Role playing is and always will be my favorite form of creative process. I love writing, I love story telling, and I’m sure that most people who RP also do, or else why would they do it? It is one thing to write a story by yourself, to craft your own characters, to mold your own plot, to watch things progress from page to page. It is a completely different experience to thrust your character into a set environment where you do not control all the variables. The goal is still the same, to create a story, but for once, you and your imagination is not at the center of it. No one is in the center of a RP, yet everyone is at once.
Role playing, at its most basic form on a forum, is a group of people coming together to craft a story. They can use characters, some that they might be very attached to, but in the end, what is best for the story is what should avail. Characters don’t always get what they want. Characters sometimes lose things that are important to them. Characters die. It is a sacrifice that you and they have to make in order to mold a beautiful story. Your character may never be in the spot light, but if they were not there, there simply would be a gaping hole in the plot, one that changes its course in other directions. Characters are added and subtracted, like music that never ends, but changes and evolves.
Death is never the end, however, because your characters’ stories live on in the words typed by the writers and the words spoken by the characters. An evil character’s name might still be whispered, for it still holds fear in other’s hearts. A good character may be praised for the rest of the story for their heroic sacrifices. Some might die in vain, die a hero, or die forgotten. Your character may not die, but be someone who is merely supporting the main at the moment. Each character has their time to shine, and their time to let others take the helm.
My favorite example of this is in a short role play with a group of random strangers. It was a fantasy setting, and I picked two characters that are always paired with each other, Scorpio and Corbin (who at the time was named Raven, damn unoriginal name). Another character joined as a special species of centaur (half dear instead of horse) with a golden pelt and horns. Obviously, this might get a very large purse of gold if Scorpio were to perhaps sell her off to a tanner or something. He was a bit evil in this one. Corbin wanted to protect her, as did two other characters.
In the finale, Scorpio was killed by another character with three arrows to the chest. I let him die. Why? Because the story demanded it. Corbin’s grief was something that at the time (I was young) shocked even myself. I realized that I just killed off Corbin’s father figure, and now I was describing him with such a confused and muddled mind it was hard for me to find the words. After all, he knew it was the right thing to do, maybe not kill, but Scorpio had to be stopped, or did he? He was after all just trying to get the money so he and Corbin could live well. Everything Scorpio did was for Corbin, after all.
It was a short RP, but perhaps if it would have lasted longer, maybe a few days, things would have turned out differently. Maybe we would have decided that Scorpio should have captured the girl and it was up to the others to save her. Maybe the strained relationship between Scorpio and Corbin would have persuaded Scorpio to turn a new leaf. Putting characters in uncomfortable positions is the best way to challenge them. Some people call this torturing characters, but while that’s a fun thing to say, I believe it’s simply challenging them and myself to evolve and adapt.
How would your character react in a situation even you may not like? Would they make it out alive? Would they grow spiritually? Physically? Emotionally? I was barely a teen at the time of this RP, and yet this is probably one of the defining moments of my RPing career. Letting your first character die in a communal story hits hard, but it makes you better at everything.
You don’t challenge yourself as much when you’re just by yourself, coming up with an outline and following through with it. You love your characters, but it’s them interacting with themselves, not other minds which comprehend things in vastly different ways. You may know what another person’s character will do, but they pull things in another direction. This is one of my favorite parts of RPing, getting to see what the reaction will be with the rest of the group, and seeing how they will respond. Sometimes stories go in places completely different than what you thought it would be. Sometimes you realize you need to be in a subjugate role for someone else’s character. Sometimes you can be plotting behind another’s back. The person you’re going to backstab might see this and think it’s a great idea, but is it time for that character to die? If yes, what a rush it is to have a plan succeed, and the exciting possibilities for the rest of the story. If no, then your gut clenches when you race to think how the character would get themselves out of the situation, or would they even?
There are so many variables to writing a story with other people that there is at no point that you become bored, or don’t care anymore. The healthiest RP is one that could last for years because everyone is deeply involved with the end result. I admit that evil or bad characters are the hardest to play because we know that they probably won’t win at the end, as it was with Scorpio. However, at the end of this past month (April 2013) , I look at his character now from when he was stomping around with dragons and getting shot with arrows and become amazed at how much he has grown through all his variations, and how many stories he had left a mark in. I look at all the roles, from good guy to neutral to bad, from young to old. I look at how layered his character became the more I played with him, tweaked him, let him experience different characters and situations.
And then I realized, it wasn’t him, it was me- And that is what you should take away from role playing.
The Confused Spinda 