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Your PC & You

  
 
Tom Paine's Bones
00:18 / 20.10.05
From a couple of comments made by Quantum in the 'Postal/email RPGs, fantasies and transgender' thread. Specifically this:

They do say you only play characters you want to be or sleep with

which ze expanded on:

GraciousMeme asked me to expand. I spent four years roleplaying two or three times a week, saw hundreds of people play thousands of roles, and it was obvious that most characters were thinly veiled alter egos, idealised fantasy figures ('I'm a deadly ninja assassin') of the same gender, or thinly veiled fantasy objects of the opposite gender ('I'm a stunningly attractive blonde vampire nymphomaniac'). For the het players at least.

It was such a truism it became a cliche, people play characters they either want to be or fuck- it's wish fulfilment, like dreams.

I certainly think there's a large element of truth to this. I can only ever remember having ever played one character I wanted to fuck (which was based on a real person, although I'm not sure if that makes it better than worse). However, particularly among younger players, I've seen the wish fulfilment thing played out an awful lot. Sometimes through playing characters with certain traits almost the polar opposite of themselves. As a dyspraxic teenager who's everyday life consisted of large amounts of accidentally breaking and knocking things over, I certainly remember 18 Dexterity swashbuckling types being a recurring theme among my early characters.

I don't think it tells the whole story though. In terms of wish fulfilment, as well as people playing idealised fantasies I've also seen a lot of players who seem to use it to play roles that they wouldn't be socially acceptable in real life. The obvious example is the playing of evil characters. From a more personal perspective, I remember one of my earliest characters (in a Star Wars game) being a bratty 10 year old. Looking back in hindsight, I certainly think there was an element of allowing myself to demand attention of the older guys I was playing with, in a way that wouldn't have been socially acceptable coming from a 13 year old in real life.

The other thing that interests me is whether people play characters entirely separate from their own personality, or one's that reflect particular aspects of it.

I certainly tend towards that approach quite heavily. This tends to happen in two ways. I either tend towards characters that are satirical caricatures of certain parts of myself (I've played several well meaning revolutionaries who spend so much time shouting they don't actually achieve anything), which doesn't strike me as particularly aspirational. But I've also played characters which are essentially safe outlets for more objectionable parts of my personality, in particular one character who was so self absorbed and egotistical he was essentially amoral springs to mind.

Do people think that their characters are part of them or entirely separate? And is there a difference between tabletop and LARP as far as this is concerned?
 
 
*
17:55 / 20.10.05
One of the uniting trends among my characters is that they all tend to be very good at whatever it is they do. I myself may be good at things but I hardly ever have that confident, capable feeling in real life that I get when my thief picks an extremely difficult lock successfully or when my Kyasid finally finishes translating the imaginary 8000 year-old bit of text.

I have rarely had a successful villain character. Just one, in a LARP, and when he started succeeding at things I panicked. Had to throw in a whole "change of heart" plot and then play someone really nice for a month or two. I suppose because it made me feel gross that I was taking my usual glee in being able to do something well, except that the something was kidnap, torture, and the occasional murder. Even in the context of the game— and probably because it was a LARP (not that we ever live-actioned those scenes, of course)— well, I just couldn't stand having that good feeling about looking a friend in the eye and telling them I'd just done something terrible to their character and there was nothing they could do about it.

I suppose I tend to play characters I'm interested in, and I'm interested in people who are intelligent, complex, and good at doing things. Often they are deeply flawed in some way as well, but that also makes them interesting. The ways in which they are successful as well as the ways in which they are flawed are usually things I know something about, so yes, they're often parts of me given flesh.

But that doesn't mean I wouldn't, you know, do them.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
18:06 / 20.10.05
Wolfman, my shapeshifting druid character from BG2, never lets pricks get away with things. At the same time, presently I feel I need to do more good in the world. There's a kind of correlation, I guess: it's a lot harder to help someone out for no profit than it is to kill a vampire for 6000 xp.
 
 
Evil Scientist
11:41 / 03.11.05
My most recent PC, The Paragon, was a step away from my usual amoral anarchist or calculating sociopath that I played back in the day (before I was assimilated into the GM collective). A superhuman Nova, he was a preening musclebound prettyboy. His basic role in the team was public relations and property damage.

It's an interesting supposition that we play characters that we'd sleep with. My favourite character, a superhuman called Sphere, was essentially an idealised version of myself. Cocky, brave and random, where I was (at the time) insular and somewhat passive. Sphere was who I wanted to be, a person who didn't give a shit what anyone thought of him and lived a dangerous life for the sheer rush.

It's certainly interesting that Paragon wasn't exactly the smartest member of the group either. My normal taste is to exagerate my character's mental attributes over their physical abilities.

Perhaps it was because it was a short-loved campaign being run whilst I took a couple of months off being the GM. An easily played character who could follow where others led simply because I wanted to have fun with it rather than get too deep into character.
 
  
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