You and your character

[cracked]

You and your character

Sometimes, especially with people a bit new to roleplaying, or to the concept of it, I see that some peoply very clearly shine their real life personality through their character. I've done this in the past, and it's really hard to differentiate between a character and yourself. You gotta have quite a strong mind, and really be able to place yourself into a different headspace, the head of your character. 

 

I've pretty much mastered this at this point. I can clearly build up a character with their individual traits in my head, and act accordingly. It's not very hard for me, and I rarerly let my own personality spill into my character.

 

What I feel is, some people have difficulties differentiating between themselves and their character. They don't realize they do it, but they pretty much are just themselves while RP'ing, because it's the easiest. It's quick, you can think like you do yourself, and not have to worry about differences between you and your character.

 

I'd like to hear the communities opinion on this.

Is it good or bad?

Do you recognize doing this yourself? Perhaps earlier in your roleplay?

Edited September 13, 2019 by cracked

[Anselmi]

It goes without saying that making your character a carbon copy of yourself is objectively bad. People who model their characters to be a 1:1 of themselves are not very good role players - arguably, it's not even role play at that point - it's just avatarism. The whole point of role play is to create a character, a fictional entity, with their own background, traits and personality - and tell a story with it - not just make it an avatar of yourself.

 

I'd be lying if I said I haven't done this before, I did it when I first started playing on another server because of my limited understanding. I think everyone has done it at some point, even if it were unintentional. That being said, taking some qualities, traits or aspects from your life and showing them in your character doesn't make you an outright terrible role player - if you're able to create a reasonable explanation and story as to why your character is like that.

 

It's really easy to spot poor character development and / or stories that simply don't make sense or add up. Thankfully, PLM exists to help players with these kind of problems and guide players. A good example of it are the people who splash out their first 200K on a fancy car when their character hasn't even got a place to live yet - they aren't thinking about what their character would do, they're thinking as themselves.

 

 

[cracked]

4 hours ago, Veisalgia said:

It goes without saying that making your character a carbon copy of yourself is objectively bad. People who model their characters to be a 1:1 of themselves are not very good role players - arguably, it's not even role play at that point - it's just avatarism. The whole point of role play is to create a character, a fictional entity, with their own background, traits and personality - and tell a story with it - not just make it an avatar of yourself.

 

I'd be lying if I said I haven't done this before, I did it when I first started playing on another server because of my limited understanding. I think everyone has done it at some point, even if it were unintentional. That being said, taking some qualities, traits or aspects from your life and showing them in your character doesn't make you an outright terrible role player - if you're able to create a reasonable explanation and story as to why your character is like that.

 

It's really easy to spot poor character development and / or stories that simply don't make sense or add up. Thankfully, PLM exists to help players with these kind of problems and guide players. A good example of it are the people who splash out their first 200K on a fancy car when their character hasn't even got a place to live yet - they aren't thinking about what their character would do, they're thinking as themselves.

 

 

I mean, yeah. And new players aren't really taught to differentiate between themselves and their characters.

[Topinambour]

It's a mistake most newer RP'ers tend to make, most of us did. The more you get into more mature RP'ing communities (with people who are typically 25+, like ESO, Conan Exiles, old WoW RP servers, etc.), the less you see it. You see characters who can be wildly different from their players, with very varied archetypes. While on GTA V, most times, what you see IC is what you get OOC. 

 

It's of course a bad thing, but I suppose it's part of the learning process. The problem, of course, really becomes more serious when a more experienced roleplayer keeps doing it over the years. For an experienced RP'er to play the same archetypes, that evolve across the games and years, is pretty normal and quite cool even. However, when the same player has only one single archetype that's a carbon copy of themselves (or a fantasized copy), it can become exceedingly unhealthy on many levels, both for the player and the community as a whole. =/ 

 

The solution, historically, lied with the game master / dungeon master. He was the one, more experienced, who was supposed to guide and help his newer players develop their own style and veer off this path. Unfortunately, while there are GMs/DMs in tabletop games, on forums, and on some online games, this isn't the case on GTA. Given how many players we have (a lot :p), it would be wildly unreasonable to ask the admins to keep an eye on everyone's RP and offer advice to the less experienced RP'ers... unreasonable and unrealistic. So... not sure what the solution is, if any. =/ 

[Bombie]

Similarities between a character and a writer are always going to happen, whether you realize it or not! Why? Well, I don't know - I personally avoid it, but some people seem to openly do it. If someone wants to project their own personality onto a character, then that is their choice. That character might still be unique to someone that does not know the player behind it. 

 

There is a sum of things I usually project through my character, like music. It's difficult for me to pretend my character likes listening to something I personally do not, especially if it comes up during roleplay. I'd just be tabbing out to look up everything in the middle of roleplay just to prove my character is not an idiot - assuming they aren't meant to be. 

 

Anyway, my point is - It's okay to roleplay something similar to yourself, but that can get unhealthy. I've personally had unfortunate experiences with a player or two that could not separate in-character events with out-of-character events, and it was rather awkward. Try to build up a wall between yourself and your character. If something happens, stop, put yourself in the eyes of your character and act on that.

 

"Would I do that, or would my character do that?"

[mikethemike]

I've found that associating with your character past a certain point can prove unhealthy and lead to really awkward scenarios which often don't end well. Administrating in other communities, I often seen the worst of this and it's very hard to tread situations like these. You should always distinguish yourself from your character enough to where you always ask 'what would my character do in this situation?' not 'what would I do in this situation?'. Sadly, alot of people take IC events personally, and in my early days, I was one of those people. Simply disconnecting your characters actions from yours is the way to go, and avoids all of these issues.

 

The best way to avoid this is to simply put alot of planning into your character beforehand and take out alot of guesswork if you're having issues with this. If you're a more experienced roleplay, it's alot easier to wing it a little more.

[Chef]

I'd say 3 out of every 5 roleplayers are roleplaying themselves. But exaggerated, almost super hero like versions of themselves that are afraid of nothing and look like super models.

[Fenrir]

Wait, you're trying to say that we're not supposed to RP our own person?

3 hours ago, Chef said:

I'd say 3 out of every 5 roleplayers are roleplaying themselves. But exaggerated, almost super hero like versions of themselves that are afraid of nothing and look like super models.

 

More like the image of the person they wish they were. It's an easy mistake to make and it's the cause of a lot of the OOC toxicity and frustration around the RP communities in general not just GTA:W. I'm sure that a lot of people did it at first, including myself, due to not having a good grasp on what RP games are meant to be. Some learned, some never did. 

[alina2137]

First, I know I said I'd leave GTAWorld alone but I have a sentiment for this place and I think I grew up enough to be able to write a post once without using any cuss words and being a child.

I don't call myself an expert or enthusiast, but I am passionate when it comes to roleplay and there's one rule that should be in English roleplay, but I've only seen it being a thing in the Polish community (my native language is Polish so I roleplayed there for the most part). By no means am I saying that y'all English (speaking) roleplayers are bad, stupid or wrong, but I think for once in my life I might be right here.

The rule is that you can NOT speak about your character using first person - you can't refer to the character as YOURSELF. Examples would be when people use /do like this:

/do Would I be able to see this?
/do I have big arms.

I think this is improper and leads to confusion, bad roleplay and as mentioned by Fenrir - OOC toxicity between members, because everyone takes everything so seriously. Where I come from, the only proper way to use narrative chats (/me and /do etc.) is to use them in third person, like this:

/do Mikhail is sweaty and he smells bad.
/do The truck is parked on the red curb.

Calling your FICTIONAL character YOURSELF would result in a warning or even a ban on most servers that I've played on, just because it makes no sense to put yourself on the same level as a FICTIONAL character. It's literally a red flag in most cases and it shows that a certain player takes the game way too seriously. Yes, there are people who can get away with using first person but it's still such a bizarre thing that it should just be regulated as not allowed.
People often forget that roleplay is not a simulator, it's fiction. It's just a game, and like any game - it has rules that everyone should obey to make it fair.
Roleplay is not for everyone, it requires time and dedication to properly develop your character. As I said - I'm not some kinda guru, but this is the truth. Roleplay isn't play to win or play for the RPG elements, roleplay is all about achieving something and developing your fictional character.

[aldo]

On 9/13/2019 at 6:23 PM, cracked said:

You and your character

Sometimes, especially with people a bit new to roleplaying, or to the concept of it, I see that some peoply very clearly shine their real life personality through their character. I've done this in the past, and it's really hard to differentiate between a character and yourself. You gotta have quite a strong mind, and really be able to place yourself into a different headspace, the head of your character. 

 

I've pretty much mastered this at this point. I can clearly build up a character with their individual traits in my head, and act accordingly. It's not very hard for me, and I rarerly let my own personality spill into my character.

 

What I feel is, some people have difficulties differentiating between themselves and their character. They don't realize they do it, but they pretty much are just themselves while RP'ing, because it's the easiest. It's quick, you can think like you do yourself, and not have to worry about differences between you and your character.

 

I'd like to hear the communities opinion on this.

Is it good or bad?

Do you recognize doing this yourself? Perhaps earlier in your roleplay?

I agree, I will let my 14-15 year old character get beaten up and robbed because it’s unrealistic for him to be able to beat the fuck out of someone 2x the size and 5 years older than him. (although there was one time where I beat the fuck out of a hillbilly lol) But I sometimes see other people do the opposite of this, LOSING is just as good as WINNING.