Roleplayer Guild - Forum Roleplaying Games

Often when I RP with good friends, I can simply see the real person shine through their characters and when I write characters myself, I often recognize big bits of my own personality in them too. When I RPed with two RL friends, the story seemed an awful lot like our real situation... talk about failed escapism.
Anyone else who notices such things in their own or other's chars? I think it's pretty interesting

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Even for professional writers, real life gives a big deal to the story. It's not just the characters, often you write events that you experienced, or turn your characters' emotion to the one you felt that time.

But, yes, its interesting to notice these things in your own and other's posts.

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Man, I was once writing completely out of character when I felt like crap and a friend forced me to write anyhow... that made her let me off the hook big time xD
In my experience, the events in RPs don't really refer to the people behind the keyboard, but the feelings do (stories are a different... story, of course)

And I love your avatar. It's nearly hypnotizing.

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I let all of my characters reflect aspects of myself. I see it as being the only true way to bring a character to life as a writer. If you can't connect with your characters (regardless of gender differences because occasionally I'll play a female character despite being male) then you can't bring them to life. You only view the world through your eyes, and trying to see it through a stranger's eyes is difficult. So quite simply, you have to make a connection, no matter how vague it seems to others. Perhaps you have a character who is completely unlike you save for a slight reaction he has in certain situations or his overall thought process. Its elementary things like that which hide behind the words you write which let you bring that character to life and give readers and fellow roleplayers a character to connect with.
Roleplaying is how I picture writers coming together and creating 1 story rather than writing their own individual stories. Sure, there are certain aspects that can cripple creativity, but the characters become the focus and drive of the story and you can meet so many thousands of unique individuals within the pen of a single writer. It helps you to almost break down the person you are, or the writer you're following, but picking apart certain core emotions that fill their characters.

Or something like that...

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"You are my definition of Perfectly Flawed"
Screwing up the easy things so you don't have to since 1990.

Is recognizing at least part of yourself really the only way to relate? I somehow feel like it shouldn't be that way, but I can't come up with any good arguments as to why not. When my friend is depressed about problems I think are a luxury, I can more or less understand, but not relate to her, even while I'm pretty much known for being able to relate to anything. Hm.
And I completely agree with the last bit of your post. Psychology for the win! xD

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I do believe that to be a good writer, you have to let yourself seep out in the writing. You can separate yourself from the characters, and perhaps it is a good idea to do that at first while you are still experimenting with different genres (I know I personally like to push myself to see what I am capable of...for some reason I have a difficulty creating villains, so I am trying to work on that now). You have to let yourself shine through in the various aspects of different characters because, in the end, that is really the only person that you can truly know the psyche of, the thought process behind the words. I don't know if it is necessarily that you are creating a character that they can relate to, but it seems to me the ultimate goal, with descriptive writing, is to let them see through your eyes. That is something they could never do in real life, and, when someone has a truly unique perspective, people flock to it. Now, if you can find experiences in your own life that are also common in others' lives, then you have a winner. For example: Harry Potter creates another world for magic users, but the kids still have to go through school, with finals and heartbreak and fear of fitting in and all the emotions that would encompass high schoolers today. The setting isn't so much the key as the universal emotions and the writer's portrayal of them. The rest the writer can just think of creatively for their own fun and people will be taken along for the ride.

Wow, I guess I wrote more than I thought I would. Hope that makes some grain of sense...

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Took the "What Element are You?" quiz and got 75% Earth and 58% Holiness.
It's pretty accurate - take it to find out what you are!

I think it's impossible to totally separate yourself from your character in ANY roleplay. Just think about it, you are answering questions from other 'characters' taking your knowledge of the world around you to make it realistic. Which is why life experiences is generally used in books, it makes the book more realistic.

As for using the part you rarely use (Like your evil side) Can be hard, which is why I borrow from all different sources, (Books, movies etc.) and mold them into what I want... An interesting subject I must say.

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Completly agree with you, i see this all the time in rp's (D&D aswell) with my friends. No matter how much you try you will always put something of yourself into your character no matter how insignificant. I always noticed that my characters tend to be the "lone-wolf" type, and ive always been described like that in real life, even by my parents. Ever noticed how your qwirks and moods give that much life to your characters ? say a certain phrase, do something weird all the time like chewing gum or play with knives ?in a rp once i had a really inocent type paladin in a party, so inocent that when we went to one of the layers of hell to rescue one of our party, he prontly cast the spell "detect evil"... sufice to say that he went blind for 2 weeks after that. I say personality is everything to a rp, from the girl that will wipe the floor with you to the romantic scenes everyone aparently loves so much

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Quantum Slap - GM Spell
Teleports one character not in the immediate area of the game to that area, slaps them, then phases them back to their original positions.
--unknown

Ya I think almost all of my characters always reflect on some part of me. Since our reactions to other posts are usually based on our own experiences in our life, it only makes sense that some of our reasoning comes out in our characters. (Did that make sense? 4am-i confused myself)

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I honeslty think ive never made a char that didnt have a bit of me in it... made perfect sense Spaz400

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Quantum Slap - GM Spell
Teleports one character not in the immediate area of the game to that area, slaps them, then phases them back to their original positions.
--unknown