Why do people not like when rp characters have disabilities? Whenever I ask about what changes would need to be made for a blind/deaf/mute/ect... character I always get a strange look.

urm I just wanted to chit chat about that. not asking for advice

Never argue with Galena. She is law.

As for your question, I guess it depends on the roleplay the person is doing, and maybe disabilities don't really tie into it? .-.

Because it's way overdone.

Every character seems to have some sort of disability that makes him or her SPECHUL.

This may not be the case with yours, but it is very common. Most people would wonder why you would want to impair your character to that level or if you're doing it for attention.

Like if a character has a mental disorder that only seems to act up at the appropriate time. It happens. It's just to make the character more ~complex!!111

The danger with dissabilities in roleplays is when the dissability itself is when the dissability itself is all there is that defines a character.

Don't get me wrong dissabilites can be done in roleplays, its just that when doing a character with a dissability there is always the danger that because a character has a certain dissability they will suddenly demmand all the attention of the group or person roleplaying. Dissabilities can sometimes threaten to be used as a crutch in an rpging unless there is more to a character besides a dissability. A really good character sketch with a disability should be able to move along in roleplaying without constantly drawing attention to given dissability.

This is difficult to do and as Galena has suggested it might be nice to try out a perfectly normal character as well or just something you don't normally do. Those tend to be the most fun afterall for everyone.

I like roleplaying with blind and Mute characters because of the challenge it presents. Like my blind succubus (for a demon rp) character Faydra. She had two imps that helped her around and she had a knack for identifying people by their foot steps. (at least on solid hard ground) but that was really the only thing special about her.

Well, it's preference, honestly. If you can pull it off, great, but when the character is just irritating, then it's not fun for anyone. Like, for instance, if there was a deaf person in an action/adventure roleplay that had no means of communication and was just kind of dead space, then, yeah, I can see how it'd be a problem. However, in a romance roleplay, if that character is deaf/blind, it's easier to incorporate because a romance doesn't have to be action-y.

Some people CAN'T pull a disability off, though, and it becomes the definition of the character. It's annoying and nobody wants to roleplay with someone who's character is always lagging behind or something because of said disability. I guess maybe because they can keep the plot from moving at a steady pace? It all depends on the roleplayer, though.

Take, for example, my character, Zane. He's dyslexic, meaning he can't READ properly. He doesn't advertise this face because it embarrasses him, and he often struggles to read signs and whatnot, however, he's learned to cope with it, and you'd never know if he didn't tell you. He's normal aside from that, and as are most of my other characters, his family (which are all alive, thanks) has a history of it and his mother has a tendency to coddle, yeah, but he pushes her away because he doesn't WANT the sympathy.

Now, take another character of mine. She became blind because of a head injury, but we found out that it only slowed the roleplay down because she didn't have any special powers to sense things around her and was just always lagging behind. It got annoying for the both of us because my friend and I are realistic roleplayers and like to make things seem as legit as possible. She had NO way of getting a cane, and she was alone most of the time because of things that happened to other characters in the roleplay. Needless to say, we had to make it a temporary thing if we wanted the roleplay to continue properly.

Personally, I find disabilities coupled with super-powers a bit cliche as it's so easy to make it like 'oh, well, my character can 'see' by echo-location, so she's blind and it's all cool'. Yeah, I don't mind seeing characters like that once in awhile as long as they're done well, but part of them problem is that people can't do them:

A) Realistically B) Without lagging the roleplay for everyone else ( It's not intentional, I'm sure) C) Making it not-cliche/over done

Also, has a character with MPD, but her character has NO idea that the other personality exists-like he never comes out or anything, he just putters around in her mind. It's like the other personality is a separate entity that never comes out, it just exists in her mind, if that makes sense. Kind of like how S.Meyer's 'Host' is where Wanda lives in Melanie but they're both separate people. It's hard to explain. XD

So, in short: If you can pull it off, it's good. If you can't and it's holding everyone else back the WHOLE time, it's bad and you might need to rethink the concept/find another genre to play the character in.

But those are my pennies. =3

I have noticed there is few characters with those dissabilities and such, but i actually have triplets-characters where one is mute, one is blind and one if deaf- they all handle situations differently and manage to get by... of course these characters aren't human, but are a sort of demon from the site i made them on, so their other senses are heightened incredibly and they have a sort of telepathy between eachother... but when it comes to people around them they are as deaf-blind and mute as ever...

i suppose i should explain more... the deaf triplet was deaf, she couldn't hear however she could talk rather smoothly, she was outgoing and sort of fox-y, a con-artist that read on the mouth and body how her 'victims' reacted to so pull her brothers along if they discovered her lies.. instead of hearing her sight was increased as well as a 6th sense of sorts that made her capable of 'feeling' when people came to close, sort of like a samurai standing in water; when the enemy came close he couldn't hear, couldn't see or smell it, but he felt it by the rippling water.

The mute one managed best as he could both hear and see, however his lack of speech repelled people away from him thinking he was just a rude, tall and depressive looking scary guy when he was pretty gentle but stern in reality, instead of talking he learned to explain himself with use of body-language and emotions, and if possible his siblings would speak for him in a sort of 'they hear what he wants to say and tells it to the recieving part' way...

The last was the youngest triplet being blind, he couldn't see, have never been able to see and have really never seen the world but he can hear, feel and smell the things around him as well as remembering them- he can perfectly explain his siblings' face because he have memorized the feeling of touching it and have a very simple picture of it in his mind. If someone comes from infront of him he'll be able to hear them (granted they make a sound) but this haven't stopped him from knocking into inanimate objects, stopping that is his siblings' job..

alone i think my triplets would be hard to get to, but given they have eachother they are more open... though the most socially alright person is the deaf girl (for the note they are fraternal twins, hench why one is a girl and hench why they have different disabilities.).. Personally i don't view them as mary-sue-ish as their reactions and heightened abilities is that of a real mute/blind/deaf person would have or would develop, the only real addition is that they are demons and therefore have a slight bit of magic within them, as well as a increased 'telepathy' with eachother (but only eachother)... all other skills is the same as any demon of that specie would have, in fact because they had these disabilities i tried to limit down their specie-powers so they wouldn't be all-wonderful and stuff..

sooo i think a deaf-blind-mute character would be a fun addition for as long as you don't overdo x3 they are fun to play to if you just rp with the right people and not those that go "uses healing magic on you to make you see/hear/talk again there, problem solved =D"

Because often a character that's blind or mute or whatever is basically an opportunity for a poor player to say 'look at my character, pay attention to them' without putting more effort into making them a person rather than just a flaw.

It's basically a giant flashing sign for "Pay attention to me and change your ways to fit around mine."

If your character is blind/deaf/mute/etc it means the other people in the roleplay have to find a way around that disability to communicate with that character. Usually people aren't really up to the challenge, and just find if conceited someone would think that their character is so special that everyone should change for them.

Well, I know of two characters right off the bat that are disabled.

One is my friend, who had a mute character, was interesting to try and converse with. No one had to change, but it was fun.

My other character has a disability, but more in a "Don't worry about me, I'll just pass out on occasion" thing. You see, he has the same thing that apparently Billy Mayes died of (if the whole "He had an enlarged heart" thing is true), just genetic instead, and he has a bad knee.

Neither was made " Special" and both were tossed into the real world and forced to work with a normal environment.

My friend's character, sure, made it difficult to talk, but it made for an interesting roleplay as my character tried to figure out why the kid wasn't talking to him...and why he wouldn't understand written word (he was also illiterate).

My character, too, was usually left behind with things, since his knee was bad, and his heart made him black out on occasion. The other characters, after an initial freak out, got used to it.

So, it depends on how you do it. If you make other people change their characters so that you can be SPECIAL, then no. But if your character can get along on his or her own, like he or she doesn't need other's help too much, then it should be fine. =D

I think the problem I had with people using characters with disabilities is that they always seemed to want to compensate for the "lack" of one sense by making up new ones...

Like... "My character is blind, but he gets around like normal using his sense of taste! Since he lost his vision, his sense of sexual healing has increased tenfold! And ONLY HIS ears can hear the frequency that bats fart on! "STOP TAKING MY OC'S ORIGINAL POWERS YOU CAN'T HAVE SUPER HEARING TOO... who cares if she's a bat?? I GET THE SUPER HEARING FAMMIT."

And it becomes all about how that character is a super-special snowflake because they're handicapped.

My favorite disabilities are the ones you don't expect, and may not even come up until there's a situation that may be endangered by it. I have a character named Mox... she's a minor demonet working, literally, in retail hell. The last time I used her, she became distracted at work by a group of rowdy adventurers trying to storm hell and save their friends. It wasn't until they were prepared to storm the embankments of Purgatory that Mox stopped and pointed at her feet. "Uhm, hooves? I'd, like, totally chip the enamel, and I, like, just got them donezo..."

It was hilarious, because I had been using small audio/visual clues like "rapid clipclipclip of small cloven hooves as she tried to keep up" through the entire play, but no one really considered the challenge of climbing in hooves. x3

I think a character who breaks a heel at the beginning of a rip-tear chase scene could end up much more interesting than a character who tragically had to... to chew her own leg off, because it was trapped beneath the sleeping body of her rapist stepfather, and now she randomly breaks into epileptic seizures when startled.

You've got to find a good balance between having a rich, colorful character, and having a character which is the personality equivalent of a fireworks show, blotting out everyone else with explosions and noise.