Lack of Fear RP

One of the most annoying breakers of immersion has got to be when everyone is on edge because there are zombie goasts scarin' the shit out of people and then some teenage kid or some guy with his gold 1911 or a nigerian prince comes along and they don't give a rat's ass about it. I feel that during events, admins, if able to(I know you've got a lot going on when running events), should keep an eye out on people neglecting to FEAR RP or outwardly defying it. The lack of it seriously hinders roleplayers who are trying to take events seriously. Vampire or not, a prepubescent girl would never run off alone into a dark nest of these never before seen shadow creatures like they were a pack of bunnies, its bad roleplay and I know I'm not alone in thinking it should be punished.

fear rp is retarded and shouldnt be a thing, it's called negligence boys, learn some rp etiquette. if they have a gun to their head and they want to be a hero, by all means negligence pk them


And you should go fuck a cactus. - Bourneco.

PewPew wrote:fear rp is retarded and shouldnt be a thing, it's called negligence boys, learn some rp etiquette. if they have a gun to their head and they want to be a hero, by all means negligence pk them

Fear RP and Negligence go hand in hand. Fear RP is generally considered wider than the emotion of fear itself, its simply the idea of not being a hero and/or constantly living without consequence. Negligence is simply the other side of that spectrum, those who ignore consequences.

Pixie, that's when you just have karma kill them via an event and they're stuck outside of the event due to NLR and for arguing with you. This is your community, if people aren't treating it as you see fit, you let them now and if they argue with you over it, you let them know harder.

Well, if there are other people like me out there I hardly know what is going on in the server half of the time I hop on it.

So if I got on and everyone was on edge because of zombie goats or what not, I wouldn't have the slightest clue unless there was some indication given that something unusual was happening.

Well its kinda hard to be afraid when "scary shit" oversaturates the environment and everyone is armed to the teeth and has tank armor.

Some people tend to react to fear much more differently.

Take myself, I'll act stoic and unresponsive in a dangerous situation but as SOON as that situation is over I basically melt into a puddle/allow myself to experience the kind of reactions that fear tends to bring up in people.


I personally believe that FearRP can be RP'd in many different ways, which is why it's so hard to properly enforce it.

There are way too many variables to properly enforce Fear RP.

I support negligence PKs so long as they're done on a case-to-case basis and not enforced on a set of strict guidelines.

Bump, despite what I just said, I recently witnessed a child character pull out a knife and attack an adult with, I shit you not, 'a jumping spinning slash move'.

I think children should be especially prone to fear RP, but it seems like 80% of kids on server are already hardened war vets that never shed a single tear, even if their still 9 years old.

Which is why on any server I help run i explicitly ban child characters (they're fucking stupid in the first place because the point of rp is to play something you are not in real life) because everyone rps them fucking wrong anyway. Seriously, they shouldve been banned at the start.

I disagree, child characters can add a lot to a story arc or setting - but only if done right.

While I don't think they should have been banned... I do think we should start thinking about revoking some people's characters. At least, the ones who RP them similarly to anime moes or Mary Sues.

I think the lack of fear RP can be attributed not just to the player, but the character.

There might be some people who can fear RP, but there character is not one to outwardly show fear. The player understands that the time would be appropriate for fear, but their own character blocks them from doing that. This can be because the character is badly written or just because the character is like that. A big problem is that we have too many "stoic, emotionless" robots. But that can easily be turned around to say they're badly written if such a character is kind or emotional in other situations. Your character is either in control of their emotions all the time (save for circumstances where it would be appropriate), or isn't, which means they should be showing fear. Characters in the military and things like that might be an exception, as they're trained to not show fear but at the same time still show emotions. I think with characters such as those, fear rp should be acknowledging that the character might be fearful, but chooses not to show it or shows it after the event. I dunno, just blabbering.

Opposite if that, some players just don't know or don't care to fear rp. It requires them to put themselves in their characters shoes and say "if I was here, what would I be feeling" and then adjust it it their character's personality and experiences. I feel like that's the biggest contributor to the lack of Fear RP. Your character is a child, they shouldn't be a war veteran who's okay with hurting people ( except if they are hurting people because, as a child, they might not take other people's feelings into consideration or do not understand right or wrong yet). It's important to put yourself in the rp, assess it, and then filter your assessment through your character. For instance, if I saw a dead body in real like, I'd probably freak the fuck out, run away, and then vomit. But Hanna, who has seen a few, along with pieces of her own personality coming into play, is more inclined to force herself to not look at it and feel really sick and uncomfortable and get mad about it, but that also depends on the circumstance (say if they were murdered brutally or it was someone she knew).

Whatever it is, there is a severe lack of fear rp, or even just reaction rp, in this server. People just ignore scenes that are happening. Your guy just walked past a guy being stabbed and you give no reaction? I feel like a guide might help or other people teaching it would do some good. I think if an admin comes across a situation where they think there's a lack of fear rp, they could talk to the player and see what's going on, ask them about their character, and give advice, not punish them.

ZombieMesh wrote:There might be some people who can fear RP, but there character is not one to outwardly show fear. The player understands that the time would be appropriate for fear, but their own character blocks them from doing that. This can be because the character is badly written or just because the character is like that. A big problem is that we have too many "stoic, emotionless" robots. But that can easily be turned around to say they're badly written if such a character is kind or emotional in other situations. Your character is either in control of their emotions all the time (save for circumstances where it would be appropriate), or isn't, which means they should be showing fear. Characters in the military and things like that might be an exception, as they're trained to not show fear but at the same time still show emotions. I think with characters such as those, fear rp should be acknowledging that the character might be fearful, but chooses not to show it or shows it after the event. I dunno, just blabbering.

This is true. For my previous characters, many of them have been desensitized to violence, gore or in general, fear itself. This also stems from their mildly egotistical nature- and for Werewolves and Vampires, people think their invincible, and the sad part is, the administration team backs them up. 'oooh, you can't do thiis' or 'oooh you can't do that'. Even my characters had fears, they were just so rare to see in roleplay that they never really showed any fear. My Lycanthrope was /afraid/ of silver (Instinctual fear.). My Vampire was /afraid/ of spiders. My Nosferatu was /afraid/ of riticule and society itself.

People also tend to call characters 'edgy' too quickly. Lila wasn't edgy. I'll be honest, that character was an open and shut book by the time I made her as a character. She was defined, and fully profiled out as a character.

This is a pretty weird situation because there are several characters I know who are hard to scare - and by that I mean, any life threatening situation or otherwise intimidating event are shrugged off... And I'd be fine with that due to rushes in adrenaline and fight or flight instincts, but barely any of them seem shaken up afterwards. Even if faced with 'The Horrors' which everyone with a gun - even if only a pistol - rushed to confront because they wanted to be badasses.

Fear is supposed to be a common human emotion to everyone, not something you add onto your character to balance it. Going through traumatizing events in life hardly ever desensitize people to the fear they'd feel, if anything, it creates an even more intense fear of it due to them not wanting to go through with whatever it is again.

Fact is, we do have Mary Sues and the grand majority of them are Vampires. Their inherent 'invincibility' allows them to act as badass and as  fearless as they want - even if they're 700 year old kids. It's easy for someone, both ICly and OOCly, to lose their sense of possible loss and the fear that comes with it when they're better, in every way, to non-vampires. Especially considering we hardly ever play or acknowledge when its day time.

Fuzzy Wolfy wrote:This is a pretty weird situation because there are several characters I know who are hard to scare - and by that I mean, any life threatening situation or otherwise intimidating event are shrugged off... And I'd be fine with that due to rushes in adrenaline and fight or flight instincts, but barely any of them seem shaken up afterwards. Even if faced with 'The Horrors' which everyone with a gun - even if only a pistol - rushed to confront because they wanted to be badasses.

Fear is supposed to be a common human emotion to everyone, not something you add onto your character to balance it. Going through traumatizing events in life hardly ever desensitize people to the fear they'd feel, if anything, it creates an even more intense fear of it due to them not wanting to go through with whatever it is again.

Fact is, we do have Mary Sues and the grand majority of them are Vampires. Their inherent 'invincibility' allows them to act as badass and as  fearless as they want - even if they're 700 year old kids. It's easy for someone, both ICly and OOCly, to lose their sense of possible loss and the fear that comes with it when they're better, in every way, to non-vampires. Especially considering we hardly ever play or acknowledge when its day time.

In the defense of people who don't instantly run away...I mean, what can I say. I created a character who absolutely dislikes guns. He does everything in his ability to avoid being around them or around people with guns. That said, when he saw heavily armed and armored individuals coming down the street he immediately changed his course and tried to walk away, which lead to my first actual encounter in the game where-in I was cornered in an alleyway with a guy pointing a gun at me wanting to know why I was acting sketchy.

So, the first time I actually acted upon what could arguably be considered one of my characters fears, it lead to me being held up at gunpoint by the police in a dark alley because I looked suspect. I mean, he didn't piss himself in terror because there was a gun pointed at him; he fought in World War II, that'd just be silly. He wasn't happy or comfortable with the situation, and made it abundantly clear repeatedly that he did not like guns but I didn't turn him into a bumbling mess of fear and stuttering. Sometimes fear manifests itself in different ways, sometimes people draw in and try to harden themselves instead of giving in and showing fear.

Now, Alexander's situation with guns is a special one because I'm not sure whether or not to classify him as being properly afraid of guns...Just mostly traumatized, I suppose, by his experience during the war.

That said, Alexander also remains inherently distrustful of all human beings despite whatever 'rights' Fables might have been given. A big part of my character is that I still roleplay him as being keenly aware that Vampire kind are vulnerable during the daytime, and that humanity likely far outnumbers them. It is part of why he actively still tries to keep the fact that he is a Vampire semi-secret.

Just to be clear, my definition of 'fear RP' isn't that I expect everyone to start shrieking in horror whenever faced with the smallest amount of threat or danger, in fact, your example fits what I had in mind perfectly.

I hate to use myself as an example but; Vagabond's greatest fear is vampires, her fear has an origin related to her backstory and it isn't something I, as a player, gave her just to 'balance' her so she has a weakness - as in, the fear is a part of her character and personality. As a result, she's also got a phobia of blood, and thus hates violence because it usually leads to bloodshed... So, despite being uncontrollably uncomfortable around people who seem vampiric, the city is full of bloodsuckers to the point where she can't realistically avoid them - but tries to anyway. She isn't screaming whenever someone claims to be one, but she'll avoid them or just act suspicious of them. She doesn't like them, and if faced by one in a violent situation, she'll show some true fear because it combines everything she hates in a big horrible mess. In short; her fear affects her, it isn't just a lazily added on factoid, it has purpose and it allows for development.

My issue, however, is when people don't acknowledge when a stressful situation occurs; their characters will shrug off any sense of fear, anxiety or even discomfort - or just plain not react to it in any realistic manner.