roleplaying, you, and SL

I wanted to start up a conversation about roleplaying and how you view yourself and the SL world. In games like World of Warcraft there is a unified theme and a shared history that everyone can fall back on. In SL, not so much. You can stick on your spaceman outfit and go blasting around the cosmos as Captain Raygun, then put on your suit of armor and ride around as Sir Swordguy. Even the lines between OOC (out-of-character) and IC (in-character) are blurred at times.

Here are just some questions that were jumping to my mind this morning:

Do you play as your avatar or as a "third life" alter ego?
When you go shopping for clothes, you might be able to pass that off as IC. When you go shopping for a certain kind of HUD, is that IC?
Do you only RP within a controlled space, say like Midian City, or do you RP all the time everywhere you go? If so, do you consider the world of SL as a whole your setting or do you think of each individual place like a theatrical stage? Say for instance you are in a skybox that looks like a jungle. Is it a skybox to you IC-ly?

I understand that everyone will have a variety of answers and that's sort of what I'm curious about.

I don't really role-play---unless you open up the definition of role-play to 'everything you do and everything you say is playing a role'. (And in my opinion that makes the term useless, because if it encompasses EVERYTHING, then how can you use it to distinguish one situation from another.)

So anyway, I guess I'm neither IC or OOC because I'm not playing a C.

i don't look at SL as an RPG..i look at it more like the makers do..an extension..

there are areas you can role play but i'm really not into those..there are things we can't do in rl that we can do here and sides of us we don't find until we get here but it's all extensions for me..
role play is a choice here more or less and not something that is a law like newtons law of gravity..it's just as social as the real world and then some..
but thats my sl..everyone elses will be different..thats the point of it all..choices

This guys says it about right:

Like Ceka...to me SL isn't a RP game. To me, it's a virtual sandbox. A place to be creative, build things, and socialize with others that I might have something in common with. I don't even do alts. I do have two that I made as jokes, and they come in handy to test permissions, and such, on builds. But they don't see the light of day otherwise.

There are quite a few RP communities within SL though. Some of them seem like they would be quite fun. But even there, my contact with them has indicated fairly clear lines. If you're wearing your tag, you are IC, if not...OOC.

Hummm.

Each of my avatars is a fictional character, who is, to some degree, being used for roleplaying whenever they are on-line.

How deeply they remain "in-character" depends on the situation.

I have set up an RP area for our household on the ground in my parcel, as a small section of Edo Period Japan. Circa 1640, with Japanese myth and legend as well as anthro furry species a reality, and the main residents in my household are Kitsune. At times, the play can get quite detailed, with various players or their alts serving as castle guards, and even as riding beasts, while others act out various scenarios.

In the sky I have a more relaxed OOC (out of character) designated area, were we can speak of matters that are clearly not in character for a kitsune, such as how the RL job search is going, or computer issues...

Most of the time, the appearance, personality and relationships of each character remains consistent. So Ceera, for example, is always a female Kitsune, talented as a mage and shapeshifter, and mated to this other character, by whom they have that character over there as their Daughter, and this other character is Ceera's brother. When shopping or going to a non RP venue with my SL daughter, Reisuki, we are still mother and daughter, even though we may choose to wear more modern clothes when doing so. Sort of like when two actressses from the Renaisance faire change to street clothes and take a break to leave the faire and go shop for some camping supplies that will be needed later that night, after the faire closes to the public. We may be driving a car and using credit cards, but we still chatter with each other as if in character. "M'lady? What think ye of this set of bedding?" "That will do nicely, my dear. Do add it to the cart.".

I am the least in-character when building or doing other sim-construction work for a client. I personally think of it as "using various spells" to alter reality around me. But if asked about the building process I answer in clear, OOC terms. Yet ask Ceera what or who she is, and she'll still answer that she is a Kitsune.

Argent Stonecutter is me: as Argent I don't do anything I wouldn't do in RL if I could. Including changing species on a whim and rewriting the code in my neural implants. It's not me that is really roleplaying, it's the rest of the SL universe roleplaying the other side of a Vingean Singularity.

Argent Rankadlinensur is a character (based on a novel by Vinge, as it happens), but SL doesn't have the technical capability to let me play that Argent yet, so I make do with what I can get.

I don't role-play. Sure, Second Life is like a digital sandbox, but I also see it as a virtual world and a game with a ton of styles of gameplay, and many "mini games." Even so, I avoid role playing whenever possible... For example, instead of "me," typically, I say, "my avatar" or "my character."

But once you've said 'hey, yes, you, Mr. Accountant adding up numbers, you're only PLAYING A ROLE! And hey, yes, you, Ms. Housewife polishing the silver, you're only PLAYING A ROLE! And hey, yes, you Little Kid playing hopscotch, you're only PLAYING A ROLE!'....

...once you've said that, what have you got?

You've got NO way of distinguishing the activity of adding up numbers from the activity of dressing up as An Accountant on Halloween and carrying around a ledger book....that's what you've got.

(When you broaden the definition of a term to make it mean EVERYTHING, then the term becomes useless.)

I don't rp because I flat out feel silly doing, it. Always have, it's just a personal glitch

That being said, one of the things I loved most about WoW was the lore, even though I didn't RP I did love the backstory. I used to turn up ambient sound in the throne room upstairs from UC and listen to the ghostly arguing.

"What are you doing?"

"Succeeding you, father."

And I would always stop to listen to Sylvanus sing when someone completed that quest and I happened to be in UC. It was all I could do to not go in there and kneel at her feet, but that would have been rp and I would have felt silly haha

oh i loved that song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbrKlZB0XkI

haven't played wow in almost a year and i still watch this vid sometimes lol
(lament of the highborn)

Maybe I'm totally mis-construing the term role-play, but here is how I play SL (and yes, I play it, because to me it is a game). My main ava is really me, with all my RL quirkiness, but with out the RL nose picking habit (although I might learn animation just for that). Fifafan doesn't cross over into RL...and by that I mean this: any feelings that he develops for another avatar stays in-world. He now has a GF in world, but I am married in RL (/waits for can of worms to spill over). SL is SL and RL is RL. Thus, SL (imho) is one big role-play. I am playing as Fifafan, not as me.

That probably made no sense at all, but it does to me.

Reality TV.

Neither, I'm just me. I've never "played" either and can't use that word to describe much of anything I do in SL really. I believe it was about a half a year of using SL before I even played a board game in it although now, ironically, Tuesdays I host Primtionary.

In rl I'm role playing the best me I can figure out how to do and in SL I'm playing pretty much the same role - which I guess some would say is not role playing at all.

I roleplay on the RP sims, but off them I't just me... a me with cat ear, tail and fur half the time, but the personality is all mine.

I'm guessing that "IC" in the original post means "in character"? The question uses terms that may not be familiar to everyone reading in the forums.

I don't role play in SL. I'm just me in a different environment.

Ahhh, ya... I meant IC to mean in-character... I'll edit that for clarity.

I guess this was mostly aimed at people who do roleplay, but a few of you exceptions have said some interesting things.

When I first started I probably would have said "I'm just me" as well, but... then I got interested in some of the RP sims. Problem was, I don't tend to stick to just one, nor do I stick to one character. One of the interesting things I thought was reconciling your behavior when you leave the protected little RP bubble, because everything isn't really "RP".... or is it?

I guess if you wanted to you could RP being an avatar in a place called Second Life full of gor, midian city, sine wave isle, virtual construction capabilities, pirate sims, clubs, etc. Kind of like "the sims" on crack.

I guess roleplaying is a really ambiguous and ill-defined term in this context. I do really enjoy hearing about how you folks think about this though. Ceera, your account was very interesting to read in particular. Magic spells when building eh? Hehe.

*laughs* Ceera has been around since long before I came to SL, as a roleplaying character in a freeform RP and story telling forum that I started on. So she has a very well established background and a personality that is unique to her. Sort of like any decent novel writer develops a consistent backstory and personality for the recurring characters in their novels.

"As of yesterday, the ship was stocked with consumables. That sounded like something out of a medieval adventure, but you had to take some supplies if you were headed so far down that reality graphics couldn't be trusted" -- A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge.

"You can never tell with future shock." Annette shrugs and reaches a limber arm around the back of her neck to scratch. "We are utility fog using, for most purposes out here, peer-to-peer meshes of multiarmed assemblers that change conformation and vapor/solid phase at command. Texture and color are all superfice, not reality. But yes, this came from one of your mother's letters to your father. She brought it here, for you to surprise. If only it is ready in time." -- Accelerando, Charlie Stross.

Second Life is what you get if you stick a bunch of 20th century plains apes in a near-singularity world.

See, I knew I should have included the rest of the quote, which is referring to the role of living being more than "Account" or "Housewife." Nevertheless, those are roles as well -- and part of that role, therefore, is the training it takes to participate in same, no? I could dress up as an account, but I could hardly be an effective account -- no training in the field.

Back to the OP...

Inworld, I'm Marianne McCann. It's me, or at least the part of me that exists in this shared world of ours. Her actions are dictacted by her player. Sometimes, you'll see my player's hand quite clearly, sometimes you won't. Is it role play? In a broad sense, ya. An sometimes more than others. If I'm at HardKnock Academy in class, or similar situations, you are getting the role play side of me. If I'm negotiating a build project, you're getting RL me. There's a whole lot of shades of gray between those.

Ya, it's confusing, but it's me.

I rarely RP in SL, and when I have it's been in designated RP areas, or at least between people who are aware it's RP. I've occasionally found myself among people who were RPing and expected I was too, when I wasn't. Cognitive Dissonance ensued.

I've done, and still do, far more RP in RL than in SL or any other computer-based world. Starting with paper and dice RP maybe 25 years ago (damn, that sounds a long time) and picking up Live Roleplay somewhere along the way. So the whole thing of dressing up and pretending to be someone I'm not was pretty old hat by the time I got to SL.

Generally when you speak to me in SL, you get me. I'm as likely to talk about what's going on around me in the real world as the pixel world. You probably get a more honest me than if you met me in RL where the stakes are higher and I've more to protect.

Indeed. Reality TV: Scrofulous, Scurrilous, Sleazy Spawn of Role-Play & Not-Role-Play.

I don't. I tried a RP group once, but it eventually devolved into sheer idiocy, and after it swallowed my (then) mate, I was done with it completely.

That's why I generally don't interact much with people when I learn that's one of their preferred activities on the grid.

And the WORST are the ones that just 'flip' into RP mode with no warning.


As far as I'm concerned, I'm me, idealized. I know, you're gonna try to say 'but you're not a tiger in real life!'.... given the opportunity, I'd look exactly like my av, so to that bunch of you, I wave my Impudent Digit.