I am a Roleplayer

I am a roleplayer. I play games in which I pretend to be other people. I do it for the fun and challenge of playing someone else, typically in a setting or circumstance well beyond my own personal experience. I like fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, and most other genres. Roleplaying for me is an escapist activity, but unlike reading a book or watching a movie, an active one. I enjoy exploring my characters' personalities and lives, both internally (getting inside the head of the character) and externally (as one would explore a character from literature).

I am not a gamer. I enjoy board games and card games, but I would rather roleplay. I do not play roleplaying games to kill monsters, work out the puzzles, solve mysteries, or do the other trappings of roleplaying games. Granted, these can be fun, but only in the context that they give something for my character to do. These activities become a framework for roleplaying and hold no interest for me if there is no roleplaying.

I am not a storyteller. Sure, in the course of a roleplaying game, a story is told. There may even be a plot and an underlying structure that is very story-like. As a roleplayer, I want my control of the story to be limited to my character's influence on the story. Some meta-game conventions, like "plot points," are perfectly acceptable, and I certainly want some input on the kinds of plot I want my character to be involved in. But I do not want to control the story from the third person; there are plenty of storytelling games that do this very well, but I would rather roleplay.

I do not dogmatically insist that everything I do in a roleplaying game be in character. I want everyone to have fun and if that means I give up a little character control or make decisions based upon the plot or group cohesion, I am happy to do so. I do insist, however, that actions not be imposed upon my character without my consent.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not think my approach to roleplaying games is superior to other ways of playing these games. I have nothing against people who use lots of miniatures and move their characters through dungeons of ever increasing difficulty. I also have nothing against basketball fans, but their games do not capture my interest. There are simply other things I would rather do.

Roleplaying games are just games, enjoyable pastimes like playing catch or spades. It is possible to take them too seriously, but it is possible to not take them seriously enough. When playing volleyball, I try my best. I do not let balls fall because "it's just a game"—I run and dive for every ball I can conceivably get. Not to do so is not fun for me. When roleplaying, I try my best to roleplay well. I do not succeed as often as I would like, but the fun is in the trying.

As a kid, I played "make-believe" and "let's pretend" a lot—probably more than most other boys my age. Roleplaying is just a natural extension of that early activity. In many ways, I see most roleplaying games disrupting the minimalist purity of those childhood games. As an adult, I cannot play those games any more. There was no character development and no plot. The issues and themes that were fun and new to the child are not interesting to the adult. This is natural—I do not enjoy playing Hungry Hungry Hippos any more, either. The key to roleplaying games is to take the raw imagination and abandon we had in childhood and apply it to characters and situations that interest us in adulthood.