Getting Lost in a World

...Not Your Character
I am a fan of fantastic settings, fictional worlds of magic and wonder - the kinds that are encountered while reading adventure stories. Names like Lankhmar, Gondor and Bree, Zamora and Aquilonia, Barsoom, Tekumel, and even Arkham draw pictures on my imagination and fill my head with possible stories. I can easily lose my self in any of these imaginary places described as settings by various authors I have read and re-read.
White Box is a tool to explore the wondrous worlds of make-believe and adds an extra dimension to the term escapist entertainment. Using White Box and similar "games", we may further explore the fantastic places read about, or invent new ones, all the while taking part in imaginary adventures, often of a heroic nature. We can make our own stories set in these wonderful places of fancy where things can be very different from reality. For a time we can immerse ourselves in the imaginary world and escape our real situation, perhaps even pretending to be someone we are not - the hero of the story?
It is customary for one to play the role of a character in White Box and other RPGs - that is somebody imaginary, rather than to just play oneself. To take on the role of a protagonist native to the imaginary world or setting is part of the fun for which the game is designed. The challenge is to try to think like this someone else, this alien person, "not you", and to be entertained by the process of how well you can do so.
How the player's character is generated can influence how the player thinks about their character. Many games take a detailed approach to character generation, one which involves many steps and results in a character sheet full of data. This can be accomplished through optimized point-buy or by making decisions based on a pre-conceived idea of what type of character you would like to play or even random rolls of the die, allowing fate to determine details while embracing the challenge to play what you are given. Some character generation involves developing a backstory so that much is already known about the fictional game pawn before play begins - or did play effectively begin with character generation?
The goal of most games, RPGs included, is to have fun and be entertained. To this end I find the setting is more important to the game than the individual characters. The story which develops during play, which is born of the setting and situation as described by the referee, and given life through the decisions and dialogue of the various players through the characters they control, and with fate or chance being accounted for in the form of dice rolls, is often on par with the best written fiction, cinema or theater. It is full of surprises, humor and tension. Conflicts may arise and outcomes change the course of the world's future, for good or bad. At the end of the day, however, it is escapist entertainment and we can walk away from it, returning to our real lives. Through memory and talking about the story of our game, however, we may revisit these fictional events even while making our imaginary world seem a little more real.
It remains a game, and what the game is not is a way to explore what it would be like to be an elf, or a wizard or any other character used to play the game. There really is nothing I see to be gained from identifying with one's in-game character. Putting your own hopes and dreams, emotions and beliefs into the imaginary game pawn, a pawn designed as a tool to let you explore an imaginary setting, is in fact a distraction from allowing your mind to be fully entertained by the game and its emergent story. The story isn't about you, or me, it's about an imaginary place and some imaginary beings.
This is one of the reasons I prefer White Box and the OSR style games - they have simple character builds which require a minimum of character generation decisions on the part of the player. Decisions are reserved for what the characters will do during play. Who the character is and what makes them special can emerge through play and be a surprise to all. It also makes the character easier to replace when the fates of the dice, or bad decisions regarding risk, results in character death...a game event which itself can add to the story rather than detract from it.
So the next time we play our favorite version of the RPG, I propose we get lost in the world - immerse ourselves in the story, much as we would while watching a good film or play. Try to think about the character we control, our game pawn, as a person of that world and ask ourselves, what would that character most likely do in the situation? Don't look on the character sheet to find the answer. Instead, let's use our imagination and play to find out!