You and your character

[aldo]

On 9/13/2019 at 6:47 PM, 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 think the initial paycheck should be 100k so it’s just enough to get a house and a cheap car

[shaobadman]

while it's an easy mistake to make, if people would think about any other fictional work (a book, tv show, movie or anything else) and realise how bland their character would be in one of those, they might consider putting in some effort to play out a more interesting character rather than a win-all, one dimensional character

 

my best advice would be to keep one of those to "channel" your inner self into if you have to, but playing other characters that you've written is a good experience for both you and others on the server

[shaobadman]

On 9/14/2019 at 2:45 PM, Topinambour said:

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. =/ 

i learned this way of rping (i call it story rp) through playing here, before that (and my first few months on here) i was playing like the players that we're criticising here

 

and the best way to describe it is "rpg mentality", making a character as an extension of you is basically what gtao is and it lacks any depth, which is okay, just not on this server or any story rp server

 

but this is always something so difficult to get across, newer rp servers nowadays define heavy rp as strict requirements on realism, instead of requiring people to make a fleshed-out character - it's evident in the biggest problem they make, which is requiring your character to work for anything they'd really start off with in any story (this one's also difficult to explain to some people since they see it as freebies for nothing)

[ThatDutchPerson]

On 9/18/2019 at 5:10 AM, hentai! said:

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.

I got to agree with this.
This is the exact reason why I always refer to my character in the third person when I, the player, am speaking to someone. Because I am not Kayleigh, I am the player ThatDutchPerson referring to my character.

I wish more people understood that.

[liq]

Emotes are always in third person by general roleplay standard so I'm not sure why this discussion even went there. If one does first person emotes, they should be reported because that's not a thing.

 

-

 

Avatarism happens because people commonly use this game as a coping mechanism for their real life issues. You like to admit it or not, the game is an escapade from real life struggles. It's a safe haven where one can put pink glasses on and dream on to whatever they long for. It's why there's so few people who roleplay the bad along the good and also why some people are able to make a clear distinction between what's OOC and what's IC. People don't understand it's about making a character and letting said character take its course rather than trying to force specifics to happen In Character because you have an Out of Character desire to it. The second you start being reactionary to what happens in game and don't question how would your character react instead of acting upon your own instincts and muscle memory, it's a problem.

 

There's no recipe or formula you can follow to be detached from the game, other than to take steps and completely separate yourself from what you want to portray. It's why, in retrospective, I enjoy portraying women more than men, for example, because it creates one more layer I cannot relate to myself so I feel pretty detached. What you need to do next is define a clear background you're going to stick to for your character. You're going to want to know what education they have, how did they do in school, what happened next in their life, how did their family environment influence them, and so forth, especially ifyou wanna start a character off as a young adult like the vast majority. You will understand what you want to portray and stick to that script in everything that goes on forward and account for development going forward.

 

For example, I primarily roleplay a dude from a small town whose graduation choices were Army, Navy, Marine Corps or the Coast Guard because he was influenced that way. With little education past that the US armed forces served as a way to indoctrinate this guy and break whatever he stood for and turn him into an asset, a soldier, a warfighter. The existential drama for him is when he comes home and nobody exactly cares for what happens in the places he went and fought. Nobody pays no mind to what's happening to the thousands of troops deployed across the globe. And nobody is gonna care he's no longer that much of a young adult and he barely has any further education past getting into the auto shop trade. He doesn't understand society for what it really is and he's just one more guy who's torn apart that way, thus he'll certainly be awkward, gullible, naive, and clingy, and slowly learn how to actually develop a personality he uses which isn't him nor how he feels but he must given peer pressure and the social constructs he revolves around. Because he doesn't know how to live a statesides life and he's way behind his generation. Now that's my character but it sure isn't me, nor something I want to be, nor do I relate to such traits. So it's fun for me to portray him and dissect how he's gonna react to what happens around him.

 

Whatever floats your boats, I guess.

Edited September 25, 2019 by liq