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Talakeal
2015-05-09, 12:44 PM
Has anyone ever successfully played in a roleplaying game where the players play as themselves?

I have tried many times, but never got it to work. The game always broke up quickly with everyone mad or hurt. The three most common problems I faced were:

1: Hurt feelings. If someone has a lower opinion of you than you have of yourself, it is not fun to hear about it. I remember one time when we were playing a play yourself white wolf game and I gave myself a good "Appearance" score and the GM literally laughed in my face and called me fat and ugly. Needless to say the game held very little enjoyment for me after that.

2: The opposite of the above, people who have ridiculous opinions of themselves. For example, I had one player give himself a legendary willpower score in one game, his argument being that he was a sociopath and therefore always gets his way without compromising. That's just awkward for everyone involved.

3: Issues of privacy. There are a lot of parts of my life which I do not discuss with people who I don't know really well, and some things I don't even mention to my closest friends and family. Its hard to play a character where I am actively holding back on my real motivations for reasons of privacy. This is not an issue which I have in other RPGs, and ironically actually means I am better able to RP a fictional character than myself while staying true to motivations.
For a very hypothetical example, say I had always been in love with one of the other player's wife / girlfriend / sister / etc. or maybe even one of the other players them self, and my greatest wish was to be married to them. Then, in game, a genie grants us all our greatest wish. There is no way the hypothetical me would ever let my secret infatuation slip, so I need to make up a false greatest desire, and thus I am no longer playing myself but merely someone who outwardly looks like me.

The only time I have ever had this work was when I am playing a freeform game with a single very close friend. Any attempts to add rules or a third player inevitably end in disaster.

So anyone got any advice on how to make it work? Or stories about past games where they played themselves successfully? Or heck, just entertaining stories about times when it DIDN'T work.

Freelance GM
2015-05-09, 01:29 PM
Once I showed my group the Easydamus "What D&D Character are you?" test, one said, "You should DM a game where we play as ourselves!"

I was wondering if anyone had tried that before... I wasn't sure it was the best idea, because of the three reasons you listed.

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-09, 01:38 PM
Sure. It was called the army. *gets shot*

More seriously: before playing an RPG as yourselves, you might want to play a non-RPG game first. Like soccer. Or Truth or Dare. There are a lot of trust-building and "getting to know each other" games which are mostly dedicated to mocking other people or revealing embarrasing secrets. Once you've gotten through them unscathed, a tabletop RPG where you play as yourself ought to be a cakewalk. (Like, there's this game where people stand in a ring, and one person stands in the middle with their eyes closed, and then just lets themselves fall over to whichever direction, trusting for the other people to catch them and push them back up. To me, being called has no bite compared to someone letting me fall on wet ground, so the former is pretty hard to take seriously if the person wasn't willing to do the latter.)

Now, when you're playing a tabletop game as yourselves, the important things you're bringing to the table are your personality and your knowledge. To avoid the rules-wankery you describe, it's best to choose a system where the vital stats of characters are very abstract, or don't need to be defined. The focus on the game should be on "how would I act?", not on "what could I do?". For similar reasons, the game really ought to use contemporary setting or scenarios, or magical realism at most. A murder or crime mystery would perhaps be best.

More fantastic games can only really be done using the "you were thrown to an alternate universe!" framing device, and if you're doing [I]that, you have an excuse to alter the avatars of the players to suit the system. I'd recommend using an OSR system like Lamentations of the Flame Princess and randomly allocating stats. The key here is to get the players to understand that, again, the imporant thing they're bringing to the game are their personalities. Accurately modeling their physique and abilities is besides the point when far greater break from reality is occurring. It helps many OSR games emphasize player skill instead of mechanical stats. You don't get an argument on, say, what someone's mental scores should be, when they really only impact languages known and saving throws, and it's explicitly up to the player to roleplay how "wise" or "smart" their character is in the conventional sense.

If you're really hardcore, there are actually a fair few fitness, personality and intelligence tests the players could perform and then use the results to determine their stats. It'd take at least 20 minutes before the game to do those, but you could dress the tests up as another game or competition. I can come up with specific rules for your amusement if you want to.

I can't think of a tabletop game I've participated in where all players were themselves. All cases of playing ourselves have been live-action training scenarios in the army, school, scouts etc., along the lines "here's a person who is bleeding to death, plug the wound and call the ambulance".

Mr.Sandman
2015-05-09, 01:38 PM
Was in a d20 modern game where we played ourselves 5 years in the future (mostly so my brother would be done with college enough to have his 'Knowledges') the GM based it heavily off of those books where the town gets sent into the past. We took a large city near where we were all living at the time, and in game were at a new years party in and sent it back to the past, paliolithic I think. There where also other pockets of 'othertime' for us to interact with, like the small town my apartment is in from revolutionary war times. The problem was, as ourselves we were allowed to use any knowledge we actually had, but between 5 players we had 2 electricians, 1 computer guy, 2 history buffs, 1 military kid, and 4 guys who love to plan things out way too much. My friend brought a projector on which we had maps (the only thing we were allowed to use the internet to look up, unless in the ingame library, as we appropriated maps of the local area from said library), itemized lists of things to do, alliances, enemys, etc. We had the power plants in the area back up and running in a week with just the PC's, built an intranet in three days, made peaceful contact with aforementioned revolutionary town despite arriving in a helicopter in 3 weeks, and began chopping a (very well protected) path between the two through the trees. Unfortunately the GM had already began writing a story for the adventure long before it began, and thus retconed almost everything we had done the previous session with each new one. We got that &@*^ powerplant up and running three separate times, and it wasn't even "oh, it broke again" it was "I don't believe you could have done it in that timeframe despite saying it was fine ingame last time." The game only lasted 4 sessions, mostly us trying to redo what we had previously done but didn't fit with how she wanted things to go, but we all loved everything except that, and all really wish to get a game like that going again with a different GM.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 01:42 PM
There is the fun four too:

4: People react badly to people that do not share their very narrow world view. The sort of stuff that really does not come up in everyday life in America. So no one would not about it. But in a RPG extraordinary things happen....it is kind of the whole point. And then it comes out, and other people react badly.

I've had fun in the past with the ''prove you would do it''. So before your ''character you'' could have the ability or such, you had to prove that real you could/would do it...for real. I had no problem doing X, Y or Z......but many others very much fumble.

BWR
2015-05-09, 02:10 PM
We tried it once. It was fun and no one got butt-hurt. We even had the others assign our stats and no one cared when we were not supermen. I'm not sure we played ourselves entirely true to life, though.

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-09, 02:32 PM
4: People react badly to people that do not share their very narrow world view. The sort of stuff that really does not come up in everyday life in America. So no one would not about it. But in a RPG extraordinary things happen....it is kind of the whole point. And then it comes out, and other people react badly.

This is in no way unique to when players are playing themselves. Even in purely fantastic games, people get upset over silliest things and think they reflect badly on whoever invoked them.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-09, 02:49 PM
In the first edition of the (first?) superhero RPG, Villains and Vigilantes, your character was supposed to be you. The GM assigned your stats and then you rolled your powers.

Very awkward when the GM gave one guy a lower intelligence than everyone else. We all felt bad but no one argued for him. Kind of ended his participation in the game.

It might work okay in a statless game.

Murk
2015-05-09, 03:45 PM
A lot of those problems seem to come from the distinction between "true self" and "game".

For example, the enormous wisdom: of course, in average day life, I'm not a master of wisdom. That's why I'm a silly accountant, a student or a baker, not a hero who saves the world. However, when you get to playing D&D, world-saving happens. If I were forced to save the world in real life, I would probably fail. That does not make for an interesting game. In all your stats you'll have to make up for that. I think it's not so much the stats or appearances that should matter, but the characters.

Another example, the "greatest wish": yes, in our simple everyday lives, getting together with the one you love might be our biggest wish. However, you are playing a hero who is out to stop the world from burning to ashes (or whatever other important quest you're on). I would say that, no matter how much I love this other person, saving the world might actually be a little more important. Again: not in my average-day life. But in the game? Yeah.

The real me would laugh and expect a prank if I see a dragon. In-game me, probably not. If I ever encounter a half-orc I would keep my mouth shut because I think it's a nasty genetic disease. The in-game me knows orcs.

So, you need to make clear distinctions with your group: yes, you are playing yourselves, but not really yourselves. Your real selves are sitting around a table eating chips and rolling dice. While it could be a fun meta-exercise playing roleplayers, that's not really what you do.
So, consessions have to be made. Things will be different from real life, but it's a game of acting: if it were me who had this huge wisdom or Majestic strength, who was out to save the world, then what would I feel/choose/do/think?

Cluedrew
2015-05-09, 04:53 PM
This reminds me of an soul searching exercise I went on once. "If I was a..." and then filled in the ... with something. Maybe if you approach it from that angle it might go better. It might help to run people through some different ones first and especially if you run them through some contradictory ones.

If I was a ...
... comic book super hero.
... comic book super villain.
... character with one scene.
... god.
... Dungeons and Dragons adventure.
... Shadowrun runner.

Actually you could also choose the system to play this way. This actually is not quite playing yourself, but if you are playing your actual selves... that is what life is for.

Mexikorn
2015-05-09, 05:30 PM
I have never played with myself. In a DnD/PF Session that is.

Solaris
2015-05-09, 05:37 PM
The second time I ran a 'play as yourself' zombie apocalypse game, we used a stat generation test that asked you a series of questions to determine your ability scores and then told the players to make a version of themselves that would survive ten years of zombie infestation. Some departed from their real-world versions more than the others, which was an acceptable casualty of the war between maintaining playability and modeling reality. I forestalled butthurt by pointing out the likelihood that they'd all be eaten in the early stages of a zombie apocalypse.
I'd use a similar philosophy in dealing with other settings, and the noisy complainer gets me reassessing their character based on my opinion of themselves and their abilities to demonstrate why being an ******* isn't the wisest plan.

The first time was even simpler; I used the same test and we translated ourselves pretty much straight across, being as we were all in the Army and thus had reason to be proficient with firearms, body armor, and all that fun stuff. We were all also artillerymen, who had trained and qualified in such fun maneuvers as a hasty emplacement of the howitzer, firing a direct-fire mission, and then packing back up and rolling out again all in about twenty minutes or less.
Do you know what artillery does to zombies? Or even something as little as a .50-cal HMG?
We left that campaign after accidentally triggering a chain-swarm and massacring the entire undead population of a small town with just the four of us.

The test dealt with the first and second issues rather well, as well as maintaining the attitude that it's a cooperative game and you shouldn't go out of your way to screw over your fellow players. The third and fourth are only problems if the group can't handle that sort of thing. The fourth, in particular... well, I don't make a habit of gaming with people whose beliefs are so enshrined and encysted in bile that they can't comport themselves reasonably when they come into question or are put to the test.
As for the third, you're already playing a fantasy version of yourself. It's okay to depart from reality.

Darth Ultron
2015-05-09, 08:46 PM
This is in no way unique to when players are playing themselves. Even in purely fantastic games, people get upset over silliest things and think they reflect badly on whoever invoked them.

But if during the game, as the character Zoarnot, if you do ''X'' other players won't tag the player with it. They might think the other player is weird, but they don't go crazy.

Frozen_Feet
2015-05-09, 09:33 PM
But they do. I once had a player throw a fit because another (their older sibling) was taking too long to finish their turn, and the player felt they were being teased. (Not all that far-fetched, to be honest.) Moral of the story is, don't play with sibling. :smalltongue:

SowZ
2015-05-09, 10:18 PM
We did a Hunger Games style game and statted ourselves as standard human NWoD characters. It worked out pretty well, especially since the starting character is above average enough that we understood we had some room to exaggerate. We understood it was a one weekend deal, too, so dying to each other was all part of the fun.

Ashtagon
2015-05-10, 04:19 AM
My only bit of advice on this is that rather than make your stat array an "accurate" relfectklyion of the person, merely make the relative values of each ability score reflect the person, but normalise thaton to a standard point buy.

SimonMoon6
2015-05-10, 11:22 AM
I have done this sort of game on numerous occasions. And oddly enough, these particular games have usually been the most successful games I've ever run, the games that people looked forward to the most and the games that people had the fondest memories of playing in.

But to address the ability score issue:

(a) Let there be balance. Not everybody that you'll play with will be equally competent, but let the stats be balanced anyway. Like, if there's one guy who's strong and smart, but another guy is *just* smart, well, maybe he gets a higher intelligence score than maybe he deserves. There might be some slight inaccuracies overall, but you just have to deal with it. And keeping the scores balanced tends to keep everybody happy. Then people will understand why that guy got the stats he did.

And, yes, sometimes there are still issues. I once had one player who in real life was not good at anything. He wasn't strong, fast, dextrous, nimble, or healthy. He wasn't smart, wise, or charismatic. So... what do you do for him? What you do is: you fudge things. Everybody gets the same number of points to spend on ability scores. So what if his intelligence score makes him smarter than his real life version? At least, he's happy (and the other players realize the only reason he gets an inflated score is because he's useless at everything in real life). I was actually more frustrated by the player who could do *everything* (he knew grad-school level science, he had outdoor survival skills, etc... so his stats suffered in order to give the necessary skills).

Still there can be issues. I was running a game using (mostly) 3.0 D&D rules and the DMPC (me as me) was being granted a 12 charisma. And it was rather bluntly pointed out to me how vastly that overrated my actual real-life charisma (ouch). But with the explanation of stats having to be balanced, it worked okay. (And, no, it wasn't the "bad" kind of DMPC before you start asking.)

(b) Don't let the players make their stats. The DM/GM needs to, with possible input from the players. But keep in mind the need for balance as previously mentioned.

The one time it was a serious issue was when one player who was invited to join in was denied a high wisdom score because, frankly, that's accurate. He makes poor choices and he has pathetic perception abilities. But the problem is that the only character classes he could envision playing as would involve a high wisdom score (being a, let's say, spiritual person). So, that caused conflict and he ended up not playing in this game.

Of course, that was more of a problem with D&D's bizarre ability score system. He had no problem playing in other games as himself, using more flexible game systems.

(c) Give them their superpowers fast, so they don't dwell on their basic stats too much.

I mean, nobody wants to play themselves as themselves, right? You've gotta be playing a game where the players suddenly get super abilities of some kind. Once you've got psychic powers or superhuman strength, nobody cares too much about how Timmy should only have a 10 strength not a 12 strength. Even if stuck in merely a D&D game, once you've got spells that let you alter the fabric of reality, your actual ability scores aren't really relevant.

The "privacy" issue only came up once in one my many games of this type. In a scene taken from a Bruce Lee movie, the night before a martial arts contest, every PC was given the option to sleep with one of several beautiful women. One of the PCs did not make his choice known. And that was all that was said about that. (Another PC chose to sleep with the middle-aged woman who was in charge of these young ladies.)

SowZ
2015-05-10, 12:45 PM
I have done this sort of game on numerous occasions. And oddly enough, these particular games have usually been the most successful games I've ever run, the games that people looked forward to the most and the games that people had the fondest memories of playing in.

But to address the ability score issue:

(a) Let there be balance. Not everybody that you'll play with will be equally competent, but let the stats be balanced anyway. Like, if there's one guy who's strong and smart, but another guy is *just* smart, well, maybe he gets a higher intelligence score than maybe he deserves. There might be some slight inaccuracies overall, but you just have to deal with it. And keeping the scores balanced tends to keep everybody happy. Then people will understand why that guy got the stats he did.

And, yes, sometimes there are still issues. I once had one player who in real life was not good at anything. He wasn't strong, fast, dextrous, nimble, or healthy. He wasn't smart, wise, or charismatic. So... what do you do for him? What you do is: you fudge things. Everybody gets the same number of points to spend on ability scores. So what if his intelligence score makes him smarter than his real life version? At least, he's happy (and the other players realize the only reason he gets an inflated score is because he's useless at everything in real life). I was actually more frustrated by the player who could do *everything* (he knew grad-school level science, he had outdoor survival skills, etc... so his stats suffered in order to give the necessary skills).

Still there can be issues. I was running a game using (mostly) 3.0 D&D rules and the DMPC (me as me) was being granted a 12 charisma. And it was rather bluntly pointed out to me how vastly that overrated my actual real-life charisma (ouch). But with the explanation of stats having to be balanced, it worked okay. (And, no, it wasn't the "bad" kind of DMPC before you start asking.)

(b) Don't let the players make their stats. The DM/GM needs to, with possible input from the players. But keep in mind the need for balance as previously mentioned.

The one time it was a serious issue was when one player who was invited to join in was denied a high wisdom score because, frankly, that's accurate. He makes poor choices and he has pathetic perception abilities. But the problem is that the only character classes he could envision playing as would involve a high wisdom score (being a, let's say, spiritual person). So, that caused conflict and he ended up not playing in this game.

Of course, that was more of a problem with D&D's bizarre ability score system. He had no problem playing in other games as himself, using more flexible game systems.

(c) Give them their superpowers fast, so they don't dwell on their basic stats too much.

I mean, nobody wants to play themselves as themselves, right? You've gotta be playing a game where the players suddenly get super abilities of some kind. Once you've got psychic powers or superhuman strength, nobody cares too much about how Timmy should only have a 10 strength not a 12 strength. Even if stuck in merely a D&D game, once you've got spells that let you alter the fabric of reality, your actual ability scores aren't really relevant.

The "privacy" issue only came up once in one my many games of this type. In a scene taken from a Bruce Lee movie, the night before a martial arts contest, every PC was given the option to sleep with one of several beautiful women. One of the PCs did not make his choice known. And that was all that was said about that. (Another PC chose to sleep with the middle-aged woman who was in charge of these young ladies.)

I disagree with B. That has a much higher chance of hurt feelings, plus the GM doesn't know each player equally well. No, better to give people an array or PB and let them allocate how they see fit. Since it is standardized, it shouldn't be an issue of someone making themselves overpowered. What could you possibly have to gain from the DM saying, "No, Bob is smarter than you Sue, and Bill is better looking than you Fred, let me remake your characters for you."

Some people would say, "accuracy," but how is accuracy more important than maintaining a non-hostile gaming space? It is best that players make themselves and have sole input. In WoD, for example, we said no 5s in anything but other than that build how you perceive yourself and you need to explain any skills at 2 or above. 4s were discouraged but a single thing, (stat or skill,) at 4 was fine. We didn't have any problems.

Murk
2015-05-10, 12:54 PM
Some people would say, "accuracy," but how is accuracy more important than maintaining a non-hostile gaming space? It is best that players make themselves and have sole input. In WoD, for example, we said no 5s in anything but other than that build how you perceive yourself and you need to explain any skills at 2 or above. 4s were discouraged but a single thing, (stat or skill,) at 4 was fine. We didn't have any problems.

You could even make them rank their stats, rather than give them active numbers. Saying "my strength is my greatest asset, then my wisdom, then my charisma", etc., and then giving the stats numbers according to rank (same number per rank for each player). That way, you don't have to say "I'm more charismatic than you", only "I'm more charismatic than strong".

Eisenheim
2015-05-10, 03:41 PM
I've considered it, but never actually followed through with a group. I would say that abilities, points, whatever clearly need to be standardized across players. That seems both necessary for fun play and to avoid hurts feelings and arguments.

Fate Accelerated might work well for a game like that. The stats are abstract enough to make it a little easier, and aspects let you pikc the elements of yourself that you want to highlight in the game.

Winter_Wolf
2015-05-10, 08:17 PM
I've had fun in the past with the ''prove you would do it''. So before your ''character you'' could have the ability or such, you had to prove that real you could/would do it...for real. I had no problem doing X, Y or Z......but many others very much fumble.

So...ehm, how do I put this? How exactly does one prove they'd do it if their stated action was essentially "waste this dude"? 'Cause, y'know, murder. Most people I know wouldn't even get into a physical altercation. I mean, I have (gotten into fistfights as an adult, not killed people) but most of the people I know are pretty pacifistic when it comes to actually trading blows.

More on topic, I've never played myself, because I have to live with myself all the freaking time. RPG time is "not be me" time. Otherwise I might as well be drinking/fighting/hunting/hiking—actually, now that it's summer I think I'd rather be doing that anyway. RPGs are more of a "damn it's cold this winter let's stay indoors" thing for me. In any case my closest friends are not my roleplaying friends, and you have to be in the closest circle before you learn a lot of stuff about me, because A: some of it is 'kind of' messed up; and B: enough of it is the source of intense embarrassment even 20 years later. So it's one thing to reminisce with your buddies but another to tell relative strangers things you've actively been trying not to think about and frankly don't trust people to know about you.

Solaris
2015-05-10, 08:47 PM
So...ehm, how do I put this? How exactly does one prove they'd do it if their stated action was essentially "waste this dude"? 'Cause, y'know, murder. Most people I know wouldn't even get into a physical altercation. I mean, I have (gotten into fistfights as an adult, not killed people) but most of the people I know are pretty pacifistic when it comes to actually trading blows.

Logic is not the strong suit of the sort of people who demand you prove your ability to do something in a game.

Mr Beer
2015-05-10, 09:54 PM
The main issue I would have playing myself in an RPG is that I am not actually, in real life, a recklessly brave man. If I saw three goons menacing a helpless lady, my instincts would be to alert the appropriate authorities instead of charging them and getting myself brutally beaten or worse.

If I was going to run such a game, and zombie horror or some other post apocalypse sounds like an ideal kind of adventure, it would be a one shot or short campaign on some kind. Everyone would have the same number of points to spend, so instead of being as close as possible to a in-game clone, they would have their own concept of their strengths and weaknesses, translated to RPG format. This I think, would work a lot better than trying to have a conversation with someone you like that starts 'Yeah dude, I don't you're that smart really...".

Milodiah
2015-05-11, 08:32 AM
GM once attempted to run a zombie game where we were ourselves, with what we had on us.

Needless to say I escorted him to my truck, within which were three rifles.

According to him I discovered my truck had been stolen when I went to go get them.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-11, 08:55 AM
In any case my closest friends are not my roleplaying friends, and you have to be in the closest circle before you learn a lot of stuff about me, because A: some of it is 'kind of' messed up; and B: enough of it is the source of intense embarrassment even 20 years later.


GM once attempted to run a zombie game where we were ourselves, with what we had on us.

Needless to say I escorted him to my truck, within which were three rifles.


I might have to start doing this exercise with new people I play with as a short-form version of running a background check.

"Okay, everyone is playing themselves -- list all your real-life advantages and disadvantages on this character sheet..."

ElenionAncalima
2015-05-11, 01:47 PM
I've never been involved in a game where people played themselves. However, I was in a game where the GM used the players as inspiration for NPC villains. I think he meant for it to be funny, but it was actually pretty uncomfortable. Fortunately we never really interacted with his version of me, but the ones we did meet were pretty insulting. For example, one player's representation was a fat, hairy, stupid monster with no friends. I think what bothered the players most was that the GM's own in game representation was a total villain sue. It would have been easier to swallow the mockery, if was making fun of himself too....

I'm sure it could be done well, though...if handled maturely by everyone involved.

Lorsa
2015-05-11, 04:38 PM
I can only speak for myself, but I would never want to play as myself. I mean, what would the campaign be about? Just ordinary life? Well, I have that already. Some supernatural / fantasy elements? Considering how poorly I deal with life in general, I don't think I would handle such things very well. In any case, it is impossible to know how I would act (and react) to such a thing as a zombie infestation for example. Since I don't know, I wouldn't be playing myself anyway, so there is little point trying.

Another big issue is that my morals are generally far greater than necessary in order to have a fun game.

SimonMoon6
2015-05-12, 09:45 AM
I can only speak for myself, but I would never want to play as myself. I mean, what would the campaign be about?

Here are some descriptions of some such games that I have run:

(1) Due to the actions of a particular person (the NPC version of me), the powers of Chaos and Law (in the Moorcockian sense) entered the real world. Only those who were nearby (the other players) can put a stop to it, by going on a quest throughout the multiverse. And afterwards, the PCs have gained superpowers (and possibly magic items, etc) and access to an entire multiverse (including superhero universes, science fiction universes, fantasy universes, and even a boring old D&D universe), while having altered the real world to an unfortunate extent (oops, they replaced Law and Chaos with the Cthulhu mythos). That was a springboard to a variety of stories. One player became the king of a city in the Dreamlands. There were always enough plot hooks to keep people active (such as having to deal with the insane NPC version of me who had the potential to destroy universes).

(2) The players are sucked into a D&D universe (and subtly changed). They now wonder if they can ever get home again. This game didn't last long enough, but eventually, they were going to find their way back home, only to discover that demons had invaded the real world and they were the only hope that the real world had.

(3) Due to the actions of a particular person (the NPC version of me), a magical crystal is activated. This opens a portal to another world. A great evil has now sensed the real world and apart from a small area near the portal, it seems that there is great devastation happening across the world. And what's worse, the players are taken over by great evil, while also being granted vast powers. A dying wizard pops out of the portal, stops time, and splits the players into two parts: the good but powerless versions and the evil superpowerful versions. He tells them what's going on (that their world is being destroyed, though a piece of it will be preserved on a patchwork world full of pieces of dead worlds). Their only hope is to go back through the portal and find items to power themselves up in order to match the power of their evil selves. (Each fragment of a world has a crystal that can power them up.) The wizard can only keep time stopped for as long as he lives and he is dying, so the players have a short head start before their evil selves will pursue them to try to kill them. (And the powers that both versions can gain are based on that player's favorite characters.) And so the PCs go off to investigate a variety of worlds, each a different genre (robotic overlords, generic fantasy, fairy tale fantasy, various superhero worlds, cheesy horror movie, alien invaders, Greco-Roman fantasy, etc). The fate of the world if not the multiverse is in the player's hands!

I've also participated in other games of this sort, usually short-lived. One was a Palladium fantasy, where we were sucked into this fantasy world. One was a bog-standard superhero game where we just got powers and became superheroes.

Also here's one I've had in mind but never got around to running:

The players hear about a new Virtual Reality gaming center. They go, they play, they have fun (even though they discover some technical issues cropping up). Then, they go home, thinking that's it. But they awake to find themselves being attacked by their virtual reality opponents (but the players no longer have their cool gear and skills). Eventually, they regroup and (presumably) try to figure out what's going on. This would lead to them discovering that the Virtual Reality is not so "virtual" after all. If they go back to the virtual reality game place, they end up stuck in a different reality, trying to find their way home (think the Sliders TV show, but with different genres for each universe).

Maglubiyet
2015-05-12, 10:23 AM
I can only speak for myself, but I would never want to play as myself. I mean, what would the campaign be about?

You could play yourself as you'd like to be, your idealized self, improving the areas you want to IRL?

Also, you could add super powers, magic, alien technology.

Voidhawk
2015-05-12, 10:57 AM
I'm playing right now in a DnD campaign where we've done this. It has been immense fun and one of the best game series I've been involved in. It started out as a thought experiment ("could you run a game with self-inserts/mary-sues that was fun?"), but quickly ballooned into something amazing.

The way we did it:
1) I've known and been playing with these guys a pretty long time. Five/six years in most cases, and two of the players are brothers and have known each other a hell of alot longer. These are some of my closest friends, and the idea of trying this with anyone you just met sounds like it would lead to disaster.

2) We didn't pretend this was going to be super-realistic. People like to play games because it differs from reality, so we decided to go as over the top as we could while still remaining a playable game. Our instructions were to make a DnD character that vaguely represented yourself; but this is self-insert-epic-fun so we got 32 point buy, 16 levels, and 2 free points of Level Adjust (with a homebrewed +1/+2 LAdj paragon template available if you didn't want anything else). What would you be in high fantasy land, if you were a hero of legend? Less about stating your body, more about expressing your soul.

3) The DM dropped his own self-insert NPC into the mix, and then we went to save the world from lich-hitler and his evil moon-base.

It. Was. AWESOME. We rocked about the place being Big Damn Heroes. No angsting, no trying to unravel complex political dilemmas, just "You are here. Over there is moon Hitler and his evil legions. What are you going to do about it?".

That was more than a year ago now. After that first game ended with us stealing Hitler's Spelljammer on the way out of his exploding moon-base, we decided we wanted to play more. So we've begun rotating GMs and players, giving anyone who wants one a shot at running a campaign. The Spelljammer now wanders from plane to plane like the TARDIS, throwing ECL 18 heroes at epic problems that the gods need solving. Currently, an Elder-Evil-undead-shadow-demon-god is awakening and putting out the sun (imagine Father Lymic crossed with Tenebrous/Orcus), so we've gathered a bunch of artefacts/allies and are about to bind his soul and kick his entire demi-plane back into the far-realm. Then (after tea-and-medals) it'll be my turn to GM.

Jay R
2015-05-12, 11:33 AM
Has anyone ever successfully played in a roleplaying game where the players play as themselves?

I once played an extremely fun GURPS campaign of that sort. The GM set up our characters, and he thought more highly of my fencing, diplomacy, and performing skills than I do.


2: The opposite of the above, people who have ridiculous opinions of themselves. For example, I had one player give himself a legendary willpower score in one game, his argument being that he was a sociopath and therefore always gets his way without compromising. That's just awkward for everyone involved.

Giggle. Tell him, "No". If you can make it stick, then his will isn't that high. If he successfully gets away with it, then he's made his case.


... thus I am no longer playing myself but merely someone who outwardly looks like me.

Exactly. You must assume that from the start, or it fails as soon as any action happens that isn't sitting down playing a game - that being what you are really doing right then.


So anyone got any advice on how to make it work? Or stories about past games where they played themselves successfully? Or heck, just entertaining stories about times when it DIDN'T work.

This cannot work unless everybody can be brutally honest about themselves and their weaknesses. (Or, as above, when the GM thinks more highly of the players than they do.)

The game requires players with humility, utter fairness, the ability to back down graciously, and unselfishness, and excellent judgment. This doesn't sound like the average gaming group as I have known them.


Another big issue is that my morals are generally far greater than necessary in order to have a fun game.

I have the opposite situation. I routinely play heroes and people of the highest honor - people who withstand torture, risk their lives for others, pledge their service to great causes, etc. I play people morally better than I am for the same reason I play people with powers I don't have. There's no fun pretending to be somebody I disapprove of.

Lorsa
2015-05-12, 01:50 PM
I have the opposite situation. I routinely play heroes and people of the highest honor - people who withstand torture, risk their lives for others, pledge their service to great causes, etc. I play people morally better than I am for the same reason I play people with powers I don't have. There's no fun pretending to be somebody I disapprove of.

Withstanding torture and risking lives for others is more a matter of having much higher willpower.

Quite often my characters, at least in D&D, end up killing a lot of sentient creatures. I am not quite sure I would do that myself, as I don't find killing to be morally defensible. There is always the self-defense clause, but the way it is often stretched a bit too far in a RPG is not something I would be okay with if playing myself.

Cluedrew
2015-05-12, 04:02 PM
Less about stating your body, more about expressing your soul.This is why I like the "If you where...". One group of friends of mine did something like this for an RPG (the Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest type). The physically small one who did marshal arts became the brawler, the one who would always support others work became the healer and the thoughtful one became a robot. There where other parallels as well (some of which are only occurring to me now) but still, you would have to be a member of that group to get them. They were versions, not our actual selves.

kyoryu
2015-05-12, 07:41 PM
There is no way the hypothetical me would ever let my secret infatuation slip, so I need to make up a false greatest desire, and thus I am no longer playing myself but merely someone who outwardly looks like me.

Outside of the concerns you raise, the fact is that after the first session you're no longer playing "you". You're playing "you that has had experiences that you haven't actually had."

Solaris
2015-05-13, 11:37 AM
Withstanding torture and risking lives for others is more a matter of having much higher willpower.

Quite often my characters, at least in D&D, end up killing a lot of sentient creatures. I am not quite sure I would do that myself, as I don't find killing to be morally defensible. There is always the self-defense clause, but the way it is often stretched a bit too far in a RPG is not something I would be okay with if playing myself.

As a DM, I don't generally put an opponent in there to be killed unless there's a pretty good reason to kill it. Sometimes that reason is "Make it dead so it doesn't kill more innocent people." Unless the PCs know a reason to kill it, though, combat is entirely optional.

LokiRagnarok
2015-05-13, 04:32 PM
In the one and only "playing as yourself" horror game I ever played, the players really didn't know each other. When the big damn horror monster was creeping up on us, another PC decided to leave me for dead, reasoning "well, I don't really know him that well. Also, big damn monster".

I was slightly miffed about that, and still am to a small extent.

SowZ
2015-05-13, 06:21 PM
In the one and only "playing as yourself" horror game I ever played, the players really didn't know each other. When the big damn horror monster was creeping up on us, another PC decided to leave me for dead, reasoning "well, I don't really know him that well. Also, big damn monster".

I was slightly miffed about that, and still am to a small extent.

Why? You guys chose to play mundane characters in a horror game and what's more you chose to play yourselves. He probably wouldn't stick around to help a wounded stranger escape when a terrible monster was bearing down. Most people wouldn't. I don't know the scenario, but more than like he would have died, too. I'd expect another PC to take that risk in a super hero game. Not a mortal WoD game or Call of Cthulhu, though, and certainly not in a play as yourself game.

There is far less expectation of party cohesion in such a game than, say, D&D. If he had blatantly betrayed you or attacked you, sure. But running is par for the course in this style of game.

LokiRagnarok
2015-05-16, 02:14 AM
Why? You guys chose to play mundane characters in a horror game and what's more you chose to play yourselves.
It was at an "introduction to P&P" evening where we could pick to play one-shots with different GMs. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think the "you play as yourselves" part was sprung on us only after we had picked the "horror game GM". There wasn't a choice to play a non-mundane character.

Mutazoia
2015-05-16, 11:21 AM
I've done this a few times with different groups and different systems. The last time was a GURPS Horror one shot.....playing ourselves at the start of the Zombie Apocalypse. The only real trouble I have when doing this kind of thing is....well after several years in the military including combat duty...I'm nowhere near a starting character...so trying to "Point-buy" yourself with base points is rather difficult. Plus there are always a few skills you are not sure you want your friends knowing you have, for one reason or another.

Cluedrew
2015-05-16, 08:17 PM
...I'm nowhere near a starting character...That would also depend on the power-level of the system, but I'm guessing GURPS is pretty "realistic" in its power levels.


Plus there are always a few skills you are not sure you want your friends knowing you have, for one reason or another.Now this just wants me to put something utterly bazar on my character sheet and just say "long story" we people ask me about it.

Mutazoia
2015-05-17, 10:01 AM
Now this just wants me to put something utterly bazar on my character sheet and just say "long story" we people ask me about it.

Well...the group knew I was a combat photographer, and that I trained with and was regularly assigned to Navy Seal and Marine Recon units, so some skills I didn't have to explain at all....but there are still a few that I would rather not have to....no matter how cool it may sound...right up to the point when you think about actually USING them....

Milodiah
2015-05-17, 02:10 PM
The best part of this in systems like NWoD is watching people attempt to lay claim to the "Common Sense" merit, and the GM just staring at them.

Judging by the sort of idiotic plans I come up with in most RPGs, I wholeheartedly accept that I will never qualify for such a merit. Even if I did, I would most likely just cheerfully ignore the GM's warnings.

goto124
2015-05-17, 08:29 PM
'I dumped Common Sense to gain more Strength! Totally worth it!'

SowZ
2015-05-17, 08:32 PM
It was at an "introduction to P&P" evening where we could pick to play one-shots with different GMs. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think the "you play as yourselves" part was sprung on us only after we had picked the "horror game GM". There wasn't a choice to play a non-mundane character.

Well the other player stuck to the concept and the conventions/expectations of the genre.

It's more on the GM/event then the player.

Cluedrew
2015-05-18, 11:36 AM
I actually meant something not so much dark as completely out of character for yourself. Going for contrast rather than a skill that is eye-brow-raising on its own.

DragonBaneDM
2015-05-19, 06:36 AM
I had an idea that I never got to try out for Shadowrun.

The idea was that my group and I would have played as our descendants, for instance I was planning my great granddaughter to be an NPC, so not exactly ourselves, but very close to our personalities. She was going to be a high pitched spaz who inherited my college nickname.

It would let us have our personalities, but mix it with the fantasy elements of the Shadowrun world. My granddaughter was going to be a master hacker, something I have absolutely no experience in. I could see a DnD campaign where you're playing your ancestors and accidentally, or purposefully, eliminate magic from the world as the same idea but with a different time period.