Military "Roleplays" (I hate them.)

Here's a fun little factoid about me: I LOVE roleplaying

It's one of my favorite activities. And I very honestly recommend you participate in a roleplay of your own! It is genuinely a lot of fun, it's like acting in a movie where you're the main character and where everything is improv

Except everyone is the main character!!! At least in a good roleplay setting, that is

In my life I've participated in many types of roleplays:

Original RPs

Steampunk themed, cyberpunk themed

Attack On Titan "RPs"

RPs inside videogames, text RPs

Now, you might've noticied how I put quotation marks around one of these. That is because that specific AOT RP was, to put it bluntly, a military "RP."

I do not like military roleplay, the reason being that it has a lot of military and not a whole lot of roleplay, at least in my experience

LEFT, FACE!

A big part of Military Roleplay is, well, the military. And the military is simply full of soldiers made and yelled at to follow orders.

Let me walk through the process of getting into Miltary RP:

You will join the RP

You will walk up to someone and ask them how to join the military, which then will redirect you to a group or some shit you need to subscribe to

After you get let in, you'll be met with the big obstacle: TRAINING

This is where you are taught to follow orders. This is where you are thought to be fearless! Emotionless! And, most of all, only do whatever your higher up tells you to do! Only do that! nothing else! Only that!

If your commander tells you to "LEFT FAEC" you will follow it and then get fucking beaten to a pulp because "I didn't say Left Face, I mispelled it! you got a strike!!!"

This is my biggest gripe with military RP: The entire thing is just a way of people who small penises to show off power in some way, they get at the top so they can yell at the bottom, and that's all it is.

You are never taught how to roleplay because you don't need to roleplay. All you are made to do is listen to your higher ups.

It is only considerable a "roleplay" in the way that you are pretending to be someone else, but as for roleplay value, there is simply none.

But hey, that's just the training right! After that you'll be going off into the field and get to roleplay a lot with people! Right? Right?

Permadeath, or, as I like to call it: "Oops! You died! Back to the start with you!"

Now the concept of permadeath is simple: If you die, your character dies permanently and you need to start from the beggining with a new character. To someone who is naive this might sound like a cool idea, up the stakes a bit, make it so it actually feels like you're gonna die, make your life matter!

But in practice, it completely destroys all roleplay value, especially in an environment where you die A LOT.

"And what is the issue? I'll just roleplay when there aren't any!" That's the neat part: YA DON'T!

No one takes any rp seriously unless it's done during those permadeath moments, because many times those permadeath events are the only time where RP is ACTUALLY CONSIDERED CANON! SO ALL YOUR ACTIONS OUTSIDE OF A LIFE OR DEATH SITUATION MEAN NOTHING!

And pretty much all of the time, RP rules are only enforced during perma death.

So. In other words, you can only really roleplay in a moment of life or death, and in a moment of life or death you are more focused on living rather than talking to your brethren and building up any type of lore. So these events come, kill a bunch of people, and then end

Which destroys any motivation for anyone to actually make any good characters because they're gonna be forced to make new ones every thursday. So no one will really roleplay at all.

People only join military roleplays to be power hungry, to climb the ranks and yell at the ones at the bottom

Quotas, or, as I like to call them: "Why get myself an actual job when I can stay in a server for 2 hours a week and do absolutely fucking nothing?"

A lot of roleplays will have this neat thing called a quota, which is basically an amount of time you need to spend in the server to remain in the department you are in.

This is stupid. All it does is put pressure on people who might already be stressed about other things, things more important than a children's game

And it's not like you do anything in there anyways, most of the time you will only be guarding a gate from trolls, for two hours straight. No roleplaying happens. Nothing happens.

Usually all these RPs have some sort of overarching story going on, but you can't do anything about it because you don't get to ever participate to any real RPs, you are simply made to stand in the sidelines and do absolutely nothing but loiter around until you die, while the big guys (99% of the time just high ranks who are in an inner friend group you'll never get in) do all the actual roleplaying

The experience wouldn't change for anyone whether you were there or not.

I dislike the concept of a roleplay where you don't roleplay.

I have been in the AOT RP group for circa a year, and in that whole time I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened. I never built any character, I never even touched an asterisk to do an action, people don't join military rp to have an actual roleplay, people only join military RP to play an FPS game with a rank structure. That's it

Now I mostly roleplay in an SCP RP group, and in that SCP RP group I keep myself FAAAR, FAR AWAY from combative departments, and instead keep myself within non combative departments, because they are basically a military rp, you are thought to follow the rank structure, to kill and to die, and everyone who joins them only joins them to play an FPS game with a rank structure

I much prefer staying within the boundaries of non combative departments where wars are fought with actions and where I can actually built up lore and roleplay.

Also everyone in the medical department is gay as fuck, you know who you are!!! (none of them know abt this blog)