What's in a Character name?
Character Name bar. Made by me in Paint!
Often the hardest part of playing a game is choosing a name for a character. An easy option is to just input my username and begin playing. No problem! I'll do a run through the game doing all the tasks and figuring out the game mechanics while completing the storyline. What a rush!
But now I want to play again but this time taking my time to actually EXPERIENCE the game, the world, the story, the activites, the characters, and everything else rather than rolling through it as quickly as possible. I'll try out a name that is more 'normal' for this 'Roleplay' through.
Washed up on shore unaware of the terrors of the island of Aeternum
New World
It's a bit silly but now that my character has a 'normal' name I now have to give him a whole life story. What do they think about the situations that occur? What type of activities would they prefer to focus on? What's their preference of combat and why? Obviously the game will have ques that could explain some of these things but this character isn't 'Asynckronism' playing a game, it is a named individual in the games world that is taking the time to fully understand the situation.
An adventurous fool documenting low sector systems in his civilian shuttle
Eve Online
Roleplay is often weird like this but this style of play helps establish myself in that game world. It can be limiting, which is silly because games usually offer every option available to the player, but the 'player' and the 'character' can be two totally different beings. Is it a choice to adhere to these made up rules? Of course! I could be three quarters through the game as that character before deciding 'I'm tired of this.' and doing all the things I passed on in this run.
List of the previous 'Survivors', They had hopes and dreams too before the undead squashed them
Project Zomboid
I just like to do it to both extend the replayability of the game and to sort of lose myself playing a character. 'Escape from reality' is a bit too harsh of a term in my case but I just enjoy the immersion aspect that 'roleplaying' a properly named character brings.
At the end of the day I know I still have to press 'Escape' and click 'Exit Game', so there's no delusions of 'returning to reality'. It's like Willy Wonka said:
"Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination
Take a look and you'll see
Into your imagination
We'll begin with a spin
Traveling in the world of my creation
What we'll see will defy
Explanation"
And having an active imagination is part of the fun of roleplay.
That's my take on 'What's in a Name'. Roleplays can be fun but it requires some imagination and putting 'rules' on the character to go along with their 'view point'. Nothing too crazy and if it jump starts creativity then I am all for that.
Thank you for reading.
Happy Gaming!