RolePlaying Tuesday: Physical Descriptions

Let's kick off RolePLaying Tuesdays with a relatively straightforward topic: the physical description of one's character in one's RP profile.

I admit, the physical description makes me stumble a lot more easily than a bio or anything else, because I can pretend not to know a bio or whatnot, but I'm supposed to picture the character as they are in their description, and if that description breaks my brain, it does actually kinda breaks my immersion.

So, a couple of things I'd really wish people would keep in mind when writing their physical description:

More...

1. Height, Weight and Body Type: That Disbelief Isn't Going To Suspend Itself

I'm not asking for hyperrealism, here -- this is, after all, a game where a 3ft Gnome will hit exactly as hard as a 7ft Tauren, as long as they're the same level and wearing the same gear. And frankly, given how often I've seen "realism" used as an excuse for sexism ("Women aren't as strong as man, therefore they can't be warriors and definitely can't wield two-handers!") and other bigotry, I'm actually rather leery of calls for realism, these days. Besides, I'm a fantasy fan; my disbelief-suspending muscles are well-developed.

But suspension of disbelief only goes so far, and I get very cranky when I painfully drop my disbelief on my toes because someone forgot that swinging a sword/hammer (with or without a shield) around all day builds muscle. Yes, even if you're a girl. No, I don't care if you think bulky muscles on a female character are ugly, or "unrealistic," or whatever. It's going to happen. Sure, depending on your genetics and build and gender, the degree of bulkiness is going to vary. But a warrior or pally who's made it to Outlands, let alone Northrend, isn't going to be "slender," people, and even a newly-minted pally is going to be more than just "athletic and perhaps a little on the muscular side".

Furthermore, if you're going to give people an exact height and weight, please think about what those numbers mean. Don't just throw out what you think is a "normal"/"slender" height/weight proportion, because first of all, what we think of as "normal" often isn't, thank you mainstream media, and secondly, muscles weigh more than fat. What this means is that someone who is the same size as I am, but is muscular instead of my, er, "padded" build, is going to weight more than I do. It means that when I see things likethe two images in this paragraph, I'm picturing two very skinny individuals. Both of them have a BMI of 18/18.5, which is literally on the border of being underweight. Doesn't sound like they're likely to have a lot of muscles on them, does it? You see why I have trouble picturing either of them as paladins, swinging a hammer around for great justice.

And don't even get me started on this Draenei Death Knight. That's a BMI of 14.9. Which, yes, exists out here in the real world as well -- my youngest brother is around that BMI, for example. My brother is also a skinny-assed freak, and I cannot imagine him trying to wield a big two-handed sword while wearing plate. And I've seen a number of Draenei around with racially semi-appropriate heights and human-standard "average" weights, which makes me wonder if this is a racial ability I've not heard of yet. Do Draenei have hollow bones filled with helium or something? *throws hands*

Look, generally speaking, I'm extremely sceptical of BMI as a measurment, but when you're picuring your character's height and weight, you could do worse than to calculate their BMI, keeping in mind that warriors, paladins, Death Knights, and really, most heavy melee classes, are likely to have a BMI in the mid- to upper twenties at least. (Which, yes, is officially "overweight," which is in fact one of the problems with the BMI system. But you can use it to your advantage here.) For non-melee classes, this is a good website to see what a certain height/weight ratio actually looks like.

And while you're thinking about height and weight and whatnot, think about how those would fit your character, and think about the vast, wild variations that exist in body types out here in the real world as well. Melee classes will be muscular, logically, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily tall, or that they have no body fat at all. One of the physically strongest women I know is also fat. I've known a number of guys in my life who were physically very fit and strong, but still had a beer gut.

On the other end of the spectrum, caster classes are very unlikely to be bulked up and muscled out, unless they spend their days in the gym rather than questing. Yet it's rare to see a skinny male caster, and even rarer to see a fat caster of either gender, with the possibly exception of the dwarves.

And speaking of rarites, I've spent the last several weeks clicking on every RP profile I came across, and I noticed something disturbing. Number of human females taller than my 5'7" warrior alt: zero. Number of human males shorter than my 5'6" priest: ditto. The hell people?

I mean, I know what the hell, of course -- conciously or not, people often create characters that adhere to the beauty ideal at least in most ways, and the western beauty ideal says men should be tall and women should not be tall, but really, 5'7"? Not that fucking tall. And also, let's talk about that beauty thing, shall we?

2. Beauty: Still In The Eye Of The Beholder

I've been playing on an RP server for a little over a month, and I'm already sick to the teeth of physical descriptions telling me how beautiful a character is, with her petite build and her slender curves and her azure eyes and blah blah blah, or how handsome this other character is, all tall and muscled and strong-jawed and whatever and -- AUGH! *hairpull* No! Tell me what your character looks like, and I will decide wether I/my character would think this person is good-looking. Because believe it or not, beauty is not universal.

For one thing, "beauty" is likely to vary wildly depending on the race of the observer. Humans may look at a girl's breasts and ass, for example, as indicators of beauty, but dwarves are probably more likely to appreciate strong arms in either gender, I suspect, a quick jaunt through wowwiki has given me the theory that a gnome's primary beauty is in their hair, and given that the Nelves' warriors have traditionally been female, I doubt they share the female beauty ideal of petite and slender and "elegant".

For that matter, even within the same race/culture, people don't all share the same tastes. Not every character is going to find your character stunningly beautiful or handsome, and even if they do se her as attractive on an "objective" level (i.e. measured against the beauty standard of their culture), that doesn't mean they're necessarily attracted to them. And yes, dammit, this is a personal pet peeve for me. I like my women tall and big and bossy and, er, non-blonde. My priest likes tall blondes who can swing a hammer with style. Neither of us would be all that attracted to a 5'4" petite, slender woman, and we'd both appreciate it if you'd stop telling us we should be.

3. Details: Less Is More

Okay, I admit, this is in part a personal preference. I don't tend to get very clear descriptions of my characters -- usually, I (and my readers/RP-partners) are lucky to get a general height and build, and maybe hair and eye colour. I suspect this is largely because I have a hard time recognising/remembering faces in real life as well.

Which is why it baffles me when people describe a character in three paragraphs of detail, because ... really? You expect someone to notice all that at first sight? Because even people who are more observant than I am really aren't going to notice your character has, say, a large scar on the back of his shoulder. No, really.

And if you must have a three paragraph description, rather than listing a bunch of details from head to toe, try and start with a general description first, then describe more details. That would, at least, mimic the way most people notice what others look like.

4. Words: They mean Things

Put. The thesaurus. Down. Please. I'm actually begging here, folks, please don't use a £5 word when a 50p one will do. Save the expensive words for when you want to be very precise, and even then, use them sparingly -- but most of all, use them knowingly.

People have eyes, not jewel-toned "orbs". They have hair, not "tresses", and that hair is black, not "Raven". You might be aiming for poetic and non-boring, but you're hitting purple and headdesk-inducing.

Furthermore, words that are listed as synonyms in a thesaurus aren't always interchangable. "Crimson," for example, means red, yes, in that it's a very specific shade of red. A deep red with a tinge of blue, to be exact; not exactly a colour human hair comes in naturally. Neither is "scarlet," for that matter, which is a bright, blood red.

Avoid giving people the wrong image of your character (or indeed the urge to stab themselves in the face), and use the word that comes naturally, rather than the one that sounds fancy.

5. Originality: We Are All Special And Unique Snowflakes

It occured to me during my smoke break that most of my rant targets above really occur because of one big reason. Well, actually two, but the other one is that beauty ideal thing, and since this is not the feminist blog I also write at, and I promised myself I wouldn't type "patriarchy" on this blog (... oops -- er, I won't type it often?), we'll focus on the other big reason: people want their character to be unique.

Which is a perfectly fine, understandable, and even laudable goal. The problem, though, is that people seem to confuse "unique" with "stands out in a crowd", which leads to the extremely tall, the stunningly beautiful, the eye-catching scars and whatnot, and that, in turn, ironically leads to situations where I sometimes feel like Sir and my priest stand out in a crowd because we look perfectly ordinary.

I'll let you in on a secret: everyone is unique. No two people look exactly alike, not even identical twins. But by definition, only a small number of people can stand out in a crowd, and even those people are highly unlikely to actively attract noticable attention. The brother I mentioned above, the skinny-ass freak? He's tall. He's also a punk, and dresses like it, and has a dreadhawk. Does he stand out in a crowd? Sure. Do people stop and stare when he walks the streets? With one or two rude exceptions, hell no. Standing out in a crowd is not, as some people seem to think, a way to get people to RP with you, or like you, or find you interesting.

You achieve that by initiating RP yourself, by being likeable, and by being interesting.

Desperation Is Not A Good Look For You (Or: "What the hell just happened there?")

Sorry folks, I do actually have a RolePlaying Tuesday post almost ready to go, but it'll have to wait until tomorrow, because:
a) It's really really long, which means I need to put it under a cut, which Blogspot doesn't seem to support unless you tinker with it, which I can't do, and Sir isn't online at the moment.
b) It's not quite done, needs some tinkering, and mostly a fresh set of eyes that, frankly, I just don't have at this time of night. (It's 2:30 in the morning over here. *faceplant*)

So to tide you over, here's something I said I wasn't here for: a PuG rant. Well, a not-quite-PuG rantlet, really, but still.

I'm talking about the bane of every healing and/or tanking class (and the double bane of druids and pallies, I suspect): random PuG requests. There you are, out and about, questing (okay, I was fishing in this instance, but usually we're out questing), and there's a whisper asking if you want to come heal/tank an instance. And that's if you're lucky, and you do't get the ones who open by asking what spec you are. The first kind, I politely decline. The second kind always get the same response: "Why do you ask?"

I know damn well why they ask. I'm just also well-trained in stubborning people into at being at least vaguely polite to me. Half the time, the result is silence, which is fine by me. The other half, I at least get a question/explanation out of them, at which point I politely decline, and they can go pester the next healing class.

This one, however ...

On the one hand, at least he said hello, and asked a question, rather than just throwing "spec?" at me. On the other hand, apparently in seven words, I apparently revealed myself to be ... well, whatever kind of person they wouldn't want to have in their group.

And in, er, a lot more words, he revealed himself to be the kind of person I'm not grouping with.

Remember, kids: if you're so desperate for a healer you're whispering people who aren't even in LFG, don't start out by asking for their spec (but don't assume they're healspecced either!), and graciously take no for an answer, because behind that priest may be a long time DPSer who is taking advantage of the fact that they can now pick and chose their PuGs.

M Speaks (And Speaks, And Speaks, And Speaks ...)

I've been told it's my turn to post, and so post I will, because I'd rather not annoy my meatshield. So I figured I'd follow time-honoured tradition and start with an introduction.

Hi, I'm M. I've been playing WoW for about two and a half years now, but I'm still very much a newbie, mostly because I'm kind of antisocial and shy and nervous about fucking up, especially in PuGs and (ohgod) BGs, and thus my WoW experience has been limited mostly to levelling alts (yes, of course I have altitis!), doing dailies, and grinding for epic flying mount money. Rerolling on an RP realm was probably the best thing I ever did in WoW, because I have a much easier time coming out of my shell when I'm actively pretending to be someone else.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying you probably won't see me post about PuGs that often, unless I can bring myself to recount the Deadmines run that soured me on not only PuGs but also my now-retired pally for months, or if I have some really godaweful experience on my baby warrior at some point. But mostly, I'm going to be usurping the blog on Tuesdays to talk about roleplaying, because roleplaying with random people is kinda like PuGging, right? Right.

So, to clarify where I'm coming from with regards to roleplaying, a few things you may need to know about me:

• I've been roleplaying for about six or seven years now. I've played in fannish LiveJournal games (yes, it was a Harry Potter game), I've LARPed (the mainland Europe, full-immersion, weekend-in-the-woods, hit-people-with-sticks kind), I've tabletop gamed in sysems ranging from World of Darkness through Seven Seas to homebrewed SciFi systems. My point being, while I have my preferences, I'm really not that picky about systems or settings, in the end.


• Related to that: I don't realy have a problem with ERP as such. It's not something I do, unless it's with someone I know very well and trust. But for the love of god, people, keep it to /w and /p, not /s, because I really don't need to see you doing the nasty in the SW Mmoonwell when all I wanted was to purify some felcloth into mooncloth. (True story!)


• I don't understand the appeal in playing a character who's the strongest/smartest/best/prettiest/whateverest/most important characer EVAH. It's one thing to play Lord Whatsisface in a game that's set at court, with everyone playing courtiers and such, or to play a character starting out as Miss Whosit and following her in her ascent to Lady Whosit -- although I think the latter can be quite tricky if other players are still entering the game as "base level," so to speak. (This was a problem in the LARP I was in, in fact.) But why would you want to play Lord Thingumy in a game/guild where most or all of your fellow players are common soldiers at best? Where's the fun in always twisting things to make things go your way? This may be because my favourite RP memories are not "My Awesomely Cool Character Saves The Day," but rather, "The Dice: They hate Me And Want Me To Die," "That Time Rocks Fell And Everyone Died, No Really," or even, "And That Is Why You Should Never Overestimate The Smarts Of The Average LARPer," and as far as I'm concerned, if I can't turn it into a drunken war stry at a geek party, it's not a fun game.


• I'm kind of a huge feminist. I'd not call myself a hardcore one, but I'll take it as a compliment if someone else were to describe me as such. I'm also a lesbian, and I try to be a decent ally in the anti-racism fight. This doesn't necesarily mean I think someone playing, say, a sexist, or a homophobe, or a racist, but I do think it's quite difficult to get right, and I tend to avoid those characters unless I know the player and thus know they're not just using the character as an excuse to be sexist/homophobic/racist. In short, it's complicated, and I'll likely have a whole post on this at some point.


• I have a whole bunch of quite irrational, very subjective pet peeves about which I nevertheless feel very, very strongly.

So that's me. I'm working on my first Roleplaying Tuesday post, which will probably be about physical descriptions and will hopefully be up this coming Tuesday. After that, who knows. I take requests. :D

That damn hammer is still in my bank.

There's no real reason behind the use of the Thundercats logo. I just like it.

As stated, my toon, Lee, is a cockroach Paladin. And that's why M and I waited until we were level twenty to run DM: That Damn Hammer Quest. We could have run it twice but a) I'm lazy and b) I'm spoiled. I've been running nothing but those lovely, short, to-the-point Northrend instances for months, and Classic WoW instancing feels rather endless and confusing.

(And I wasn't even a BC baby. I actually raided in Classic WoW - nothing fancy, just Zul'Gurub - but still. I don't plan to go anywhere near BRD or any of the other upper level endless crawls until I'm 80, bored, and after Achievements. I just don't have the patience anymore.)

With DM out of the way, Shadowfang Keep was next. I don't like DM, it bores me. I do like SFK, though. Maybe it's the werewolves, maybe it's the gothic castle, or the evil ponies, I just like it. We hit this on the same day as DM, so we grabbed up our adopted hunter, a big blue shaman from LFG, and picked up a mage as we were jogging our way from Southshore.

It went smoothly at first, more smoothly than DM because I know this instance better than DM and didn't have to pause to think for a moment about what came next.

I had forgotten that the Wailing Guardsmen silence, though. That's an incredibly annoying mechanic when every single one of your threat generating abilities is a spell. (Even the stun! Why do I need to be able to cast to smash someone on the head?)

I felt rather bad for our adopted hunter, SFK is a cramped little instance and does not love ranged classes, she was standing on railings and crammed awkwardly into stairwells half the time, trying to find a balance between range and LoS.

Real Life aggro meant the mage had to leave about halfway through. M was guiltily pleased not to have to share the cloth drops. I can't really blame her, Robes of Arugal are very pretty. I can, however, mock her for being a horrible greedy person and a poor example of the priesthood.

And, ok. I'm going to preface this with saying that this sort of thing annoys me greatly, and it's not about the loot. It's about being a douchebag, then playing dumb.

A BoE blue dropped. It was Drakewing Bands, I think. I - and everyone else - hits greed. The shaman, without saying anything, hits need. I think 'oh christ. already? really?'. When I asked why he did that he would only say it was an upgrade. Which isn't really an excuse. Hell, going by stats they were an upgrade to me. I told everyone that if another BoE blue dropped, it was greed fodder and moved on.

Now, am I wrong about this loot rule? Every server I've played on, BoE blues are a greed item, because cash is an upgrade for everyone. If someone really wants that piece as an upgrade, they ask. The only time it was different was if it was a guild run, when it would go to an enchanter if we had one, or people would sometimes ask to take it for an alt.

Now I'm not going to get all butthurt over a mediocre level twenty blue. It's annoying not because I needed the money or wanted the item, but because the shaman pulled a butthead move and put a little butthead-burr in the metaphorical shoe of the instance.

And it wasn't a case of the shaman just not knowing instance etiquette. We'd been discussing our main's earlier and he had a few max-level toons. Now, you can get to level eighty without learning a damn thing about how to interact with your group-mates, but it takes effort.

Anyway. Moving on.

(I can tell you though. As soon as M and I hit Northrend the loot setting is going on Master Looter and not coming off. I have been on way too many "I am butthurt over something and will now ninja everything off the last boss to stick it to you, pixels who have offended me." dungeon runs to do anything else.)

No, seriously, moving on.

We managed to wipe on Arugal, he fursploded me, squished the shaman and M in quick succession, and then went after our hunter. Regroup, and smushed him. No robe, but he coughed up a nice belt for M, and I'd gotten my refined ore. We bid adieu to our PUG and the shaman was added to our ignore list. Life is too short to run with buttheads.

We were going to run BFD, until I realized it was unnecessary and the Kor gem would drop off the non-elites outside the instance. Hallelujah. Of course, I also spent a good half hour killing naga and satyrs before I realized I'd forgotten to get the individual quest for the gem. I may have cried a little. It had been a long day.

Jogged my little self to Auberdine and back, clanking all the way, and really missing being a hunter. Thankfully, with the quest in my log the gem dropped on my second kill and I hearthed out of there with a quickness. Turned everything in to that lazy, demanding, ungrateful fellow bumming around outside Ironforge and got my hammer.

For all my whining it really is a fun, interactive questline that can, according to all the comments on Wowhead, be soloed. I suggest you do it. Particularly if you're a Belfadin, as your reward is way prettier.

Actual newbs? In my Warcraft?

Actual newbs? In my Warcraft?

It's more likely than you think.

So, the first instance for M and I was Deadmines, because we're not Horde, and while I like Ragefire Chasm, running into the middle of Orgrimmar as a level 20 isn't my idea of a good time.

It was more fun than I expected, probably because it's been a while since we've done it at the proper level - I usually play Horde, and M hates being at the whim of random idiots. We picked up another Human Paladin, a Nelf Hunter, and feral Druid. It was an unremarkable, clean run. Everything but us died, loot dropped, Cookie was stingy with the Siamese cage.

It took me around three pulls to adopt the hunter. She could control her pet, she didn't melee, and she had the "right" gear. I have seen level eighties perform worse. Often.

(Both my retired eighties are hunters. I have something of a soft spot.)

I don't recall much about the druid, other than the fact that he utilized his status as a hybrid. He'd pop into bear form to grab a mob if I lost it, or go humanoid to throw a renew. Since the jack-of-all-trades aspect of druids is one of my favorites, I liked that.

The Paladin, well. Sucked. Her DPS was lower than M’s, she’d run ahead, lag behind, I had to tell her three times to stop Needing every drop…I could go on. And sure, she just could have been dumb, or a jerk, but I suspect it was someone not only new to the game, but new to MMOs entirely. Why? Mostly because of her gear, it was all vendor-bought whites. And when I rolled my first toon (a pause, to pour one out for the little Tauren Shaman foolishly rolled on a PvP server.) I thought that vendor-bought stuff was the best you could get until you, I don’t even know. Raided? I had no clue. I was a newb!

So instead of booting her, I explained things. And by the end of the pug she was a slightly better player, with at least a slight grasp on instance etiquette. And who knows, maybe I was wasting my time and the player was just someone who couldn’t be arsed to alter her play style to a group setting, and liked the look of that vendor set.

But maybe not, and deity-of-choice knows I’m still grateful to the people who pointed things out to my newb self.