I feel the same way, Dulan.
For starters, I believe the whole "good vs evil" duality to be hokum. Does anyone IRL actually consider themselves to be evil? Very, very few would, I suspect. I think we tend to label as "evil" those whose attitudes and actions differ markedly from our own. As humans, we all perform actions we are proud of and those we are not so proud of.
In the words of Edward Falconer, "it is not so much the actions of characters that are important, but the motivations behind them".
And there lies the real reason why I avoid the "good" and "evil" stereotypes. I just don't find acting good for the sake of being good (or evil for the sake of being evil) all that interesting. Creating a character's history, value set and personality which enable me to determine how he or she would react to a particular circumstance, to explore his or her motivations - there for me lies the beauty and interest of role playing.
I tend to play characters that are essentially me, since this lays down a solid foundation for believable roleplay. But, because of their backgrounds or environments or just a few personality quirks I introduced out of curiousity, they differ enough from me to enable me to feel like I'm exploring someone else's brain. Because if I'm just going to be me, I might as well stay in the real world, right?
It's similar to my preference in gameworlds. I most enjoy worlds that are very realistic, that is, in most regards they work just like RL. For me, this makes the experience much more believable and immersive, so I feel I can more deeply experience those aspects of the world that do differ from Earth.
Maia
|