SL Roleplay

I don't think I understand roleplay in general let alone in Second Life. A notecard I got described it as being an actor without a script which I understand.

My question is does roleplay consist of saying stuff like "Susie Boffin smites Lecktor with her mighty elven sword" or do I just smite him and say "gotcha"?

This is a for real question. Does talking in the third party make a person a roleplayer or can you just play your role and talk normally?

Oh, and by the way, I was at a "roleplaying" sim and it kind of confused me as they were talking in third party instead of really talking. Does this make sense?

I think roleplaying really depends on the type of person. Some are really into it and other's aren't. It's like what some people call someone else a gamer. Are they a gamers because they play one game, or what number of games do they have to play to be a gamer?

In my opinion talking in 3rd person every now and then doesn't mean they are a roleplayer, but it also depends on what they're roleplaying.

Roleplaying is pretty much just that 'playing a role' - An easy way to go about it is to make up a character - a persona - and then act as they would act.

If you are 'sheena the amazon elf princess' then keep that in mind when you go to do things like talk - act - what you're going to do. You play the role of 'sheena' like in a book or movie and act as you think she would.

Most roleplaying has some kind of rules set out for things that affect other people - could be rolling dice - could be consulting a game master - could be doing things by mutual consession.. best ask others playing for the specific rules in those matters.

Personally in role playing games I've been a part of I haven't done the 3rd person speak thing - just because to me it sounds silly.. thats a matter of individual taste.

How you roleplay is generally up to you. Often people who roleplay confine themselves to in character utterances in open chat. Out of character chat (OOC) is saved for IMs or occasionally enclosed in parenthesis.

Emotes are often used to describe actions that may or may not be difficult to communicate via other means. For instance:The emote is what Keiki is doing, regular chat is what Keiki is saying.

In addition, some people enclose emotes in astericks: However, emotes don't make a great roleplayer. I've interacted with plenty of good roleplayers who rarely used them, and I've interacted with several tiresome roleplayers who overused emotes, who filled the screen with unnecessary descriptions of the littlest actions they could think of. Less is more when it comes to emotes in roleplaying, in my opinion.

One other thing to mention. I have sometimes seen roleplayers say something like this:Some think this kind of emote doesn't work with roleplaying. Communicating internal thoughts should not be included in emotes. Of course in regular SL chat, stuff like this is no big deal.

If you want to hear about some really intense roleplay, ask me about the Shadowclan Orcs sometime.

Anyway, the short answer is. You can roleplay and speak fairly normally as long as you confine most of your speach to things your character would say (i.e. don't talk about RL or about your computer or use l33t speach, etc).

I roleplay in SL. I role play a designer and someone with a smidge of creativity and talent

Thanks Keiki and Siggy but I guess I am still a little confused. I went to a rolplaying sim and someone said to me, "someone says hello and welcome to Susie". I responded with hi( in the first person) and got no repsonse at all ever. Should I have said "Susie says hi to someone"?

I mean why talk that way? It is the official way to talk?

I can understand not talking OOC since I never do it in SL anyway but why the third party? With all of the features in SL I really can't see the necessity unless it is some sort of age old tradition.

I personally think that done right communicating things like that can be OK in emotes; you can't use tone of voice or facial expression to convey subtle emotion, so there are times when other means are needed. Ultimately it's whatever works for you and the people you are with,same as it is with table-top, LARP and free-form RP in the real world. There is no "right" way, provided everyoen involved is happy with the way it's being done.

I think the hardest roleplayers to understand are gorean slaves, a few times I have had them contact me about a product of mine and they would always say "this girl" I am like, ok have HER IM please and I will be glad to help, they refer to themselves as "this girl" odd...

I've noticed a few things like this in SL and I have a few ideas. It may be their way of expressing emotes. It may be that they are confused about how to roleplay and believe that speaking in third person equals roleplay.

It may be that they are Gorean slaves (or some other D/s variant). Sometimes slaves are required to only refer to themselves in the third person. They might say "This girl greets you" instead of "hi there." I'm not sure why they wouldn't respond to "hi" though.

In any case, different roleplay cultures have different customs. What kind of roleplay was this? Gorean? Fantasy? Gothic/vampire?

This girl says "gimme a ton of free stuff".

A suitable response to this might be "RU a NPC?"

You certainly don't have to speak in third person to roleplay. Just try and speak and act as you think your character might. If you need to communicate as the person behind the character, the use of the ((Hey guys..need an afk for a minute)) is useful, but even that may not be needed in SL.

The key to roleplaying is to think of yourself as an actor in a movie or TV show, or even a novel or historical period, and act appropriately.

The third person can be used if you want to "tell" someone what your character is doing. It is often hard to do that without having the right animation file and saying "And now I am dancing around furiously" will interfere with the flow of the "story". You wouldn't say that in RL and I guess you won't find that in a book either.
That is why we use the third person speech as a narrator as if you were reading an adventure novel.

For any given roleplaying technique, you can find somebody that will tell you that you are doing it "wrong".

There are two reasons that I can think of offhand that someone might do that:

1. They approach a roleplaying scene as if it was being narrated. Other characters cannot hear the "internal thoughts", but the other players can, just as if they were reading the scene in a book. It's a stylistic choice.

2. They are providing the information so that the other players can deduce what the character is thinking (not necessarily in completely accurate detail) for some reason. It's a hint.

There's a problem with describing, say, body language in roleplaying. Text does not easily capture all the nuance of which humans are capable, and it is prone to being misread, as anyone who has had someone take an email or IM the wrong way has seen. There is a world of difference between *frowns* and *frowns, sweating beading on her forehead, her shoulders sagging and eyes looking a bit dulled*. Using your "less is more" approach, not only might the other character misinterpret a particular bit of description (which can be interesting), but the other player might as well (which often causes scenes to spin off into bizarre areas until the miscommunication is found). This helps circumvents that problem.

That's a Gorean thing, not a general Roleplay thing. I'd tell you exactly what I think of the Gorean "role play", but we don't need another Gor bashing thread.

dont we?

**Richie Waves Presses the Reply button and Starts to type what he is doing into the Reply to thread box [pause for dramatic thought] He never was much of a writer/ roleplayer**

Having more descriptive emotes from time to time can be very useful and fun. But when someone accompanies every single thing they say with several long descriptive phrases, it can get to be very tiresome quickly. I'm just suggesting a little moderation.

There is a truism I've heard about comedy said many different ways but it's basically this: "When writing a joke, keep eliminating words until it's not funny anymore, then add back the last word you deleted." Similarly, I prefer emotes in roleplaying that are as spare as possible and yet still accurately communicate what you want others to know about you.

In the words of Mark Twain, 'eschew surplus verbiage'.

Really it sort of depends. Usually when I roleplay, If my character is talking, I just talk, first person. Even when I use descriptions I don't go entirely into third person though sometimes its understood that way. In gerenal the more I can accomplish easily with my character's avitar, the better. So for example If I strinke at the orc, I just do it, and not descrbe it. Same with sitting, or whatever.

Sometimes there are actions that there are not emotes for, or that the action does not covey the whole expereince. Just sttting does not convey *sits heavily, wearing the weight of sorrow he feels at your words* this can be done 1st person too.

I think someone pointed out moderation is essential. I agree. There are, however, whole schools of role play that are about paragraphing. People don't ever say in three words what they can say in 50, and people who use brevity are looked down upon.

Personally for me paragraphing like this is annoying, I would rather have more insight inot what a character thinks, than pages of decritption about thier every facial twicth. Description should set the stage, not be the stage. For Me role play is about getting to know the characters, and I like bck and forth dialogue to do that.

Also bear in mind that third person is NOT the reserve of Gor. there are many examples when it's used in general roleplay.....ie: "Baxter Mcbax steps backwards in confusion and pulls a spam sandwich from his knapsack of Great Plenty"...

There's various kinds of roleplay, too, all subtlely different. Online, I've noted free-form to be very popular - this is where you simply define your character and act accordingly, and try to resolve conflicts in the most entertaining manner... keeping in mind this doesn't mean "you win". The first thing you have to 'get' to roleplay is it's not a game where all players compete and somebody wins; it's a fancy "let's pretend".

That said, I enjoy somewhat more structured games like your usual "tabletop" roleplaying games. Bit of a misleading name since I play over IRC or SL nowadays, but the basic idea is adding some rules so you aren't stuck every time there's a conflict and neither player wants to "give", and having a neutral "game master" who plays the rest of the world as needed and keeps everyone honest.

Which makes it "let's pretend, with some math and dice to give you something else to do in the bargain".

(My favorite game, Unknown Armies, describes roleplaying as "improv radio plays", which isn't too far off, if a bit more highfalutin' than I'd use.)

Siobhan inserts her L$0.02.

My own opinion, and bear in mind that it is just an opinion, is that the accutrements of a role-playing game such as dice, paper, pen and so on are there mostly to resolve those situations that you have no control over. I have been playing RPGs for years now (more than 20 of them if you must know) and get most satisfaction from the actual "role-play", and very little from the "rule-play".

Some house-rules I've played under...
"Anything you say, your character says. Unless you make it clear to the GM in advance that it's OOC"
"Who needs dice, except for luck? If it's dramatically appropriate, it works, if not... oops"

Second Life is itself a role playing game of the highest order. Even if you play yourself, you're playing a role. Most of us don't play our RL selves exactly though, we're taller, slimmer, more beautiful; we're elves, furries, vampires or aliens... and we have relationships every bit as real as those we form in RL. That is the heart of role-play, to put your whole self into the character, to make it you, or you it... All the rest, the whapping with swords, rolling the dice, speaking in a special way... that's just a distraction, or scene setting at best... at worst, it can be a pain in the butt!

Role playing in a game (as opposed to role-play for therapy) is supposed to be fun. If the rules make it otherwise, play under someone else's rules - or your own.

I think you have stated it clearly Siobhan. I will no longer feel dumb for not saying things like "Susie Boffin says hello". If I want to say hello I will just say it by god. I know in my first life I don't usually talk in the third person.

I thought my partner and I were doing good roleplay at our pioneer homestead in Sand saying stuff like "howdy pardner" and "looks like the corn will be knee high by the 4th of July" instead of trying to talk convoluted third party nonsense.

Everyone is entitled to talk however thay want and I have no problem with that except I will no longer even try to talk as if I was some other person.

Don't even mention roleplaying therapy.

Ah, well, one of my favorite games - I bring it up all the time, in these conversations, is Exalted. One of the features is a combat system where it's entirely possible to be rolling a couple dozen ten-sided dice for a powerful attack.

Some people do not like this, but I kind of enjoy the tactile feel of 20-some dice hitting the table, exploding like a clusterbomb, yea, even as my character's attack must be causing great pain to the opposition.