Geek Girl's Guide to Character Development

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1413

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

good character actors are rare in RPG's in my experience because character acting while more rewarding is often very taxing. Still my best experiences have been when I shoved me aside and channeled my character. Its why character creation for me is more than a series of numbers and why sometimes I realize that even though I created a great character, I cant continue to play them.

Character acting for me started with Vampire the RPG where I played a gangrel biker chick who had no idea she was a vampire. She would have these fits which she couldnt remember and then she'd wake up covered in blood and terrified.

One day, she was caught by the cops and well, thats when she snapped,... just snapped and I did some horrible horrible things to them before they died. It worked, really well and moved my player from the scared she was a serial killer camp to the aware she was a supernatural being camp. When I looked up after a detailed and dramatic hand to hand fight all the other players were staring at me, in a not so good way. In a is that my mom calling kind of way. But I had been planning this outburst for a while and I had to stop and explain to them why I had just become a real monster.
It was a good session. Beth, the storytellers girlfriend later did much the same thing with her characters all of who were heavily character acted. I'd tell you what she did in character that had us going check please, but this is a PG board. Anyway my point is that anyone can play a collection of numbers, and can even make it fun, but I really like making rounded characters for my edification.

[caiticlu]

I Larp, so the line between rp-ing and real can get pretty blury. You are dressing like the characters, acting like the characters, and engaging in the scenes. Sometimes your character really doesnt like another, and bad things can happen. Some people in my games have a difficult time realizing this is not because anyone dislikes them as a person, but their character or their characters actions. A big problem is that many people make characters similar to themselves, so if you dislike their character you must dislike them as well.
A friend of mine stopped talking to me for about a month because our characters got in a fight and his got killed because he kept sticking his nose where it didnt belong. He decided this was me taking out my personal hatred of him, why he decided this I still dont know... I think it had something to do with me being friends with his x-girlfriend...
Finding a character you can play, and you can easily interact with in the larger group, and trying to avoid the In-Character/Out-of-Character confusion can be hard... but its fun too...

[Q_ballff9]

  I'm new here. However i have gamed some 5 years now and game mastered 3 to 4 years of those five. Honestly I think that being in character, to the extent that you go out of your way to express the characters feelings and opinions is a sign of a good role player.  The reason i say this is some people seem to fear entering the characters mind set too much, and distance themselves by doing things like "my character influences you" rather then having an exchange of words with the other player. I prefer when my players have social interactions with me in game, I never enjoyed simply rolling dice to have an outcome.
  Now the other side of this is taking it to the extreme. I also larp and have seen some pretty serious stuff, however i think any player in their right mind can draw the line between the characters and themselves. Lastly if a player can take a situation seriously in character and still step back and admit that it is fun then Id say that its not that players weakness of being too involved just that player being more dedicated to the role-playing experience then the rest of the group in question. To end, it doesn't seem like its a problem of being too involved it sounds like your just an excellent player whose playing with other players who aren't quite up to your speed.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

out of your way to express the characters feelings and opinions is a sign of a good role player.  The reason i say this is some people seem to fear entering the characters mind set too much, and distance themselves by doing things like "my character influences you" rather then having an exchange of words with the other player.

I wonder how much of that is a kneejerk reaction to the 80's RPG's are evil and will make you crazy mentality that existed when I started gamining. I wonder if the last crop of gamers picked it up from us? I wonder if Tom Hanks should be tried for crimes against humanity for Mazes and Monsters (note I almost wrote Masers and Monsters by accident, and oddly it sounded like a really cool game... so if anyone wants to step up to the plate). Maybe Im reading more into that reaction than I should?

Discuss.

[askreet]

I find the solution to 'who are you responding as' is to play a Third-Person roleplay campaign. That is lets say you're name (irl) is 'Zack' and you have a character named 'Dennis'.

If you say:

Dennis says, "No! Don't! Stop!".

They clearly know "Hey, in-char he wants us to stop."

Then at the same time you could say:

Guys, that's friggin' awesome.

They'll know "He didn't say 'dennis said', so it's Zack talking."

It both ends alot of confusion and plays out more like reading a book, or watching a movie.

My $.02

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I prefer the opposite approach. Play first person. ANNOUNCE when you are OOC

[mockman]

Wait the iron kingdoms game is still going.......NO ONE TOLD ME !!!!!!!!!!!

[Entsuropi]

In my groups we just oscilliate between in and out, and if anyone isn't sure if a given comment was in character, they ask. GM's tend to decide that amusing or dangerous comments were, in fact, in character despite what the player thinks. Hilarity ensues.

[Harbinger]

I had a GM who got so sick of all the OOC BSing ("I charge the legion of Frost Giants!") that he declared that all comments were either in character, or told what the character was doing. Much pain ensued. As did many fewer stupid comments.

[caiticlu]

I dont often tabletop so we dont have the same exact problems, but with LARPing you often walk into a conversation that is out of character thinking its in and it gets frustrating. You are supposed to use a hand signal to denote out of character, but if its a group where everyone is out people dont always bother till someone new comes in confused.

[blcdrayco]

I use putting my hand on top of my head- it looks silly, but when someone wants to make a silly comment or talk out of charicter it saves a lot of confusion.
I also tend to get into the charicter, which is why I try to make it clear that "this is my charicters actions/opinions, not mine".  I find that telling the guy that your charicter is bickering with that its an in game only fight helps to keep things a bit more cool headed.