RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Jana · **04-14-2014, 04:16 PM**

It's good to feel emotions while you read and write RP; investing a bit of yourself into it will make the job you do better. Being disconnected from your character's feelings of love or hate doesn't mean being unemotional or unfeeling, it just means being able to separate IC from OOC.

Tiergan · **04-14-2014, 04:47 PM**

(04-14-2014, 04:09 PM)Zhavi Wrote: Emotion is there, it just might not be the same way that you experience it. Feeling some sympathy towards a character and feeling their exact emotions are two different things.

Exactly this. I feel a lot of strong emotions when RPing - much stronger and intense than the ones I get from reading a good book, watching a movie, or playing a video game because I am directly in control of my character. However - I don't feel the exact same emotions as my character does. Tiergan and I are two different 'people'. When I roleplay with someone else, I want to the comfort of knowing that things Tiergan does or says will remain in the RP only and will not impact you as a real person in a really negative way.

If he does/says something to make your character hate him? I want to know that while your character hates mine, you as a person do not actually hate my character or me.

If Tiergan does/says something to make your character love him? I want to know that while your character loves him, you're not confusing your emotions and convincing yourself that you are actually also in love with me.

This separation is what frees me to be 100% In-Character when I RP. If the separation is not there, I have to constantly pull myself OOC to think about whether something my character does or says to yours will hurt you as a person and that personally ruins the whole point of RP for me.

EDIT: Bah, forgot a few words in there that were important. I shouldn't post when hungry.

Melkire · **04-14-2014, 04:51 PM**

It comes down to, "am I in control of my emotions enough to divorce myself from my character on demand?"

If the answer to that question is "no", then there's a problem that needs to be addressed ASAP, because that ain't healthy.

Ignacius · **04-14-2014, 04:58 PM**

(04-14-2014, 03:59 PM)K Wrote: Unless you're a creature that lacks the ability to empathize then I don't see how you could not experience strong or harsh emotions for your characters. I have felt a variety of things through, or on behalf on my characters, even if they themselves didn't. In addition, I have also been through a lot when exposed to other characters even when I was totally uninvolved with the scene taking place or even so much as not even having ever roleplayed with the character. This is what makes RP exciting and interesting. If you couldn't feel anything from it then I don't understand why one would do it in the first place.

I've played a character before that has nailed a woman (literally with carpenter nails) naked to a table and interrogated her by skinning a tattoo off her hip and tossing it down on her face. Â He finally got her to talk by preparing to slice off her finger to show her the ring she was wearing, having her tell him it had come from her husband, and threatening to have them find her husband to torture him as well.

It was fun, it was tense, it was dramatic, it was absolutely 100% not something I'd ever want to empathize with. Â I've had a great many heroic roleplaying characters in my time, but I've also played characters that, at various times, have burned down an orphanage after killing everyone inside, had a witness killed and disposed of in order to get a murderer acquitted, and had one character bring a yearlong forum RP thread end by killing his own fiancee on behalf of his employer after leaving his entire gang to death.

If you want to know what I love best about RP, it's that several of the characters I've played that have done that, I've had people feel sympathetic, friendly, and respectful towards, despite all of that. Â But I would assume no one would want me to actually empathize with these characters.

I play characters that are very different from me, so I don't necessarily feel everything they feel. Â Generally, if you're a bruiser for a local criminal syndicate, I personally feel like you've got nothing to be proud of and nothing to feel sorry about if one of your associates dies on the street. Â These guys aren't me personally, though, so I have to run the RP through the lens of that character and whatever reactions they have.

Way more fun that way, I personally haven't killed anybody and I don't know magic. Â I don't want to RP a happily married architectural designer that gets annoyed when his dogs don't get out of the way. Â The fun of RP is playing someone else, often someone completely different.

Knight Kat · **04-14-2014, 09:38 PM**

If I may be so bold as to recommend that everyone step back and take a breather. There are some insinuations in some of the posts that are a bit insulting, and that accomplishes nothing.

Like everything in life, RP is dependent on the individual. Their enjoyment of it hinges on how they personally go about it.

Some people want to play a certain type of character while others want to play a different type of character. How they should play their character depends on the person, and what they enjoy.

No one is unhealthy, abnormal or crazy for how they decide to enjoy a freaking harmless hobby. If you get emotionally involved in your characters, fine. It you don't, fine. It only becomes an issue if people start OOCly attacking the other person. However, just automatically assuming that will happen is jumping to a conclusion.

For example, Kiht Jakkya is NOT me. She is my character. Do I feel empathy with her? YES. Is she exactly like me? NO. She has some aspects of my personality, but she is at least 50% different. Am I living vicariously through her? NO. Have I ever OOCly treated someone badly for negatively effecting my character in an IC way? NO WAY. Am I in love with the player who plays the character that Kiht is in love with? Certainly NOT.

Just because someone can feel emotions that their characters are supposed to be feeling, doesn't mean they will think the same things that their characters are thinking. It's about discipline, and self-control. I can easily do that, but maybe not everyone can. That makes them different, not crazy. They simply need to go about RP from another angle. They need to draw their own lines, and set their own boundaries. They need to understand the difference between IC and OOC.

As long as everyone remains OOCly respectful and kind to everyone else, there is no reason why they shouldn't feel or play the way they want to.

Melkire · **04-14-2014, 10:51 PM**

Maybe I should have phrased that as, "because the potential negative repercussions ain't healthy".

Kimikimi · **04-14-2014, 11:04 PM**

In the end I think people approach the RP scene differently.

Whether people are like me "a complete emotional wreck" or someone that just enjoys their character adventures.

I somewhat enjoy the emotional roller coaster as I would not typically expirence this in a real world situation.

Finally however people play, what is important is to have fun, remember this is a game.

Tiergan · **04-15-2014, 12:17 AM**

I just want to point out that I never said that people who feel exactly what their characters do are crazy or an emotional wreck. It's completely normal and VERY easy to do when you're literally crawling into the mind of the character you're creating. I did it when I first started. A lot of my friends did it when they first started. Almost everyone does it when they first start RPing.

It's a common enough thing that (at least when I first started RPing ages ago) separating IC and OOC was one of the big RP rules all RPers back then got taught along with not godmoding or metagaming.

What I WAS saying in my previous posts however, is that IC/OOC separation is insanely important because there are a lot of inherent problems if there is not some degree of separation. Finding yourself hating/loving players OOC is one potential problem that may or may not happen. Discovering that your character's emotions are strong enough that it's actually making a negative impact on your real life is another.

Being disciplined and having self-control means that yes, even though you empathise with your character, you do have that degree of separation. You don't let it reach a point where it can negatively affect your life.

Knight Kat · **04-15-2014, 07:44 AM**

I just want to clarify that my post wasn't aimed at anyone in particular. I simply used words and insinuations, that I personally saw in the posts, as examples. If the insinuations were not intentional, I am sorry I misinterpreted.

Obviously, the topic made me a bit sensitive, and I didn't like the 'heat' I saw building in front of the OP who is obviously a newbie on the RPC. Both sides of the "argument" seemed to be loosing a bit of tact, so I felt compelled to post again.

I guess managing an RP plot, and the LS involved has turned me into a Mother Hen Laugh

Alex Taja · **04-15-2014, 07:47 AM**

(04-15-2014, 07:44 AM)Knight Kat Wrote: I just want to clarify that my post wasn't aimed at anyone in particular. I simply used words and insinuations, that I personally saw in the posts, as examples. If the insinuations were not intentional, I am sorry I misinterpreted.

Obviously, the topic made me a bit sensitive, and I didn't like the 'heat' I saw building in front of the OP who is obviously a newbie on the RPC. Both sides of the "argument" seemed to be loosing a bit of tact, so I felt compelled to post again.

I guess managing an RP plot, and the LS involved has turned me into a Mother Hen

A controversial topic indeed.

Ignacius · **04-15-2014, 09:00 AM**

What the Hell is wrong with you people?! Â I just said my characters had skinned people alive, tortured them, and engaged in all manner of evil debauchery and violence. Â Why DOESN'T anyone think there's something wrong with me?! Â My roleplay has at various times become sick and disgusting and I've played those characters sympathetically!

Jeez, you people...

In all seriousness, I'm rarely serious. Â I wouldn't take anything I say as a personal attack and my own ego is pretty bulletproof. Â I half expected someone to respond, "Well, most people should feel some kind of connection with their characters. Â Not you, Iggy. Â You need 24 hour care and one of those rooms with no inflexible protrusions or sharp edges."

The whole point of the post, self-deprecation removed, is that I tend to play characters that, for some reason, people have a lot of sympathy, respect, and admiration for. Â Which is strange, because I most often play characters who engage in terrible violence, horrendous crime, and no small amount of indulgence.

It's entertaining, and I feel like I can tap into an undercurrent of people's feelings where they can respect someone like that and even follow them, then see how low they're willing to follow the character into the hole in the ground they live in. Â I love the archetypical "dark knight", a villainous character of high moral principle that is just as likely to buy a poor kid an ice cream as he is to hide a police officer's body in a sewer for the rats to consume. Â I really like seeing what kind of decent people might end up following them and to see how they react to falling from grace.

Which is fun, but I'm the last guy that says you need to have empathy with your characters. Â At the very least, be happy I'm not that well connected to mine. Â I've had people cry IRL when bad things happen to my character simply because people come to like and admire them. Â I don't; they don't deserve it.

I do sometimes worry about people getting too attached to their characters andÂ mine, though. Â There have been a few RP relationships that the individual players have taken too far, mistakenly thinking those feelings made their way OOC. Â Definitely not in my case, as I feel as much connection to the positive emotion of their love as I do to their anger when they're bodily ripping someone's ripcage out and wrapping it around their backs.

Yes, that's happened in RP as well....

ArmachiA · **04-15-2014, 10:31 AM**

I always try to get inside my characters head and feel what they feel when trying to play a scene and I have a lot of empathy when something bad happens to one of my good characters (Not so much with my evil ones) and I have cried at overly emotional scenes - just like reading a good book or watching a good movie will do.

I think in order to play our characters accurately, we have to try to feel what they feel in the moment. Whether it's a funny scene or a serious scene, we have to try to get into their head. In essence, we're actors and thats what actors do.

Never take it OOC though. Once your out of your characters head remember that you are you and your character is your character. This can be difficult, hell even some big named actors have trouble with this once a shoot is wrapped. But it's important to get out of your characters head space when you are not being your character, if you find yourself stuck there - taking their feelings into the OOC - you need to take a step back and distance yourself a bit till you can leave.

OOC and IC are always two very distinct and different things.

Kage · **04-15-2014, 10:54 AM**

I think it's being able to keep the IC things IC and never taking it OOC. You're you and your character is a character. You're not your character.

Empathizing with their feelings or those in theÂ momentÂ in my mind is a process of RPing I think for most people with the characters that they like.

I've certainly cried a few times in the past two weeks in some big emotional scenes because the characters would have moved me for sure if I had been reading about the scene from a book or watching it as a scene in a move.

It's possible that you're disappointed and sad over how your character's RP is not going the way you want it. Perhaps a retcon or finding different RPers will also change that?

C'kayah Polaali · **04-15-2014, 11:09 AM**

I'll echo Kage here on this one. For a lot of people (myself included), it's not only common to feel things that your character is feeling during a scene, it's desirable. Good RP characters are like good characters in a book. You empathize with them. You get into their heads to some degree. You laugh with their jokes, you cheer with their triumphs, you cry with their defeats. It's the same thing with RP characters, except that you're writing them yourself. It's only natural if you feel along with them.

At the same time, it is a game and you are entitled to insist that you get some enjoyment out of playing it. If playing your character makes you sad all the time, to the extent that you're really not enjoying the game, then it's time to think about why that is and what you can do about it. It's perfectly reasonable to make OOC decisions about the direction an character goes in order to make them more fun to play. It's also perfectly reasonable to set them aside in order to play a character you enjoy, or to take a break from the game and get a little distance.

And if being part of an Ul'dahn crime lord's new empire might make you happy? It's perfectly reasonable to contact me.Â Wink

Seriously, though. If you're on Balmung and feel like making an RP change, I'd be happy to help.

Ignacius · **04-15-2014, 11:13 AM**

(04-15-2014, 11:09 AM)C Wrote: I'll echo Kage here on this one. For a lot of people (myself included), it's not only common to feel things that your character is feeling during a scene, it's desirable. Good RP characters are like good characters in a book. You empathize with them. You get into their heads to some degree. You laugh with their jokes, you cheer with their triumphs, you cry with their defeats. It's the same thing with RP characters, except that you're writing them yourself. It's only natural if you feel along with them.

At the same time, it is a game and you are entitled to insist that you get some enjoyment out of playing it. If playing your character makes you sad all the time, to the extent that you're really not enjoying the game, then it's time to think about why that is and what you can do about it. It's perfectly reasonable to make OOC decisions about the direction an character goes in order to make them more fun to play. It's also perfectly reasonable to set them aside in order to play a character you enjoy, or to take a break from the game and get a little distance.

And if being part of an Ul'dahn crime lord's new empire might make you happy? It's perfectly reasonable to contact me.Â

Seriously, though. If you're on Balmung and feel like making an RP change, I'd be happy to help.

Too bad you're on Balmung.

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Role Playing feelings and Real Life feelings.

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes