Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Avio Yaken on 21 Sep 2015, 19:22
-
EDIT: I'm not sure if this is the correct subfourm to use....
For the sake of starting more conversations...
Why do you roleplay? Simple question really..
My reasons is a bit sad so just skip me if you don't want to read my depressing reason ( .___.)
But i roleplay becasue i want to escape reality, i roleplay to be pretend to be someone more epic than i am and so i can escape this dull and dreadful life we all live in.
Also its a way for me to be casually creative, i might not be a bookworm but i can get really into a good story if its got a good hook, and i just can;t help myself but find a way to roleplay...even if its just a single player game i still roleplay in my head with this story i make up as i play...in this sometimes kills the game for me if i reach a dead end with my character and il end up starting over....never completing some games due to this desire to make up my own grand story
Do i do it for enjoyment? sure, but mainly because i want to forget about the depressing stuff in this real world that might have some impact on my life and just run away from it all just for a little bit, its not healthy to do this i know and i still somehow managed to keep a grip on what is reality throughout the years i done this
but i can't help myself, il find any way to roleplay in ANY video game, even if i have to rewrite the linear story given to me il find a way..Just a habit i have...Fuck i even roleplayed COD multiplayer once or twice in my head...Don't ask how
But what about you..Why do you Roleplay?
-
To explore certain character archetypes in different settings, to see how they change depending on settings and what they experience. I can take Miz as an example. She's been the main character in many RPGs, but given the limitations of pre-written scripts that only goes so far. As an MMO character though, she's turned into quite a few diverse characters over the years.
They all start out pretty similar. Traumatic events, unpleasant beginnings and attaining both a cause to fight for and an "arch" enemy to fight against be it a singular individual, a particular group/faction or even a particular philosophy etc. Since it's roleplaying, I tend to allow them to be somewhat indulging in power fantasy levels of capability since that allows me to explore what they do with the power to affect change. For better or worse.
In World of Warcraft, that meant she lost her life, family, eyesight etc to the Scourge and rose as a Forsaken after Sylvanas freed her mind. The living having turned on her, and everything but Sylvanas wanting her dead... well, more dead... she fully invested herself in the Forsaken's cause and focused on the Scourge/Arthas as the primary antagonist. The Alliance being an obvious enemy to spy on and kill on sight, and the Horde being allies of necessity rather than ideological compadres, she basically became an antagonist to everyone including the warband she joined. It was an interesting journey as she grew more brutal, murderous and dangerous by the day but still developed unlikely friendships with certain grizzled Orc leaders etc that managed to maintain a bit of... let's call it humanity for lack of a better word. It was interesting, but in the end WoW's RP community turned pretty much even worse than Eve's when it came to consistency and realistic loyalties and so on. If it was inconvenient, it was ignored with zealous determination. Just like in Eve, really, but to an even greater degree.
In New Eden, well... the story is even longer but it resulted in a very different character, even though the core remains the same. It is very interesting to see how Miz has developed very differently from WoWMiz, being a far more authoritarian and "in the open" person than the other incarnation while retaining many of the traits that bind them. The willingness to do what needs to be done for the sake of the cause, even if weaker people aren't willing to, etc.
There's others as well, each having taken different paths ending up as different people and yet they manage to share some core similarities.
I have quite often considered trying to write a metastory where some of them become aware of each other and their connections to a central archetype across realities depending on their particular character's spiritual/mental awareness. Where the most developed of them become able to communicate and draw on each other's strengths and learn from the different lessons and experiences the others have gone through. Perhaps even explore the notion of being aware of the singular mind that first gave birth to them and then pushed them this way or that, and the notion that they still have their own will and so on, expressed in things like how EveMiz doesn't just go with the convenience and take the easy way towards reinvigorating MinFac etc, even though it'd be so much easier for both the character and myself.
I think it's a story that takes a better writer and mind than me to create though.
Anyway, I guess I'm rambling by now and I answered the question in the very first sentence. I roleplay because I can explore how different people act and deal with different settings, and secondarily it lends what is otherwise just mechanically rather boring games (Admit it, MMOs are boring as fuck when you get right down to the mechanics) actual motivation and reasons to go on.
-
Short answer....cause I enjoy it.
Longer answer...I like making the characters, the backstory, the interactions with others. I really love it when something happens that surprises me and takes my characters in a direction I never really intended to go in. Which has lead to my more memorable moments and characters. I think just about all of us have a bit of *escape reality* to our answer and I'm no different. I do love the escape that RP brings and have been doing it in pretty much every game I've ever played without even knowing it.
Also like Miz said....these things are boring as fuck if you don't RP in at least some way and instead just go through the motions.
-
Originally RP was sort of a game to escape depression, it also let me ask difficult questions and play them out in a safe environment since RP isn't real.
Over time though, especially once those original reasons were no longer an issue (on my meds now so no depression) I started to really enjoy the collaborative storytelling aspect of it. I love to write and I love to read an interesting story and I found it was very rewarding to do that with other people in a game.
I also thing that RP both in eve and on a tabletop has helped me immensely as a writer. I am much more creative and my process for deciding what should come next has improved in speed as well as quality.
Even though my RP centers around Val, I have got the chance to play quite a few other types of characters too. I have RPed Val's entire family before even, and recently the much more Calculating and pragmatic character of Svetlana Laknaya has been interesting for exploring that side of my own personality.
-
I always create alternate persona's and characters in games, being that I one day aspire to become an author, especially where no other character is presented. In the case of both EVE and Dust I found so many other players who loved doing the same thing and from there my characters Kador and Satja really just came to life.
They were also there for me during a time of loss and really helped me work through everything.
It actually wasn't until recently when Thal asked if I was interesting in joining him in a channel that I even started to enjoy RP in a real sense, aka not just writing chapters and excerpts from Kador and Satja's lives, and since then I've been able to refine the characters into 'people' not just the concepts that gave birth to them.
I keep RPing the characters because I genuinely love them, being my two most favoured characters in all the hundreds I have created and I don't really want their story to end..... I'd love to believe that it will end happily but I seriously doubt that somehow in a universe like New Eden.
-
I like the story. I started to learn the lore after almost two years of playing and after checking out all of it I decided I liked the blood raiders the best. I like roleplaying Anya because it lets me be the person I want to be without actually be prosecuted for it. I'm honestly not that bad in real life, I just like taboo things. So I try to explore taboo ideas with Anya. Some may see it as attention seeking via shock value, but it's all for my personal entertainment. Anya has kind of a bad rep, a your doing it wrong rep. I admit some things Anya has done is completely out of order. But I've always tried to give her a reasonable excuse for her actions.
Roleplaying solo is very different for me than roleplaying with others. I care about other people's experiences. I like to have fun with other people in strange ways. Getting people to do things, making people feel a certain way, or just using people for my own personal gratification. It's all for fun. I've tried respecting people in real life and separating ic actions from real life drama. I'm almost never in ooc channels bc of that. I know we all have our own different issues and would rather not take advantage of that. When I play Anya, I'm Anya in my mind. And you're your character in my mind. It's way more fun that way.
Trust me. It's way more fun not knowing who we are in real life. We almost always like eachother's characters more than the person behind them. That's not meant as an insult either. It's just a thing like if you are a rich successful genius in real life and I'm not. We are more or less equal in eve and being the characters we want to be we may like eachother more that way. Then if or when you find out how the person is in real life you may start thinking about them in a different light whether that is good or bad, it changes things.
-
Essentially everything Mizhara said.
-
I'm an escapist. RP lets me escape some of the crap of RL and have fun getting into another person's shoes and seeing what trouble they get in to.
-
I had played EVE for about a year, and I had always read IGS and even made a few half-hearted posts, but I never actually participated.
I found Samira to be an interesting (and inspiring), stereotype-breaking character and Goldfinch is probably subconsciously a sort of copy.. but I think I've worked at differentiating her.
I play because Goldfinch is a good excuse for me to learn the game's lore which is very interesting. Like many of the others who replied (like Uta) RP is a bit also like living out your fantasy, and my specific fantasy aspect with Goldie is how connected she feels through her tactile ability, and how touch and feeling forms an integral part of her memories. As it is a disability I have irl I like to consider how she will behave and act as a personal exercise in walking in somebody else's shoes.
The reason I continue RPing is 100% because of the community.
-
Cause its fun :D
-
Sorta glad im not the only one who uses it as a form of escape :x
-
back when eve was in its infancy stages, i became infatuated with the lore, and therefore the idea to "roleplay" within that lore was most appealing.
-
I roleplay in most MMOs as soon as I can, otherwise I tend to drop pretty fast once I get bored (in months, at best). If I can last 4 years on SWG or 8 on Eve, it's because of it.
Of course I roleplay to create and experience interesting, or even hopefully powerful stories, with the interactive side as a big bonus. I have a GM mentality. In tabletops I have been one with friends, I like setting up games and offer players various situations, and most of all, explore themes. The more interesting the themes of the setting are, the more interested and lasting I will be too.
But yes, all in all, I am an architect in spirit when it comes to that. I am of the few that tend to play completely different characters every time, males or females.
-
I had played EVE for about a year, and I had always read IGS and even made a few half-hearted posts, but I never actually participated.
I found Samira to be an interesting (and inspiring), stereotype-breaking character and Goldfinch is probably subconsciously a sort of copy.. but I think I've worked at differentiating her.
I play because Goldfinch is a good excuse for me to learn the game's lore which is very interesting. Like many of the others who replied (like Uta) RP is a bit also like living out your fantasy, and my specific fantasy aspect with Goldie is how connected she feels through her tactile ability, and how touch and feeling forms an integral part of her memories. As it is a disability I have irl I like to consider how she will behave and act as a personal exercise in walking in somebody else's shoes.
The reason I continue RPing is 100% because of the community.
She's probably not aware of it but Samira has been with all likelihood my greatest source of inspiration for character development in New Eden with specific relevance to both of my characters. Thanks to the effort she puts into to uncovering interesting and generally lesser known facets of Amarr lore my character have really taken off.
Even if she does think it's silly to identify with Udorian heritage instead of True Amarr heritage. Tash-Murkon forever!!!
-
:oops:
-
Sorta glad im not the only one who uses it as a form of escape :x
Bro...most video games are escapism in some way...whether you RP or not. We're just really hardcore with our escapism.
-
Why do I roleplay?
Because I enjoy fantasizing and dreaming. That's about it. I love to explore worlds real and imagined, see and experience culture real and imagined. Roleplaying is a good excuse to dream...with a focus.
I roleplayed in WoW as an undead rogue. His backstory was that of a disowned son of a noble-turned-hitman who died in the plague one evening. He rose from the grave in a world wholly different to what he knew. He was born in Stratholme, died before Arthas burned the whole place down. He would like to go back and find his family home and recover his heirlooms. His family won't be needing them anyway.
Other than that however, he was played as just some fellow who was just there, seeing things, hearing things, and killing people as a day-job. He had a pet cat and he mourned the fact that he can't ever feel that fluffiness. That's the extent of his angst. Otherwise, he was this undead, who got up one day in a world completely different from what he knew and was trying to do his best to make the best of his situation. He is an excuse to explore the concept of disconnection and being the 'other' and to experience what it feels like to live in a necropolis, where humanity is discarded and where the concept of being dead or alive is ultimately meaningless.
Also it's fun to roleplay the futility of hygiene. How do you keep clean...when pieces of you just keeps sloughing off?
As for why I'm roleplaying a Sebiestor in Eve Online? Well, I found the anachronism intriguing. We have here an arguably primitive and rich culture full of taboos and traditions that, somehow, is able to skip multiple steps in the maturing of civilizations to enter the Space Age. We have this supposedly antiquated technology that can wreck something that shoots lasers. We have this society where shamanistic practices and STEM stand on more or less on equal ground. I like to experience what it's like to live in a society like this, where the traditional and the modern are not in conflict but are instead treated as parts of a whole.
Besides, I'm also an Adeptus Mechanicus fan and being a Sebiestor is probably the closest to being one. Just get rid of the whole ommisiah thing and replace with spirits and totems and tattoos.
-
Besides, I'm also an Adeptus Mechanicus fan and being a Sebiestor is probably the closest to being one. Just get rid of the whole ommisiah thing and replace with spirits and totems and tattoos.
Oh boy has their introduction to table top been a welcome relief from having to paint Iron Hands or Dark Mechanicus Iron Warriors space marines.....
Yetamo = Machine Spirit (Rynn's Might?)
-
I enjoy roleplay in Eve because it makes it feel more than just number crunching. It adds spice to wars and gives influence to paths taken in game. I'm not really much into chatting in OOC channels as I really don't want to know my enemies. Helps with my immersion.
-
Extended foreplay for ERP.
-
Short answer is: I don't. At least, not any more.
Long answer: I needed a reason to keep playing Eve, and adding a story function to my gameplay was the way to do it at the time. I greatly enjoyed RP for the first two years I was involved in it, but a two year break followed by a lot of my old friends quitting the game meant that I never really got back into it on my return last year. Instead I focused on actually enjoying playing the game rather than once again getting caught up in the petty dramas and conflicts inherent in the RP community, (guess how well that went?).
-
I'm finding myself a little burned out on Eve, lately. The problem is that I LOVE games, made them my profession for fifteen years, and Eve is a very difficult game to dip in and out of.
I generally use forum RP to cover my lengthy periods of absence from the game itself. That and Training skills are probably the only reason I'm still subscribed. The only reason I still bother with the game are the awesome folks at PYRE.
-
Eve is the first MMO I've ever really played. And while I've been playing video games since the day my dad brought home this new thing called a Nintendo way back in 1985, I've always preferred the depth offered by tabletop gaming. The building of worlds and characters without restriction has always appealed to me.
When a friend introduced me to Eve, I immediately had a concept in mind of the kind of person I would want to be in this seemingly limitless world. So I created Quattras with that concept in mind. I took my in-game decisions seriously, reading the flavor text of every mission and item, weighing my allegiances and actions accordingly. It wasn't until a few months into the game that I discovered that there was actually a community of people who did the same thing.
Now, I RP more for the chance to toy around with concepts within the framework of who and what Quattras is. Sometimes he's a good guy who does bad things. Sometimes he's a bad guy who does good things. Sometimes he seems to have a mind all his own, though, and that's when things get really interesting.
-
My introduction to roleplaying was through tabletop gaming. My first proper campaign game was a RuneQuest second edition Gloranthan game (hero wars era). EVE was my introduction to MMO's so there was no real question of me not roleplaying.
I do it for various reasons. To try and put myself inside the head of someone who isn't (I enjoy the mental exercise of doing that). There is also a health dose of plain escapism and aggression release involved with some characters.
Arnulf is, to an extent, the person I would like to be. He's richer, more studious, more focussed and in better physical condition. He has some, to me, odd ideas about collective responsibility that he has picked up from his culture. However, like me, he tries to be open-minded and makes the attempt to understand other views of the universe.
-
Various reasons.
Like many things I do, it's partly escapism. Reality can be a tough pill to swallow, and I lost my idealistic fire about the time I (1) fell in love and (2) realized that I didn't have the will to try to depopulate the planet.
I bet a lot of you think I'm joking about that last. No. Really. Falling in love does a lot to get a fellow to stop wishing death on his own species. It does not, however, eliminate the problems that species causes or that same fellow's awareness of those problems, hence the escapism.
Partly, it's an exploration of my own limits-- though after nearly three decades, I consider those limits pretty well explored, so I don't really, consciously play "evil" characters anymore. Basic sketch of results: I'm capable of immense impersonal destruction, but seem to have real trouble with knowingly being a jerk, even if it's in character.
Partly, it's to play around with ideas. Aria's always been a little bit of a philosophical cat's paw, a way of exploring principles and ideas that I'm not quite ready to commit to, personally, often including dark corners I'd never seriously consider wandering around myself.
Aria kills people. I just defend them in courts of law. We may have similar philosophical bases for why, though.
-
I could not have said it better than Aria just did.
It's actually been kinda fun watching current Aria; I don't really know all what's going on with that, but the difference between NeoAria and the Aria that Havo used to talk with is pretty big.
Havo's obviously always been an extension for my darkest, most nihilistic, pessimistic, cynical, violent and all manner of other negative thoughts/emotions/opinions/viewpoints. He's the outlet that helps me not burn down buildings and overturn cars and do other stupid shit.
Now that most of my focus is on Charlinda, I've been exploring the worldview and mindset of a person who grew up in an environment in which a Havohej is King. How does someone come up in that environment and not also be pretty fucked up? IS she a little fucked up? If so, to what extent?
So I guess, my answer to the OP is "At first, because :argh: needs an outlet. Now, because it's something entirely new. In both cases: Escapism."
Also a big fan of Samira; it's a shame I don't get to interact with that character much.
...maybe now that I've got a character who's an up-and-coming narcotrafficker?
-
Exploring aspects of humanity, what-if's, and myself, and having fun doing so.
Also, it serves as an emotional safety valve. I can release some emotional tension through Ché...although through the years, Ché has become part of me so much that sometimes he actually is the cause of emotional tension, and I feel like I'm his safety valve, but vOv...the result is the same, I guess.