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« on: December 31, 2007, 06:57:35 PM »
Please forgive a comment from a very casual player (who will be coming back soon as soon as my job ends)...
Speaking purely as a player (not for my various characters) I formed my own stereotypes based on my experiences. One is that monster characters were almost always played as cuddly and "wuvable", more often than not and whether they know it or not aiming to be Lennie from Of Mice and Men. Another is that elves are best avoided, as they were the most likely to be stuck-up pains to deal with in character and out, at least lower-level ones. Your mileage may vary and of course there are many exceptions but that was my general impression. Thus whether it was "correct" RP or not I tending to be attracted to grouping with that bumbling but friendly Half Giant instead of the new haughty elf because it was just more, well, fun.
There's another factor, too, which is that we all live in a very PC real world where racism is a huge taboo. That's a good thing, but it's hard for many of us to play racist in the game, particularly when we don't see evidence of why we should be so in the general storytelling. There's a pretty simple solution to this problem, in my opinion.. If people are being too friendly to orcs, teach them a lesson. Send the friendliest orc their way, have them cuddle and coddle it, and then when the time is right have the orc double cross them in a cruel and violent way. Turns out it was a scout and his vicious tribe was following not far behind, something like that. They'll learn. If the monster races are being played as too friendly then they need to face some adversity to beat them down. Maybe NPC patrols on the trails to harass them, etc. I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but people do have to be trained a bit to hate and fear.
Anyway, the most evil and unpleasant villains have always been humans and near-humans. Orcs and goblins may be cruel thugs who ambush you on the highways but should they really be feared more than that shady human who may be a Corathite able to summon a Balor? Note that this probably doesn't apply to Drow, or say an army of well-trained orcs, but that scraggly band by the side of the road may not be the biggest thing to fear in a very hostile fantasy world. Considering how many members of the "good" races are just as cruel at heart as any monster, and able to attain considerably more power while blending in to society, I would think most characters should be played as really not trusting anyone...
From what I've seen the playerbase here is more than willing to bend over backwards to give the DMs what they want, and are extremely quick (and hungry!) to pick up storylines-- unfortunately it's not always clear what the DMs want, and the storytelling will often drift not to what it perhaps has been envisioned to be, but what the group of players who happens to inhabit the world at the time make it to be. The one thing I never really liked about this server (and don't get me wrong because I like almost every thing else) is the tendency to reprimand the general playerbase for perceived problems much like this, when in my opinion it could easily be resolved in the game itself with great storytelling to boot.
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