I went to a social group recently. Someone I knew was there, so we both said hi. I asked her about what type of game she was playing. I noticed she mentioned it had befriending characters and battling characters. She called it an "RPG". I said, "Oh, I play role playing games too! I don't play the kind you're playing, I play the kind where you make a character, choose a celebrity as a face for your character and get to roleplay as the character". She was like "Oh."
So she wasn't interested in it, and I stopped talking about it to her. That kind of situation is frustrating, when noone understands and cares about the kind of roleplaying I do. :angry:

Well it's not for everyone. Just because you think it's awesome and a wonderful thing to do with your free time doesn't mean other people are going to feel the same/ care/ enjoy it at all.

We're all different.

I only tend to find that frustrating when they show absolutely zero interest in your own hobbies but expect you to listen to theirs because they're clearly superior and they just don't care to listen to you...

You know, those people who like to hear themselves talk and could tell you their life stories but would rather die than give a penny for your thoughts afterwards...

Ew.

But she could've asked me questions about the kind of roleplaying I do and show interest when asking the questions. I'd happily answer if she did that.
That's the better way to handle it then going back to her game, which is showing that she doesn't care about what my interests or what I have to say. :o

I may like to point out that it may have made little to no sense to her. If you had worded it better, something like "Oh, I roleplay too! Except it's more focused on writing responses back and forth between people and communicating with other characters done by other people online. Instead of being an actual game that's more like D&D."

I assume it's one like D&D. Since the only other ones are stuff like video games on the internet (think City of Heroes, City of Villians, World of Warcraft, Guilds...) and stat RPGs (those involve some writing as well as some chance to them).

I've done that before and found out that it made no sense to them, so obviously they did not really get it... so I kind of can't hold it against them.

Radsos, that point is true. But your suggested response would confuse me, if I wasn't a roleplayer. Yes, I could have worded it better, you're right. But I don't know how, I admit.

She was playing a Nintendo-DS game that involved battling characters and befriending characters. I don't know the name of the game, but yeah it's the other type of rpg games.

Yeah, it's early in the morning, my brain can't think at the moment.

But that explains it since normally if someone is on D&D like/stats rpgs, then they may know of our kind of RPG vaguely. The other (the graphics based games) are a lot less likely to know of our stuff.

I wonder what we call our kind of RP to be honest...

Hah! It's like those people who want to talk to you in person or IM or IRL, and all they do is talk about their game and their players and their characters. Then show minimal interest in yours until there is an opportunity to turn it back XD.

I think so long as you can enjoy your roleplaying the way you do it and you can happily sit and play with other people, then go nuts and don't worry about other people--just remember to show her the same courtesy as she shows you; even if that means being discourteous. Perhaps then they'll get the message.

Your description of RPing woulda confused the heck out of me. I woulda been like, "Bwuh? You RP...as celebrities...? Ehhh." Well, I would have thought that about a year ago before I even knew what the heck PBs were. xD

I've just always described text-based RPing as kind of like interactive novel writing, except you only write for your own characters and it's done on a forum (or IM, or e-mail, etc.) with lots of other players. x3 Not all games have PBs, after all!

(For the record, I've mainly heard the type of RPing most of us are familiar with referred to as text-based play-by-post RPing. :3)

But yeah. I mostly don't mind being blown off. I would hate talking someone's ear off about something they're not interested in and were only faking interest in for the sake of courtesy, mainly because I can tell when someone really isn't into it and those don't make for fun conversations. :B I only really find it annoying when people want to talk about themselves constantly and then clam up when you want to share something back. |: Blah. Conversation. It's about give and take, people. Dx

If it was something like that, I'd be annoyed. :3 But sometimes, people just aren't interested and that's how the cookie crumbles.

I consider myself fairly lucky in that most of my friends also RP, though they verge on being mary-sues (changing eye colours, etc.), but they're beginners/Gaia roleplayers, which has lower standards with a lot of what they do (no offence--Gaia got me into RPing!)

My problem with them is they consider MMORPGs "nerdy", despite them playing games like Warcraft, albeit on Player-versus-Player servers. I asked them if they wanted to play on my RP server and see if they liked it, but they shot it down and said, "those people are all thirty year old men who think they're the king of the elves" and things like that.

Yeah. D: So at least your encounter wasn't insulting. :lol:

Thank you, Panda, for understanding!
Yes, I'll continue to enjoy my roleplaying, but I'll continue to be nice to her and be the bigger person. :pink:

And Brandon, that is true. At least my encounter wasn't insulting.

It's not a matter of being a bigger person. It's a matter of accepting she's not interested and is giving you the courteously of not pretending that she is.

Oh, ok. I never thought about it like that. :innocent:

"Human-Based Roleplay", and for short call it HBR. o.O
I don't know. x.x

I'm fond of the term "Group Storytelling"

Not many people have asked, but when or if they do, I'll just say something like it's writing with other people. You have your character and they interact with the other person's character. Then I always add a little disclaimer, either at the beginning or end... "I know it sounds nerdy but I like writing so it really helps. :D" Rofl.

I personally use "collaborative story writing," but I think anything around the lines of writing with other people works pretty well. XD

It's more like collaborative storytelling. Of course it is a game. But it's not really a game-game. There's no big prize at the end of it all. This is where stats-based RPBs tend to fail. Many players forget why stats are there in the first place. But that's another story.

The type of RPing we do is like collaborative storytelling. It does remind me of this game we would play when I learned improv comedy. This was a form of telling a story. Everybody that participated would put in a few sentences of the story. RPing is kind of similar to that in the sense.

I would go as far and say to think of the type of RPing we do as being similar to Second Life. Instead, it's in the form of a forum.

The words "Group Storytelling" made me think of campfires and pajama parties, not RPG's. I also don't play Second Life. Maybe "Writing Roleplay Teamwork" , would be a good name for it.......I don't know.

It's never really been something that's come up for me, but I usually describe it as 'cooperative writing' and find another topic to talk about while trying to avoid seeming rude about it.

I usually say 'forum-based rpg'.. but 'play-by-post' seems to be the general accepted term online. Describing it as collaborative writing or group story telling has bad connotations... reminds me too much of school work. XD

I generally don't talk about it, but if people aren't interested - it's their loss, not mine. For the record, I don't like football.. and I generally won't continue a discussion about that either, so it's all the same to me.

Very good point, Mousie. I also didn't know it was called PBP- "play by post".