What is a RP effect?
When I say ‘roleplay effects/rp effects’ I’m refering to how a game softly prompts the player to act a certain way as a result of ingame mechanics. Current examples would be: text that describes how something tastes, text that informs you you have began turning into a zombie, seems to be- text, the red fade and blood pixels that infer you are hurt, the psychedelic screen effect from drugs.
Problem:
The current indicators for rp effects appear to do a poor job of prompting a character to roleplay their effect (even on MRP). Its the exception when a player acts in pain or acts high and current methods dont expand well into other potential rp effects. Of course players shouldnt be forced into roleplaying a forced demenour, but more robust prompts can elicit stronger roleplay.
Proposed feature:
Roleplay effects that would be shown in the character menu and remain visible for the duration of the effect.
The character menu is underutilised and only finds real use as the quest menu (objectives). It would make sense since its a character menu, that active rp effects were also displayed here.
Here is a quick mock up of how these might look:
(Of course you would usually only see a couple rp effects at once)
This could be taken further by having something similar to the moodles in project zomboid to the left of each rp effect, as to help ID them at only a glance.
What will this do/not-do?
It gives solid written direction on what would be effecting your characters mental state and roleplay at any given time. It reinforces current rp prompts rather than overwriting them, a red haze on screen typically flags in the player mind as ‘low health’ and not as ‘I should act in pain’, see the room for that to be improved on?
RP effects that are currently not prompted are often neglected by the player, for example, not remembering the events that lead up to your death, this could then be displayed in an appropriately ic manner and actually be acted on.
This also opens the way for more gameplay features in the future that would be clunkier to achieve with current methods, for example, if a disease wanted to encourage crewmembers to hide it, the disease could cause euphoria that would be stated as a rp effect. That way players are not forced into any course of action like giving them an objective would.
Of course If their character has a stiff upper lip, is soldiering on through a desperate situation, or is simply being played in a casual way, they can simply not use this tool. Its not rule enforced, its just a clearer tool for the player to use or ignore at their discretion.
It could also help players who are new to RP by providing a bit more assistance to getting into their character.
Edit: I dont know if other people see this too, but when you directly enforce an effect like with bloodloss-speech, people often try to overcome the effect rather than rp it.