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Do you rp as someone like yourself or the opposite?


Wolfdragon2004
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In the rp I run, most of the group has characters with a similar personality albeit very different background circumstances and/or augments, magic powers, etc. Do you prefer to have a character similar to yourself or not? I'd love to know why you would want to have a different personality in a character and how you achieve good results with said changes.

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Most characters have a trait or two similar with me and many more totally different ones. 

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I'd say most of my characters have a trait or two of mine in them, but I try to avoid making one too much like me. I don't tend to take things very personally, but I don't know how I'd react to someone saying "OMG, I hate everything about [insert character that's just like me here]." You know?  I tend to discourage it when it comes to my players too for that same reason.

 

Though, I will say that a new character, Rose, has a lot in common with me. Except she's nice and I could give zero #&$*s 99% of the time.

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Honestly, every character I have has something in common with me, but a lot not in common. It's kind of weird. One character is basically me as a teenager, but no inhibitions, if that makes sense. Another has my shyness, but can talk up a storm if she knows someone. Just little things like that.

 

On the other hand, there are those who only have one thing in common,  or they are someone I am the opposite of. For those, I think about what I'd do, then just post the opposite.

 

Luckily, since none of my characters are just like me, I don't take things personally.

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Lol, and in a great contrast to what I wrote over at the topic of diversity in one's cast, I do recognize a lot of my own traits in the characters I have. Sure, one character has a dick and I don't, but that character has a lot of my grumpy, hermit-y, need to control all the things personality. Another one of my character has a shyness which I have IRL and learned to hide for the most part, while collecting a bunch of random ugly hats (which I did growing up and my kids now possess that collection), but she's different from me in how she likes to soothe people's hurt feelings and is wanting to be promiscuous at that age.

 

If some of these traits are pointed at and someone tells me that they don't like this thing about that character, I would shrug and say, you don't have to roleplay with that character or with me. Seriously. A lot of that stuff is water off my back and the great thing is, one can totes move on and find someone else to play with! 

 

Edited to add for the question on opposites. I was trying to think if I'd played a character totally opposite to me, and well, I have! My Spaniard gypsy. She was and is a great, great fun to play. I have some gypsy in my blood, but nothing like her. She's straight from the source, hailing from some little cliff community in Spain, and is extroverted, playful, wild in her own way. My way of playing her was listening to her voice, which was very alive in my head, and questioning her choices (are they something I'd do or are they something she'd do, which is so different from me?) before writing her posts down.

Edited by kay
Re-read OP and wanted to add.

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I don't think of characters as being similar to me or not so I don't have a preference. They're all their own people with different experiences and influences. Thinking of their context and influences is how I develop them into who they are.

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I don't play characters like myself, but many of my characters have traits which I can identify with through life experiences.

 

I am not sure that it would even be possible, though, for me to really play a character that was me with powers or something but with a different background, because that different background would shape me into a different person altogether. But that's not quite here nor there.

 

I don't play characters like myself because I'm fascinated by people- why they think the way they do, why they act the way they do, why they feel the way they do. I already know this about myself. I want to explore this with others, and so that's why my characters are different from me. Playing characters that are unlike me helps me understand more about other living people.

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I have yet to meet a rper who did not incorporate some elements of themselves into their characters. That said, I think a lot of us purposefully explore parts of who we are or who we wish we were through RP.  I know players who have used RP to help them work through personal pains and losses.  It can be quite cathartic to play a character who killed their abuser and their life became more successful when your own story didn't quite go that well.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I try to play very diverse characters so they are not similar but may have some similarities. Looking at them all, I would say there is a little piece of each of them that is like me where it could be a favorite movie, favorite food, mannerisms, car, etc. They are definitely more different than they are similar. 

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I never make characters that represent myself.

 

It's just too painful. The character review is always bizarre; comments and fixes are an unpleasant ride. The OOC drama is way too high because everything is taken personally - how can it not be? You can't make interesting IC plots because you might offend someone.

 

I'd love to know why you would want to have a different personality in a character and how you achieve good results with said changes.

 

It starts with you, the writer. You have think "this is a character, this is not me. This character has their own thoughts and desires and agenda."

 

Next, you start writing them, start fleshing them out. Sometimes we authors end up sticking ourselves into the character because they aren't defined enough and need more. Don't do that, let the character be their own individual entity. Let the character fill in those cracks. What would they do, how would they behave? It's okay to let a reply sit for a few days while you daydream about the character and figure out what they would do.

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This is for sure a double edged sword with me. I do and I don't. I like me. It has taken a good many years to come to terms that I'll never be perfect, no one is, but at the end of the day when I put my head to the bed I feel right in my soul. A lot of my characters don't.

 

I do not have the same ability to turn away from a fight that matters like a few of my characters do, nor do I fight just for the hell of it. So I see a lot of both me and well...not me!

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I kinda do a bit of both. No one character is exactly like me, but some borrow attributes from my own personlaity. Write what you know, right? At the same time I've gone to great lengths to ensure my character isn't me. But I don't want a character that's my polar opposite since for one, I wouldn't know how to play that properly, and two, I usually don't care much for people who seem to be opposite of me, so I've sorta met this off middle ground when I make characters. I obviously have an idea for them, a certain personality drawn from inspiration either in my real life or from something I've read. But I'll add extra things to this personality to draw it back to me, just a tad. One character might be really outgoing and social (definitely not me) but I'll give them some off quirk like being too caustic when they don't mean it (definitely me). There's a bit of me in all my characters, but at the same time, no one character is actually me per se. I let them borrow some of my attributes for ease of writing, but they're separate form me and I think that's important. 

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Yes and no. Most often, I write characters with traits or ideals that I aspire to. More like, from my perspective as a writer, "If I could be like this" rather than "I am like this." If that makes sense. My characters are often loyal with a strong sense of right v. wrong, who stand up for what they believe in and take no prisoners. To an extent, I too am like this, but my characters often take it to the next level. My best characters are what I want to be myself, but for some reason I can't so I use them to express that aspiration.

 

Alternatively, some of my most amazing characters are ones who aren't like me at all. The slimy villain, the ambitious queen, the smooth-talking and clever pickpocket, they all possess traits that I myself don't have. And I struggle with writing them, but they often yield the most reward, because I really have to dig into them and figure out their motivations, their wants and needs, and what's really driving them. And they're usually the most fun, because they're aspects of life in general that I don't get to explore elsewhere (or necessarily want to). 

 

On 3/7/2017 at 4:04 PM, kitwolf said:

I have yet to meet a rper who did not incorporate some elements of themselves into their characters. That said, I think a lot of us purposefully explore parts of who we are or who we wish we were through RP.  I know players who have used RP to help them work through personal pains and losses.  It can be quite cathartic to play a character who killed their abuser and their life became more successful when your own story didn't quite go that well.

 

@kitwolf hits the nail on the head here. Exploring different perspectives in characters is amazing, but there's always going to be some part of you in your characters. Even if it's something small, like you both like chocolate cake or you both lost someone close. In a way, all of my characters are like myself. Even if I don't want to admit it. Or even if I can't admit it, I'm drawing on personal experiences and expectations for these characters. So there's a similarity there somewhere.

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My characters tend to be all over the place. A few are very much like me and a couple are absolutely nothing like me. Terrible people, lol

Like others, though, there's a trait or two that I recognise in myself in almost every character, the good and the bad. It's normal. We write what we know, we write what we'd like to see, what we find attractive or interesting or challenging and that's great!

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So this is one of those things that I've thought about and kind of annoys me but I don't really know how to change: I can't make characters that think completely different than me.  Obviously we have our differences, especially in interests, but there's this overlap in how our minds function and how we come to conclusions and rationalize that I can't really shed.

 

I intentionally give my characters a few of the same traits as me because it helps me relate to them and therefore keeps my interest in them longer.  The characters that have none of the same traits don't last as long.  But I try to distance myself from them and not make 'ME: THE CHARACTER' if you know what I mean.

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