Characters and their Players

In psychology the term 'Role-Playing' describes a situation where one person puts themselves entirely into the role of another. They try to think, talk, live, eat and breathe the assumed role. This is not what roleplaying (the hobby, note the difference in spelling) is about. In roleplaying the player tries to imagine how their character would act, but they always retain the knowledge that they are not the character that they are playing. (The distinction between what is In Character, and what is Out of Character).

In the article below I will outline some reasons for wanting to roleplay a character, show why these are not the same as wanting to 'be' the character, and explain the separation between the character and the player that exists in all games.

A Character as an exercise of imagination

In a roleplaying game a player is presented with the opportunity to design a character. Whether the character is generated by random rolls or by a purchase system it is still largely the work of the player, who will decide its name, its personality, its history and its idiosyncrasies. The choices that the player makes in deciding on these elements will be influenced by what he thinks would be good for the game (i.e. a warrior is good if combat is expected) and what he wants to play, what he would find a challenge, or just fun.

From the very start the player thinks of the character as something to 'play', not something to be. Half of the fun of a roleplaying game lies in the interaction with the other players, out of character, and much, if not half, of the time spent in a normal session will be in conversation and not roleplaying. When the player does devote attention to really 'getting into' the reactions and speech of their character it is because they enjoy trying to imagine how the character, hopefully an interesting person, would react.

The greater the imaginative leap into the character the more fascinating it is to make. For this reason people play strange monsters, Mages and Assassins, whose mentality is so much further from their own. Where opponents of roleplaying make their mistake is to assume that the players think that they are these characters, they think so no more than the reader of a book thinks that he is the books characters, or than the book's author thought that she was them. Rather the player can experience a window into another mind, and another world, a window which will make them put their own lives and problems into perspective. (Since roleplayers commit suicide far less often than any other group it must be having a beneficial effect.)

A Character as a fulfilment of Fantasy

Another way to look at a character is as a vehicle through which the player can fulfil their fantasies. Thus you can play a fantastically attractive woman, a deadly fighter, or a potent and knowledgeable Mage, imagining what it would be like if you could do these things. Just as one can enjoy a different life through a book or film, you can experience it in a game.

It goes even further than this, for you can also purge yourself of more destructive feelings and passions. A player who plays an evil sorcerer or a heartless assassin is no more assuming their personalities as the theatre goers who cheer for the bad guy when he comes on stage. We all enjoy the darker side of our natures, so long as it stays in a place where it is safe, and it cannot be safer than in a roleplaying game, where the whole world is only a construct.

The separation between Player and Character knowledge

If more evidence was required to illustrate the separation between player and character, one need only look at the actual process of playing a game. In any game there must be a separation between what the character knows, and what the player does.

On one side the character is assumed to know a lot that then player does not. A Fantasy character may well be able to ride some fantastic beast, but the player cannot. Again the character is familiar with his world, he can speak its language, recognise its plants, and is familiar with its animals. The player knows none of these things, and thus the rule system of the game exists to model the things that the character must know, and which the player cannot possibly know.

On the other the players often know things, or understand things, that the character does not. The most obvious example of this is where the intellects of the character and of the player are not the same. The player may be super smart, but her character may be incredibly dumb. Faced with a puzzle the player may be able to solve it easily, but the character might have no idea. The same problem exists if the intelligence levels are reversed, how do you role-play the thoughts and plans of a character that is considerably smarter than you?

The answer to this question, and to the problem of skills, is the rules of the game. The rules outline the nature of the character, his personality, his physical characteristics, his skills, abilities and knowledges. This character is manifestly not the player who may happen to be playing him, indeed in long games more than one player may play the same character, rather it is an artificially constructed persona that, by a feat of the imagination, the player may put himself in the place of, realising dreams, working off frustrations and tensions, and gaining a new way of looking at the world.