The private life of my toons: why I RP in private

Although I enjoy when a game is carried by a well written character, I often relish the opportunity to design my own avatar, and forge my own way. This is often limited by current technology, so a lot of the 'fleshing out' process would have to happen in my head, when playing console games. With MMOs there's the added bonus of playing with others, so the 'fleshing out' process can be done outwardly. This is called Role Playing or RPing.

I love that my toons, the ones I come to care about, have dimensions. But I never RP. There are a few reasons why. One of the more poignant is some degree of shame, and fear of rejection. Given, the only MMO I've played with dedication is WoW, and the lore of this game is not that complicated, but I have not boned up on the lore anyhow. So I would be at a loss often, when RPing with other people. This disadvantage, coupled with the fact, that what I do in an MMO I don't feel is worthy of critique, positive or negative, as I do it exclusively for fun, is pretty much the main precedent for an inward RPing experience. Another reason is laziness. You can always go 'out of character', but I feel I would do it so often it would defeat the purpose. I have no stamina for making believe. My imagination gets bored easily, I would want to say. It wanders a lot.

Then there's the fact that some of my toons lose steam, as they might only be a part of my own inner self-image.

Jurakan was my first serious toon. My first level capped character. Jura was supposed to be an innocent and naive soldier of the light. Most of my toons were the result of a pairing when playing with my girlfriend. Jura was a first attempt, and I actually came to flesh him out a while after I had been playing. He was a pretty simple character, a goody two shoes. And this didn't satisfy my more visceral fantasies. It's not that he was a badly thought out character, but a bit juvenile.


My second SERIOUS toon was Felwenn. Felwenn was a rogue, and it took me a long long time for me to come to terms with this toon. I kinda struggled to fall in love with him. I do not know if it had to do with the class (Rogues as a class are hard to play, although as I've stated before, there is a certain flair to playing a rogue that lends dramatism)or if it had to do with the fact that at that point I was not very intrigued by night elves, but it was a bit uphill. In the end, I never deleted Felwenn because I got so far with him, but to this day...I feel I failed to breathe life to Felwenn. I've jumped back to him from time to time, and I can't come to terms with the fact that I want to like him as a character, but I never fleshed him out in my mind. Something didn't click. Later on I revisited making a rogue and I tried a human- I don't like human models, but I made an exception- which I promptly deleted and made a dwarf instead. For some reason, that stuck.

I then made Akarius and Mendrick. Mendrick took a while to get used to, and to this day, his usefulness precedes his preferential treatment, rather than his appeal as a character. I imagined a life before becoming a Death Knight, of being a paladin full of righteous fury and vengeance that met an untimely tragic demise, but this is SO trite, it detracts from my enjoyment, to be honest. He quested with a Shaman. They were a great pairing gameplay wise, but storywise, it didn't click that well, I felt. He's terribly fun to play, not fun to RP with.

I then made a night elf warrior, and it was a big hit, and it had to do with the fact that I made an unpopular class with the most unpopular race for that class. I feel I projected myself well enough that the toon to this day, as nerfed as warriors got, is one of the more fun toons that I've made. As a contrast to Jura, Akarius was kind of a dick though, he was not a do-gooder. He had no qualms with cruelty, so I got to tap into my dark side.

There are other aspects that I have been able to satisfy through other characters though, and I have come close to try and RP with other RPers. It happens more often than not when on my rogue, Sicari. And I feel I fleshed out that character in my mind as best I could, but there's always the embarassment factor. The 'what if' holding me back.

It's kind of embarassing to come clean about other instances of embarassment. So weird.

Oh well. I'm currently working on two more, a new paladin called Sigridus. Sigridus I'm fleshing out as a pious and religious man, practical, but moral to a fault. It's fun to play as that character because in real life I'm more in the morally ambiguous spectrum, I THINK? Hmmm. The other character is Maximilianus, a worgen druid. I'm still coming to terms how a werewolf was a druid. Or how a human, a posh human, was a druid that THEN became a werewolf? It's a bit overwrought, and it bothers me, but I am a sucker for lycanthropy and shapeshifting.

As I mentioned, my reluctance to RP has to do with my lack of knowledge of the lore, and my being a stickler for purity to a certain degree; I could not just make it up as I go...I would feel I need to commit to my character and his background, with all the racial and 'cultural' baggage that ensues. Perhaps with SWTOR I'll have the upper hand, and my girlfriend and I will be able to RP and speak in emoticons until our fingers bleed, hah!