Roleplay

I do it. Not in bed, but the written stuff. I've been doing it for years.

I CAN'T do it irl, with my own voice. I've been told to roleplay to practice for job interviews, I freeze up and my brain freaks the fuck out. i feel ridiculous. I can sorta be in-character in cosplay but I don't enjoy it too much. I had a hard time playing D&D when the DM wanted us to talk in first person as our characters, I've refused to do certain things my character COULD do because I had to "act" them out.

But text-based RP is fine. In fact, I love it.

This has sorta come up because I joined an RP server in an MMO and...I'm having the same hangups that I do with IRL roleplay. Even though I know my character isn't me, the visual element...Idk. wtf, brain.

 

That makes a lot of sense. I did lots of text-based roleplay until I was about 11 or 12. Doing it out loud is too weird - possibly because I'm a better writer than I am an actor, so I get confused because I'm not doing the facial expressions and mannerisms that I'm picturing for my character.

 

I think a big part of the visual element that bugs me with RP is people can like.. see me standing there in an MMO. Like they're there and I'm there and they're waiting for me to respond. There's an expectation and there isn't really a way to just suddenly get out of it if I'm feeling overwhelmed without me feeling guilty about it.

Meanwhile with text RP I could theoretically buzz off for a few hours without saying anything if I really had to, or just do a quick 'I have to go but you can write for my character to get me out of the scene' sort of deal if I'm feeling overwhelmed. If I pulled that in an MMO they could still theoretically see that I'm online and just off in another area doing something else.

 

I get really nervous with roleplay that involves voices. Especially if I can't see the other people involved, if there are any. It's one thing I had a great deal of trouble with when it came to tabletop RPGs over the internet. It's less of a problem in person though, at least with tabletop games. But then I don't really classify that as RPing to me usually? More just a game with some vague kind of tacked on roleplaying element. Something about having other people next to me that I can see and watch really helps me calm down though.

Otherwise a lot of it is stage fright? I get very nervous when having to perform. That and feeling like I can only fit specific types. I want to be other characters, but I feel like I can only ever be specific types of small woman. Which is very paralyzing. When I get going though I do well? I love improv games a lot. It's a lot easier for me to get over these hangups with text rp though.

I would like to do rp in person though more. Like not tabletop stuff but things that actually involves moving and acting. That and I would like to do voice based rp like over skype or something. Though that seems a lot more nerve wracking to me than doing rp in person.

 

Reading the replies, it makes a little more sense now...I guess stage fright goes hand in hand with anxiety. I used to want to be in theatre but I didn't even have the nerve to ask if they needed stage hands for school plays...

It probably has something to do with a combo of "text can be edited before you send" and the fact that voice-based types are essentially realtime. Hmm.

 

For me it's the verbal processing gap. I have an online tabletop group that meets over Skype and it is SO HARD, because I can't present the character with the full personality I would over text because I just don't know how to words at the thing.

 

This. I actually used to act in plays when I was a kid/teenager, and I can act IRL as long as I don't have to make my own words. But I can't improvise anything in voice-mode; just talking out loud takes up a lot of spoons for me, nevermind choosing my words for effect.

 

I have the same exact problem and I don't know what it is for me. Even if I'm literally reading lines off a script, if I'm told to roleplay it instead of read it, all I end up doing is giggling nervously and blushing. Over text it's all fine, but vocally? Ha no.

The weird thing is that I can do GM stuff in tabletop games just fine even though that's arguably got roleplay bits to it. I don't really think of myself as roleplaying then, though--I'm not really trying to produce a person, in my mind, just a thing people can interact with, so it doesn't trip the panic meter.

 

I have a bit of a weird disconnect. I find written RP fine and but I find irl RP spoken-word groups kinda hard, possibly because of verbal processing and shit. Never tried MMO RP servers, so I cannot say anything about that.
But LARP is fun. and pretty easy! I don't even overload even though I interact for 12+ hours with complete strangers! I think its because my anxiety is so fundamentally incompatible with the way I have to act my brain just stops misbehaving and has the character do the things.
Plus I find I have a lot of hangups in spoken word RP groups because suddenly for some reason I'm thinking of strategy and winning instead of my LARP-full-character-play-all-the-time thing which usually leads to me pissing off quest givers and importants NPCs left and right.

 

Larping since 2003. Written RP since 2005, I think. Hate spoken, table-top, D&D style roleplay quite a lot.

Haha, winning. Sadly I get that in larps too, and try to solve the game. It's been a struggle to ease off on that, but there is of course the problem that our larp community sort of fosters the winners vs. losers mentality somewhat.

 

... Okay, good, this is the Brains forum. Here goes.

I woke up one day after RPing on Skype the night before and woke up as the character I had been RPing. I mean, I also was psychotically depressed at the time, but it scared the shit out of me.

I also love voice acting, even though I know I sound completely foolish. And I love pretending to be other versions of myself, like Super Lawyer. I can't comprehend wanting to LARP or D&D, though. I was once asked to be DM for a good friend of mine who knew I'd never done anything of the sort and I think I might even have needed to breathe into a paper bag. If it feels in any way, shape, or form that I will let someone down, I can't do it.

Which is also why I don't Tumblr RP any more. If I can select one on ones with people I've vetted, I have less of a chance of getting "lost" as a person, if that makes sense.

 

I think I'm the inverse of most people on this forum in that talking is generally easier for me than writing (although conversational writing like this isn't too bad) and I prefer tabletop games to freeform text rps (I also like having dice as an independent "can I actually do the thing" judgement. I tend to be a bit wary of my ability to judge that and not godmode or be unable to do anything) I also did a bunch of imaginative-play rp kinda things with friends running around the neighborhood when I was younger, so maybe I should give LARP a shot sometime.

 

To help prevent godmodding issues for things like combat my group uses dice rolls. Just simple roll d20 with modifiers here and there based on the context. Beyond that though our stuff tends to be very free form. Varies from chat/script style to paragraph. Or the weird social media style of flarping. Some of us also write bits of exposition or things like newsreports for it too.

That sort of thing has been my favorite kind of rp since I joined City of Unity like a year before it ended. Freeform stuff with a well defined setting that the players get to add to in various ways. Short stories, newsreports, radio broadcasts, factions, locations, etc. It was great and gangland! has a lot of what I liked about CoU.