You hear people talking about it from time to time. People forming an RP group or team. People looking for RP or an RP group. What do they really mean by that? I generally concider myself to be an RPer and will often advertise myself as such and yet I sometimes get involved with a group of people whose concept of RP differs from mine.

After thinking about it for a while and doing some reading on the subject I can define RP in 3 ways.

Action oriented RP: Cool combat moves, Epic fights, Grandious monologues, combat catch phrases and battlecries. Also included in this would be more of a James Bond type character. Focusing more on the mission than big explosions. RP with a foe

Mystery oriented RP: Search for clues. Who done its. Puzzles and riddles. Political inrigue. RP with the world

Drama oriented RP: In depth backstories. Interpeersonal relationships. Family RP. Activities usually concidered day to day normal activities. ( As a side note Emo and Cyber is included in this. Gnerally these two topics is what people think of when they think of RPers. In reality they are a subset of a type of RP.) RP with an ally

So as a fun experiment how would you rate yourself in these 3 categories on a scale form 1-5.

I personaly would rate myself this way.

Action: 4
Mystery: 5
Drama: 2

I generally always have a backstory and will even build my characters to fit that concept. I don't mind involved personal stories but I greatly dislike drama RP just for teh sake of it. Stories I'm cool with but I don't play games to do stuff I can do in real life. I like to go out and be a hero. Blow stuff up. Defeat supervillains. Above that I love to be challenged with a puzzle. I also like to roleplay a characters skills. I am not against banter back and forth but, to use an example from CoH, I never hung around Pocket D or Gemeni park before that. The idea of sipping tea at a club always sounded boring to me. I wanted my character to be out brigning evil to it's knees. Or in a villains case bringing the world to its knees.

So how would you rate yourselves? Also feel free to add a category if you feel I missed one.

It depends.. when I am out on missions I like little to no RP at all. I got a mission to do and there is no time for something to get in the way. But when I am just hanging around, I like to RP to its fullest. So the situation dictates what type of RP I will doing.

So I guess you can call me:

Action: 5
Mystery: 1
Drama: 5 (non-missions)

I suppose it would depend. If you don't RP on a mission you wouldn't be into Action RP. However if it is just in character for your hero to be silent and focused then it would be action RP.