We all have them. Maybe some are more obvious than others, but it happens when you stretch yourself in a way you didn't expect. Maybe you took on a handful of secondary characters who blossomed into fully-developed characters in their own right. Or perhaps you've developed a second plot or subplot within the story. Maybe it was getting another character to react in a way you had wanted but was difficult to achieve.
This here's the time to say: I leveled up! And let us know what you did.
I know we're all at different points in our RPing skills, but for me it took interacting with several great roleplayers before I found the courage to do what they did: taking on secondary characters and not being afraid to hold back. The result was astounding: they developed their own personalities! So that's my "leveling up" story. What's yours?
This here's the time to say: I leveled up! And let us know what you did.
I know we're all at different points in our RPing skills, but for me it took interacting with several great roleplayers before I found the courage to do what they did: taking on secondary characters and not being afraid to hold back. The result was astounding: they developed their own personalities! So that's my "leveling up" story. What's yours?
Wow, this is a great question.
I think for me my first memorable level up moment was when people started to tell me that they had noticed a complete change (for the good!) in my RP. I don't really remember the specifics, it's well over a decade ago now, almost two, but I know that I started absolutely awful and spent a few months catching on to the basics. I was blessed with a group of veteran RPers that were very patient with my pre-teen foibles, and modeled best RP practice for me that I could learn from without rubbing my nose in how terrible I actually was.
Anyway, although I guess my writing improved pretty rapidly over the next several months, it was gradual enough (for me) and still hard enough that I was always struggling that I didn't realize how far I had come until several people told me OOC within the same two week period that they were impressed at my improvement. At first I was puzzled because I still wasn't at the point of feeling like a natural or at all confident, but with some thought I realized there WERE a lot of changes that had happened that I hadn't even noticed. All I saw before that moment was the struggle ahead to get better, not the road behind from where I had started.
A few months later, I was RPing with someone else who was brand new (although not as young as I had been when I started), and was able to give them some constructive tips (I still remember the gist of it... "When you write a post, try to take your time and think of everything you want to include before hitting enter. When you send your pose, other people start composing their responses, and if you post several followups every few seconds until the next person goes, it slows everyone down as they have to rewrite what they did to accommodate each change and addition you make. So taking a few minutes longer to think about your post will actually make the RP go faster than if you just hit enter immediately after you finish each sentence, but send a lot of them.")
It has become so obvious and normal to me that I had never thought about it, or considered it might be a valuable thought for others. But there it was! I was part of the ranks of people who could help others! Level up!
These days I feel less like I level up myself as a player, and more like I level up each individual character I create, by discovering that their basic concepts have vastly more nuance than I had originally imagined when I put them into unpredictable RP circumstances and they reveal new biases and relationships with their own handicaps and preferences than I had realized were possible.
I think for me my first memorable level up moment was when people started to tell me that they had noticed a complete change (for the good!) in my RP. I don't really remember the specifics, it's well over a decade ago now, almost two, but I know that I started absolutely awful and spent a few months catching on to the basics. I was blessed with a group of veteran RPers that were very patient with my pre-teen foibles, and modeled best RP practice for me that I could learn from without rubbing my nose in how terrible I actually was.
Anyway, although I guess my writing improved pretty rapidly over the next several months, it was gradual enough (for me) and still hard enough that I was always struggling that I didn't realize how far I had come until several people told me OOC within the same two week period that they were impressed at my improvement. At first I was puzzled because I still wasn't at the point of feeling like a natural or at all confident, but with some thought I realized there WERE a lot of changes that had happened that I hadn't even noticed. All I saw before that moment was the struggle ahead to get better, not the road behind from where I had started.
A few months later, I was RPing with someone else who was brand new (although not as young as I had been when I started), and was able to give them some constructive tips (I still remember the gist of it... "When you write a post, try to take your time and think of everything you want to include before hitting enter. When you send your pose, other people start composing their responses, and if you post several followups every few seconds until the next person goes, it slows everyone down as they have to rewrite what they did to accommodate each change and addition you make. So taking a few minutes longer to think about your post will actually make the RP go faster than if you just hit enter immediately after you finish each sentence, but send a lot of them.")
It has become so obvious and normal to me that I had never thought about it, or considered it might be a valuable thought for others. But there it was! I was part of the ranks of people who could help others! Level up!
These days I feel less like I level up myself as a player, and more like I level up each individual character I create, by discovering that their basic concepts have vastly more nuance than I had originally imagined when I put them into unpredictable RP circumstances and they reveal new biases and relationships with their own handicaps and preferences than I had realized were possible.
A lot of my RP progress has been gradual. There's nothing that specifically sticks out to me about my RP. It's mostly always been "Your English/writing/roleplay is really good!" because it's not my first language. I wrestled with the common RP practices at first but learned pretty fast in the first 1-2 years. From there on I haven't changed much (I went along with a fad every now and then, but I settled down on my current ways that are pretty solid I guess), and all my focus has been on improving my English.
So I suppose if I look at my English, my first leveling up moment was when in high school, my English teacher looked at me and asked "Sanne, how do you spell this word again?" because she wasn't sure anymore. In just 3 years time I'd improved so much, largely by myself because I was ahead of the study material so early, that my teacher was looking at me for the right answer. That was pretty awesome.
So I suppose if I look at my English, my first leveling up moment was when in high school, my English teacher looked at me and asked "Sanne, how do you spell this word again?" because she wasn't sure anymore. In just 3 years time I'd improved so much, largely by myself because I was ahead of the study material so early, that my teacher was looking at me for the right answer. That was pretty awesome.
I think, like Sanne, that my overall progress as a writer has been a sort of slow building upon past lessons--one brick at a time, you might say. As a player, I think one of my biggest "Aha!" moments came when I started pushing myself to be more public in my roleplays. On the one hand, it banished a lot of my shyness and social anxiety (at least on some fronts), and taught me to have more confidence in my work. More importantly, however, it taught me to let myself relax and just have fun with my writing and with the scenarios laid out before me--which is arguably what roleplay is all about, eh? I'd lost the ability to just have fun for quite a long time, prior, and sank far too much energy into fretting about my technical quality to actually enjoy myself.
Mostly, however, I think my ability to express three-dimensional characters with beliefs and personalities drastically different from my own is what develops most for me, over time. It's like Kim says; you slowly discover new depths and uncover new layers as you expose characters to unpredictable situations--doing so with a character whose personality is dramatically different from your own teaches you to keep on your toes and remain dynamic in your play, I think.
I believe exploring genres one might not initially be familiar with in one's RP can lead to "level up" experiences, as well. I've learned a great deal from playing my characters Ignymn and the Englishman, as both of them constitute an exploration of different horror genres, which I knew very little about prior to creating the characters and researching methods by which horror authors build atmospheres of dread and suspense. It ended up strengthening my ability to create atmosphere in my writing overall, I believe.
Mostly, however, I think my ability to express three-dimensional characters with beliefs and personalities drastically different from my own is what develops most for me, over time. It's like Kim says; you slowly discover new depths and uncover new layers as you expose characters to unpredictable situations--doing so with a character whose personality is dramatically different from your own teaches you to keep on your toes and remain dynamic in your play, I think.
I believe exploring genres one might not initially be familiar with in one's RP can lead to "level up" experiences, as well. I've learned a great deal from playing my characters Ignymn and the Englishman, as both of them constitute an exploration of different horror genres, which I knew very little about prior to creating the characters and researching methods by which horror authors build atmospheres of dread and suspense. It ended up strengthening my ability to create atmosphere in my writing overall, I believe.
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