Do you think roleplaying in inevitable with PBBGs?

I think RP is something that is a natural part of human development. Everyone, in there own head, RPs parts of their own life when they go over the "what ifs" that exist (some of us do it too much, and it gets labeled anxiety. But that's another subject entirely).

I think a collaborative "what if" sort of happens when groups of people get together. and those people who are the most into it tend to gravitate together (IE: What happens/happened on neopets).

 

Hm. Inevitable depends a lot on your definition of roleplay, I suppose.

For example, I've never roleplayed my Neopets in the same way I roleplayed on forum RPGs or even chat RPGs. That is, I've never written for my characters and interacted directly with someone else's characters.

I have, however, written backstories for them and have included them in various Neopets fanfics back in the day. Does prose/fiction writing of original characters in someone else's setting count as roleplaying? Sometimes I included friends' pets in these stories alongside my own. Does that count as roleplaying their pets too? Or just writing? I dunno!

For a lot of PBBGs, I wonder if players form an actual character outside of "this is me, in game." Without a separate persona, I don't see a lot of those scenarios as roleplaying as much as just...gaming. When I play Pokemon, my avatar is not really separate from me, so I don't consider that roleplaying. I'm not playing the role of anyone other than me...yes, game-me and real-me are different because game-me can do a lot of things real-me can't, but it's still me. If that makes sense. If I were roleplaying while playing a Pokemon game, my avatar might end up making decisions differently than me.

....So yeah. I don't really think RP is inevitable in PBBGs, depending on how you define it.

 

Hell, I think it's natural with almost any game that's sufficiently immersive. When I played World of Warcraft I would craft little stories for all of my characters. It's just a shame that the game was rather limited in that respect. It's one of the reasons I've gravitated towards more open stories and MMOs. There are exceptions. Any game where you play as like, a leader or politician - like Civilization-esque games - it's difficult to put yourself in their shoes since the game is taking place over centuries. I'm thinking of Planetarion which I used to play as a kid. In that type of game it gets more real, and you're just 'being yourself' rather than adopting a persona, at least in my experience.