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Eonas
2014-04-02, 02:22 PM
So, during the GiantITP hiatus, I plugged onto Omegle to get my roleplaying fix. What I found was interesting and rather thought-provoking.

There were, of course, a large percentage of RP partners who opened with an ASL (or a request for my ASL) and were always males ranging from 15 to 21 years old, looking for sexual roleplay with a dom/sub female. Easy disconnect.
What was more interesting, however, was everybody else, those that apparently weren't only there for the sake of sexual roleplaying. We would talk together and come up with a game concept or set of roles or whatever, and begin to play. Frequently these were actually quite good roleplayers, though not really of the same caliber as those you generally see on Omegle. What made me scratch my head, however, were their characters. Even though it was this was obviously a roleplaying exercise and they were playing a [vampire, werewolf, teacher, student, whatever], it was quite clear that they were playing themselves. In describing what their character looked/behaved like, the players were actually describing what they themselves looked/behaved like (albeit perhaps an idealized and/or otherwise altered version of themselves).

I thought this was odd, because what they were doing was at once roleplaying a character and not-roleplaying a character. Obviously, none of them were a vampire or a werewolf, and yet by so blatantly placing their own characteristics upon the character, it was quite clear that they were still playing themselves. This was, I think, about vicarious wish-fulfillment: I make a fictional copy of myself, then 'I' save the world and make love to all the handsome/beautiful princes/princesses. Yay me!
It's tempting to write this off as simply the sort of immaturity typical to Omegle, and to say that we 'serious' roleplayers are above this sort of thing. Yet, don't the RPG 'propaganda posters' advertise D&D with the slogan "You can be whoever you like!" Isn't there a certain level of self-projection that goes into creating any character, so that every character is still fundamentally just you in a fictional body? In having an RPG character save the world and become ruler of a thousand planes or a world-famous celebrity or a succubus playboy o, to what degree is that just the player 'dressing up' as a wizard and vicariously living out his fantasies though his projected version of himself? What's the relationship between roleplaying an RPG haracter and writing for a character in a novel? Thoughts?

I dunno if that all makes sense or not - certainly, my thoughts still haven't fully coagulated into something that can be clearly communicated (or even that I consciously understand myself).

The Oni
2014-04-02, 03:00 PM
The famous "as Jesus or as Faust" quote comes to mind. Many of the characters we play are either what we are, what we wish we were, or what what we openly hate but secretly are intrigued by. It makes sense that any character, crafted lovingly by a player given free choice, is going to have some connection to that player because otherwise, they would not appeal to them.

In one world, I play a god-hating barbarian. I don't hate gods or religion, but I DO enjoy the fantasy of challenging the very fundamental principles of the world, bucking the authority of The Powers that Be. In another world, I play an apathetic fish-hengeyokai who cares for little but hedonism and avoiding his master's wrath. I'm anything but a hedonist, but the desire to disregard responsibility and just do what I want all the time is appealing.

If you're familiar at all with Jungian psych, it makes sense then that the characters we play are facets of our personality that, for whatever reason, we can't or don't express everyday.

lytokk
2014-04-02, 03:19 PM
My favorite characters I can always peg down to singular aspects of my personality. My NE ninja was my inner jackass coming out, my LG Paladin was the part of me that wants to be a hero in ever sense of the word. I think thats why these characters are my favorite, since they are an actual part of me.

Oh, and then there was my CG barbarian. That was my ADHD.

HolyCouncilMagi
2014-04-02, 03:23 PM
Clearly, you've never read bad fanfiction. Writing a character for a story carries with it the threatening possibility that the author is projecting themselves for that same wish-fulfillment. It's usually not as obvious, however, given that you generally don't have any experience with that author as a person.

Now, I agree with the point you're trying to make, and yes, especially among inexperienced roleplayers there's a crazy tendency to play their characters like themselves. Of course, the ads sort of HAVE to cater to this; you don't make ads to get nods of approval from people who are already roleplaying seriously and quite likely already have your game, you make ads to draw in new people, a large number of whom probably haven't done anything remotely similar to roleplaying in their lives since playing make-believe as a small child.

Remember, though, that even experienced players will probably have characters similar to themselves in a number of ways, for two major reasons, one of which I would consider slightly immature but easily forgivable, and one that isn't a matter of maturity at all and is just common sense.

The slightly less mature reason is something that tends not to exist at all in novel writing and Play-by-Post games, and is instead prevalent at actual tables or in instant-message roleplaying. Especially during emotional or exciting scenes, it can be difficult to fully absorb everything that's going on while thinking very in-depth about "what would my character do?" Sure, you don't have to be very empathetic to have your Paladin shout something righteous at some people who are beating up orphans or whatever, but you might not think about how your character, having grown up an outcast, would consider agreeing with your best and only friend about joining up with the bad guys to finally have a place where you belong. Those are both very cliched examples, but I think you get the point; if it's not the central, maybe top two defining points of your character, you'll be liable to forget things in the moment and default to yourself.

The one that's duh and not a matter of maturity is also much more simple. You are presumably roleplaying because you and the person(s) you are roleplaying with want to have fun. A character will probably align themselves with something the player finds interesting or fun. A very intelligent, extroverted person might play a less intelligent, shy character because, well, it's a character, but the character will also have similarities simply as a matter of course. If you've tried being the team item crafter a few times and don't like sitting out for such long spurts of time, your next wizard might not be keen on item crafting; if you find the spellcasting system too complicated, your character probably will stray away from other equally complicated things as well. You're playing a game for enjoyment, so you build a character that will partake in actions you will enjoy partaking in, which in some cases might make them more similar to you.

Outside of those things, though, you're on to the right thing. There's a lot of wish fulfillment in roleplaying, and I don't blame people who draw that from games; it's nice to feel like you've accomplished something great, and some people want to see how something they can't try IRL would go. But yeah, I figure people like you or I will generally get annoyed with that type of roleplayer. Oh well though, that just sort of happens.

GolemsVoice
2014-04-02, 03:28 PM
In a way, any player does what interests them, as, in a game, he is actually given the choice of what he wants to be and do. No player is going to choose something that doesn't in some way interest them. And what interests a person is very much based on who he is.

The two extremes could be players who think they themselves are the greatest thing ever, and as such, all their characters will be like them, only a wizard/cop/whatever, or players who are totally unsatisfied with who they are, and so all their characters will specifically NOT be like them, but rather given traits they consider positive.

Most actual players won't be that extreme, but their characters will nevertheless be shaped by what they find interesting or not. Not to mention personal elements that creep into a character without the player even noticing it, like how much the character talks, what words he uses, or fundamental viewpoints. These things happen because few players are so invested in their character that they do everything to become the role, and also because most players just aren't Hollywood Oscar actors.

I mean, when's the last time you heard somebody say "To me, there's absolutely nothing interesting about being a firefighter, and I despise everything related to that profession. It bores me to tears. That's why I always wanted to play a firefighter!"

Fabletop
2014-04-02, 03:40 PM
How do you roeplay a character you can't identify with?

There has to be something of the player in their PC. There needs to be that identification, that cognizant verisimilitude. Othewise, you're lost.

Freud identified dreams as wish-fulfillment. I'd say RPGs are something else. More like writing a book with a random dynamic that makes certain situations unexpected.

When you have players willfully allowing their characters to fail and even die to heighten the story's overall drama, wish-fulfillment falls flat. At least how we seek after it normally.

I doubt you've ever made a character that didn't have something of yourself within. No matter how small. You can't square the decisions of your PC without understanding the "why" of that deckision first-and in that lies identification.

If people choose also to play themselves as PCs, how much easier is it for them to stay in-character and advance the story/game? How would that be bad or even unusual? Maybe for you and those like you who maintain a hefty detachment from their PCs.

In the end, what works for some may not work for others. As long as everyone has fun, doesn't matter, does it?

NichG
2014-04-02, 04:00 PM
The experience of roleplaying is often a form of exploration. Most people who do it for entertainment purposes (as opposed to e.g. actors) aren't trying to portray a specific character as accurately/realistically/compellingly as possible, because they aren't given a specific character to play; unlike actors, they both get to pick their part and play it. So that means that naturally people gravitate towards things that are meaningful to them.

One way for something to be meaningful is for it to have a very well-defined connection to the person themselves. 'What if I were a vampire?', 'what if I were fearless?', 'what if I were a hero?', 'what if I were to openly act on my darker impulses?', etc. Another way is for it to connect to something that the person either doesn't understand or that they wish they could understand better 'what if I were actually really charismatic, even though thats hard for me in real life?', 'what if I were actually really wise, even though thats hard for me in real life?', etc - so in that case, roleplaying can act as a guide to learning a skill/ability/characteristic that the person wishes they possessed.

Beyond that things get more esoteric and abstract, but can still be meaningful. I could for example say, 'I don't understand people who are really obsessed with greed; maybe if I play someone like that, I can understand it better?'. So now this is a step removed - its not about understanding with respect to ones-self, but understanding with respect to the world. It's still exploration, but now its going to be less of a projection of the self onto the character and more an attempt to 'figure out this person I've constructed'.

You can also get things like 'I want to see how a character based on this idea interacts with this world/the other PCs/etc', where its a sort of third-order exploration (you aren't exploring the character, you're exploring the particular set of interactions enabled by the group).

So I think wish-fulfillment does 'belong' in this sort of thing - it's one form of exploration, not intrinsically better or worse than another. But at the end of the day, I think you do always retain some seed of wish-fulfillment: a character in an RPG exists not because the script demands that particular character exist, but so that the player can achieve the out-of-game goal of being entertaining and/or being entertained.

Raine_Sage
2014-04-02, 04:59 PM
Yet, don't the RPG 'propaganda posters' advertise D&D with the slogan "You can be whoever you like!" Isn't there a certain level of self-projection that goes into creating any character, so that every character is still fundamentally just you in a fictional body? In having an RPG character save the world and become ruler of a thousand planes or a world-famous celebrity or a succubus playboy o, to what degree is that just the player 'dressing up' as a wizard and vicariously living out his fantasies though his projected version of himself? What's the relationship between roleplaying an RPG haracter and writing for a character in a novel? Thoughts?

Other people have already answered the "why" of this so I'm going to focuse on your question about degrees of dressing up. And I think the biggest difference come in whether or not people are comfortable writing outside of their comfort zone. You see this in novels too. Dean Koontz for example churns out novel after novel about straight white male protagonists who are on the meek and shy side with some hidden darkness in their past who turn out to be reliable when the chips are down. Likewise Dean Koontz himself is a straight white male who is on the meek side with a very dark upbringing due to his alcoholic father. See a pattern? This is one case of a published author who very clearly has trouble writing outside of his own head, it doesn't make his writing bad persay but it does make all of his books incredibly formulaic. It's what's familiar and comfortable for him, and so far it's been very commercially successful so there's no reason for him to push any boundaries. He has no roleplaying partners telling him "dude you play the same thing every time how about a little variety?"

Likewise whether or not a roleplayer only has a tangential connection to their character or whether they play an augmented/idealized version of themselves usually comes from how comfortable they are with stepping into the shoes of another person. When I was just starting out I was one of those roleplayers who "couldn't play guys" because I couldn't fathom what it was like to be one. As I grew older and gained more familiarity with the opposite sex (growing up with two brothers helps) I became more comfortable with crossplaying. And this went for just about everything, the more things in life I grew familiar with, the more things I was able to incorporate into my characters. The difference between 13 year old me playing a character and 22 year old me playing a character is astounding. It's like looking at two completely different people.

And some of this was of course my friends pushing me to grow and change as a person because while playing different variations of "me as a vampire" or "me as a cat person" were still fun for me but not really very fun for them to interact with. They already knew me, they wanted something different. I imagine people who don't have dedicated partners just don't have any reason to evolve their styles. It's still fun for them and their partners are ok with it so why not.

Tengu_temp
2014-04-02, 05:58 PM
For me, my characters are more like the main characters of a story I'd really, really like to see get made. I don't see them as extension of myself, but rather as my creations that I'm attached to perhaps a bit more than a writer normally should be. Though I noticed that most of my characters share some traits with me, so I guess writing what you know is unavoidable.

BWR
2014-04-02, 06:49 PM
If you assume 'characters you can understand and enjoy' to be the same as 'some part of you', then yes, all characters are self-projection. Consdering how different many of my characters are from me as a person (for one thing I wouldn't be caught dead doing something as stupidly dangerous as adventuring, nor do I think that violence is an all-purpose solution to problems), I have a hard time calling all roleplaying self-projection.
As for wish-fulfillment, again it depends on what you mean by 'wish-fulfillment'. If you mean 'experience adventure, excitement, wonder, drama, tragedy, comedy etc., from the safety of your home with no real consequences' then yes, all characters are made for wish-fulfillment. If you mean 'has stuff happen to him/her that you literally wish you could do and get away with', then no, not all my characters are wish-fulfillment.

TerrickTerran
2014-04-03, 07:05 AM
I've roleplayed with many people who do use rping as wish-fulfillment. For me, I've done it before but a lot of my roleplaying is just a method to try out something I've had in my mind to do. I can never experience everything I want to try in life so roleplaying give me an outlet to do so.

Devils_Advocate
2014-05-16, 09:36 AM
Roleplaying is a specific form of cooperative storytelling. Control of characters is not shared; rather, each participant takes on the role of a particular character (or multiple characters). If pretending to be someone else isn't the point of that, then what is?

The 3.5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook notes how it's possible to speak of one's character in either the first or the third person, and says that it's fine to do either. But how common is the latter? Andy Weir mentions feeling dissatisfied at having a roleplayer refer to his character in the third person (http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=530) in order to make a joke (http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=517) work, because that's not how roleplayers talk. You don't refer to your character as someone other than you; you describe your character's actions as though you are your character!

But imagining yourself as someone else, as paradoxical as that might seem, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with wish fulfillment, and has applications far beyond the realm of entertainment.

Trying to comprehend a mind as an abstract conglomeration of abstract parts -- taking a psychological perspective, basically -- is more the exception than the rule when it comes to people trying to understand other people, isn't it? More often, it's much more a matter of trying to imagine oneself in another person's situation. Want to guess what someone else is thinking, or might do? Then think about what you'd be thinking about, what you might do, if you were different in all of the ways that that person is different from you. We basically are only particularly good at understanding other people by pretending that we are them, and how well we do so is just a matter of how good we are at realizing what differences exist between ourselves and others and how good we are at taking those differences into account.

So, yeah, roleplaying is rather obviously an elaborate game of make-believe, but that doesn't make it unsophisticated. It can actually serve as a chance to practice a vital life skill. Rather, if there's a contrast to be made between sophisticated and unsophisticated roleplayers, it's probably that the latter layer so few differences onto their alternate selves that they're still readily identifiable as essentially the same individual. That's not very elaborate! ;) But naturally even the most sophisticated roleplayers' characters still tend to be ultimately modeled as alternate selves. That's how we model people, fictional or otherwise, at least by default.

Eonas
2014-05-16, 10:21 AM
Roleplaying is a specific form of cooperative storytelling. Control of characters is not shared; rather, each participant takes on the role of a particular character (or multiple characters). If pretending to be someone else isn't the point of that, then what is?

The 3.5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook notes how it's possible to speak of one's character in either the first or the third person, and says that it's fine to do either. But how common is the latter? Andy Weir mentions feeling dissatisfied at having a roleplayer refer to his character in the third person (http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=530) in order to make a joke (http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=517) work, because that's not how roleplayers talk. You don't refer to your character as someone other than you; you describe your character's actions as though you are your character!

But imagining yourself as someone else, as paradoxical as that might seem, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with wish fulfillment, and has applications far beyond the realm of entertainment.

Trying to comprehend a mind as an abstract conglomeration of abstract parts -- taking a psychological perspective, basically -- is more the exception than the rule when it comes to people trying to understand other people, isn't it? More often, it's much more a matter of trying to imagine oneself in another person's situation. Want to guess what someone else is thinking, or might do? Then think about what you'd be thinking about, what you might do, if you were different in all of the ways that that person is different from you. We basically are only particularly good at understanding other people by pretending that we are them, and how well we do so is just a matter of how good we are at realizing what differences exist between ourselves and others and how good we are at taking those differences into account.

So, yeah, roleplaying is rather obviously an elaborate game of make-believe, but that doesn't make it unsophisticated. It can actually serve as a chance to practice a vital life skill. Rather, if there's a contrast to be made between sophisticated and unsophisticated roleplayers, it's probably that the latter layer so few differences onto their alternate selves that they're still readily identifiable as essentially the same individual. That's not very elaborate! ;) But naturally even the most sophisticated roleplayers' characters still tend to be ultimately modeled as alternate selves. That's how we model people, fictional or otherwise, at least by default.

Effectively, you're saying that we only understand characters through projection; therefore, placing ourselves as the character is natural? That's interesting, and I think it answers my question perfectly.

nedz
2014-05-17, 08:10 AM
Interesting arguments; but how to they affect DMs ?

Are the best DMs those whose own characters have more facets and so can RP a greater breadth of NPCs ?

Is DMing wish-fulfillment ?

Jay R
2014-05-17, 08:32 AM
How do you roeplay a character you can't identify with?

Quite easily, in many cases. I could role-play Tarzan, Moe Howard, Richard Sharpe, Treebeard, Harry Flashman, or King Joffrey from Game of Thrones, and I don't identify with any of them.

Don't confuse "identify with" and "understand".

Jay R
2014-05-17, 08:35 AM
Interesting arguments; but how to they affect DMs ?

Are the best DMs those whose own characters have more facets and so can RP a greater breadth of NPCs ?

Playing a greater breadth of NPCs is an important and useful tool, but by no means the only one.


Is DMing wish-fulfillment ?

In the sense in which you mean it, of course not. I don't "wish" to be in a series of fights I almost always lose.

NichG
2014-05-17, 03:54 PM
In the sense in which you mean it, of course not. I don't "wish" to be in a series of fights I almost always lose.

But thats not really where the DM's wish fulfillment would be. For a DM, the place I'd look for that sort of thing would be in the ability to create a world that works to every level 'the way they think the world should work'. In such a world, there's never dissonance or events that do not make sense. Even if the DM is constantly running losing battles, its the sort of wish-fulfillment of a clock-maker or programmer seeing their creation run perfectly. So it speaks to a different drive - rather than 'I want to be like X', its 'I wish the world worked like X because that would make more sense/be more interesting/be cooler/etc'.

Think about how sometimes authors will make events work out in ways that are convenient to their likes/dislikes/beliefs/etc. Authors often implement a sort of pseudo-causal karma, where subconsciously or consciously they want to 'warn against the dangers of X' or 'reward people who behave in ways they like' or all sorts of other such things. A particular character happens to be a misbehaving trickster, but no one ever stops him even if the consequences for his tricks are far worse than the direct villains; or a ridiculously selfless/humble character gives into pride or selfish behavior once and as a direct consequence horrible things happen to everyone; or the villain tests the hero by fake-surrendering when defeated, only for the hero to turn their back, the villain to prepare to kill them, and then a freak event only tangentially related to the villain's duplicity ends up killing them and keeping the hero's hands clean.

(Of course, sometimes this will go in the reverse direction, where authors will be particularly cruel to their favorite characters because they're consciously trying to avoid the phenomenon and overshoot, or because they're intentionally playing against reader expectations.)

For a DM, there's always the subconscious temptation to do this kind of thing and turn the world into a soap-box for their beliefs, sense of realism, etc. The best DMs learn to not only recognize when they're about to do that, but also recognize the handful of cases when its actually something they could channel to make the world more interesting by intentionally leaving it as a question to be explored, rather than have the universe itself reach down and cram their particular answer down people's throats.

Eonas
2014-05-18, 01:22 AM
But thats not really where the DM's wish fulfillment would be. For a DM, the place I'd look for that sort of thing would be in the ability to create a world that works to every level 'the way they think the world should work'. In such a world, there's never dissonance or events that do not make sense. Even if the DM is constantly running losing battles, its the sort of wish-fulfillment of a clock-maker or programmer seeing their creation run perfectly. So it speaks to a different drive - rather than 'I want to be like X', its 'I wish the world worked like X because that would make more sense/be more interesting/be cooler/etc'.

Think about how sometimes authors will make events work out in ways that are convenient to their likes/dislikes/beliefs/etc. Authors often implement a sort of pseudo-causal karma, where subconsciously or consciously they want to 'warn against the dangers of X' or 'reward people who behave in ways they like' or all sorts of other such things. A particular character happens to be a misbehaving trickster, but no one ever stops him even if the consequences for his tricks are far worse than the direct villains; or a ridiculously selfless/humble character gives into pride or selfish behavior once and as a direct consequence horrible things happen to everyone; or the villain tests the hero by fake-surrendering when defeated, only for the hero to turn their back, the villain to prepare to kill them, and then a freak event only tangentially related to the villain's duplicity ends up killing them and keeping the hero's hands clean.

(Of course, sometimes this will go in the reverse direction, where authors will be particularly cruel to their favorite characters because they're consciously trying to avoid the phenomenon and overshoot, or because they're intentionally playing against reader expectations.)

For a DM, there's always the subconscious temptation to do this kind of thing and turn the world into a soap-box for their beliefs, sense of realism, etc. The best DMs learn to not only recognize when they're about to do that, but also recognize the handful of cases when its actually something they could channel to make the world more interesting by intentionally leaving it as a question to be explored, rather than have the universe itself reach down and cram their particular answer down people's throats.

Very plausible and very thought-provoking.

Sartharina
2014-05-18, 03:38 AM
And I am always the strong, beautiful, usually-naked (And good-looking) and confident Catgirl (Well, lion-thing girl) warrior that I can never be in real life - with a blend of humor, intelligence, wisdom, and daring, because it's awesome and I want to be that, but can't.

Alberic Strein
2014-05-18, 08:17 AM
Well, DM'ing IS wish-fulfillment for me. About the only time in my life when I can say "and that's how it is, end of the story" to my girlfriend and get away with it.

All jokes aside, pretty much everything was said. I personally completely agree with the "we default to ourselves" part. Same thing when I DM. When my blockhead players start a conversation with some element of the background, like entering the home of a farmer family and going for questions, or upon finding they are in the territory of a necromancer, go find him to chat him up; I have no time to come up with something, I pull something out of myself.

Also, I find that we play ourselves much, much more the less people there are around the table. For example, in a 6 players table, I had enough time to ponder each of my actions and reactions, and choices, and sentences to be in line with my character. In my 2-player campaign, I play myself with ability scores.

Thirdly and lastly, i find that, even if I work a bit, a lot, on my character, the "mental" part is never worked enough. Sure, I have the general idea, I define points extremely important to him, what he loves, what he hates, what he believes in, what he is distrustful of, but it's not a personality. These are guidelines, and general, at that, but they don't inform me on what my character's reaction would be on subjects which I completely overlooked. A stupid, stupid example being, who was his first love? What kind of women does he like? What traits in a person he finds appealing? What about brothely/sisterly bonds? How does he feel about slightly abusive siblings?

Even when we think we created a very rounded character, there are always personality oversights, and in these, we default to ourselves again, blurring the line between characters and players, and the wish-fulfillment. It does not have to be complete, role-playing a happily married character can be wish-fulfillment even if that character is dissociated from you on other points.

Jay R
2014-05-18, 09:10 AM
But thats not really where the DM's wish fulfillment would be. For a DM, the place I'd look for that sort of thing would be in the ability to create a world that works to every level 'the way they think the world should work'. In such a world, there's never dissonance or events that do not make sense. Even if the DM is constantly running losing battles, its the sort of wish-fulfillment of a clock-maker or programmer seeing their creation run perfectly. So it speaks to a different drive - rather than 'I want to be like X', its 'I wish the world worked like X because that would make more sense/be more interesting/be cooler/etc'.

In terms that general, yes it's "wish fulfillment", I suppose, but so is any task. Fixing a clogged sink, or installing a ceiling fan, is equally an expression of "I wish the world worked like X." That certainly is not the vicarious wish-fulfillment we're discussing.


The 3.5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook notes how it's possible to speak of one's character in either the first or the third person, and says that it's fine to do either. But how common is the latter?

I almost always refer to my character in the third person, because he's a separate person. When Ornrandir draws his sword, I don't draw mine; it's still hanging on the wall. This isn't being non-immersive, either. Tolkien calls Bilbo "him", not "me".

This may be related to the fact that in my first year, we had a very small group, and we each played more than one character. "I draw my sword" wasn't clear. Who was it? "Darkstar draws his sword, and Endora readies her wand."

I've noticed that one player in a recent game always refers to his character in the first person when doing something he enjoys, but in the third person when it's something he doesn't enjoy. "I draw my sword and attack." But later he will say, "Primus stays awake for the first watch."

Sartharina
2014-05-18, 10:42 AM
In terms that general, yes it's "wish fulfillment", I suppose, but so is any task. Fixing a clogged sink, or installing a ceiling fan, is equally an expression of "I wish the world worked like X." That certainly is not the vicarious wish-fulfillment we're discussing.But creating a world in which sinks never clog for you but always clog for your sister and you don't need to use a ceiling fan is wish-fulfillment.

Eonas
2014-05-18, 08:44 PM
And I am always the strong, beautiful, usually-naked (And good-looking) and confident Catgirl (Well, lion-thing girl) warrior that I can never be in real life - with a blend of humor, intelligence, wisdom, and daring, because it's awesome and I want to be that, but can't.

Huh. So for you, roleplaying really is wish-fulfillment. How long have you been doing this, and how similar is your character to you in terms of personality? Do other players respond positively to your character?


Well, DM'ing IS wish-fulfillment for me. About the only time in my life when I can say "and that's how it is, end of the story" to my girlfriend and get away with it.

All jokes aside, pretty much everything was said. I personally completely agree with the "we default to ourselves" part. Same thing when I DM. When my blockhead players start a conversation with some element of the background, like entering the home of a farmer family and going for questions, or upon finding they are in the territory of a necromancer, go find him to chat him up; I have no time to come up with something, I pull something out of myself.

Also, I find that we play ourselves much, much more the less people there are around the table. For example, in a 6 players table, I had enough time to ponder each of my actions and reactions, and choices, and sentences to be in line with my character. In my 2-player campaign, I play myself with ability scores.

Thirdly and lastly, i find that, even if I work a bit, a lot, on my character, the "mental" part is never worked enough. Sure, I have the general idea, I define points extremely important to him, what he loves, what he hates, what he believes in, what he is distrustful of, but it's not a personality. These are guidelines, and general, at that, but they don't inform me on what my character's reaction would be on subjects which I completely overlooked. A stupid, stupid example being, who was his first love? What kind of women does he like? What traits in a person he finds appealing? What about brothely/sisterly bonds? How does he feel about slightly abusive siblings?

Even when we think we created a very rounded character, there are always personality oversights, and in these, we default to ourselves again, blurring the line between characters and players, and the wish-fulfillment. It does not have to be complete, role-playing a happily married character can be wish-fulfillment even if that character is dissociated from you on other points.

Excellent points - wish-fulfillment really is a sliding scale instead of a binary on/off thing, and I think playing yourself as a default for when you end in a character grey-area makes a lot of sense.


I've noticed that one player in a recent game always refers to his character in the first person when doing something he enjoys, but in the third person when it's something he doesn't enjoy. "I draw my sword and attack." But later he will say, "Primus stays awake for the first watch."

Now that is interesting. Have you asked him about this?

Gavran
2014-05-18, 10:03 PM
For me, it's not really wish fulfillment (not that I don't envy the abilities and adventures my characters can have) but in some ways my characters are still me. When I'm thinking about a character's motivations/behaviour/what have you I'm answering a question - "How would I act in this situation if I was my character?" - but the reason I'm asking that is because I'm the only real model for behaviour that I have. I don't just put on a hat and call it a character, I take my character's history and traits and then apply them to my thinking. Inevitably, there are elements of myself that aren't altered because a) I'm not perfectly self-aware, b) I'm a novice roleplayer and c) I'm generally more developed than my characters are. :P

Jay R
2014-05-18, 11:40 PM
I've noticed that one player in a recent game always refers to his character in the first person when doing something he enjoys, but in the third person when it's something he doesn't enjoy. "I draw my sword and attack." But later he will say, "Primus stays awake for the first watch."

Now that is interesting. Have you asked him about this?

And mess up the observations? Not a chance.

Lorsa
2014-05-21, 03:45 AM
When I play characters, I usually try to find the personality somewhere in myself. If I can't do that I would have to sit for minutes or hours to figure out how the character might react to unknown situations.

This is not in any way playing myself though, rather changing my feelings and thought patterns as much as possible to fit with another persona, which can be quite different from myself. For example, if I am going to play a cold sociopath I have to do away with my concience and bring forward logical pragmatism. Try to get into the mindset of how this character would think.

So in a way, I do think I have the potential to be all the characters that I play (well). The plasticity of the brain is very large so who knows what I would be like if I had other ideals to strive for.

As for playing yourself with something fancy added to it (like vampire or werewolf or wizard or whatever you were talking about), I try to avoid doing that. I spend most of my time being myself and it get spretty tiresome at times. There's nothing wrong with vicarious wish-fulfillment though. If people want to do that they should be free to!


And I am always the strong, beautiful, usually-naked (And good-looking) and confident Catgirl (Well, lion-thing girl) warrior that I can never be in real life - with a blend of humor, intelligence, wisdom, and daring, because it's awesome and I want to be that, but can't.

apart from the lion-thing, you could be all of those things. If your characters show humor, intelligence, wisdom and daring so could you. If you want to be strong, start going to the gym and lift heavy things. I am quite sure everyone is beautiful in one way or another, but even so it is subjective so if you yourself feel you are then that is true (for you which all that matters)! The usually-naked part is probably the easiest of them all though, it takes just a couple of seconds to implement that in your life. Confidence can be more tricky but I hear it can be trained. So take heart! You can be all of that!

And even if you're not, you're awesome anyway.

Sartharina
2014-05-21, 03:58 AM
Huh. So for you, roleplaying really is wish-fulfillment. How long have you been doing this, and how similar is your character to you in terms of personality? Do other players respond positively to your character?The character is radically different (And far more extroverted) from me in almost all ways, and I've been playing as variations on this... as long as I can remember. About the only similarities are moral ones.

Most people are annoyed, though, because of a lack of 'coherence' to the characters - "Trying to be too much at once", instead of bolting them down to a core set of principals/tropes. And the lack of clothes.

Kalmageddon
2014-05-21, 08:14 AM
The character is radically different (And far more extroverted) from me in almost all ways, and I've been playing as variations on this... as long as I can remember. About the only similarities are moral ones.

Most people are annoyed, though, because of a lack of 'coherence' to the characters - "Trying to be too much at once", instead of bolting them down to a core set of principals/tropes. And the lack of clothes.

I can see how that could be awkward. :smallconfused:

Personally, I roleplay characters that I think might fit in the narrative. I take the idea of cooperative storytelling and ask myself "what kind of character could work with the premise of this campaign? What would give the DM the best opportunity to flash things out and create interesting interactions?".
You could see this as wish fulfillment in the sense that I am very creative and roleplaying gives me the chance of creating a story or even a world (as a DM) and have people interact with it in a far more easier and immediate way than say, publish a novel or direct a movie. I personally just think that it's something I enjoy on more levels (the game itself and the creativity involved), if anything because I don't really put myself in the game in any way.

AttilaTheGeek
2014-05-21, 08:50 AM
I've roleplayed with many people who do use rping as wish-fulfillment. For me, I've done it before but a lot of my roleplaying is just a method to try out something I've had in my mind to do. I can never experience everything I want to try in life so roleplaying give me an outlet to do so.

I've used this as the basis for some of my favorite characters I've ever played. For example, at one point in my life I was atheistic, but I wanted to better understand people who were very religious, so I decided to play a devoted paladin in a PbP game. There, because of the format of the game, I really was able to spend hours to figure out how this character would factor their religion into every choice. After playing the character for almost a year, I came away from the game with a better understanding of religion in general. (Whether or not I am religious now might be across the line of the forum rules, so I'll leave that out.)

erikun
2014-05-21, 11:11 AM
I find that the difference between people roleplaying "themselves" and people roleplaying different characters is mainly a matter of experience. A lot of people inexperienced in roleplaying tend to have a preferred fantasy character, which is basically an idealized or stylized version of themselves. The decisions they make are the decisions that they would make themselves, primarily because of that. People more experienced with RP generally do a better job of divorcing themselves from their character, both to interact with others using a different personality and having different responses in similar situations. (Let's face it, a lot of RPGs run characters through similar adventures.)

Note that some people don't get into RPGs for the roleplaying angle. Some get into it for acting in characters reasons. Others get into it for other reasons.

ArendK
2014-05-22, 05:00 AM
Personally, I roleplay characters that I think might fit in the narrative. I take the idea of cooperative storytelling and ask myself "what kind of character could work with the premise of this campaign? What would give the DM the best opportunity to flash things out and create interesting interactions?".
You could see this as wish fulfillment in the sense that I am very creative and roleplaying gives me the chance of creating a story or even a world (as a DM) and have people interact with it in a far more easier and immediate way than say, publish a novel or direct a movie. I personally just think that it's something I enjoy on more levels (the game itself and the creativity involved), if anything because I don't really put myself in the game in any way.

Of all the responses I've seen thus far, I think this is the best representation that I can relate to. I tend to ask a ton of questions regarding the campaign, the DM's style (if I don't already know it), setting, etc. etc.
The keywords for gaming to me are "cooperative storytelling" and "game." A game is fun, but structured and with a purpose/goal.

I try to build characters than can be interesting/fun on their own, but in a group setting, can support and help the rest of the party. I jokingly call it the "Avengers Initiative"; reason being we have all these different personas and snowflakes on their own, but when we get them together, it needs to be more about collaboration and building a story together than just one personal story.

I may write tons of backstory for a character, even for a DM that requests just a page or two (if that); I having a full fleshed character, and to be able to become him/her as an immersion/fun bit. I don't care if the DM didn't request the backstory; I don't even care if he uses it; because I will to build the persona.

I tend to do a little research and background on culture/norms for a given role/archetype I'll play. If I'm playing a knightly type character, I've done research in ancient codes of honor, customs, equipment, norms, etc. etc. of historical knights and compare it to in-setting and see how they fit. If I'm running a hacker for Shadowrun, I did a little background on hackers (both famous hackers and actual lingo/methods). I've done face characters that I employed Psychology and Communications education to that were a blast to play. They made the game a more immersive experience for my fellow players.

That being said, I don't really want to be a hacker, or a grifter. I can already switch personas off and on;

Recently, during a military education class with our unit chaplain, he was discussing effective communication methods as far as the basic "aggressive, passive, and assertive" types; he was looking for volunteers to work with him in a demo for each different type, using an example of us being a Sergeant Major and him just being a private making some small faux pas. I volunteered for aggressive, which invited chuckles out of the higher-ranked Soldiers I work with every day as I'm known as a generally laid back, passive person because not much really bothers me enough to justify being aggressive/loud. So we do the little role-playing experience and I explode on the chaplain, who didn't know I could "turn the switch on." We finished the demonstration and the switch went back to "mellow." The higher-ups were astounded, since a lot of them wrote me off because I'm not aggressive by nature.

We play what we think would be fun; I have a good time around other people having a good time telling a story using a game, so I design a character based around that.

Icewraith
2014-05-22, 07:02 PM
This isn't meant as a jab at anyone, but I've noticed with regards to myself that less conscious/subconscious effort into making my characters "me" correlates with times of greater success in other areas of my life.

If I'm happier with who I am as a person and how I'm doing in life, I tend to push more on making characters "not me" and memorable, rather than making an amped-up version of myself. I also have a lot more difficulty coming up with halloween costumes. I think that might be a bit more optimization issues than roleplaying issues though- if I'm going to go to the effort of dressing up as something else, I want it to be cool and intricate enough that it exceeds my available time to devote to (or ability to fund) such a project.

The people I've known with the biggest personal issues put a lot of effort into their characters being "them" and took things that happened to their character very personally. When one was DMing they put effort into adding unnecessary background characters that were fairly obviously there as wish fulfillment and nothing more. Not everyone's like this, and you probably had to be there and know some history to really understand what was going on, so again this is only going off of the couple extremely damaged RPers i've been at a table with.

Or it could just be that the longer I've had to be alive, the better I've gotten at roleplaying and have gotten tired of just roleplaying "me but better" and am simply branching out. Or both. Or neither.

But yeah, the people who I knew well enough to know they had some deep, longstanding personal issues (that in one case turned out to be far worse than I realized) were by far the most focused "my characer is me" type players, and my own "my character is me-ness" has definitely gotten toned down as I've attained some stability in life.

DeadMech
2014-05-23, 03:34 AM
The first rp character I played was me but better. It's probably a bit natural to start off that way. A little taller, stronger, not afraid to do what it took to help others even at the cost of his own safety. Blonde, blue eyed like me. He was a sword and board tank. His character traits good and bad were really just mine but turned up higher. Easily embarrassed and bashful, overly polite and formal, Proud and happy of his family but not bringing them up trying to establish his own name. Had a crush on the party's healer, didn't end well.

It went over well and there have been a few iterations over the years. Some of my favorite times rp'ing have been with some of them. Other times I played other things that weren't me and that could be fun too.

The first iteration was him but.. a teenager's version of bad ass. A polearm user who focused less on tanking and more on elemental weakness exploiting. More aggressive, confident, commanding, flirty, didn't let people talk down to him even if he was at a disadvantage. Still willing to protect others over himself.

He threw himself at a chimera and told the rest of the party to run when the first boss battle went sour. Gm fiat saved him and he woke up surrounded by the party in an elven household. When they were captured by the big bad and held in jail he spit in his face and challenged him to a duel. Which he lost. Dug out an escape, stole the bedsheets and bedded the party's healer who was played by the same girl as the last time... It was a phase.

A more modern version was in a skype/chatroom rp that ran for a couple years. More like the first but a bit more anime. A member of a wizard created race, people who transformed into weapons. Playing the guy so bashful that he would feint or walk into door frames was fun since the girls liked to set up situations with their characters to watch him squirm. There was also a guy playing a wizard who was trying to study him and occasionally threatened to dissect him though they had a mutual respect for one another. Another guy played an axe crazy chaotic magic jester that tormented him endlessly, really clashed with his law and order personality. He made a really cute couple with a kitsune girl he befriended.

The latest version is an elvaan knight in a final fantasy conversion game of D&D 3.5 Hasn't gone on long enough to say much. I decided that he unlike myself can not live without a cup of tea. I've never had a cup of tea that I've enjoyed.

The reminiscing is fun but now I'm starting to wonder how much of me is in all the other characters. Though that's hard to say for sure. Every moment of every day you are a little different from the person you were before and there have been allot over the years. I doubt many others were such obvious self inserts though.

I think I do well playing characters that are not me but there's no point rambling on about that as well unless anyone asks me too.

If I had to try to pick out why I played characters like these I'm guessing because most of them are examples of me trying something new. Usually playing with a new a new community or medium.

Most of my rp's involve some romantic plot. Sometimes with other players. Though I think my self inserts in the past tended to only pursue them with the characters played by women I was also pursuing out of character. As opposed to my not self insert characters who tended to either pair with background npc's or player characters played by guys or girls I had no romantic feelings for out of character. Though I think those situations evolved over the course of the games rather than being something I planned out ahead of time. Or maybe I began to form relationships out of character because my character was a self insert and the girls were playing characters that were also self inserts. Potentially says something about me as a person at any rate. Have fun dissecting me as you will.

Melville's Book
2014-05-23, 08:06 PM
Well, this is more a factor of the games I play, since I've switched to nearly exclusive use of troupe-style play in my roleplaying games as of late. But since in such games you control multiple characters, but not all at the same time, I tend to have my "main" character be rather similar to myself with a few large but easy to work with variations, so that my performance doesn't suffer if our weekly sessions don't yield any play time for that character for multiple months. For those characters, roleplaying them well but making them individuals is important to me because they're significant characters to the weave of the story, so I need to make sure there isn't room for little forgetful errors that make the character badly inconsistent in hindsight. On the other hand, as mentioned, a character being similar enough to me that I only have to track 3-4 separate traits doesn't necessarily mean that the character would be considered similar to me.

For example, I'm a natural planner, and tend to quickly analyze solutions to find the most efficient solutions, and if it's a non-emergency I habitually order the solutions I think up from least to most efficient. However, I also hold myself to a very particular code of ethics, meaning I don't always utilize the number one most efficient plan I come up with. On the other hand, if my character is supposed to be a planner himself but is instead sadistic and cruel, I can use the most efficient plan without that filter, and the resulting character is remarked to be vastly different from myself by my colleagues.

Likewise, if I wanted to play a particularly stupid character, I could do things like be intentionally inattentive to what's happening at the table or go through my list of plans and pick things on the "least efficient" side.

With minor characters, I tend not to worry as much about being able to play them consistently, so I might make them contrived so I can observe a particular personality from within; since the character generally won't impact the narrative enough one way or another for minor mistakes to destroy the story, I can be as complex and detached as I want, and who knows? Maybe my mistakes or lack thereof can serve to generate new story hooks. Meanwhile, I can discreetly switch to a different minor character between sessions.

This is for practical reasons, of course. I'm extremely comfortable outside my own skin, perhaps a bit more than inside it, really. However, while I *could* make my main characters highly individual and separated from my own consciousness, it would require a strong mental detachment from the character in order to avoid incidents of personalizing myself, such that it becomes less a game played for fun and more a psychological exercise. Which is of course highly educational and can be fun in its own way, but I don't want to meet with my friends weekly to analyze a persona's mind and the idiosyncratic effects of Mythic European life and magical enhancements on the mind of an artificial psyche with no controlled variable to compare it to. I meet with my friends weekly to play a game of adventure, emotional development and bonding, and cooperative storytelling with the express purpose of finding enjoyment and, for a brief period, relief from the stressors of daily life.

So, there's my spin on it. Wish-fulfillment in and of itself is rather practical, but that's not even the relevant thing here. It's about exploration, fun, and maintaining consistent narrative believability, not about stripping the human mind to its barest shreds, rebuilding it from the ground up, and analyzing it for data. There are many professions more adequate for that than "casual gamer."