Your approach to Roleplaying

[Fruit]

Would you say your approach to role playing is that of a writer or an actor? Some mixture of both? Neither? Explain.
What does each of those two approaches mean to you?
If your partner had a different approach to yours (writer x actor), do you think it would create the potential for conflict/failure of the RP? Would you say this had happened to you before?

I'll come back with my own take on this later. I'm really interested in what everyone thinks though.

 

[obieblu]

I am most definitely a director that writes dialog and actions to fulfill my (or someone else's) fantasy and imagination. Despite having been assured that I'm playing myself by strangers, I don't generally RP scenarios that I would want to do or be in. For smut, the way my kinks range, I definitely want to 'see' them happening to someone else. IRL, I have a mote of voyeurism, so that feeds into what I want to do in RP. The power dynamic I prefer my characters get into is the opposite of what I prefer IRL, also.

Starting in jr high, I'd compose epic scifi and fantasy novels in my head. I even tried writing and drawing a comic in high school. Maybe some of those characters did things I fantasized about doing, but they weren't me, because I'd never try. Now, as an adult writing adult things, I want to watch things happen from an aloof perch. I trend to writing characters that I would want to get with instead of writing characters that represent me. In lieu of tv series about a jock transported to tentaclerape land, I gotta write that to read myself, and RP allows for someone else to participate.

I'm definitely and director and not an actor when it comes to my RPs.

 

[Staine]

Writer, most definitely. The way I see it, we are crafting a story together, my character or characters are of course playing a role in that story much like an actor might but they are also my creations, often there is at least a small part of myself in them and in the world we create together. As for conflicting styles, I actually think they have a high potential to make a story better. My writing style, I still need improvement on finer detail and poetic descriptions, they just aren't my strong point but I do excel in guiding conversation and imaginative leaps, I am good at the creative part if not at the descriptive. Writing with somebody who is great with the descriptive, as several of my partners are, brings something to the roleplay that I don't and enhances it in my eyes. They make the writing better than it would be if I were playing both roles, that's the best way I can describe it.

 

[ShinseiDrayga]

Honestly my approach and view of rping is probably gonna be a bit weird.
I view it as an Audience Member in the theater. I sit back and watch the actors (mine and my partner's characters) interact and go through their story.

The way I view my characters is possibly a bit different than most people, as I view them as completely independent of myself, which can cause some problems with writing sometimes as I do have to write them still so I have to get into the right mindset to write them sometimes. I don't view my characters as puppets or tools, so their reactions and actions in a given scene, story, etc are very much based on the personality that they've developed as I've created them and their background. So if I try to make them do something they wouldn't do there is a strong rejection, but if its something well within their personality I can write paragraph after paragraph of text on it.

I'd say I probably work well with Actor types, or perhaps Director types. But I don't think I work well with writer types. From my experience, those of the writer type view their characters more as tools and puppets in their story they want to tell, an approach I find is a bit at odds with my style of letting the characters decide what happens.

 

[SoleAccord]

A mixture of both. I find my best roleplays involve my partner and myself coming together to create a rough draft of what we want; the story, what action takes place, what smut comes from it, that sort of thing. And by working together in our two-man writing room, we figure out how to place the actors and actresses of our story. From there, some dialogue is predetermined, but I find that in the midst of writing a post my partners and I tend to go "off-script" and make some decisions in the heat of the moment. Those decisions and dialogue choices we didn't preplan always turn out to be intriguing or exciting, and it amps us up to see what can come from these changes we didn't put down.

I also view it as a dance. We might know the moves for the dance but our way of going about completing the dance might differ, and that's how clumsy miscommunications can occur, or scenes ending up in a way we didn't intend them to. Or sometimes we forget our "lines" and have to either look back or make it up on the spot--and it still works. Sometimes the smallest of changes trigger better ideas than the one's we've brought up previously. It also helps trying to find a "dance partner" better than yourself to help push your creative limits and reach another level of roleplay. I've never gotten better at writing working with people newer to the craft, always people who want to match my steps with theirs or are dancing at a level above my own. I love having partners who make me want to step my game up. Similarly, I like it when partners have something to prove in their work.

"I hit you up for a reason, now I'm going to show you why it was such a good idea to answer." Or something to that nature. Roleplaying shouldn't be this boring timid toe-in-the-water experience. I want partners who want to dive in with me from the get-go and put all their heart and soul into these stories we're crafting together. Anything less is a waste of my time. Go big or go home!

 

[Dark Horse]

Probably more of a writer, I do like the characters to come to life and I love it when they do things that neither partner expected. I like to flesh out my characters and make them as real as possible and I like them to have some kind of conflict about what they are doing and why. I enjoy that depth rather than some character that just exists to torture or have sex etc

 

[Thufir Hawat]

Neither: I'm just a guy who got into a virtual machine and found himself in a new body, which remembers a ifferent history, and has a new world to explore!