I was having a bit of a surf last night and came across some stuff on various LJs about RPGing that is buried in my History somewhere. But it got me thinking about it and my experiences of it.

I wasn't expecting it to get that long, though...

The first time I ever tried it was by email in a small group in the Stargate universe where we all played original characters. It was fun, but hard. What made it hard was that you could only write your own character, you couldn't write any of the others, because they weren't yours to do anything with. Which almost made it feel like writing in a vacuum. And also, at one point, my character got taken over by a Goa'uld whose name I couldn't spell - I had to copy and paste it every time. But I enjoyed it because I liked the other people in it.

It wasn't until years later that I saw the RPGing thing on LJ and it all looked so big, there was nowhere I was going near it. Up until the point where I discovered Relative Space and I got hooked in reading it. Well, reading through various characters storylines. It all seemed a bit crazy really. And I wasn't half confused some of the time. I joined it on the basis it would take up as much time to play in as I was spending reading it.

I think LJ (or any message board) makes roleplaying easier, because it's simpler to stick to shorter comments, then wait for another character to play off. You don't feel quite so compelled to write something long and email-worthy.

I'd written some Harry, and found it much harder to write from his point of view, rather than just putting him in a story. I end up writing lots of 'old girl's to get his voice, then taking them out later because you can go over the top with that. And I have specific occasions I want him to call Sarah that, and specific occasions for him to call her by her name. And I must post sometime about names, because this is something I think about a lot - specially with someone like Aragorn who has far too many of them.

But I digress. It's strange, really, this RPGing thing because you get to know characters, then you get to know the people who play them. Or vice versa, and sometimes I get confused keeping them separate in my mind. The other thing is trying to keep in my head what my characters know, which is generally less than I do. In some ways, playing characters who are a bit clueless anyway - an AU Harry and Jo - is a help because they are apt to not know what is going on and I don't have to pretend too much when I don't know. A bit like the actor's expression of NAR - no acting required.

Sometimes, knowing more than the characters is also handy, because you can steer the conversation to get the other character to reveal that knowledge. Unless anyone's playing against my Harry who pretty much never reveals anything about himself. Which can get frustrating. It's a nice contrast, having started playing Jo too, because she'll quite happily talk about pretty much anything.

That brings me to another point: characters taking over. I get it in fics all the time, when I want them to have a conversation and they go off on a tangent. It's worse in RPGing. So Harry flirts with Sarah without consulting me first. And then gets serious when actually I'd quite like him to flirt. I just can't do anything with him, he's got a mind of his own. And Jo just won't be angsty. Possibly because Harry's angsty enough for the both of them. And then whenever you have an RPG conversation, there's another person (or people) in it with characters and agendas and ideas of their own. So not only do you not know what your character is going to say, you don't know what theirs is either.

It's not always easy to say everything in character, as well. I think sometimes I do that better than others.

I feel like I should write a conclusion, which is to saying I'm enjoying fic writing and RPGing, and I think they're each helping the other.

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