Getting Into Character

The Black Church in Aracadia

Last night, a friend asked me a very good question about getting into character.  She explained that she had a tendency to get too attached to her avatars and felt that if something happened In Character (IC) she might take it personally.  She wanted to know how I separated Real Life (RL) me from RP me.  She has no role play experience but is willing to learn.

The first thing I suggest would be to pick a look that is not like RL you in all aspects.  By this I mean choose a different hair color and a different look.  Make your character look like someone else.  This way, you won’t be seeing your RL looking avatar on the screen.  Mentally this will make a difference to you in disassociating yourself from your character.   A suggestion would be to get an alt.  More about alts here.

You also should play a character type that is completely opposite your RL self.  I remember meeting an angel one time and discussing religion over a drink at the bar.  Out Of Character (OOC) he told me he was an aetheist, which was a good laugh for us both after I told him I had actually been a seminarian.  In similar fashion, you should look to make your character’s personality completely opposite from RL you so you can disconnect from that character when you are not role playing.  This way, you can jump into this character to play and jump out of it when you are done.  This is the best way to get into character but not create that mental connection between RL you and RP you.

Some will say that it will be harder to create a new character than to just play themselves, but you would be missing a lot of the fun about role play.  Part of what make this fun is being something you are not and doing things you would not normally do in the real world.  Why play something you already know when the challenge lies in playing something new and foreign to you.  You can absolutely surprise yourself by acting in ways you never thought you could.

Hopefully these tips will be helpful for those of you that feel you might mix OOC and IC because your character is too much like you are in RL in terms of appearance or behavior.