Playing a character or playing a class

Bill · October 25, 2013, 08:59:10 AM

Quote from: Soylent Green;702743Omega has pretty much addressed this. My relationship with my character can be summed up as 'I am the guy who writes his lines'. I try to create a unique personality. Through the gaming session I want to communicate, explore and test this personality. Whether we win or lose at the end is almost secondary.

It is not immersion as you might get in a first person shooter. My character can be terrified while I am laughing uncontrollably. I can feel delight in his defeat or humiliation if in doing so I feel have portrayed the character authentically or seen a new aspect of him. On the other hand it can be immersive in the sense that my character might surprise me, do things I would not expect but in retrospect are very much in character. It's like when writers say of characters having a life of their own.

And please don't hit me with the old, tired "You should write a novel instead." . I'm not writing the script for the entire world when I play am roleplaying.

That's cool; you do what is fun for you and that makes sense.

I just find playing an rpg more fun when I am not thinking about game mechanics much at all and get in a zen mode where I do what the character would do.

Same for me when I play a game like everquest or skyrim. The mechanics tend to distract me from what I enjoy about the games.

Opaopajr · October 25, 2013, 10:24:46 AM

Quote from: Skywalker;702318I don't always game the same. Sometimes, I like to go adventuring as me with a class suit. Other times, I want to define the personality and play that PC to the hilt.

I'm more like this. However I will note that I favor immersing in a personality, and end up doing it more often, than immersing in a class/role. Yet I switch up now and again.

I see it as mask v. costume. Both are powerful, in that you subsume identity (or a part) into the new overt form. But masks anthropologically on average have been vastly more powerful to the psyche. When I want to lose myself, immerse, I usually want the more intense version.

What's really fun is playing the mask with costumes. It's immersing in character which in turn immerses in class/role. And, along with the more layers the better, the more alien the better.

Omega · October 25, 2013, 07:29:45 PM

Another one to add to the list...

Some people play the character but view it like a sort of sim. They do not necessarily know what the character will do untill the character does it. Sometimes at the dictation of a roll.

I've seen it a few times. Even in D&D. One example was a player who rolled INT and WIS to make decisions and then act it out based on the level of success/fail. They did it pretty fluidly so it never interrupted the flow of the session.

One player I met at a con though pretty much had a second personality running the character that they liked to just observe in action. Simultaneously creepy and fascinating to watch.

The Traveller · October 27, 2013, 07:12:46 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr;702808What's really fun is playing the mask with costumes. It's immersing in character which in turn immerses in class/role. And, along with the more layers the better, the more alien the better.

Yeah this is how I do it though it can be quite a lot of effort to adjust the consciousness that much, although I suppose ad lib actors do it all the time. I need some touchstones to relate to though, too much alien and I disengage.

Opaopajr · October 27, 2013, 08:39:09 AM

Few things more fun than the head-explodey of possessing another person's dream of their own shoe. "Why is my shoe sticking its tongue out at me and going, 'pbbbbt!'"

One of those more fun things is then possessing that other person's earthly shoe once they are awake and with the tongue and laces pantomiming "pbbbt!" Preferably when no one else is looking.

Phillip · October 27, 2013, 04:40:31 PM

I can go either way, and I would not call the one not "playing a character," either. In fact, I wouldn't say there's a firm dichotomy; most people most of the time are combining elements of a theoretically modeled persona with elements of their own personalities.

Phillip · October 27, 2013, 04:50:30 PM

Quote from: Soylent Green;702743It is not immersion as you might get in a first person shooter. My character can be terrified while I am laughing uncontrollably.

That level of detachment is not what many people mean by immersion. Even if one places a high value on having a character role that reflects as little as possible one's own personality, it's when the identification is such that responses come naturally that people are likely to speak of "immersion."

Bill · October 28, 2013, 08:17:07 AM

The 'Natural response' is what I enjoy best. Usually I am able to do that, but once in a while I find a particular character is just not 'clicking' with me.

So for me, if I need to actually think about how I am playing the character instead of just doing it, something's not working right.

everloss · October 28, 2013, 10:32:26 PM

I play characters that seem fun to me. I never make up any backstory that can't be summed up in more than three sentences. Some people get off on making characters - I like playing the game. I think it's more fun for that kind of stuff to come up while playing, than making it up before hand.

RPGPundit · November 01, 2013, 02:12:17 AM

All of my characters are separate individuals to myself.

As for players, I know a few who do in essence play themselves; they are a minority.

The rest are somewhat evenly-divided between guys who play mostly-very-different characters in each game (or with each PC), and guys who are clearly NOT playing themselves, but who are nevertheless generally playing the same character (or type of character) every time (you could say they're "typecasting" themselves).

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