characters understanding of each other, which is also a Plot in a way). After all, both in books and movies, dialogue that does not further the Plot or "chit-chat", is usually cut from the final product because it bores the audience.
There is one remark to make here, which is the importance again of looping back subtext in dialogue. When you've decided on a Plot for your character to pursue for someone else, you should /never/ express this literally in roleplay on day 1, or indeed ever literally express it in words. It is an incredibly anticlimactic experience to have the story unfold in a manner of simple words. The old concept of "Show, do not Tell" is really strong here. Sentiments and intentions should ideally be shown through an action, rather than said. A prime example of this is a dragging love declaration like one made by Anakin Skywalker to Padme Amidala in Star Wars II. It was good screenwriting and good dialogue at face value, poetic, nice. But there was no subtext or subtlety at all. Anakin's feelings were just being vomited onto the spectator, and that was boring as hell. Instead of a straightforward love declaration, a more powerful method of conveying the Plot was to showcase small moments here and there of the characters flirting, stealing glances, doing the kinds of things that people do when they have a crush on someone, without explicitly stating it in words. Dialogue can be very deflating if it does not have the right subtext. That obviously does not mean all of your dialogue should become a mysterious puzzle of hidden meanings. It simply means your character should not wear their feelings always on their sleeves and express them at face value or in words as literally as is asked. "Are you Okay?" after someone's father has died and replying with "I'm fine" with body language emotes is far more enticing for an intense further dialogue than "No I'm feeling sad" with no subtext at all. It is the lack of subtext that usually results in character relations where everything feels "said and done". There is nothing left to discover, nothing left to understand. If everyone is an open book, the dialogue gets stale, no matter how good the Plot of Dialogue is.
A long drawn conclusion:
The Premise
In personal circles, the concept of Personal Roleplay Value has recently become a topic of conversation again. Frequently it looks along the lines of "Oh but look who is around, everyone is so boring", or something along those lines, the usual elitism or pretentiousness that one subclass of roleplayers is somehow worse or better than the other, and that an individual is somehow not up to standards to engage with. The reality I've always found that these statements propose half truths. While elitism is a reprehensible perspective, they have a core of truth. While pretense is an excess of pride in one's own ability, they have a core of sensible fact. The half truth comes into play however, in that those who consider themselves more advanced, are in fact often boring to the ones that consider themselves more advanced than those. Furthermore, the reason why others might be perceived as boring or not worth investing in, is because the actor is not being provided the right narrative to play in to. It's actually surprising how much of this can be looped back to movie directing and screenwriting theory, but we'll get back to that later. First, let's tackle some minor points.
It should be mentioned that before we begin, my rant is mostly if not entirely aimed at roleplay in a setting of dialogue between Player A and Player B, and maybe Player C. It is not aimed at event/activity based roleplay like a gang base raid, or a major law bust on a Noble House. By definition, scenes with action are always entertaining to all sides because the action is self propelling. This thread is purely about what I think makes for good 1 on 1 conversation roleplay, and what people can generally do to improve their dialogue roleplay to not appear like an Oblivion NPC.
Minor Points of Quality of Life Roleplay
Quality of Life Roleplay is the kind of roleplay that you can do something with. With "doing something" it means "being able to further the conversation in a fluid and natural feeling way, or to take actions to further one's own narrative". A great example of a Quality of life roleplay response would be seen below, color coded with colors because it will be referred to in other text points:
"Speaking of Altalar history, have you ever considered looking into the Wildering as a defining end point to the Altalar story? I've always thought that post Wildering, Altalar society took on different nuances that argue for their race to be reclassified as something else than Altalar".
This dialogue is what I would consider Quality of Life Dialogue, for a number of reasons:
- It starts with a hook-in or reference to earlier, a clear subject definition and in this case, likely a phrase that knits it together with an already ongoing conversation so it doesn't feel like a random segway. (You can however use random segways if your character has a form of ADD or is overly energetic, as long as you don't leave conversations without conclusion)
- The Dialogue contains a question or request, or a clear request of the other person to reply. It sends them a message ahead of time before they create their own response which helps them expand their own content in the response, or generate a response in case they were starting to feel dry in terms of being able to come up with something to say.
- The Dialogue contains context and expanded content which is extremely important. Consider the difference between that Dialogue and the dialogue without the blue part. It would cut the dialogue in half, and turn the actual dialogue into just a question. A question without context doesn't lead to a clear definition of the character's motivation for the conversation. It becomes harder to read what the actual subtext of the dialogue is.
- Do not ever reply with a just "no" or "yes" answer. Consider how deflating a simple "no" would have been to the person who wrote all of that. Consider even how "No I have not" is also not sufficient. Responding to a piece of dialogue which contains a hook, a reply request, and a context with only an affirmation is the lamest dialogue ever, and bores roleplayers very quickly.
- If you lack ideas for dialogue, consider adding body language or other forms of subtext to the conversation. Maybe your character did, but wants to lie and say no because they feel uncomfortable with the subject. How is this discomfort expressed? What are their eyes doing? Where are their hands? What is their gaze aimed at, and what is their mouth doing while they speak? Emotes and body language are capable of replacing both the reply request and the context if words are not present for it.
- You have a large reply bar. Try adding meaningful content, without making it hollow. If you are giving less than 7 word replies to dialogue, you're probably not trying to seem interesting. Interesting isn't character design, personality, or who controls the character. It's all about whether or not someone can hold their attention to you or not, and this becomes exponentially harder if you're not giving them much to read.
- You can usually dissect good dialogue by analyzing parts of dialogue into their respective categories. That being said, in normal conversation, it's impractical to start analyzing dialogue during writing and reading. You should be aware of the concept of the hook, the reply request and the context, but not contort yourself to try and get these elements present in every single dialogue you type. Eventually when you get used to writing longer replies, you get used to generating more content for others to work with, in which case it becomes automatic. Maybe consider not doing mid-rp review, but just reading back a few of your lines when your roleplay is done. Consider where you could have been more interesting, and try doing better next time.
There is however a massive flaw with the above rhetoric, and that is ultimately Narrative, or "Why are we even having this conversation". Dialogue is an action that is almost entirely subservient to Plot. Plot, Narrative, basically the same, the latter is just a more fancy way of wording the former. Dialogue in a 1 on 1 setting can feel so much more powerful and noteworthy than group dialogue, because group dialogue (unless it is explicitly for planning something for example) tends to not really follow a plot. It's just dialogue for the sake of dialogue, a reason why many nobles complain that the noble lounge or balls are boring. There is no underpinning reason for the majority of the dialogue there. You could set yourself micro goals during group dialogue, in trying to figure more about the inner workings of specific individuals by posing them situations or questions pertaining to ideology that are more cleverly disguised as regular questions.
Still, this thread is more about 1 on 1 dialogue, less about group dialogue. A conversation between two characters over the span of three hours can be massive, but the characters could have really said nothing at all in that time period, which makes the roleplay feel so-so, especially if the dialogue was poor quality. Ask yourself after a serious bout of 1 on 1 dialogue:
- Has my personal plot towards this person progressed after this conversation?
- Has my personal understanding of this character's feelings or motivations improved?
- Have I been able to coerce or convince this character to change something?
- Has my character been coerced or convinced to change something?
- Did I learn something outside of myself that I find useful to know?
- Did I generally get challenging content that required me to think for real?
- Did I generally get dialogue that was fun to read because of phrasing or content?
Plot between two characters is a clear intention to achieve a certain state or goal through another character for your own character after an unspecified amount of time. A good way to find interest in other characters is to set yourself goals for each character you meet, that you know you won't achieve in a single sitting of roleplay, and that you know might even fail. Having goals gives you something to work towards, and allows you to formulate a Plot for yourself. This is what I did for Cedric, I have a plot that I specifically aim to achieve with Arthane (in fact, it has multiple plot endings that I consider all viable, depending on diverging points in roleplay). The fact that the roleplay we have each time makes me feel like my character's Plot is progressing, is making me want to do it again, and again, and again. It's entertaining, it's motivating, and I am experiencing a "leveling game" where I'm making progress.
This is likely where Bagley_'s motivation problem lies, in the fact that I have a Plot, and he knows of this Plot OOC, but he has no Plot of his own to pursue. He is just an actor in my Plot. It might actually be worthwhile to discuss your Plots with other players, even if that means spoiling the potential outcome, to ensure all parties are comfortable with what is being suggested, and to ensure that all parties are willing to engage in the Plot, but that is a whole different cup of tea from the subject at hand. In our current scenario, Cedric Kade has a Plot towards Arthane of Brilonde, but Arthane of Brilonde does not have a Plot towards Cedric Kade. This means for Bagley_ that while my roleplay dialogue may be good enough to keep him going for 3 hours, it means that ultimately, the roleplay doesn't leave him "wanting". After about 3 hours of dialogue that left no major imprint on him, why should he want to sit through another 3 hours if he might as well play APEX instead? At least in APEX he is improving his skills and ratings. Roleplay dialogue is just that, dialogue.
It is important for all parties to have long term Plots when engaging with one another. It is not sufficient for Bagley_'s character to simply act in my desired Plot, when that Plot leaves him indifferent. He needs to actually want to engage in a Plot of his own in order for the roleplay to become "wanted", after which both Plots can derive furthering from each other's motivation to push forward. It is possible for these plots to be the same, maybe they are even opposing each other, or maybe they have nothing to do with each other. The context of the Plot doesn't really matter, as long as the dialogue can be applied to further the Plot (or the characters understanding of each other, which is also a Plot in a way). After all, both in books and movies, dialogue that does not further the Plot or "chit-chat", is usually cut from the final product because it bores the audience.
There is one remark to make here, which is the importance again of looping back subtext in dialogue. When you've decided on a Plot for your character to pursue for someone else, you should /never/ express this literally in roleplay on day 1, or indeed ever literally express it in words. It is an incredibly anticlimactic experience to have the story unfold in a manner of simple words. The old concept of "Show, do not Tell" is really strong here. Sentiments and intentions should ideally be shown through an action, rather than said. A prime example of this is a dragging love declaration like one made by Anakin Skywalker to Padme Amidala in Star Wars II. It was good screenwriting and good dialogue at face value, poetic, nice. But there was no subtext or subtlety at all. Anakin's feelings were just being vomited onto the spectator, and that was boring as hell. Instead of a straightforward love declaration, a more powerful method of conveying the Plot was to showcase small moments here and there of the characters flirting, stealing glances, doing the kinds of things that people do when they have a crush on someone, without explicitly stating it in words. Dialogue can be very deflating if it does not have the right subtext. That obviously does not mean all of your dialogue should become a mysterious puzzle of hidden meanings. It simply means your character should not wear their feelings always on their sleeves and express them at face value or in words as literally as is asked. "Are you Okay?" after someone's father has died and replying with "I'm fine" with body language emotes is far more enticing for an intense further dialogue than "No I'm feeling sad" with no subtext at all. It is the lack of subtext that usually results in character relations where everything feels "said and done". There is nothing left to discover, nothing left to understand. If everyone is an open book, the dialogue gets stale, no matter how good the Plot of Dialogue is.
A long drawn conclusion:
- There is some truth that some players don't try hard enough to be more interesting.
- You can make better dialogue by using more dialogue, and not using short answers.
- You can make better dialogue with context and giving others something to work with.
- Dialogue itself can be great, but eventually grows stale without an underlying Plot.
- Plot should never be one way. Plot should be two-way, and can be different, reflecting or the same.
- It is important to communicate frequently with your roleplay partners, and compliment when due.
- Subtext is still important, even if your Plot and Dialogue are solid for the sake of replay value.
