Be careful who your roleplay
May. 20th, 2005 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueAs I may have mentioned before I'm of the opinion that we go through life roleplaying. I don't know about you, but in the office, I'm the 'techie professional' but in the pub, i'm the slightly manic beer fiend.
Roleplay games, are just an extension of this. The only difference being, that in an RPG _you_ choose the character you play, rather than trying to guess based on everyone elses preconceptions.
In a roleplay game, as a rule, a character either turns into a pallid stereotype, and quickly becomes boring. Or it becomes a solid entity, that you can understand, perceive motivations and 'get into' as a character. There's some character archetypes that I just can't play. I think this is because I don't have sufficient 'empathy' for a trait, to develop it into anything more than the piece of paper and stats block.
Which leads me to an interesting thought. I've caught myself on a few occasions thinking like a different character. I'm sure most of the established roleplayers out there do this. Would it seem reasonable that the 'believable' characters, are ones formed from the stuff of your own psyche? When playing a priest character, you take some of they mysticism within yourself, and 'direct' it.
There's one simple difference between the pallid stereotype, and the 'real' characters. The latter will grow of their own accord. I've find myself thinking of things, and doing things, that I understand as perfectly logical, but I wouldn't do normally. And then, gradually, this characterisation feeds back a little. As though, by focussing on an aspect of my psyche, I'm allowing that aspect to evolve. Perhaps grow, perhaps diminish, or perhaps just change course.
My previous character at Maelstrom was something like this. Started off ok, but turned into something I didn't want to play. My current character, I'm enjoying immensely, as if something has 'meshed'. I can understand this character.
On one hand it's disturbing - the thought that if you RP a sadist, a bully or a thug, then you're extending somewhat that part of you, giving it light and life, rather than suppressing it. But on the other hand, it's a fascinating voyage of discovery. In much the same way as you explore the land near where you live in order to avoid getting lost, roleplay makes a wonderful tool for exploring the parts of you that you may have never been entirely sure were there.
As Sun Tzu put it, before facing your enemy, you must first know yourself. I rather enjoy getting to know myself.
Roleplay games, are just an extension of this. The only difference being, that in an RPG _you_ choose the character you play, rather than trying to guess based on everyone elses preconceptions.
In a roleplay game, as a rule, a character either turns into a pallid stereotype, and quickly becomes boring. Or it becomes a solid entity, that you can understand, perceive motivations and 'get into' as a character. There's some character archetypes that I just can't play. I think this is because I don't have sufficient 'empathy' for a trait, to develop it into anything more than the piece of paper and stats block.
Which leads me to an interesting thought. I've caught myself on a few occasions thinking like a different character. I'm sure most of the established roleplayers out there do this. Would it seem reasonable that the 'believable' characters, are ones formed from the stuff of your own psyche? When playing a priest character, you take some of they mysticism within yourself, and 'direct' it.
There's one simple difference between the pallid stereotype, and the 'real' characters. The latter will grow of their own accord. I've find myself thinking of things, and doing things, that I understand as perfectly logical, but I wouldn't do normally. And then, gradually, this characterisation feeds back a little. As though, by focussing on an aspect of my psyche, I'm allowing that aspect to evolve. Perhaps grow, perhaps diminish, or perhaps just change course.
My previous character at Maelstrom was something like this. Started off ok, but turned into something I didn't want to play. My current character, I'm enjoying immensely, as if something has 'meshed'. I can understand this character.
On one hand it's disturbing - the thought that if you RP a sadist, a bully or a thug, then you're extending somewhat that part of you, giving it light and life, rather than suppressing it. But on the other hand, it's a fascinating voyage of discovery. In much the same way as you explore the land near where you live in order to avoid getting lost, roleplay makes a wonderful tool for exploring the parts of you that you may have never been entirely sure were there.
As Sun Tzu put it, before facing your enemy, you must first know yourself. I rather enjoy getting to know myself.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 08:42 am (UTC)http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/personal_construct.htm
The interesting question is how do you find that point where it meshes in favour of when it doesn't?
Enquiring minds etc.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 11:26 am (UTC)One of the common features of a game nowadays is 'realism', which always seems like rather a misnomer to me. You don't really tend to find gritty antiheroes on every street corner; you're far more likely to find, say, a skateboarding gawf. In a similar fashion, rarely do world-threatening consequences crop up. At least, not those that can be solved by a hero with a mighty sword as opposed to, say, politics. And I won't even mention the Toilet Shortage syndrome.
But then, what is 'realism'? Ladies and gentleman of the presumably willing and attentive audience, I posit that real life is in itself an RPG, and thus are automatically realistic.
No, no, stay with me here. Things will make sense soon.
People often describe coming out of their mother's womb as emerging to a bright, white light. They're nearly right. That's not actually light; it's more of a Now Loading screen. Similarly, near death experiences are hasty recoveries from the last save game that was made, or possibly the warming light of the Continue? prompt.
Really, if you think about it everything tends to fall into place. Let's take the average day in the life of a certain writer. In the morning, I wake up - feeling as if only 10 seconds have passed since I went to sleep. Presumably there was a brief snatch of inn music, but as I was asleep, I wouldn't have been able to hear. Proceeding downstairs brings me into at least a conversation, if not a full-blown encounter, with a Housemate, which often leads to random violence or discovery of the next piece of plot - or at least a sidequest. ("Hey, Alan, go to the supermarket for me?")
Upon talking to or pummeling the Housemate (with such special moves as Rapier Wit and Outright Insult), some skill practice is required, be it at the computer or university. Sometimes I'll even try a little Item Creation such as Cooking or Writing Ability, though burnt objects and scribbles - not necessarily respectively - are often the result. Sometimes the results will need thorough analysis and identification, but can also handily be used as projectile weapons.
Then I'll head into town, and hit the shops for a disposable item or two; maybe some Eyedrops, an indigestion Antidote, a 'Potion' (as the guys in the gutter might call it), or a new piece of armor. Well, a shirt, but who's being picky? At least it changes my model appearance. There are, of course, people all around town, minding their own business, standing around, or possibly skateboarding in all black. Attempting to talk to them invariably leads to an extremely unhelpful, repeated response. Very occasionally I'll need to head out onto the world map and make my way to a different town. Just like an RPG, this tends to be a dangerous and lengthy affair, fraught with large mechanical monsters and unhelpful guides.
-cont-
no subject
Date: 2005-05-20 11:27 am (UTC)Many people in the world have to perform repetitive tasks to receive a fixed amount of G every day or at the end of a month - like personalised fetch quests in the biggest MMORPG around. Often players have to perform Heroic Quests such as Go Shopping or Get Me A Beer. My personal favorite is running around trying to collect all the minigames I can - I've got an awful lot of PS2 and PSX ones. Others run around checking all the lamps, stoves, or clocks for Elixirs. I call them Treasure Hunters myself, and I'm not quite sure why others refer to them as 'Electricians'. The world has hundreds of classes - Librarian, Scientist, Martial Artist, Merchant, Dancer to name but a bare few. Most, if not all, of these classes train their trade skills and occasionally meet someone who opposes them and needs to battle with them either physically or mentally. Many have fights with their bosses - Boss Fights, naturally. Of course, every RPG needs a party chock-full of misfits. I don't know about you, but around here there are many parties, each with far more than their fair share of misfits. The neighbours are starting to complain about the noise.
From time to time the standard flow of play will drop away to that of a strategy mini-game, where I'll need to direct housemates to perform specific commands around the battle map such as Clean Up The Kitchen, Dammit or Get Me A Beer. Housemates tend to move at a set and sluggish rate, will threaten to leave if I mistreat them, and will often stand there looking dumb while they wait for their next turn to roll around. For greater strategy, obstacles litter the battlefield - often quite, quite literally - and need to be negotiated to reach the enemies or goals.
Throughout all of this, we slowly get better at what we do and more resilient to damage - we're going up levels. And we keep gaining levels as our life goes on. At least, until we reach the point of mentorhood to a new adventurer, which inevitably means we're going to die soon in an FMV to allow the young'n to make his or her way in the big, bad world.
Who needs RPGs to be realistic? I've got more realism than I could ever need in this RPG.
Written many years ago and edited up recently. I had it lying around and thought it appropriate.
Well I'm hardly an established roleplayer, but.....
Date: 2005-05-20 12:39 pm (UTC)Of course!!!! Nell Reynaud is the sensible, grown-up part of me, Cleopatra is my flirty nature (and a few other things that I won't mention in polite - and Sinergy-player infested - company!. My chaotic neutral elven bard and my devout, spiritual and generous-hearted dwarven paladin from tabletop are facets of my character, as is my LoD character, Raina the cowardly Fey Tracker. I even believe that my new tabletop character, a particularly anti-social and evil Spiker Fighter comes from the part of me that I have to work very hard to suppress. I assumed that everyone felt this way?
I have always thought that roleplay must be akin to 'method acting'....I don't IGNORE the mathematics of the calls required to play any given role-play game, but I DO make my decisions character-driven rather than 'roll'-driven, even if it means shooting myself in the foot or endangering others. My elf once let a thoroughly evil mage escape because she had given a promise he would not be harmed - and even healed said mage when another member of the party broke his promise and kicked the crap out of him. The mage returned the favour on numerous subsequent occasions by trying to kill my elf and the rest of the party!