NAYLEEN NO'QUATH
The Dominant Drowess
An old character of mine! Click to read. She was a POPULAR character.
My Views on... "Demi-Gods"..
There is nothing inherently wrong with someone playing a Demi-God. The problem comes when people abuse demi-gods, or when others fail to appropriately build the suspense around their own character.
To the left is an image of a character I used to play:
Lindelae-Dakira, Valheru Dragon Lord.
She dressed like a Roman Goddess, understood all languages, but refused to speak anything lower then Elvish. Because of this? She was always in the presence of servants, including her (player) majordomo, Meliira Eveningfall.. whom would translate for others what she was saying..
The key thing is that it really added to the officiality of a demi-goddess, lounging on a couch being fanned by slaves, staring at those speaking to her with eyes glowing like molten gold as some player servant translates her divine words to you.
A demi-god doesn't belong in a crappy little tavern, getting pissy and trying to massacure someone because they came between your character and some hot elf that was leading you on.. that's petty, silly, and to simple for an immortal entity that has lived for a thousand years.
Wether you play a demi-god, an immortal, a demon, or whatever -- keep this shit in mind.. If you're going to do it.. do the shit right.
Just because you have a long RPed history with your existing, OP character... doesn't mean you have a good history with your existing, OP character.
Lindelae-Dakira once took a broadsword full to the back of the head .. turned around, grabbed the man by his throat, and caved in his armored breastplate with her fist and then flung him one handed, cartwheeling through the air over a crowd of people -- a feat that even with her strength is physically impossible due to her weight ratio compared to his (effectively, she'd throw herself off balance trying this no matter how strong she was) -- ... one of her divine powers however allowed her to manipulate gravity of their surroundings relative to herself as an anchor.
The thing is? If you build it up enough ... you play stoic ... you let people talk for you, as if you're important ... and you have *present* IC support when your character is in the room... and you go about the business of an authentic demi-god, rather then the petty business of a munchkin? People will be okay with you doing these things to their characters when they deserve it. Especially if other characters are warning their character that they should not be fucking around..
But that random fight at a bar? People will call bullshit on your "demi-god" or "(half)-vampire" or "demon" every fucking time. For good reason. The thing that you need to understand however? Doing these kinds of characters in random public RP.. it doesn't matter if you "power down" your character, "weaken" the "power level" of your "half-vampire" who can "only" spend 2 - 4 hours "per day" in sunlight. What good is that going to do to protect someone fleeing from him into sunlight anyways?
It doesn't even matter if they attack you first.
What actually pisses people off is that they are playing a character about day-to-day interaction, making coin, negotiating business deals, and having personal relationships: You dues-ex-machina'd your inter-galactic warrior from completely outside the narrative entirely for the fulfillment of your own ego. You bring it into an environment completely outside it's scale... and you are imposing it on people: Because you are bored.
The problem is:
A contrived or arbitrary plot device may annoy or confuse the reader, causing a loss of their suspension of disbelief in the setting.