What? There's nobody to announce my presence? Surely you don't mean I have to do something as vulgar as introducing myself?
I have to? Outrageous!
Hi,everybody!
The above is definitely not how I usually speak. But it fits one of the characters I'm currently playing (a well-born participant in a fighting tournament using Fight! The Fighting Game 2e RPG).
Why did I decide to introduce myself with an in-character voice that doesn't resemble my own, some might ask.
Well, why not? That's part of the point of roleplaying, right? At least it is
I have been a roleplayer since...I was a kid, basically. But let's stick with the official date "since 1999".
That was when I first tried playing an "official" RPG (as opposed to using homebrew rules, freeforming and LARP).
Said official RPG being a version of D&D, it almost ended with me swearing off the hobby. Luckily, a bit later I got introduced to a game that fitted much better what I was after.
To this day, there are only four kinds old systems I don't want to play: D&D (Pathfinder included), Hero, and overly narrative games like Cortex+ and the like.
Now, Hero is just a victim of my prejudice at the time. It seems really close to GURPS, and since I know GURPS already, why should I learn another set of 3d6 rules that mostly do the same thing (simulation with lots of options)?
I'm mostly into games like Traveller, One-Roll Engine, Mythras and The Riddle of Steel.
I've never been able to understand the logic of stating in advance whether you are going to write long or short posts. To paraphrase a classic book, I start writing a post, I write while I have (or rather, my PC has) something to say, then I stop.