What's Your Playstyle Preference - 1st or 3rd Person?
 

hey all,

I'm currently developing a podcast about virtual play of tabletop RPGs and play-by-forum will be one of my main focus areas. I was chatting with a fellow PBF player and he posed an interesting question to me that I wanted to throw out to a bigger audience.

When you are playing in a play-by-forum RPG, do you prefer to post in 1st person or 3rd person?

Why?

If you post both ways in different games, why do you choose one over the other?

3rd person.
Why: I'm playing a character, I'm not playing me.

3rd person past when I'm doing pbp, usually first person when I'm at a tabletop. Actually speaking feels more like I'm acting, where pbp feels like I'm writing a story.

Third person.

@Azar, why third? What are you able to do in third person that you couldn't do in first or second? I'm not advocating for any way, I'm curious why people play the way they do.

Primarily because it is the perspective I am most used to, but there's also the fact that I never play me. If I were to play as myself, I might employ a first person narrative...yet, that is unlikely to happen, as RPGs are a form of escapism to me.

3rd person. Why? Because I like to collect the in game posts after it's done and format it in Word to make a story.

As GM, I use second person (present or past tense) for moving-the-scene-along exposition:

And third person, present tense for anything "live" or interactive, like a conversation or battle:
I think third person is most appropriate in any group of players as the assembled product would be unreadable with multiple-voice first person. Strict First Person (Player) and Second Person (GM) could work for a solo adventure.

Third person. Why? Because it's pretty much what everyone else uses and it would be strange to have everyone but one player in the group use the same Point of View (I prefer to try to use the same tense as everyone else too.). It's also more familiar to me since that's what I normally write in when I write short stories, and pointing out, even to myself, that I'm playing my character helps me actually get into character and act the way my character would act as opposed to how I would act.

Its easier to use third person I find for pbp.