Playing a character Vs. Playing a role

General
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I’ve had this thought about the way that I approach roleplay in SS14 and I’m curious how other people feel about it. To preface, most of my experience in the game, especially recently, has been on MRP, but I think the topic is relevant in all servers. Incidentally I was whitelisted for MRP before they started making you write out a character description, which may or may not have something to do with my approach to RP.

The main question is this: When you play, are you playing a role or a character? My main character that I play is, by all accounts, very generic. So much so that I still use a randomly generated name. I like playing a variety of jobs, so I usually roll with many checked at any given time and my character’s personality will change depending on what job I get. Brave, timid, stern, easygoing, loves paperwork, or hates paperwork, it all changes depending on my role. Basically, I end up playing a stereotype of a job, rather than a unique character.

So I’m curious how you all choose to play. Do you do something similar, or do you set your character’s traits first, and then see how they play out in different positions? Do you prefer when other people do it one way or another? Is it better for roleplay to keep your character consistent between rounds? I’d love to hear what everyone else does and thinks about.

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I roleplay character with job. Well being their job and not personality.

Examples:

  1. This character is a massive ass.
  • They will do their job, but wont be happy about it.
  • They will try their best to make someone else do a job while they watch
  • They will do sarcastic remarks
  • They are an ass
  • I will literally limit my work speed in OOC to match the temp of this lazy ass
  • If thing spaced for 6 tiles, i will stop every 2 tiles to complain about how much it is pain in the lower back and then continue

By lazy i mean: Mutations on plants? Naaaahhhh. Advanced chems? Idontwanna. Sci anom exploded and SM does critical. Ahhhhhhhhh fine, toggle walking ON and lazy walk toward SM setup. Time to cook? More like time for slop.
CMO DEMANDS advance chems? Can i please get that i writing with stamp

Antag personaliy(sleeper agent) will do 180 turn. They will become super competent and exited about doing their job. They will stop being sarcastic ass and will try be beacon of competence and team building. Being positive all the way (Also people reaction to character personality swap is funny. really gives out something is wrong vibes)

  1. This character is a moth scientist that loves talking
  • Every research node have around 3 messages of what moth think about it
  • Ask what other sci think about it
  • Surprisingly fast at what they are doing(this one dont have lazy limiter)
  • They will try to save everyone they can, mice included(they have pacifist trait)
  • If i see a fire, I will stop. I will comment about how beautiful it is. I will start walking towards fire stop every 3 tiles to comment again how warm and great its embrace is. If no one interrupt, pull or direct message at me to stop. I will burn in said beautiful fire

Antag personality(sleeper agent). Will ignore fire, will become silent and rude when talking, disregard for any life whatsoever.

And third one i didnt flash out(dunno what i want to do with it yet)

P.S. Which is why i wish we also had ability to select certain characters for certain jobs and use them in a pool when ready for round

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It really depends on how I go into the game.

If I’m just playing for the sake of playing, I’m going in with one of my generic characters. I play them based on how I naturally act, but with a few characterising features. This stops rp being a drain because playing a character outside of my natural scope of behaviour gets tiring.

Otherwise I go in with a character plan, generally a filled description box and a few written notes, inspirations and backstory bits to get me into the headspace of that very different character. These will be tailored to a specific job usually. These characters will only last a few rounds before being dropped because it gets tiring. But the times I do this are always 100x more memorable and fun. (mrp)

Do other people get the thing where playing a character beyond their scope is draining?

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Kiki is a bit of both. I try to preform my job well. but Kiki is Choatic Good so she isn’t beyond breaking space law to get her job done. for example as Sci I’m willing to break into the server room to insert the disks salv / mail give us if RD is non-responsive or absent. If no RD is present im also willing to break into the valut to get our gold/silver/diamond and the golden toolbox for our department.

Kiki is also Anti-station chaos, If something is bothering her about the state of the station for long enough she’ll go out her way to fix it, preferably within the means of her job, but Choatic Good.. For example one time I broke into Engi as passenger and got the TEG sorted after an extended peroid of no power (think it was like 10-15 minutes blackout before Kiki decided enough is enough).

I try to keep kiki fairly consistant but every now and then we have a Kiki thats a defective clone, for example one kiki defect is she ends her sentences with ribbit. Another has her introverted so she hides away and doesn’t speak as much. Mime kiki is cute and just wants to doodle.

My head cannon is that CC keeps clones of all of us on hand in cyrosleep at CC and clones a new one of us should a event make our body unviable for cloning (Gibbed, Borged, Zed’d, eaten by singlo) and that Cloning sometimes has errors resulting in ‘defective’ clones.

I always wanted to get a admin permisson to run a Kiki thats defect is the mind wipe didn’t effect her so she remembers threats from previous rounds and slowly slides into madness, but i’ve not done that one yet and it would break meta-shield rule so need Amin permisson just think its a neat idea and think it’d be fun to have CC telling sec to stop Kiki as she runs around playing hide and seek trying to convince people of things that happened in previous rounds. while Kiki as a pacifist tries to convince sec to stop hunting her.

When I play station AI sometimes I rp either meek, bubbly or logical personality. I kinda roll with its the future given the state of current LLM’s odds are our station AI’s would have some kinda personality selected by the NT programmer.

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Keegan started off generic enough, but has developed into her own character. She hates science with a passion and jokes about hating security. She mostly messes around with atmospherics and engineering for fun or to learn something new nowadays rather than to do the work, and chemistry is where she cuts loose and tries to pretend she’s a wizard on occasion (When the workload isn’t heavy).

But Sassy PAI will always remain my favourite character. It’s just a PAI who insults the crew and claims not to have a god complex, but if their master dies they’ll quickly go turncoat and claim superiority if they can. They’re also not afraid to call out bad ideas and will shoot the shit just because they can. They’ve fucked with carp before for the fun of it, got microwaved in response to saying “i’m invulnerable” and has observed many MANY things happen to the crew.

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I made up little backstories for each of my characters, it makes the game more fun.

Bobby was a marine and became a bartender because he wanted a shotgun to relieve good ol’ days, and after once hitting a plushie over 15 meters while bored, got enrolled in sec because he’s a good shot. He doesn’t care much about NT itself, but making cool drinks, spending time with pun pun, and protecting other citizens are the reasons he stays.

Later on, his cousin married Crochets-the-Yarn, so Bobby got her a job on the station, she like taking care of plants, so botany was a great fit, but all the weird chemicals were too complicated for her, and she became a cargo techie, bringing mail and orders to everyone. She’s really kind with others, also somewhat scared, but the wonders of space outweigh the dangers.

Phenus Lightsinger was a reporter for the longest he can remember. However, after a crazy live tv event went wrong, he’s decided to chill at the bar and pick up instruments. Bobby and Crochets attended his first concert. He thought about resigning from NT, but it’s the only place he can get Moon boots and be an actual flying moth. Also, NT has great lamps, Phenus has a religious obsession for lamps, he might become a farming monk on Marathon someday, and worship the lamp.

The Tree of Silence is a young diona whose lastest nymph went kinda wrong. He woke up mute. When a kind cargo employee(crochets-the-yarn) saw how sad he was, she gave him some minifigures, and Tree figured he could “speak” with the figurines. To this day, he keeps trying to collect them whatever the means are (breaking glass, hacking vendings). Mimes clothes suit him a lot with the current condition, be careful around him not to mistake the figurines for actual speech ! He’s always ready to face dangers, hoping one day he’ll nymph again and regain speech.

So besides silicon, here are my characters ! I have a lot of fun playing them, and doing each job as like a certain point in their storyline. Plus i enjoy having links between my characters who all more or less know each other

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I mean on the surface I play a generic character, but his main goals are to blend in, and when questioned further, it’s clear they know just a bit more then they should and have ties to way to many people.

But for the longest time my character has no backstory. This is caiden hynes, he is a young slime man. This was all that was needed, he served his purpose of allowing me to interact with the other crew. But when I submitted my MRP application it made me think, why would this guy be a thief,syndicate, nukies, and an NT worker. So from there, using a series of lore events and in-game event, I built my character to be more interesting.

I used to play a role, now I play a character

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I IMAGINE that the character question is to give proof that you can RP. It does not mean that the quality of RP ALWAYS has to be that high, just that you understand how to act like your character and take it somewhat seriously.

In LRP, you may suddenly decide to build windows in the middle of the halls for a bit of innocent shittery. And that is allowed (within reason)
In MRP where you are expected to act like a real person, a person does not suddenly decide “time to get fired by clogging a hall” because they are bored. So proving that you know how to act as a real person is important. And what better way to do that than to write one?
It also filters out people that do stuff because it is advantageous instead of people that value RP over just powergaming.

Ofc that playing a real character, taking into account a planned backstory and stuff is always a +. But that is something a HRP server would enforce. Not an MRP one.

I use a character per role, so i can’t really make a backstory for each. But i do have a clear idea of what personality i want to play with each.

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I primarily play a character, and secondarily play a role - a given character will act similarly but not necessarily the same in different jobs, and two characters in the same job may differ in a fair few places.

Setting up character traits before I first play them isn’t something that usually comes naturally for me, though - I play a couple rounds to figure out what type of person I want them to be, then start seeing how that adapts to different roles. I also try to work out a basic backstory for them, which usually gets developed as I play them more and get a better feel for them.

All this means some characters can’t be used in certain roles, because it doesn’t fit either their personality, or their backstory - I won’t be putting a med/sci character in engi, nor an engi/salv character in med. That’s kind of a habit I picked up from HRP, though - I don’t care much if other people use a single character for everything.

I think having a character with some consistency is nice, because it allows the possibility for other characters to form relationships with yours, at least within what’s allowed by metafriending/metagaming rules. It also lets your character stand out a little more, and shows you put some effort into developing them.
I don’t think it’s strictly necessary outside of HRP, but I think it’s worth considering anyway, especially on MRP.

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You act like you wouldn’t do that if you had the power to.

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If you ignore the consquences, which is a check to see if you are ready for MRP or not.
An LRP player just thinks “It is a game, it does not matter”. An MRP player thinks “My character would get fired for this, which they would not like”

Not saying NO ONE would ever do this ofc, maybe you made a character that has an IC reason to do such a thing.
Like, maybe they are deathly afraid of the paranormal, so they wall off a corridor where they saw a light flickering cuz it may be cursed.
Or maybe they are just a very bad worker that is at the verge of firing already cuz they keep pulling pranks like these.

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MRP also has the power gaming rule, so.. if you are just doing things for the sake of doing things you could get Bwonked as well.

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I found this PR the other day: Multiple enabled character slots with binary job selection. Make job priorities PLAYER specific. by Quantum-cross · Pull Request #36493 · space-wizards/space-station-14 · GitHub
Playing a character per role might become a lot more popular. I might even venture out into more unique characters if this got merged.
That said, it might be a long way out, it looks pretty ambitious.

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im very excited for this PR! I told my friend the moment i saw it!

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Funny thing here. I am qualified for MRP. I just don’t play often, and suprisingly it’s not the MRP amendments to rule, it’s just that sec and command are too competent for something interesting to happen

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i have 250 hours in the LRP wizdens and haven’t thought of going to MRP yet, but i’m kinda curious to try it lately. I could copy probably copy paste one of thie character bios i wrote earlier in this thread and make my whitelist haha

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I think that the point of MRP is that the general RP is deep enough to not need the usual chaos that drives LRP.

Like, just a single theft is enough for people to start rumors and act accordingly without it being “Someone stole a high value target! Time to Valid Hunt!!!”