ON ROLEPLAYING [PAGE 5]

PAGE ONE

ON KNOWING THE HOUSE RULES
ON THE REBEL IN THE SYSTEM
ON THE ART OF THE DESCRIPTION
ON FURTHER RESEARCH

PAGE 2

ON THE MATTER OF ROMANCE
THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT TINYSEX [Guest Speaker]

PAGE 3

ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TABLETOP RPGS AND MUSHES

PAGE 4

PLAYERS CAN CARE AND FEED FOR MUSHES TOO! [Guest Speaker]

THIS PAGE

ON THE TYPES OF POWERPOSING

PAGE 6

ON CANNED SPEECHES

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ON THE TYPES OF POWERPOSING

I originally thought it would be enough to refer to Powerposing in passing in my Glossary and leave it at that. But it has since come to my attention that there are many types of powerposes, and that some people seem to interpret "real" powerposing to mean violent play such as, "I draw out my gun and shoot a hole in your heart," but consider their own actions to be "just" romantic or humorous or other manifestations of "exciting" roleplay technique. Accordingly, I've decided to expand the subject a little (brace yourselves! When I decide to say "a little" about a subject, you can never know how many thousands of words will be generated before I run out of steam. You've been warned!).

My current feeling is that common "powerposes" may be broken down into these 10 categories (but this is just off the top of my head, and I reserve the right to add more categories at any time)

Humorous.
Romantic.
Law Enforcement.
Magical.
Violent.
Described.
Lengthy Assumption of No Interruptions.
Attempt to Move A Group Event in the Right Direction.
Wizardly.
OOC.

POSTSCRIPT: The Pre-Consented "Powerpose."

HUMOROUS

Consider the following example of roleplay (assuming that Puck and Brendan are both PCs, operated by two different people):

Puck unexpectedly pops up out of the underbrush and tosses a cream pie directly at Clementine's head. It makes a satisfying SPLAT! as the gooey contents are smeared across Clementines face.

No, no, no! You're not supposed to do it that way. It may be funny, but it takes away Clementine's free will (or more precisely, her Player's free will) concerning what he is or is not prepared to have happen to his own character in this scene. Puck was not trying to do anything SEVERE to Clementine (such as breaking her bones, or taking her prisoner, or stealing all her money), but that doesn't mean it was an acceptable pose, no matter how IC it is for him to pull practical jokes.

As an even more extreme example, we have:

Puck unexpectedly hooks one arm around Clementine's waist and lifts her off the ground, ignoring any objections she makes, while singing, "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my da-a-arling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful so-o-orry, Clementine!"

Once again, NO! Manhandling somebody else is not the way to make friends. I admit there are VERY trivial cases of "touching" another player where it might pass unnoticed, but anything as severe as striking them, or picking them up, or yanking them by the arm, should always be done following the "Pose the attempt, and let the Target pose the result," rule.

Examples of VERY trivial physical contact cases that might squeak by would include such things as, "Puck, who has popped out of the bushes behind Clementine, lightly taps her on the shoulder to get her attention."

It is probable - based on my experience with many different mushers- that Clementine won't scream OOCly at the thought that someone actually posed touching her shoulder, briefly, with one finger, in order to advance the roleplay. By a strict reading of the rules, however, if she DOES object to it, then in any future dealings with her, Puck will just have to remember to pose things like this: "Puck, who has popped out of the bushes behind Clementine, reaches toward her, meaning to tap her on the left shoulder," and let her decide how to handle it. And for anything more severe than a quick single-finger touch of someone who previous poses have already established to be within arm's reach of you, I advise you to rigorously adhere to the "Pose the Attempt" rule, to be on the safe side.

NOTE: In these instances of "humorous" activity, I had the "aggressive" PC be male and the "Target" be female. This was done by design. In case you are male, it may interest you to know that many female mushers (assuming, for the moment, that female mushers tend to be the controllers of female PCs and vice versa) are exceptionally sensitive to ANY attempt by a male PC to powerpose unexpected physical contact of ANY sort (an arm around the waist, a hand on her forearm, a hug, etc.) due to the sad prevalence of male TinySex fanatics whose principal interest in meeting female characters seems to be lustful rather than just "sociable." What you think of as being friendly humor may be taken to have more severe overtones by a female stranger, so it's best to avoid the problem by being on your best behavior.

ROMANTIC

Rhett seizes Scarlett in his arms and kisses her thoroughly, nearly sucking all the oxygen out of her lungs.

Hmm. Did Scarlett and Rhett reach an OOC understanding beforehand concerning the propriety of his "forcing" the kiss upon her? For example, the following exchange could have occurred by way of paged messages between the two lovebirds, invisible to any observer in the room:

Rhett: "Scarlett, shall we do a passionate kiss now?"

Scarlett:"Sure, why not? Go ahead and start the kiss, while I plan where to go from there."

If nothing like this was clearly established, Rhett is OOCly looking pretty dumb because he took WAY too much for granted. If his pose doesn't suit her plans, Scarlett can insist that his powerpose be retconned to an "attempt" and she'll be justified in doing so. Please note that even if these two characters are ICly engaged to be married, or otherwise involved in some sort of romantic relationship, this does NOT automatically give him the OOC right to powerpose hugging her, kissing her, and otherwise manhandling her whenever he feels like it. It may have been established in previous roleplay that the two of them are on sufficiently friendly terms that, ICly speaking, Scarlett could reasonably be expected to be pleased - rather than affronted - at receiving a kiss from him, but that's an IC matter and it doesn't mean that she has surrendered her OOC prerogative of deciding whether or not she wants any such thing to actually HAPPEN to her character at any given time. Standard Consent doctrine should still apply (i.e., pose the attempt and let the other party pose the result), UNLESS (and this is VERY unlikely to happen, in my experience, and rightly so) Scarlett has explicitly informed Rhett, "Sure, you have the right to manhandle me anytime you feel like it, now that we're a romantic item") as part of an OOC conversation. Lacking that sort of carte blanche - either for this particular scene or for ALL interactions between their characters, Rhett might have done better to pose something like this:

Rhett holds out his open arms toward his beloved, obviously yearning to kiss her.

At this point Scarlett could turn her head away and say in an annoyed tone, "Not now, dear, I have a headache!" or whatever she feels like saying.

VIOLENT

These are generally against the rules. In addition, they are terrible wasters of time, because only a very inexperienced Roleplayer will fail to OOCly protest a powerpose directed at him which does not mesh with his own wishes, and the resultant argument can kill the roleplay while the pointless spam flows back and forth.

Example: Once upon a time I wandered into the main Bar of a certain Fantasy Mush and discovered that a swordfight between two real he-men types had recently begun. I watched it for over half an hour (my character idling, while I did more interesting things elsemush). At the end of half an hour, not much progress had been made . . . and the IC poses and dialogue were being interspersed with loud OOC arguments such as, "That wasn't a good pose, that was a Powerpose!" "Was not!" "Was too!" I eventually wandered out of the room and spoke to someone else for about an hour . . . went back into the bar after the someone else left, and saw the fight was still going strong . . . OOC arguments galore, and thus far no significant IC progress in terms of one side or the other clearly being on the edge of defeat. I began to suspect that the underlying problem was this: Both players considered their characters so strong, skillful, and tough, that when they started the fight both had been expecting to win, neither felt he could afford to lose this one.

Possibly in an attempt to liven things up, one of the warriors might pose something like this:

Strongboy seems to be getting tired as he parries the latest blow from MachoMan.

At which point, MachoMan might powerpose something like this:

MachoMan takes advantage of Strongboy' s weakness to launch a nasty kick at his midsection, at such close range that he can't dodge it!

Just because Strongboy posed he was feeling a bit tired does not mean he gave MachoMan carte blanche to powerpose a SUCCESSFUL blow a minute later. These things are generally supposed to be resolved in one of two ways:

1) If there is a coded combat system, it can be utilized and an "impartial" program will determine who the winner is in a one-on-one combat.

2) The Players can OOCly agree on an acceptable outcome.

My great preference has always been for No. 2, negotiating the outcome in advance, BEFORE the fight even starts ICly, in order to make sure we both know where we want things to end up. Fights such as the one I mentioned above, where I got the nasty impression that neither Player considered it even possible that HE could lose, are about as pointless an activity as I can imagine.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

By this, I refer to trying to curb the twinkish tendencies of a Player who is ICly attempting to do something his character logically would never get away with doing. Elsewhere, I have recounted the tale of a visitor to a Royal Palace who was stopped, Icly, by a local bureacrat at a security checkpoint and told he had to produce proper ID to pass this point. All he had to do (if he Icly would have some ID of the right sort) was pose pulling it out and showing it to the guards. Instead, he made a joke of it and tried to pose walking right past the (emitted NPC) guards without any trouble. After a couple of warnings, the Bureaucrat emitted an arrest with several guards closing in from all directions, and the Visitor exploded (OOCly) that this COULDN'T happen without his Consent!

He was ignoring the fact that it's virtually impossible to get away with a flagrant violation of local security procedures when the highly trained security personnel are right there glaring at you. He had it coming.

MAGICAL

Suppose you are a relatively "normal" character facing the mighty Kalkin, who has some heavy-duty "magical" powers. Suddenly this occurs:

Kalkin raises his hand, and lightning sleets down from the heavens, turning your poor carcass into a blackened chunk of meat. You aren't quite dead yet, but you sure don't feel very alive.

Unquestionably a "powerpose." The question is: was it legal for a magic-user to do this to a target with no magical defenses?

Ah, here we get into special problems. What do the rules say about a magic-user's right to "force" his spells upon you, without your having veto power over whether nor not they actually hit you as hard as the magic-user wants them to? This is a different problem from one-on-one interaction between two "normal" people, where it is assumed that if the other guy swings a fist at you, you can elect to duck, block, be hit squarely, or do something else. I can't give you any hard-and-fast answers here, because the different types of "magic" (I define magic, for mushing purposes, as ANY exceptional ability which some characters may possess, but others don't have - telepathy, telekinesis, throwing fireballs across the room, or any other exotic item) and the "proper rules" for utilizing them will vary from one mush to another, depending on the precise theme and the local interpretation thereof. A few of my thoughts on how the Wizards of a magic-using mush should organize their thinking are found HERE , but I mainly pose the questions they should consider, rather than trying to explain what the "best" answers might be.

But there are two responsibilities here:

First, that of the Wizards to clearly define what a magic-user can or cannot "force" a less powerful victim to endure, and why.

Second, that before you do any magic-using roleplay, as magic-user OR as "mundane," you be thoroughly familiar with the rules the Wizards in their wisdom have burdened you with so that you know what you're doing and what to expect.

If EITHER of these responsibilities is not properly attended to, then nasty arguments will arise where both parties (the magic-using aggressor and the Target) are both EQUALLY SINCERE in thinking that their position is the right one. If it was the Wizards who were asleep at the switch, then both of the roleplayers in question may have studied the magic-based rules until they can recite them word-perfect from memory, and STILL be sincere in having different opinions on what it all means.

DESCRIBED

I've used it before, and I'll use it again: Here's an example of what NOT to do when describing yourself.

Cronkheit the Barbarian, the mightiest warrior of the fabled land of Testosteroneia though still a mere 27 years of age, stands proudly before you. Surely the strongest man in the world, he moves with the speed of a rattlesnake, the grace of a gazelle, the courage of a lion. His long black hair is held back with a headband, his bare chest remarkably muscular, his feet clad in leather boots which have seen better days. Sensing your gaze, he turns to glance at you with cold blue eyes with seem to pierce to the very marrow of your being, and you feel your knees go weak as you wonder if he might be angry with you. Somehow you sense that people who arouse his anger don't usually live long enough to regret it. However, after a moment he shrugs imperceptibly and returns to what he was doing before you stared at him.

"Surely the strongest man in the world" is an attempt to force an opinion upon the viewer.

"You feel your knees go weak" is an attempt to force a physical sensation upon the viewer.

"Somehow you sense, etc." is an attempt to force what might be a psychic impression upon the viewer.

All of these things are bad ideas. It would be better to indicate in a nonpersonal sort of way that his cold blue eyes often make people nervous, but not to powerpose such an effect on any particular person. Let the viewer decide how HE is going to react to whatever you have described as being the most noticeable points about your character.

Similar considerations apply to descriptions of rooms, objects, etc.

LENGTHY ASSUMPTION OF NO INTERRUPTIONS

We all make lengthy IC speeches at times (lengthy, for my purposes, being defined as 8 or more lines of text, just as a ballpark figure), but - except in very strained circumstances, such as a gunfight - it's not totally ridiculous to assume that other people in the room will be polite enough to let you stop for breath before they cut in with their own opinions, etc. When we go over into the subject of posing, however, we need more restraint. Consider the following example : the good guy, the heroic John Sterling, is confronting the evil mastermind, the Galactic Overlord, in his secret lair. The Galactic Overlord has a blaster in one hand and is menacing a row of innocent hostages (just a bunch of NPCs, not PCs with any "civil rights" to speak of, under the mush rules) who are chained to one wall, threatening to kill them if Sterling comes any closer. The following pose now occurs:

The Galactic Overlord fires a shot that sizzles into the stone wall next to Hostage One's right ear. "See, Sterling? I TOLD you this thing was loaded!" He fires another shot, burning off Hostage Two's left hand. "And I have no compunctions about using it if you threaten me!" He fires another shot, disintegrating Hostage Three's head. "In fact, I want you to be absolutely sure that I can and will KILL the rest of my hostages if you don't surrender right now!"

This was an extreme example, naturally, but my point is: It is at least conceivable that when the Galactic Overlord started shooting off bits and pieces of Hostages, the gallant John Sterling would choose to attack immediately, on the theory that even if he didn't, this psychopath with a blaster was going to kill them all anyway, so what was there to lose? It's ridiculous for the Galactic Overlord to assume that he can undertake a series of VERY provocative actions, such as three gunshots at three different hostages, and not have to worry about Sterling making any attempt to interfere before this overly complicated pose has been completed. It would have been better roleplay technique to pose one shot at a time (the near miss, the amputation of a hand, the killing of a hostage) and pause after each shot, to give Our Hero an IC opportunity decide if it was now time to leap across the room at the fiend, or if he should wait for a better opportunity.

To use a more "ordinary" example, it would be silly for another Player to pose something like the following when your character was right there in the room with him, expecting to roleplay something.

Laurent goes to the refrigerator. He takes out bread, meat, mustard, etc., and carries everything to the kitchen table. He builds a hero sandwich with these and other ingredients. He eats it. As an afterthought, he goes back to the refrigerator to get an apple for desert. Upon finishing the apple, he throws the core at you to see if you're still awake.

This assumes that Laurent has just spent about 10 minutes getting and eating a meal, while you (whoever you are) simply stood in a corner of the kitchen, watching him without moving a muscle or saying a word to interrupt his meal. It would be more sensible to break this sequence down into one or perhaps two discrete actions per pose, such as:

Laurent opens the refrigerator. He begins pulling out meat, mustard, cheese, etc.

This then leaves you the opportunity to interrupt the process by saying or posing something of your own, and get a real give-and-take session started instead of being assumed to be in a coma until his meal concludes.

ATTEMPT TO MOVE A GROUP EVENT IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

Sometimes - for specific purposes for a limited period of time - one or more Players agree to follow another Player's "lead" in creating an interesting adventure, i.e. he will serve a function similar to "Dungeon Master" in a tabletop roleplaying game. The understanding is that he will run the NPCs and describe certain things which everybody will accept as gospel truth. For instance, if he says that the blizzard is so fierce outside that you simply CAN'T try to leave the building you are now in without dying of hypothermia, the Players will accept this as a hint that there is still something important scheduled to happen (or waiting for them to find it) INSIDE this particular building. I may expand upon this point later.

WIZARDLY

Okay, there's not a whole lot you can do about this one. Occasionally the Powers That Be on a particular mush (Wizards, Admins, whatever they call themselves) will consider it expedient to "force" certain events to happen to you. I may expand upon this point later, as well.

OOC

In humorous OOC conversation, people often "powerpose" doing things to one another. This does NOT mean that powerposes are permitted ICly, but only that they are amusing themselves by doing things which have no "consequences" in terms of IC ramifications.

Example: if characters Brutus and Julius are arguing in an OOC room, Brutus might finally attempt to end the argument in this wise:

Brutus draws his dagger and lunges, burying it to the hilt in Julius's chest. Julius staggers back, looking more puzzled than pained at Brutus's treachery. "Et tu, Brute?" he gasps out. Brutus smirks. "That will teach you not to bore me with your right-wing politics!" Julius slumps to the ground, his toga turning red as his blood leaks out through the wound. "But I still . . . maintain . . . that if our country replaced its President with a Royal . . . .Family . . . we could save a fortune on elections (cough, cough) and the quality of leadership . . . couldn't possibly be any worse . . . than it is now." He dies, having had the last word.

I've seen people do things very similar to this performance in OOC discussions. It's meant to be amusing. After all, the character Julius isn't REALLY dead, and in a minute he'll be speaking normally again, the apparent "assassination" already forgotten, since OOC actions, by definition, have no effect on IC continuity.

On the other hand, they DO have an effect on other people's opinons of the RL you. For instance, some people are very "trigger-happy" when it comes to posing such things (OOCly, I mean) as "Ralph hugs you!" as a way of greeting someone OOCly (Or kisses, squeezes, snuggles, etc). This is a bit risky, unless Ralph and the subject of the hug (some would say, the Victim of the hug) have a very close friendship. One risk (see my comments on Humorous Powerposes, above) is that the recipient of the unexpected "physical sign of affection" will start thinking dark thoughts about "sexual harassment," i.e. "Is that jerk going to pose hugging me at the drop of a hat from now on?" It may not have been meant that way, but it can rub people the wrong way, especially if they don't really know you and thus have no good basis for judging the way you mean something.

POSTSCRIPT: THE PRE-CONSENTED "POWERPOSE."

I made this a postscript because a pre-consented item isn't really a Powerpose, it just LOOKS like one to an outsider!

Occasionally you will see one character apparently powerposing something against another, such as:

Jack strikes Bernice in the face, knocking her to the ground!

And then you will be startled to see that Bernice's player does not immediately scream (OOCly) "Foul! Foul! Nasty powerpose!"

This does not mean that "powerposing" is fully permissible on this mush, it may very well mean that Jack and Bernice have already planned out this scene via private messages paged back and forth, and they felt it was more effective to have Jack pose a SUCCESSFUL blow than just pose the "attempt," since they had already OOCly agreed that Bernice would fall down. Don't assume that you know everything about what they are doing, and be very careful about always posing your own blows, etc., as ATTEMPTS unless you have reached a clear understanding with a friend about the permissibility of doing it a different way.