Talk:RP methods 101

Jaen
A top-notch post Auburn! I'd probably class myself as a mix of immersion and improvisation; I like to feel that I'm living the character I'm playing and I dislike contrived roleplay (it still makes me laugh when someone says "Any RP going on?" or "Does someone want to come to Silvermoon to RP?"). I'd rather come across a situation, submerge myself in it and go with the flow. For some people, "that's not RP" as the roleplaying experiences are few and far between, the rest of the time being spent questing or whatever, but I feel the "downtime" is more than made up for with the quality of those intense, focussed roleplaying experiences.

In turn, on the way to work this morning I was thinking about my character (Jaen is pretty much my full time character), how and why I play him as I do and why this style of roleplay works for me and, I came to the sudden realisation that Jaen is very much like myself in terms of personality. Just, he possesses enough flaws and character hooks to make him interesting, different and challenging. As a person, I'm a fairly broad-minded, spiritual individual with - ahem - fairly strong opinions about the environment and the like. Jaen is a natural extension of this. To paraphrase something I said in IRC once when asked about my character "If the Alliance were to plan on building a road through the middle of Mulgore, the Tauren Druids would be the ones tying themselves to trees whilst Jaen would be frostshocking digging machines and punching the police in the face". Something I assure you I would never do ;)

This brings me to the one avenue of roleplaying I have always found the most fascinating. Roleplaying gives us a chance to explore, through imagination and storytelling, different aspects of ourselves that we might not dare exhibit or choose to normally explore. I'm reminded of a Mage: The Ascension solo campaign I ran for my wife (then, girlfriend) nine or ten years ago. She won't mind me saying but she was, back then, quite conservative and not really the sort of person who challenged herself deep down. We carefully worked through a campaign that explored ideas of death, rebirth, what death meant to people and used various real-world news stories (the HIV "epidemic" springs to mind) to address some fairly complex themes. I don't think it would have worked, playing with anyone other than my wife and it led to some intense, memorable and often quite emotional roleplay.

I feel this is an extreme form of roleplaying. It's not for everyone, it has to be dealt with carefully and delicately and it definitely doesn't translate well into an MMO game setting. Nevertheless, character-driven roleplay - even in a confined, restricted world such as the WoW universe - appeals to me and can be a great tool for exploring yourself. It doesn't all have to be about vampires, half-demons and sapphism. Improvised, personal roleplay can be very, very rewarding.

Auburn
Ah, I knew I forgot something ... the psychoanalytic/the!**%utic (argh, see the edit) applications of immersion. I should have remembered that, for obvious reasons. Thanks for the reminder, Jaen.

When I was active in the larp scene a decade back, immersion was what all the hardcore larpers were doing. If you didn't agree you can roleplay even alone, tied up and locked into a closet, you were a bit of a wuss. I'll grant you, it gave me some pretty intense rides, and taught me a lot about engineering attitudes (somehow I got typecast as butch mercenary bints more often then not, I tend to think playing them had a rationalising and confidence-building effect on me). However, I started noticing that when I played insecure or conflicted characters, I usually left the games vaguely disturbed and exhausted, rather than satisfied after doing something I enjoyed -- even though the games themselves were excellent. Ultimately, I think that's an issue inherrent to immersion once you go past a certain degree. Emotions are to some degree a physical response, and the hormonal component can't be shut off once the game's over. Immersion confuses IC/OOC on an emotional level, even if the player keeps them intellectually separated. This is why I agree on classing it as extreme, and noted it has a high tendency to generate OOC conflicts from IC ones.

That said, I firmly believe that done well, it's impossible to tell the methods apart from the outside. I would, I'm mostly a simulationist. One of the things I wanted with Aubs is an experiment in how atheist rationalism might work in Azeroth -- how can you -not- believe in gods in a world where magic and deities are an irrefutable fact? I figured it's not their existence she denies, just that they're actually relevant to anything day-to-day. The Light has been a pretty nifty concept for that, with it's "God is an outmoded and archaic notion for an ideal approach to life" -thing. It's been a kick figuring out how faith can be integral to a person who, in a less obviously supernatural world, would renounce religion and make a carreer with the UN Peace Core.

EDIT: Seriously, I understand the need for forum filtering, but couldn't a company the size of Blizzard afford an algorithm that checks it censors independent strings, not the middles of innocent words? Censoring the adjective form of therapy is just ... comical.

Auburn
Entriia said:

I'm definetly 100% an Immersionist. All my characters seem to reflect some part of me. My main characters anyway, and I do feel the same sorta emotions my chars do during situations. I'd say the best Pro of Immersion is that you can react and know what your character would do, faster thananyone else.

Technically, immersion should be identifying with something that -isn't- you. A character that is a reflection of you, even a partial one, is more emulation in my book. It just uses the player as a source ("me as an evil knight, only older and more charismatic"), rather than a made up character ("X from my favourite novel").

As for speed, I disagree -- my experience has been that a good simulationist (or sometimes a flexible storyteller) outdoes an immersionist backwards for appropriate and smooth reactions, especially in intense situations. This mostly because a simulationist usually considers possible outcomes of the scene at least a few steps into the future, and has reactions for each possibility sketched well in advance. Immersionists have to process the situation first to get the emotional tone -- a simulationist just picks the scenario that's closest to what he projected.

Depending on how good you are at predicting RP, this can be a tremendous advantage when playing devious, professional and/or extremely intelligent types. Immersionists plot at the gametime speed, simulationists plan ahead. >:)

Mewis
Hmm, very interesting. I don't think I could cathegorise myself into just one of them cathegories either. :) But it's sure something to think about.

I think a lot of people are emotionally connected to their characters on some level though. My own experiences also are that it differs a lot per situation. I do not see Mewis as me, she acts different most of the time as well and I have a fair idea of how she'd react. But like I said, it differs per situation a lot too.

If Mewis gets into IC fights with friends it can make me sad, i.e. because I won't get to rp with the friends anymore (or worse, they will be out to kill my character, hehe). And because, well, even if I'd write a book I'd feel sad for my char's (both evil and good ones), no matter how much joy it is rping / writing them. :) So it doesn't have much to do with immersion I think, but more with the fact that I like my char's, like RPing them, and thus feel bad when something bad happens. Almost as if I'm watching them as if they're someone else, not me. (safe for the part where i control them :P) And I feel bad for other peoples' sadness in general (it's a bad trait, I can imagine almost everybody's feelings / situations >.< often gets me in the middle of fights between people...).

Anyway, I can laugh at sad situations that happen to Mewis too. (i.e. random person x's alt walking into a bar and making her dance with a gun to her head. and all the trouble she gets herself into without even trying!) So I suppose that it's different in each situation, although the mark for me usually is whether it's a friend or a random person doing something... (hmm.. I should give that a thought sometime..)