"Play pretend" or roleplay in videogames

[ThirteeTooBeets]

I'm not sure how else to describe this, but I'm pretty certain many of us have done this when playing games, making up stories in our heads about the lore of our character, the world, story and so on. Treating videogames a bit like toys

To give an example, the first time I played Ocarina of Time I whould imagine Link having casual conversations with Navi during certain parts of the game, I remember drawing those scenarion on the sides of my school notebook. Or when playing Pokemon I whould assign each of my party members a distinct personality or even an epic arc as they grew stronger and evolved (which I whould also make drawings about)

Or the first time I played Banjo Tooie I barely knew how to read, so I didn't know what to do yet I was content just running around and pretending to be a bear doing bear stuff, like "hunting" enemies and going for a swim.

I think it's easier with the silent character type, I had this whole edgy and angsty story for my first Monster Hunter character ever (I was 11 or 12 when I played it for the first time).

Anyone else ever did or does that? Like I mentioned I used to do it a lot when I was younger, but I find myself doing it again nowadays, it's fun making up these games sometimes I think

 

[moonbits]

That's why I love the Elder Scrolls, to role play.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

That's why I love the Elder Scrolls, to role play.

Oh yeah, you reminded me all the stories I whould made up with my first Skyrim character, I had this whole romance storyline going on untill we "broke up", or make the College mission using only magic spells and robes

 

[bigstinkie]

every time i play a horror game new to me for the first time, it typically takes me twice the time to finish it as it would the average player, as i turn my lights off, light candles, and proceed to crawl around every corner as if i was actually there
for better or for worse i have some dissociation problems that medications are attempting to cure me of - sometimes my mind is so contained by the experience i do not even notice my phone ringing next to me

 

[ciro64]

When I playing Star Fox 64, I'd kill all my allies, tear up my wings, stay on the ground and pretend I was a sentient Tank.

 

[ThePeon]

Nope never or maybe when I was 5-6 year but that´s 30+ years ago so don´t remember. I got 0 imagination so I make a charter take a name from a favorite charter from an anime and just go for it. NO back story no nothing.


I hate it but that´s how useless I am 0 imagination.

 

[ciro64]

When I played Worms World Party with my brother once, we turned Sudden Death on and did a rescue mission roleplay of sorts, where we had to get all the worms on the highest platform before the worms drowned on the water.

Or the first time I played Banjo Tooie I barely knew how to read, so I didn't know what to do yet I was content just running around and pretending to be a bear doing bear stuff, like "hunting" enemies and going for a swim.

I did this sort of stuff all the time as a kid lol. Mario lived in the Wet-Dry World's underground city btw.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Yeah i made few things for my party in FF1 like how the party gets Excalibur lol i don't know how to draw otherwise i would really draw all the events and memories i have of FF1 like how the party fought the fiends or the struggle of fighting ghouls and zombies.

For FF1 i came up with character traits for each like the Warrior being this rash and hot headed brave fella and carl the thief being a little cynical and brings a lot of unwanted attention to himself this was inspired by enemies constantly focusing carl in every fight.

Or leo my black mage who is a bit arrogant when i went to the water shrine i couldn't help but imagine Leo trying to impress a mermaid by showing off his powers just to dragged away by James the Warrior telling him "you will do this later we have a task to fulfill" and leo while getting grabbed by James yelling to the mermaid "don't worry you will not turn to bubbles not on my watch!"

 

[Taukyrie]

My older brother and I did this a lot with Smash Bros Brawl as kids. We would make up our own little story things with the characters.

But nowadays I sort of do this with the created characters in a lot of games where I like to imagine what their backstories and personality is like and of course their relationships with other characters.

 

[starseeker300]

Yeah, I had this backstory in my head were my character in Skyrim was actually a pretty bad dude that did deserve to get his head lopped off at the beginning of the game but had an epiphany and change of heart when alduin showed up and inadvertently saved him.


I also like to imagine how the pokemon's relationship with their trainer when I play thru the pokemon games. not all the time though.

generally yeah i like to make up little backstory for created characters in rpgs overall like ff1 and dq9 when i played them

 

[EthyLongHair]

hell yeah i did that. i still do! it was with legos back in the day. i had this one lego character i made (along with two other characters) that would battle it out or traverse through dangerous and deadly lands. i have given away my legos though, and i remember keeping my dude out of the box when i did but i cannot seem to find him. i made a funeral for him with the other two characters too lol.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:04 PM

whenever i play minecraft i give my character some lore like "banished from atlantis, Ethy has been forced to explore the world of the humans. he can only eat fish, and his main weapon is his trusty (or rather broken) trident. ((broken because when i get the tridents off of the drowned their durability is usually low))" and i'll make a house in the middle of the ocean and stuff. i

 

[Prism_Red]

Every XCOM campaign, nuff said.

 

[Raziya The Seeker]

Any time I'm playing an RPG with characters I made myself? Totally. I'll come up with conversations in-character in the back of my head, especially during more boring parts of gameplay. Heck, sometimes I'll do it with canon characters too, if I feel I understand their personality enough.

It's quite fun. Helps that I keep reusing the same cast of OCs in just about every game I play with custom characters, too. ;3

 

[Super Funky Piece]

i dont know if i'd call it role play but especially in something like stealth games i tend to really try and get into the headspace of the player character or dwell on the internal logic of the game. like, will knocking out a guard count as an actual trace of an intruder even if the game doesnt mark it as one? if i can move their body to some sort of bed will people assume they were sleeping on the job instead? and so on.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

Oh yeah, you reminded me all the stories I whould made up with my first Skyrim character, I had this whole romance storyline going on untill we "broke up".

Ok I want to expand on this because I remembered it all and I thought it was funny. So to me marriage in Skyrim is super lame so I wanted to roleplay "romancing" an NPC for a while before popping the question (hitting equip on the Mara Amulet). First it had to be an NPC with some actual dialogue, even better if it was in any way mission related, and EVEN BETTER if it could be a follower (we could go on dates). Another tidbit is that my character was a Kajiit and I wanted to romance another Kajiit, but since Todd is not a cat person apparently I had to go for the other beastmen race and try to aim for an Argonian.
The ONLY NPC that ticked every box was Derkeethus, you even meet him in a mission were you save him from a cage inside a cave (whoah so romantic).
I rescued him and started slowly trying to "get closer" to him, I whould take him on quests, or to discover new scenic map locations, or to visit him at his home in a mining town.
It was all aiming to me "proposing" inside the cave with the giant Hist Tree since they're sacred to Argonians, but I started to notice that his AI tended to make dumb comments during missions and it started to annoy me. Out of curiosity I checked his wiki page and, to my horror, I found out that he's the only marriable NPC that does NOT commit to you (due to a glitch).
If you marry him he will never go to any of your houses, instead he always returns to his original town, AND he can be killed in the way there.
It broke my heart, and my roleplay plans, that Skyrim character of mine is still unmarried to this day lol.

 

[moonbits]

Currently in Baldur's Gate 3 I am playing a female Elf Rogue named Viper, I always pickpocket/steal and do very chaotic dialogue choices and my friend gets anxious. I sometimes ask him for his opinion to ultimately dismiss it and get us into another impossible battle.

 

[Hourai]

It's a lot of fun. I used to do it a lot as a kid, but it kinda faded with time. Until last year, when I started doing it again! It made games a lot more fun. Building skill trees based off what I think the character would like, rather than what I think is best. Thinking of how characters would handle things that pop up in the story (or in the Etrian Odyssey I genocide of the Forest Folk, the aftermath of how they handled it, because I couldn't imagine a reason they would do it), and what they think of it, each other, and the NPCs. I've found that I really enjoy making fistfighters who revel in violence.

I still dislike silent protags, though. I think they're a relic of an era that had <1MB cart space that should hurry up and die already.

 

[GamingWarthog]

For Smash Bros my siblings and I had this whole story where Peach was the big bad and unlocking characters was recruiting them, also Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 being about fighting the evil principal. The real goal of Star Wars Rogue Squadron III was also to crash. I still try to channel that energy when I can.

In Persona 3 during the period of time where Junpei is mad at the protagonist, I left his tactics settings on 'act freely' to simulate him being too mad to listen. For the first two Bayonetta games I didn't change up my weapons much, but in Bayo 3 I used the weapons of the fallen alternate universe Bayonettas to honor them. In Dragon Quest Builders 2 I ended up building a memorial to an NPC who was killed during the story.

Currently doing a series of Pokemon playthroughs where I'm trying to tell a story with each. Protagonist of Crystal is sick of everyone being fixated on the past and ruins so he refused to go to Bell Tower or Ruins of Alph. Totodile didn't like Spinaraks after an annoying encounter, so it refused to switch in for the Spinarak on the party until it got closer to it.

 

[jiyuuboyetsvi]

i still do this late at night when im in bed and im trying to fall asleep.
ill roll around pretending to be a mecha pilot or a badass samurai lady, making up whole scenarios and character arcs. sometimes if im really invested in the scenes ive come up with, ill come back to them the next night xD

 

[starseeker300]

Skyrim is super lame so I wanted to roleplay "romancing" an NPC for a while before popping the question (hitting equip on the Mara Amulet)

I did that with Mijoll the lioness in my aformentoined skyrim playthru

For Smash Bros my siblings and I had this whole story where Peach

I see someone is a fan of Smash King

 

[solidbatman]

for Crusader Kings ill sometimes not do a minxmax playthrough and just rp the characters based on their personality. those obviously are the runs that last the least amount of time as a bumbling idiot of a son ascends to the throne and gets himself killed.

 

[Skeleben]

When I was an 8 year old lad, in Mario 64 DS I used to pretend the log cabin at the end of the penguin slide race was Mario's house, and I pretended to live in it. I'd like walk around outside and pretend to do chores, I actually had a lot of fun acting out his normal life haha.

 

[GamingWarthog]

I see someone is a fan of Smash King

Nope, don't know them. Peach was our main villain because we thought she was the most powerful character in the game. I did watch some Brawl machinima back in the day, but not that.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

It may not exactly be role-playing but some melee matches i play on WarCraft 3 i conjure up sometimes an aftermath for it and already created 2 or 3 maps based on such "aftermath of battle" one time i made on the map called "terenas stand" an aftermath of the melee game i previously played it was night elf vs undead i went keeper of the groove and i think warden? Or demon hunter i beaten the undead then turned map into night elf themed instead of human themed and then made it so that naga from the sea surfaced and struck night elf positions in "terenas stand" basically reverse melee where i played naga vs my old night elf base and heroes was a fun twist that i plan build on for later i already have few ideas for such maps most notably the map under the name "cauldron" i played human vs undead vs orc vs night elf basically an FFA i went archmage/mountain king/paladin and i think knights and gryphons and hired lots of dreanai (think i wrote it right?) as mercenaries so the map is located in outland since it uses the tile scheme for its terrain and the "aftermath" idea is fel orcs fight human fortress and their dreanai allies.

 

[antii]

Ok when I use to play GTA Five M roleplay I use to get so into it because it’s so much fun to get into character and flesh out that characters personality. And when you get good people to roleplay with other gangs civilians workers it is so much fun. If you haven’t played it I recommend