rpanons | You sound fat

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i really like au games. why are they so hated? i'm just really curious.

I'm also a big fan of AU games. But the biggest problem I've had with them is people who think that AU means they can make the character as wildly out of character as they want because that's just the way they grew up in the AU. Which is annoying as hell.

or if the below responses are any indication, people who think AU's by nature must be like that.

if you have to play your character as significantly different to justify an AU, you're shit at writing AUs.

the fun of an au is the challenge of keeping them as true to canon as you can with changed circumstances, the whole concept that different paths can lead to largely the same place, just with contextual and setting changes and some details altered to fit the setting. to me they're a fun what if, but i've played with enough of the wildly ooc, basically original characters without actually being original characters that it can dampen the fun a lot.

That's pretty much my favourite part of AUs. Some characters backstories are easier to adapt to be as true to canon as possible, and others are more challenging, but figuring out that challenge is a big part of the fun.

I also enjoy not being tied down by canon love interests (because either I don't ship it, or because the other character isn't in game) and being able to build CR with my castmates from scratch (or working out how they fit into each other's backstories) is also tons of fun.

agreed. i also love those aspects of aus. it feels a lot more collaborative.

what's the point of AUing them in the first place, if not to play them differently to some degree, whether big or small?

I didn't say no differences. I said those difference shouldn't make your character OOC. If it does, you're either shit at writing AUs, shit at understanding what actually makes that character work, or a mix of both.

exploring the impact of minor changes or different circumstances, maybe?

like if someone is, say, a medieval bard and you AU them to be a modern day local indie singer, that has different implications and carries different experiences despite being a relatively minor change. just like being a feudal lord is different than being a mayor or the ceo of a corporation or the heir to old money.

in game terms though, to me part of the appeal is just not having to deal with the Home Question. at least in theory - ive never actually joined an au game because none of the few that existed ever appealed to me. but id definitely join one

When I want to play a character, it's because I like how they are in canon. I don't want to play them as a particularly different person with a different background. (I don't know if others would agree with me on that, but DWRP is a group of people who like to stick much closer to canon than other RP communities, so if I had to guess, there are other people who probably feel the same.)

Speaking personally, an AU game would only appeal to me for a character I'd already been playing for a long time. But chances are, I'd get tired of the character before I got to that point. I can think of a few old muses where AUing them in a game might be fun, but I wouldn't prioritize it over the characters I'm playing in other games.

It really is that simple. Characters are products of their background and if you change that you end up with someone else entirely. Which is fun for an event for a little while but even then for me the payoff is when they get back to themself and really look at the difference. If I didn't want to play canon characters as canon characters, I wouldn't be playing on Dreamwidth.

that's all there is to it for me. i'm interested in their canon self, not an au.

Because they're the worst parts of OUs and OCs without any of the benefits.

There's a few reasons:

1. A lot more effort is needed. You have to write an AU history, plot connections with other players, learn the setting, etc. This is also partially why AUs based on real world settings tend to do somewhat better.
2. A lot of people actually don't care for playing with AUs and will even avoid regular games that accept them.
3. Even after you write your history and get into the game, an AU game requires more effort in plotting since you'll want to build connections with others in the game both via new CR and CR that exists in the background.
4. AUs by default tend to remove or change powers and humanize non-human characters. Immortal or long lived characters will typically be reduced to a human lifespan. A lot of those things may not have an alternate way to develop them into a similar personality and it may cause a PB to be needed.

So overall it boils down to partially too much effort and partially aversion to AUs.

what it boils down to is that i'm a control freak. when i come up with au ideas for a character, they inevitably involve things like "interacted with X this way, and Y that way," so my muse will develop pretty similarly to how they did in canon. but in an au game, i have to come up with relations for X and Y. how they know my character, whether or not they like them, what X and Y are doing with their lives, etc. i'm explaining it in a shitty way, but basically, drawing parallels between all the au characters and their canon counterparts.

if i can't do that, i'm basically playing an oc, and like anons above me have said, why bother? otherwise, i'd either have to coordinate with all my castmates (a headache, especially if someone ends up dropping) or basically write out backstories for my potential future castmates if i'm a lcw (dick move).

tl;dr it's just not worth it most of the time. maybe if i'm playing a character who operates mostly on the sidelines, or whose formative years/most interesting moments didn't involve other appable characters, but otherwise... nah

They require a lot more player coordination to figure out OOC backstories that make sense with the setting and allow all of the characters to keep their defining traits and formative experiences. When it's well, you can get amazing crossover CR between characters who probably wouldn't even interact that much in an OU game. When it's not done well, you can get ooc players and overbearing mods who are so protective of their little sandbox that they don't let players create anything. But the biggest problem with AU games is that they tend to be small games with older, slower players, so if there's not a solid, dedicated playerbase then everything quickly grinds to a halt.

I love AUs, and most of my best RP experiences have been in AU games. I wish there were more of them! It's fun adapting characters, although not all characters can be made to work with all settings.

Before DW my friends and I would create our own worlds or storylines, then port in our OC's to see how they would change or stay the same. It sounds like it was a lot more freeing than what canon-players strive to do, given that we often went in either with no previous CR to worry about, or with a network of friends who were really excited to figure out how they wanted to keep or change those connections. I liked it: the character I had used as a template would inevitably change to fit their circumstances, and if I liked where they were going I'd change them enough to become their own OC.

I'd love to see more of that on DW, but I would probably still only play an OC or a character with a cast played by friends I knew enjoyed spitballing new ideas. Keep OU canon characters for games where they can react to the plot stuff as themselves, save AU games for really meaty world-building and plot-building and old-school sort of collab-writing.

You sound fat

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nayrt but atrt

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