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rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

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what if you dont have the console its on

what if your computer isnt good enough to run the game

idk 90% of game stories are just a string of cutscenes loosely connected by gameplay. how is watching a cutscene on youtube any more or less authentic than watching the cutscene on your TV?

see above

i'm also always confused as to how someone could love a game's story/character enough to want to play them without actually... indulging in the game and playing it themselves, it just seems strange to me

most video game characters aren't shakespearean in their portrayals, why don't you just find a similar game or a similar character from a game that you can actually play yourself and probably enjoy more

To turn the "video games are toys" argument around, I agree that it's slightly weird to have no interest in a major part of what makes a game enjoyable and still want to play from it. There are only a few games where story is such a large part and gameplay is so minimal/outright bad (e.g. Telltale adventure games) that you honestly DO get most of the experience from a LP. Of course ultimately nobody really cares if you're IC.

the problem is that gameplay so often has so very little to do with the story

like there's nothing you're missing in terms of chracterization/plot by not beign able to play the game

I think people in this thread are conflating gameplay with just battles when it also includes stuff like the atmosphere (even jrpgs, which are notoriously cutscene reliant, let you run through cities and the like). But that's a tangent; the confused feelings mostly come through on why you would be interested in the plot at all (and the most insulting/wankgate answer to this would be wanting pretty looking self-insert a la That Soma).

Or the shittons of terrible Roxas/Axels back on lj. Those were the days.

In this case I agree that you almost always have to play the games in order to roleplay in a game's setting. LPers will miss all the little details that you will be able to observe by actually walking around in a 3D space and exploring yourself.

Story and characters though? Not that necessary.

Because a video game's story has nothing to do with it's gameplay 99.9% of the time?

There are games where plot/gameplay integration is a thing, even in minor ways, but the fact of the matter is they're few and far between. I don't get what you're so hung up on here - if someone watches a dude play through Final Fantasy 7, name one single solitary bit of actual characterization or plot they would have missed by not playing it themselves, assuming the LP is a 100% run.

It's not like FF7 is some masterpiece of gaming, either. It's pretty sluggish and dated by this point.

you're probably more likely to get everything you need to know from an lp, anyway. if you can barely even beat the game, much less 100% it, because you're bad at video games, you're still going to miss important shit so where's the advantage?

Well, I watched a really good Thief lp and have no interest in playing the games because of it, but I adore Garrett as a character. The person playing was quite skilled - skilled enough to make Garrett perform as well as he should. Expert level, usually got all the loot, and killed no one.

However, since I'm not as good, the experience of playing the game would actually be less immersive to me. I would botch it up too much. And yes, I could use a guide, but it kinda comes back around for the same reason: if I have to use a guide, it's pulling me out of the experience.

I'm not sure who you are trying to convince. If you think you can RP a video game character without having played the canon, more power to you. If you can do it well, I assure you no one's going to care. Just keep quiet about it if you're afraid people might be judgmental over it.

I'm just pointing out that the whole "playing it yourself = better immersion/connection to the game" is not necessarily uniform?

idk 90% of game stories are just a string of cutscenes loosely connected by gameplay.

that's like saying the only parts of a novel that convey story are the dialogue, or that indiana jones would have still been great if they'd removed all the sets and just had harrison ford reading his lines against a white background.

any half decent game will convey a massive amount of background, setting, and characterization information using the gameplay segments. flavor text, ambient noise, atmosphere, secret areas, 'live' NPC chatter, background music, exploring for collectibles, exploring as a general rule... hell, even things like character animations and weapon choices can tell you a lot about the character his/herself.

i'm not saying that LPs can't convey a lot of this, but saying the story only exists in the cutscenes is naive (and is the sort of mindset that leads to garbage like metroid other m)

any half decent game will convey a massive amount of background, setting, and characterization information using the gameplay segments. flavor text, ambient noise, atmosphere, secret areas, 'live' NPC chatter, background music, exploring for collectibles, exploring as a general rule... hell, even things like character animations and weapon choices can tell you a lot about the character his/herself.

Sorry, I'm going to side-eye someone who admits to RPing a character off an LP because of the above.

but lps have all of that

100% runs at least

I've seen lots of LPs, including 100% runs and no, I don't agree.

you can usually learn a ton about the game's world by talking to npcs, looking at item descriptions, etc. i have yet to see a single lp that covers all of these things.

hell, one of my canons allows you to change the onscreen character you're running around the world as, and each character will have different responses to investigating things and talking to npcs. stuff like that provides you a huge amount of insight into the personalities of the characters and how they view the world at large. for instance, one character seems kind and polite on the outside, but his inner monologue when looking at items is often very snarky. that's an aspect of his character you would miss out on completely if you just watched an lp.

I was about to make a snide remark about no one giving a shit about the Tales series but you actually pointed out something someone's unlikely to get from an LP unless a crazy person makes a video compilation of all the special dialogue, so good job.

yeah, a lot of people forget that you can do that but it adds so much dimension to the characters and gives you a great look at their thought processes because most of that stuff IS inner monologue versus things they're saying out loud.

when i decided i wanted to play a character, i spent a few hours just running around in the game and examining EVERYTHING to see how they reacted to it. i learned a lot of things about them that i wouldn't have if i'd just watched an lp.

Video games aren't books. They aren't movies. They're a story tied up in a toy. A movie isn't going to stop playing because you weren't watching it hard enough.

any half decent game will convey a massive amount of background, setting, and characterization information using the gameplay segments. flavor text, ambient noise, atmosphere, secret areas, 'live' NPC chatter, background music, exploring for collectibles, exploring as a general rule... hell, even things like character animations and weapon choices can tell you a lot about the character his/herself.

By that standard, most games aren't 'decent' (no objections here, but still) and we're talking about roleplaying characters, not roleplaying entire settings. Pretty much the only thing even related to characters in what you're droning on about is character animations. And yes, special idle animations or gaits can tell you a little bit about a character. But if they're anything interesting they'll be documented online.

Well no wonder why you don't play video games if you have such a low opinion of them.

I only watch LPs of games I'm absolutely, positively sure I'm not going to play in the future. The only recent ones was Outlast. The only game that I've RPed from but hadn't played myself was Assassin's Creed.

In my defense, I wouldn't wish Altair on anyone, much less myself.

why are people playing from video games if they hate them that much?

not every game is an in-depth rpg

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