Forums » RP Discussion » Unable to be something you are not?

Has anyone else came across this problem with rp chars? I seem to be stuck to only playing chars that closely relate to me, and chars that dont I have a very very hard time even posting as them.

Has anyone figured out what to do if they came across this before? Its kinda bugging me...it seems like any char I can think of is somehow in a way related to myself or another char I already have. Any new char ideas that dont relate to me in a lot of ways it seems almost impossible to rp as them, even if I like the char idea.

So...discuss?

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Edit: Example - If you dont know what I mean, try to think of a player playing a barbarian suddenly plays a mage. So different it becomes too difficult to even play as it.";

I actually don't see that being a problem at all.

I once played a small pixie alongside a cyborg assassin.

I dunno, what do you think is the reason for your hesitancy to play other kinds of characters?

Roleplaying is a little bit like acting. If you struggle playing characters that don't have your personal likes, dislikes and personality traits, try to break down what this opposing personality is all about.

Analyzing why someone behaves the way they do and what motivates them is the foundation of playing a very different sort of character. Once you figure out how they respond to certain situations, it becomes easier.

To name an example, Sinnice is a very dark character who was always taught since birth that any form of emotional connection is a weakness that can be exploited. Showing feelings that are not rage and anger equal weakness, and weakness is one thing that is not tolerated in her life. She doesn't know how to actually love and accept it, so when she is confronted by it, she responds with indifference or anger. It is easy for her to hurt and kill innocent people because innocence is weakness, and weakness needs to be removed from the world.

By knowing this and sticking to the way she thinks, it becomes easier for me to play her as a cold hearted murderer and tune her responses properly.

Wow, Sanne. That actually makes a lot of sense.

The difference between RPing and acting, methinks, is that you're limited by your physical qualifications for a role in one. You're not in the other.

I try basing some of my characters off of a concept rather than people, although I add little bits of me in some. I based griffon off of just adventuring. His story telling trait is spun off of my like for writing and short stories. Pieridae I ind tuff to do but he is because I wanted a quiet forest type, he just isn't as developed. Hunter is new but very easy for me to play because I based him off of several ideas: supernatural, ex military, and high tech. Thats what gives me my means of rp. I don't know if it helps but I tried

Hope this helps,
Gamers

This. Basically this. In fact if you want more information on the connection between roleplay and acting, and ways you can really discover a character's motivation, you can read this!

While I was in University I submitted a paper about the connection between acting and roleplay. The questions one needs to ask with each discipline are different, but I think similar methods can be applied. When acting, one is called to ask "why am I saying or doing this?" while in roleplay, things are being written as the story progresses, so the questions turn from "why" to "what should I do or say?" In some ways that's a lot harder to figure out, but the same methods that actors use to justify can be used by roleplayers to create.

One of the most difficult experiences I've ever had was during my last year studying theatre. I took a course called Theatre of the Holocaust, during which we studied the ways that theatre has been used to investigate and raise awareness about genocide. Our final assignment was to perform a scene from a play that we studied. My group performed a piece from The Monument, which is a play loosely based on atrocities committed in Bosnia. My character, Stetko, was on the final stages of discovery, figuring out his true feelings about his part in the killings. He went back to the mass grave that he dug, and pulled every person that he killed out of the ground, at the command of a woman who saved him from execution. The character personally killed and did things I won't speak of in an age variable environment to more than twenty women during the war. This is the man I had to play, and I had to make him believable. He had to make sense. The point of the course was not to dismiss these acts as committed by crazies, but committed, supported, and encouraged by ordinary people, and investigate what it takes to make someone like you or me participate in great suffering. So I had to make sense of him in my head, go to seriously dark places, I had to understand him and even empathize with him in order to deliver a convincing performance. I wouldn't be doing the course, the material, or the reality justice if I played him as different, other, or if I allowed my personal disgust to seep into the performance.

I have always joked that veteran RPers have a kind of, I guess you could say, manufactured split personality disorder.

It isn't something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Flipping between your personality (and all that makes it up), to another personality, isn't really a natural thing. Most times, when looking statistically at the groups of people who do this without batting an eye, it gets a little frightening lol.

Learning how to do this takes practice and patience. It involves really getting to know your character and having the will to not get discouraged.. Think about your best friend or someone you are really close too. If you thought of a scenario and had to respond for them. You can probably guess, with a decent accuracy, how they would react. From their verbal response, right down to their body language. Be observant and critical of your character, hopefully everything will fall into place with time

Sure! Stop worrying about it. I know that most people seem to have tons of characters, but it's not like it's compulsory to have a wide range of characters.

Personally, I feel I have some limitations in what I'm able to believably RP. I feel a number emotions with low intensity, usually so low that they don't really motivate me to do anything or I'm able to drop them much easier than most people are. Revenge, for example. If that's a character's motivation, I just can't relate, and I certainly can't RP them with any degree of complexity. I'd probably be able to pull off an NPC like that for a specific scene, but anything more and trying to figure out what they would do becomes a major chore and it takes all the fun out of roleplaying (plus the character would be flat anyway).

If you really want to try and vary your characters, don't go to extremes, stick to what you can understand easily and try out what happens if you take away a bit of one thing or add a bit of another to your characters. You can also achieve some variety by imagining various courses your characters' lives would take based on their personal history - if they were pampered and sheltered as kids, they would have developed one way, growing up in an abusive environment would lead to something else.

Re: Example. If the player has trouble switching from barbarian to mage, why not try playing a barbarian who suddenly discovers he has a strong talent for magic. Or try a combined fighter/mage character (spellsword?), not skip directly to mage.

Okay read all the posts but I have to make a few comments on this. One person suggested a middle ground, the mage and barbarian was just a example, but sometimes with some subjects there is no real middle ground. For example, going from something like a house servant to something say a Evil overlord or something. Two subjects so far apart there is no real middle ground for them.

Also I came across a few users who have a similar problem, but its more of a Dominance and Submission. Not all people can hope the fence so to speak so easily...

The first thing you need to do is stop thinking in basic terms of subject matter. Dig into the character's personality and work out what they want, what they need. "House servant" and "evil overlord" for example don't define WHO a character is, only WHAT they are. Get past that and start asking why they are these things, and start asking how your characters might see themselves. Does the evil overlord think he's evil, or does he truly believe he's doing the right thing? How much can you justify if you KNOW something is right?

As my guide suggests, start simply, give them one major dream to achieve. Because that's a way "in". We can all connect with having a dream and wanting to achieve it, and once you've made that connection the specifics of what form that dreams takes stop mattering.