Limitations
Players usually have access to a full range of faculties including vision, hearing, speech, and mobility. Characters, however, may be blind, deaf, mute or lame. By adding limitations, players constantly remind themselves that they are playing a role and not simply being their normal selves. While other Live-Action Roleplaying groups may allow players to keep both eyes open while playing the part of a blind person, many Guild players with a similar part would expect to keep their eyes closed, or at least blindfolded, while they are in the game. Similarly, when a character is supposed to be unconscious, many Guild players will shut their ears and close their eyes to prevent themselves from noticing anything that they should not. Even though the honor system is often adequate to deal with such situations, Guild players often consider it important to reinforce such physical limitations in their roleplay. Players will also maintain a limp if it is appropriate for their character, although some have found that prolonged, unbalanced walks can turn fake limps into real ones.
Some limitations can be less debilitating. Many games have mechanics that require players to walk “heel-toe,� placing one foot directly in front of the other to impede one’s maximum speed. The characters may be dragging something heavy, they may be trying to negotiate a difficult passage or they may be drugged. In all cases, the heel-toe limitation often ends up heightening the roleplay experience for the player by manifesting the situation of their character as a real, physical constraint. Furthermore, heel-toe walking can be easily noticed from a distance and give other players a chance to react to the impaired character’s circumstances.
Foreign accents can be an effective means of keeping players engaged with their characters. By speaking differently, players think harder about their speech and are more likely to reword sentences to fit the imagined vocabulary, formality and biases of their character. After a few hours of speaking in a forced accent, players often slip into a comfortable groove that allows them to converse comfortably while maintaining an altered speaking pattern. As long as the sense of an accent can be conveyed, one will always be somewhat engaged in speaking as a character rather than as a player.
Of course, it can be difficult to maintain an accent in a game that lasts ten days, especially considering how ten day games tend to be punctuated with “game breaks� that require players to take time off from their game play to deal with real life. On the flip side, certain accents can also be highly infectious. A particular Guild member has been given the accolade of “Master Assassin� due to her gaming abilities but also because she managed to infect the entire cast of a game with a terrible southern accent. Such circumstances can be entertaining, if the accent is appropriate for the entire cast of a game, or confusing, if the accent is not.
Accents could be imagined as a type of psychlim, as they deny players the ability to speak normally. However, they also actively encourage players to perform in a manner that mimics the traits of their characters, promoting players’ identification with their characters. Upon hearing the accent, players will tend to converse with the person in front of them as an actual character without being reminded of the player behind the character. Thus, accents are rarely used as mechanics of dissociation.
