I’ve been thinking a lot lately.


About role plays.


More specifically, role plays in Minecraft. And, to be honest, I’m a little disappointed.


Most RPs I see are usually camping RPs, Vampires vs. Werewolves RPs and School RPs. And, I’m going to be brutally honest here, they’re all so bad. No, not bad…downright annoying. Allow me to explain.


Look, I love me some role plays, let’s get that out of the way first. Role playing is one of my biggest passions, actually. It’s like writing a book with someone else. And most of the role plays that I see on websites like PMC are well thought out, interesting and are really, really fun and enjoyable! There’s a lot of freedom to be had, and it’s fun to come up with your own little person.


But, in Minecraft, you don’t have that freedom with role playing.


In case you were wondering, I’m referring to plots. You know, on servers where you own your own section of land where you build on? And nobody can edit anything on there, which can be useful, but also a little annoying, especially with role playing. Instead of making up a character, you have to choose one that someone else made. Now, this is where the first issue falls into place. Choosing which character you want to be. And, there really isn’t much choice in choosing a character. On almost every single role playI see, the characters are described as gorgeous, hot, smoking, smart, pretty, sexy, super strong, HAWT (Spelled like that, in all caps, for emphasis on how hot this character is), or just evil. And, by evil, I mean that’s usually the only word that’s used to describe them. Do you see the issue here? Allow me to elaborate. Every single one of those adjectives up there are just over powered. And anyone who role plays knows how annoying over powered characters are. They can easily confuse a role play and without characters that are well rounded out the role play is boring and not fun at all. And the characters names are usually not unique or thought out well, like it’s first name they thought of. And there is no physical description, like hair or eye color or even skin tone. Now, I know people are probably going to say ‘But physical descriptions are controlling’ or ‘What if the player wants to be imagined in their own way?’ and I have my own answer to that. In Minecraft, skins can range from unoriginal teen skins, creepers, or just blobs of color.And, I don't know about you, but I don't want to role play with someone dressed as a giant chicken. But, I’m not writing a skin rant here, you know. If you want a good blog on skins, just look them up on PMC, a lot make a lot of fair points and are very informative. Anyway, like I said, characters like the ones I described above are unoriginal, and not fun to role play as. But, oh no, that’s only one of the issues.


For the next issue, I’m going to call up a point I made earlier: Unoriginal RP topics. Like I said above, most RPs all feel the same, to me anyway. I think the biggest offender is Camping RPs. Camping RPs usually involve large forests, blinding neon tents, and a lair containing some sort of large evil. That evil is most commonly Herobrine. You know the Minecraft ghost? Now, to be honest, I do believe in Herobrine. It’s a little embarrassing, yes, but it’s true. But, I don’t even want to believe in Herobrine anymore, because of how exploited he is, especially in Minecraft role plays. The most common RP topic I see is a Haunted Herobrine Camping Extravaganza. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t use Herobrine in role plays. In fact, the current role play I’m working pits the main characters against Herobrine.  The difference is that I made him a character that cannot be playable. The reason I did this is because Herobrine is not so much a direct character, as he is a villain that is just there, always watching, and only subtly interacting. Unlike Herobrine RPs that I see where the specter is a character that people play, and don’t know what to do with. Look, drinking an invisibility potion, wearing a Herobrine head and maniacally laughing doesn’t make you him. The main problem is people do not know how to be characters like Herobrine, so I find it best when making a Herobrine RP is to just make him not playable.  Now, camping RPs aren’t the sole offender of this problem, but they are the most common that I see. School RPs also involve Herobrine, and so do Super Power RPs. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve RPs that focus on Herobrine and they’ve gone very well. Do you want to know why? Herobrine wasn’t playable. That and the RPers were mature, except for a few unnamed individuals.


But there is another issue that I want to bring up. People that make Role Plays don’t know the basic Role Playing rules. Like I said before, Mary Sues and Gary Stus are very, very common. Not only that, but people barely understand basic Role Playing standards like God-Modding and Metagaming. In case you don’t know what those things are, I would suggest you look them up and enlighten yourself. Anyway, one of the things I see in role plays that are common are characters that God Mode. Anyone who role plays knows how annoying God-Modding is. You can’t do anything because the character that is God-Modding is controlling almost the whole thing, and you have to go along with what they say or quit out of pure boredom. My personal choice is usually the latter, as is, I’m assuming, a lot of others. This isn’t just with God-Modding as well, you would assume. Also, people just downright disrespect other Players. ‘You have a good idea? That’s nice, but look at how better mine is and how you can’t argue with it.’ That’s basically how it plays down, in the simplest terms. Sometimes, they downright don’t even act as though you said it. They just continue on their merry way of conquest of every character in the role play. This is one of the main reasons why good RPs never survive past a few minutes.


Now, these aren’t even all the reasons why a lot of RPs on Minecraft aren’t very good, but these are the ones that I need the most fixing. Also, not all role plays on Minecraft are like this, but most of them are. I hope that someone reads this and is better well versed in the delicate art of Role Plays in Minecraft.


This is PhantomShock signing off, and wishing you all a lovely day. Or night. Or continuous, never ending sunset. If that’s the case, I hope you are all alive and breathing and getting help quickly, because that probably shouldn’t be happening.


-PhantomShock