One can think of the elements of a character as acting as a filter on the player. In an ideal situation, the actions that the player can take are limited by the actions that are within the capabilities of the character (as defined by the statistics), and the information received by the player is dictated by the perceptual abilities of the character (again, defined by the statistics). At the same time, one can profitably think of the character as a mask the player wears when participating in the game. Further, one can think of the range of possible characters, and character archetypes, as modes of expression for a player. They are merely different ways to express oneself, in that they offer subtly different media for communicating to others participating in the shared fiction.

To give a concrete example, consider the two following sentences:

This world is boring to me!

I suffer from ennui.

The semantic content of these two is virtually identical, but we perceive them through different linguistic filters, resulting in different impressions of the speaker. The latter is languid, passive, probably educated, and even has a whiff of self-indulgence. The former is angry, desirous of taking action, perhaps a little frustrated.

The effect is increased if we add visual elements to what was written:

This world is boring to me!

I suffer from ennui.

The tonal differences resulting from the typeface are immediate.

A similar effect occurs with characters. They are in many ways the typeface used by the user to communicate and interact with the rest of the virtual world (be it the in-the-head virtual space inhabited by the players of a pen-and-paper RPG, or a mud’s virtual space). The outward appearance of the character (how it is perceived by other participants) is one element here; the filtering of actions and perceptions by the character’s defined statistics is another. To push our typeface analogy even further, the tangible statistics are the typeface, in that it is something that everyone can refer to. The choice of words, however, is still the player’s, and reflects the intangibles.

“Role-playing” is essentially the process of acting in a defined role whilst playing one of these games. “Role acting” is perhaps a better term since the term role-playing has been corrupted by a focus on character advancement, which is to say the game mechanic of upgrading a character’s statistics and abilities over time. In a very fundamental way, good role-playing is getting the words spoken and the typeface in which they are spoken to match up. Just as

I suffer from ennui!

is jarring and bizarre, so is forcing your character to take actions which either his tangible and intangible attributes render implausible or impossible within the setting’s laws of reality. In other words, suffering ennui in that typeface is bad role-playing.

Why does this matter to virtual world design? Because the laws of physics in a virtual world are far more rigid than the ones in a pen and paper RPG. There is no human mediating the effect of these laws and changing reality at a whim. In role-playing circles, the mark of a good game master is considered to be his ability to add and drop laws of physics in service of the narrative events in his world. The actions he takes serve the story and the enjoyment of his fellow players. A game master who obeys the strict laws of physics defined by the rulebook would quickly find his game to be unfun (and therefore without players).

In the virtual world, the game master is the computer, and it has no such agenda. And this makes the nature of characters—henceforth termed avatars—even more critical. Everything the user sees and does is shaped by his avatar—it is his filter on the events that come from the server, and it is his mode of expression within the virtual world. And whereas in a pen and paper gaming session the other players are aware of the true characteristics of a player because the player typically expresses himself as himself, merely choosing to conform to things that the character might do; in a virtual setting, the other participants only perceive the mask. The actions they see are only what the character does. For them, the other player is the avatar.