Unstoppable badass who has absolutely come to irreparably fuck your shit up in the next five minutes and you can't do shit about it ever and can't make it funny because it sucks so hard comes in from the south.
type of moments. That's what I mean. Funny is great. I try sometimes, and I suppose that works.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to have a good time without either/both of the above, but they certainly make it easier.
If you go into a situation knowing full well that you'll likely be caught or killed, you should be prepared for the consequences. Also, typically players who have one or both of the above have played for a long time, and I feel that the longer you play, the better you become at embracing rough spots and squeezing the fun out of them.
One suggestion might be to make an OOC plan to fail disastrously ICly and see if you can find an approach to make it enjoyable, knowing the outcome. Alternatively you can make a few throwaway characters and plan to DOOOOM them. See what fun you get out of it and try to steer in that direction on your next one.
Find out what the root cause was, and next time play an immy scared out of their mind. One who takes some time to form friends and alliances.
Maybe don't even invest in any combat skills. See where that takes you?
Hope you find your way.
Getting wiped financially is constant, as is getting a wiped future. I'm beginning to actually get confused what to do better. Even when I try *real* hard, as soon as I try to do anything on any level it ends poorly.
I want to get better at dealing with how fucking poor that really is and will end up.
I don't know how else to frame it other than -- I'm sure you consume narratives in some form, right? I'm not trying to get OOC or personal but like, you've read books or still do, or go to the movies, right?
I don't know what kind of stuff you like, but like....we are as RP'ers in so many ways, all just actors in a really fucking big and weird stage play that's all improv.
When Johnny Mnemonic is getting fucked up in a scene, Keanu doesn't go off screen between takes and complain to his co-stars that it's really frustrating and depressing that his character gets beat up a lot or the plot his character is involved in in a scene is going badly for him (like the beginning of that movie does). Translated to Sindome, he'd have no idea how the plot is going to play out of course, he doesn't know that it'll have a 'happier' ending coming the bad guys will 'lose' blah blah, but doesn't it seem kinda silly that the actor feels that way viz a viz the character?'
Our 'purpose' here, is to find enjoyment of course, it's a game. But it's not a game the way Overwatch or Fortnite or World of Warcraft are games. You're not supposed to 'have fun' by progressing in any casual normal sense.
The only 'purpose' or enjoyment Sindome has ever purported to TRY and offer is a space to roleplay a cyberpunk-themed narrative.
You're here, if you want to be here, to partake in basically a continual improv acting performance with your character, with other characters. Sometimes that means you're in a scene where you get the girl/guy, beat the bad guys, topple the evil corp, get the 10,000 a night hooker, hug the psychic dolphin. Sometimes you get beat up, killed, lose everything. But those 'scenes', to you the ACTOR, are equal, because to an actor, you're doing the same job in both kinds of scenes. You're here to weave a narrative, for yourself and others.
I'm not saying this isn't the game for you. I'm not saying the fact you just keep getting frustrated and offing your characters should be telling you that it's not the game for you. I'm saying you're clearly not framing correctly what the game is here to offer, and you'll have to find a way to re-frame it for yourself, shift it somehow, or it's never going to feel any different for you and it won't be the game for you.
And yeah, I do. I stop characters completely. Often. It sucks. I just stop liking them. I stop enjoying the RP I do as them and the RP I get back. So I try again. And it turns out similar. Even when I get one that I do like, which is rare, they perm -very- shortly after, even if not by my hands.
If you put yourself out there and take a lot of risks and go for every opportunity, you'll die a lot more, but you'll either end up with the resources to soften the blow, or perm. Either way you'll have a lot of fun.
Give your character a chance. I guarantee 9 times out of 10 unless you RP it like you absolutely just want them to perm you off, other characters will give you one too. :)
Losing is fun when it's a part of a narrative that has a lot going on with it. Characters build up dramatic relationships over time that change based on the decisions they make. People who suffer big losses and are amazed and intrigued by what happened enough to keep going are not just sticking their face into a meat grinder ten seconds out of chargen, they're generally engaging in deeper plotting with rivalries that have enough meaning to be interesting whether this character or that one wins or loses.
Help power-level might also be useful to read over. A new immy isn't anything to anyone. They're basically cockroaches and are rarely able to bring much to the table in the short term.
Yeah, sometimes the character concept or personality or the 'feel' just doesn't work. I get it. I've been there myself. But that doesn't seem like what you're describing.
It's easy to be ultra-focused on the short term, the here and now, but that's not always going to be productive. Yep, characters are going to screw up. They're going to get robbed, and beaten, and extorted, and more. Welcome to Withmore. 2 steps forward 1.9 back.
When first starting out, the goal, is to survive, to endure, to get to the point where you have some street cred and other characters look at your character as someone who's survived a bit and not as one of the countless (hundreds? thousands?) of really, really new immies that die in Withmore every day, and that's going to take time.
https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/open-discussion/anything-really/some-tips-for-everyone-205/ is a very good read and has some ProTips that I think will be helpful.
Whether it's your current character, or the next, make it a character you love and know inside and out. I can't say this often enough, but -be small-. Be nobody, but have big dreams and a massive chip on your shoulder. I'm not sure what kind of archetypes you prefer, but tip 6.x seems like it will serve you well, regardless.
Commit to playing that character for -at least- 3 months, no matter what. That means making sure you don't do anything to cause another character to perm your character and no suiciding.
Lastly, http://www.sindome.org/help/cyberpunk/ has a few more ProTips that seem like they might be useful.
Hope that helps.
I've found my character's back story and personality have a big impact on how I feel OOC about what happens to them. I had one character that took loss hard, they didn't deal with it well, and as a result neither did I.
Playing a character who sees loss as inevitable makes it a lot easier for me as a player to get down with. Not saying I just accept losses and move on, but I can just step back and think "Okay, that happened. How do I deal with it."... And sometimes the result of that thought is just "Nothing to be done", other times "I need to go see Person X about this"... Usually the latter. Even if that does eventually fizzle down to the former, at least I got to go RP with some people about the tragic loss of my chyen/chum/gear/soulmate/progia/etc.
Aside from how I feel about events happening to my char, I've found I feel differently about the people around me and treat them accordingly, and I have also been treated very differently by the characters I interact with.
tl;dr: Try rolling a char with a completely different personality, it might make you play completely differently. Worked for me!