roleplaying, you, and SL

Difficult question. I dont role play in sl - I am just Jig. In a sense its just a spill-over from real and I come to sl to become Jig who has all my real characteristics, features and shape. I collect art coz I do so anyway. I am extrovertly annoying coz I am most of teh time. I have never experienced shyness in reality and I dont act shyly here. I have a few friends who seem to like me and that is same as in real. I relish non-conformity and so I enjoy sl immensely. I follow strange paths. I live in remote regions in real by choice and I think Jig does also.
The only difference is that I am partnered in sl and I am not so in real. I dont have kids. I dont have pets. I am teh same age as I present myself here.
I tried roleplay but I was useless at it. I was a slave girl in Gor for 3 days but I pis*ed off my owner coz I was mouthy and wouldnt sit still. I think he tried to sell me but he couldnt give me away. I didnt have teh ideal boobs and bum and lanky hair. That was only rolling I did.

ooooooooo so when Fifafan gets all hot on the poseballs with SL GF... RL Fifafan does not get erect? No excitement or heavy breathing even???
you must be a master of control.

I don't role play as such, but I keep as much as possible consistent with my character and do things in a way that would be most credible in real-life. For instance, if I go flying, I always put on my jet pack, safety suit and crash helmet (unless I've simply fallen into a ditch and need to get out again, in which case I don't bother!). I don't morph my avatar, I only change clothes or vary my hair between loose or tied back. I've made my home as realistic as I can, although I wouldn't be able to afford such a place in RL. I do have a sky platform, up at 900 metres, so it's not visible from ground level. I'm not very tekky but I searched the net to discover the most convincing way a sky platform might stay up and settled for cold fusion to power assymetric capacitors embedded in the platform floor!

I do teleport, of course - you can't really do much in SL without TP'ing. I've yet to integrate that into my credibility plan.

hey!

thats cool, havnt figured how to set up in rl.

rp? me? no im not an actor.

Like Cass in "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan. She's a physicist who's transmitted herself to an experimental space station a few hundred light years from anything. The space station is so small that everyone else has elected to be simulated instead of carrying physical bodies around, but she wants to keep that hold on her physical body...

Cass opened her eyes. Lifting her head to peer through a portal, still strapped to the bed at the waist, she could just make out the Quietener: a blue glint reflecting off the hull a million kilometres away. Mimosa Station had so little room to spare that she'd had to settle for a body two millimetres high, which rendered her vision less acute than usual. The combination of weightlessness, vacuum, and insectile dimensions did make her feel pleasantly robust, though: her mass had shrunk a thousand times more than the cross-sections of her muscles and tendons, so the pressures and strains involved in any collision were feather-light. Even if she charged straight into a ceramic wall, it felt like being stopped by a barricade of petals.

Well, Ghosty Kips is me, all me. Vishnu Muhindra is very much a role-play situation, since he's a Hindu god and allows me expression in that vein ... and my female ava is another form of RP with a completely different personality than mine. So I guess the situation changes depending on how I'm logged on.

Fifafan has not yet had the pleasure of participating in such actions as you describe. But I will guess that IF the situation ever arises, Fifafan's controller might find it slightly (I stress the words might and slightly) erotic, and thus, being a typical man, will have no control over blood flow.

Yeah... I avoid RPers, too. They're weird.

You could always pretend you were Hayden Christensen....











[['Jumpers' reference, not Anakin.]]

Lewis Luminos is not a roleplay character. He is me, indistingushable from the real me except being taller, and much better looking.

However I do have two other avatars that are purely for roleplaying. These two characters are always in-character, in the sense that they will behave and talk in ways appropriate to their respective personalities, regardless of where they are. Any OOC chat would be indicated as such.

Having said that I don't roleplay much. 95% of my time in SL is as myself.

RP (for me) is different than regular walking-round-SL.

The pixel puppet is a part of who I am, sort of like a personality would come through a marionette or muppet. I guess that's the closest I can explain how I see that aspect of it.

If in a roleplay *sim* then out of respect for the others playing there, and the trouble the sim owner went to, to create the space, I take it seriously. I follow the sim/rp rules as best I can, and I go all out with costumes and all that.

So yes it's all a stage but didn't Shakespeare say that about (first) life, too?

This topic keeps floating back into my head. I'm not really sure what to make of it. I will say that on my "RP character" (alt account) that I've gotten to know a number of people quite intimately in an OOC context. Well, I know them about as well as you can know anyone on the internet.

The point is, we interact "out-of-character" now, similar to hollywood actors sitting around having a cup of coffee after filming is done for the day.

I've run into situations that really blur the lines between RP and "not-RP". Let's say in real life you have a girlfriend and you two roleplay "doctor and nurse" (*chuckles*). Now, you are "roleplaying" but... not really... At least, not in the same way as pretending you are a cyborg trudging through Midian City. The relationship is still quite real, but the roles you play are fabricated... however, in most SL RP, the relationships are (supposedly) fabricated as well.

Actually, a good example is cybersex with someone outside an RP scenario. Yes... good example. The SL engine just doesn't have the capabilities to demonstrate certain "subtleties" and so... it becomes necessary to emote. To me though, the instant you stop talking like a normal person and start emoting, some of the "reality" of the interaction seems to take a hit. You start treading closer to that whole nebulus realm known as "RP". It begins to feel like you are participating in an interactive story, and suddenly you have to ask: "am I just roleplaying or not? how real is this interaction?"

It all seems a bit pseudo-RP to me if I can invent such a phrase. Now, maybe you all think I'm weird. Hell, when I use to play WoW I thought roleplayers were weirdos and we use to make fun of them all on vent for cybering in the ironforge tram. *turns into a tree and makes crowing sounds*

*sigh* Anyway... it's running through my head...

I admire people like Ceera who can RP multiple characters.

I've tried, and can't seem to get the hang of it. They're all me. When I try to "play" someone different, I get all tonguetied. When I run around as an alt, I keep forgetting who I'm supposed to be...I look in inventory for stuff I don't have, I say things to people that give me away in a second.

In fact, I've always considered myself to be MORE myself here than in RL. There, I'm playing a role. Often, more than one. Here, I created myself from the ground up. "I yam what I yam", like Popeye. The SL me is the real me.

Yes. Things get a little intertwined at times. I mean, my avvie is a kid and kidlike. She does kid stuff.

But few kids own blimps and planes and such, or run a store or two, or build things like what I do in SL. I also live in a world with all manner of fantastical beast, from dragons to blingtards, giant robots to vampires. I fly (though I am taking to walking or other modes of transport around Bay City, now that the place is lookin good). I teleport. These are not "normal." It's more of a fantastic hyper-reality.



It can be, if one is really into it. Me, I don't *typically* consider my shopping time to be RP, though it can be. I've been known to RP at times during them.



I definitely RP in some controlled spaces (HardKnock Elementary) and do some RP in other areas. It's hard to explain, because I'll often simply roll with things.

On top of it, I look at this world as having some of its own RP. The tales of G'al, Magellan Linden's explorations, and other things provide the background that sets the grid apart from the First Life world, and provide a sort of backdrop.

I roleplay when there's someone whose toes desperately need nibbling.

Always roleplaying: it's what I assumed SL was about when I first registered and I guess it has turned out that way for me since we are each of us meant to make of it what we will.

I don't get out much on this account because the SL building tools are a fascinating study in themselves. Nevertheless, I use those tools to develop the basic characteristics of various alts as I work alone on my parcel for most of the time.

I don't play set RP with the alts on dedicated sims because preset rules and storylines do not work for me. I tend to keep an eye out for other avs that first of all 'look' like they may be receptive to the notion of a game and, secondly, display some willingness to exercise their imagination in chat. They are sometimes difficult to find but the 'hunt' is part of the fun for me.

The only absolute 'rule' is that RL stays away from the keyboard.

Given those vague parameters, it's too much to expect any firm direction in terms of plot or action. Consequently, the 'game' as such tends to develop on a give-and-take basis between those involved, which is magical when it clicks, and quite a mess when it does not go so well.

Interestingly, the one role that I am finding increasingly difficult to engage in play is that of the vampire. Bloodlines has created so much resentment within SL that folk just don't seem to be able to distinguish the real McCoy anymore.

Writing now not as Carl but as the person who does the typing, I have to say that I don't RP in the sense that I pretend to be a Marvel superhero or on the Starship Enterprise or a Gorean whatever you call it but I do have several very distinct personalities who rely on me to do the typing for them. None of them is a recreation of "me". They all kind-of know each other but they have *no* mutual friends and they're all jealous of each other's time inworld because it's time they don't get to spend. Carl is currently losing the battle btw.

In RL I've been accused (correctly) of being a role player. There's the business person "me" who acts, speaks and dresses completely different from the code monkey "me" and the rock'n'roll "me" and the "me" that likes to facilitate the activities of those avatars in SL. I've been on stage and have had people I know in the audience who totally didn't recognize me until I came over on break to talk with them.

Yeah, I agree with Shakespeare about "all the world".

Good roleplaying is easy if you think before you type.

Pep (Sadly, those sort of people are few and far between, it seems)

Well... some of my RP personas aren't very nice. Lol... let's leave it at that. They definitely aren't the "real" me; though, I'm sure there are aspects of their personality that are borrowed from my real life personality. I can't imagine any sort of actor being able to avoid that.

I actually revived this post because I had a weird incident the other day in-world. I'm uh... not going to go into specifics (as it's not relevant), but... I was sitting around chatting with someone I've gotten to know "outside of RP" or "out of character". She asked about whether I'd be interested in exploring a certain "interest" (probably not what you are thinking). So, we started to explore it and of course we had to emote to convey the more accurate details of our actions, and I started thinking to myself "so are we RPing... or not...?" Except we kept sort of flipping back and forth between chatting like normal people and emoting. It made me think everytime I interact with someone in SL outside of an RP sim I need to clarify with them every 5 minutes: "Wait, are we RPing?"

You may be familiar with lifestylers of certain communities who really aren't roleplaying per say.... they are using SL as an extension of RL, but... they're still ROLEPLAYING! It's an odd distinction, and I find myself thinking, it's not black and white. It's fuzzy. Hard to define. Gray-scale.

Am I making any sense? This has been on my mind all week. Need to go drink lots of beer to clear my head! /healthy

Grey-scale?

It's all eight colors of the rainbow.

Hah... I concede the point and would like to add all manner of non-visible light as well.

They're all just shades of Octarine.

Hmm.

Yumi wasn't intended to be me, and I kinda want to role-play. However, I don't want to annoy other people by a role I play. Given that, about all I can do is to chat, fit in, and try to be a generally nice gal, which _is_ basically the same as I do IRL - especially since pretty regularly someone will ask me a question about scripting.

So.. a character in the rare magic moments. Outside the rare magic moments everyone's the same.

Outside SL I'm forced to RP a character fitting my RL avatar's appearance. I didn't get to live as I really feel I am. My SL avatar lets me be my "me". Yes, it is another role played, but it is a role I'm much more natural in. Delusional? Maybe. But "me" just the same. (^_^)y