Does Your Character Always Do What YOU Want Them To?

Krist · March 2016

I know, strange question, and it popped in my head from what someone said in jest on another post. It begged the question though, for avid RP'ers, do your characters always do what you want them to do?

Example :...there is something YOU would love to have, but your CHARACTER is a knight with high moral standards, and he would never steal it. YOU would love to have it to at least put it in YOUR bank for another character....do you drop out of rp and take it?

As strange as it sounds, I cannot do that with my character Krist. I feel like I would force him to do something he would not. I know....just odd! Odder still is that I dont think of myself always playing in character, but I still wont force the character to go beyond his personal beliefs...lol.

Anyone else as strange as me?

Wonton · March 2016

Oh, here's an interesting one! If I may share:

I'm quite used to "stepping in and out of my own skin" on the turn of a dime by now. I separate IC and OOC quite easily: usually, when I'm leveling or looking for gear, I play OOC until another player stumbles upon me and/or I decide to do some solo RP just for fun or practice. I do casual RP with my friends, too , and in that case, we'll do this odd mix between IC and OOC that's hard for me to define or measure, really.

Once I'm 100% seriously in-character, though -- like, I've actually engaged another player, started a plot, ect. -- I like to solidly stay that way until the session is over. So, if I'm playing as my heroic templar, no stealing, no murder, ect. unless I give my partner(s) an OOC notice. And when I'm playing as my hard-edged Dragonknight mercenary, I don't make him instantaneously trust a random stranger approaching to offer allegedly nice new gear for gold.

TL;DR: I can see where you're coming from, here, but it's not that intense for me. It highly depends on context!

Totalitarian · March 2016

While I don't RP, I certainly write copious amounts of fan fiction.

I just let the words flow from the characters, and often times it is not how I originally intended it to be.

For example, I wrote in a character recently who is supposed to be very volatile with my main character, Sola, and her sister. When I introduce the new character, the two sisters agree that she is very childish, hotheaded, and all matter of things. So, of course, my intention was that she would disrupt everything constantly, and make everyone fight among one another. Though, as it turns out, just a few days after they all meet, they're all perfectly fine and get along well. I should have figured that though, because they are rather similar in terms of personality.

I have plenty of examples of this, but I don't want to write a whole essay, so I'll leave it at that.

What I'm saying isn't quite the same as what you're asking, but I figured it had some place here.

menedhyn · March 2016

Yep, I do this. All the time.

Part of my character builds include set rules and restrictions. I have struggled to abide by them sometimes (or I should say my character has struggled) but then that is part of the interest of the game for me. Those in-game moral dilemmas can add spice to RP, resulting in a play through that isn't simply about questing or levelling.

There is more to this than whether or not to steal, to kill, etc. Character rules or restrictions can be something simple or incredibly complicated. It can mean that sometimes you don't get to experience everything the game offers, but i'm sure we're all playing for many different reasons.

newtinmpls · March 2016

Yes, it feels right.

Ignoring that sort of thing would make this game much less fun for me.

Krist · March 2016

@paganach Completely agree. I have move sets I will not use for some of my characters, even if it is more beneficial to do so. Krist does not use poison, so you can see how that can hinder damage output. Being a werewolf or vampire is very beneficial for some sets, but if they aren't a werewolf or vampire, I will not make them one.

@Wonton You almost have to turn off rp for some things, especially if you want to level up. I can do that for some things, but man it gets hard when it comes to Krist....not so much for my others. I think because I have always seen the character as such an upstanding good guy, that even turning off rp is difficult. I once accidentally struck an innocent..before I knew I could turn it off....and it bothered me that I had to kill them and Krist got bounty! For a brief moment I felt like I let the character down...lol...yes irrational, and no, I did not fall into deep depression over it...but at that very moment I was bothered.

@Totalitarian Same way when I write, I usually do not know the story outcome until I am finished. The stories I write on here are done directly to the boards, and are not pr-determined. I have a concept and start writing. However, my characters tend to stay true to the character that comes out, but I can see how your preconceived idea of a character changed once they became reality in the writing. Happens to me all the time.

newtinmpls · March 2016

Krist wrote: »

You almost have to turn off rp for some things

My brain doesn't work that way.

Sometimes a character gets carried away in the heat of battle, but I'm always aware of "myself" as the character to some degree.

CourtneyManson · March 2016

I based my character off of myself so I've never had that issue. My moral compass is broken so I'm usually fine. But I get what you mean. I think that's an awesome trait to have. You can really immerse yourself!

adriant1978 · March 2016

I only steal with characters who I roleplay as thieves, although that said I do sometimes poke into containers out of curiosity even if I'm not planning to take anything out. I don't know what I'd do if I ran across a really rare motif or something ...

newtinmpls · March 2016

newtinmpls wrote: »

I'm always aware of "myself" as the character to some degree.

I read my post and it didn't make sense to me.

Um...

Anyway... what I mean is that when I am playing a character, I am sort of "in" that character's head, so what I mean is that for the time I'm playing say, my sad Dunmer DK who regrets having killed the family of her favorite slave .... err too much backstory, right?

Anyway,

I happened to be playing that character, wandering through Deshaan, and some random PC whispers to me something long the lines of "Arrogant Dunmer, apologize for all those years of slavery" or something similar.

So "she" simply said back: "I do. It's my one real regret in life."

Started a cool conversation - but it came about because that's where I "am" when I'm playing her.

When I'm playing Mol gra Durga, I'm fantastically fanatically in love with my Breton wife Fianna Kingsley, and when she drops by the forge in Rivenspire to decon/sell and Lorbash gets a little too friendly, well I might just "accidentally" trigger my Fetish of Anger

Artis · March 2016

All those bosmer alchemists, flower-farmers and cooks who cook anything but meat must annoy you a lot haha

RealFurion · March 2016

Sometimes its hard, specially when the game tells you what answers you can choose. But most of the time no, I try to choose like my character would. Every one of them has a backstory, and they do things differently.

Some things are making it 'harder' to play, for example my Redguard was not looting in a specific tomb for background reasons and such.

Makes the game more enjoyable imo, really fun to find weaknesses and make the hard decisions. The main story is the hardest part for me, makes my character improve over time, widen his/her view on the world and change how he/she feels and reacts to things. Fun thing too.