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How do you picture your roleplay?


Lawman
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I found a rather interesting question being asked on one of the sites I hang out on, and felt like asking that question on RPG Initiative to see what do others think about this?

 

Excerpt from the original post:

"When it comes to IC postage, how do you picture posts/scenes/events/what have you in your head?

Is it realistic, with characters and environments appearing to you as in real life? CGI/3D like your everyday video game? Anime (think the Japanese trend)? Cartoon (western?)? Any given form or combination of depending on any given thread?"



I know, that we're primarily telling text-based stories in RPing - but with the prevailing RP culture of faceclaims, fancy banners and avatars, there's no denying that the visual component is a pretty important part of RPing these days.

Thus with that in mind, the question here would be when you're writing for your RPs, how do you mentally picture the scenes and/or characters within your head? Do you 'see' your RP world in live-action? (say, live people and actual scenery like the physical world we perceive using our own eyes) Or 3D CGI? (i.e. Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc.) Or 2D illustrations and animations? (i.e. anime, cartoons, western comics, etc.) And are you able to explain how or why you picture your RPs as such?

I imagined that our preferences for a site's graphics (i.e. FCs - live or illustrated?) stem heavily from how we mentally 'picture' the world of our RPs.


To start the ball rolling with myself - I guess it kinda goes without saying that I'm very much a 2D person; i.e. as the avatars and site banners I have suggest, I tend to 'see' my RPs in stylised animanga form.

Hard to say why I feel that way, but I guess the media I primarily consume plays a factor. And while it may sound paradoxical, there's something about 2D illustrations that make them more immersive for me compared to photographs or realistically-rendered 3D. Primarily, since they're not constrained by the limits of human anatomy I find animanga faces more expressive than realistic faces - and as such it allows me to feel the characters' emotions more powerfully than watching a live-action film.

But at the same time, because I'm not looking at a flesh-and-blood person, I feel that drawn faces also help to maintain a comfortable degree of separation between IC and OOC; i.e. as much as I can get a feel for the characters, the fact that they're 2D illustrations inhibits me from viewing them as an extension of myself. So yeah, that's why I picture my RPs as such.


So, what about the rest of RPG Initiative? Let's hear it from the rest of the community!

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Good question.

 

For me it depends. When I am involved in a battle ( when I used to write Dark ages) I specifically imagined it in Real Time.  Now it depends on what I am doing. Sometimes I see it sort of like I am watching it on a screen in my head. Then there are other tales that its real time .

 

Its odd because it can be different also depending on what character I am writing.

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I see it like a movie or a stage play for the most part! Like I am sat in the audience and I am taking in the whole scene before me, but then I guess also it feels like I'm wearing a hyper advanced VR set sometimes, like I'm seeing and able to experience everything in front of me (sight, hearing, smell etc) but I cannot control what happens- it just sorta happens. Do you get what I mean? 😅

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So I guess based on the replies, most of the folks here tend to mentally picture the scenes and characters in their RPs as live-action rather than 2D animations or CGI. 

Edited by Lawman
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  • 2 weeks later...

It depends on the genre, i guess? I mean i try to picture real life themed roleplays like real people but anime themed roleplay as a 2D style. I don't often picture something like a stage play, instead it is more like clippy scenes with a focus on what elements/pictures are described and emphasized. I like the more pronounced feelings and expressions that are viewed in most 2D media so I have a strong preference for picturing scenes and character that way. Unless the genre conflicts greatly with a 2D/anime-like style, I prefer to imagine 2D. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

no matter if I am writing a novel or a roleplay, ie alone or with others, I see it like a movie.

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  • 3 months later...

For me it depends on the website; if it uses heavily anime-esque aesthetics I imagine it in an anime-based way with 2D animation and such. If it's a realistic roleplay with real-life face claims and graphics, I imagine it with realistic expectations (if it's supernatural think something like Charmed or...well, Supernatural, lol). If it's a pan-fandom that allows multi-genre...I am not sure. As I don't play on those due to how easy it is for me to be dissociated from the goings-on of threads. Probably due to clashing graphics.

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  • 2 months later...

I actually have a very poor visual imagination, so I don't "see" what I'm writing/reading. (I "hear" it more than see it.) However! I'm also a comic artist, so I think if I am trying to picture a scene/doodle a bit out, I go with... well, 2D. Comics or animation, depending. Even when I'm drawing someone else's character that has a playby (I don't usually), I don't know that I think of that character AS that playby so much as... use them as reference/inspiration? It's hard to describe, I suppose. Hopefully that makes sense to anyone else, haha. But definitely 2D I think. I can't even pick playbys for my characters. 

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