I hope I’m allowed to do this and that I’m doing it correctly. Can you all write about who you are in world? Has your in world self always been with you or did it appear out of thin air when you joined? Do you picture yourself or someone else entirely? What’s the backstory and the motivation? As a newcomer, I’d like to meet all of the people I’ll be sharing a world with and who they are. I’ll learn about all of you and get to figure myself out as well.
This is a really interesting question. The veteran Mounties will tell you that early on there was no delineation between in and out of world so you basically were who you were, plus magiq.
I think that’s why they were able to become so close. Lifelong-friends-close. Because they were essentially them, but with a shared belief in magiq and magimystic events. I hope that continues, and I feel pretty confident that it will. 
I’m also curious to hear how existing Mounties perceive the differences between them and their in-world persona.
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Well, for me, ive never played myself in anything. Ever. Period. However, bits and bobs of my personality and memories get mixed into my characters as and when i play them. With john kaldwile, i took my fearlessness and my ego, and i amplified both, while keeping the love of nature, music, and puzzle solving as integral parts of him. The result was a magiqal treasure hunter who doesnt stick around the guild much at all.
So, inspiration wise, i drew a lot of john out of mage the awakenings death mages, giving him a rather interesting adept power to work with people earlier in his bloodline, etc. i ALSO took heavy inspiration from indiana jones and charlie bone, with a dash of tintin thrown in for good measure. Finally, i added some basic details in hardboiled detectives from dashiel hammet novels, and you have john.
Backstory… nobodys ever asked ;3 i cant tell you much, thats all a secret. He SAYS hes a game developer, and he seems to come from somewhere warm. Thats it. I say, dont trust him as far as you can throw him ;3
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Basecamp Ash is pretty much mundane Ash.
It’s been a bit since I read my PRSFNE profile (unused as it is), but that’s pretty much the same Ash, too.
Though using Ash over Ashburn is all these folks’ doing. 
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I agree with CJ, most of our in-world identities are ourselves, but magiqal, and that has definitely helped us to bond. You can add some backstory to your in-world persona (my experience in the woods that I linked in a recent thread, for instance, is an example of this), but your character can also be a person who has just discovered magiq (ie you can be mundane you without magiq and you become more in tune with magiq as you spend more time here). It’s really up to you!
I think there are a few folks, like @Cj_Heighton who have separate personas (like an OC or original character) from their identities in real life. However, that’s not at all a requirement. It’s all up to what you’re comfortable with, so don’t feel pressured into creating a new character to represent yourself on the forums.
P.S. Also, chi, your persona in Neithernor is different that forum identity, is it not? Because I’m not sure that’s what Spina is talking about atm.
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Ah, we arent talking generally? Johns my neithernor persona, yeah. On the forums, i play a low member, though sort of out of the loop like our reporter friend.
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It would help to clarify that @Cj_Heighton is talking about a beta roleplaying project we’ve experimented with called PRSFNE that’s a more “D&D” style rpg.
I think @Spina is discussing the forum only, which is the primary hub for the Magiqverse.
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Honestly, any part of who you are here is what I’m asking. I didn’t realize there was a difference between forum and Neithernor, as far as who you are. I thought the differences were just in the purple and green areas of the forum.
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That is the primary difference @Spina. In and out-of-world. PRSFNE (Polyguildic Research Society for Neithernorian Exploration) is more of the beginnings of a game that we have been experimenting with in the past but is FAAAAAAAR from being launchable.
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This tbh ^
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This is definitely informative. I’m still interested in seeing everyone’s point of view on their in world selves and any process that went into the creation. Even if they’re an extension of out of world you with Magiq added, you still get to look at that version and think about it’s thoughts and actions and consequences. I remember hearing or reading somewhere that people have trouble making beneficial choices for their future selves because they’re a different person that the current person has a hard time caring about. Here we have a different version of yourself that you immediately care about. It’s interesting.
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OMG. Yes. One of us. One of us.
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Yeah, this is a super interesting question, because I think the real-world ties have (at least for me) both limited my character creation choices and encouraged a lot of interesting character growth.
As CJ said above, the Forum didn’t used to have any sort of “out-of-world” areas at all. When I joined (around the time of the 3rd Assessment/post Fragment 12), the marketing was something similar to an ARG but with more story and less gaming, and given that, it just made the most sense to me to inhabit the Forum as myself, with a couple of little tweaks.
So when thinking about how I wanted to present the “character” of Viviane, I started with the premise that Magiq in the style of the AGP-verse is real, and given that, what might be different about me?
The initial question was, How did I find out about magiq? Was I a believer or an adept who had known all along that magiq was real? Had I just been hoping for it and then found people in the Mountaineers to confirm that it was? Did I just stumble upon the group thinking it would be a fun game and then discovering it was actually real? Given those possibilities, what background knowledge or experiences would I have that would lead me to believe in the possibility of real magiq? Those were the sorts of things I wrote into my backstory, and that I keep in mind when talking about my experience of magiq in-world.
The next question was (and is) How do you react to Magiq? This is sort of the ongoing question that shapes my in-world interactions. The Monarch Papers at the time I joined was getting pretty serious narratively. The Book had been burned (or “gotten crispy” as someone said), and characters were actually in danger of losing their lives/memories/selves to a very powerful enemy. With that in mind, whenever we made a decision, I would have to think through why I would make the decisions I would make, why I felt like preserving Magiq or revealing secrets or whatever was worth the risk. Like, in this alternate universe what motivates me?
I think the most interesting thing by far has been the continuation of the story after TMP, because I’ve had to think through How would I carry on after those major events? And often times it’s easiest to create a certain amount of continuity between my real-life moods and motivations and my magiqal ones.
Incidentally, I do have trouble caring about my future self (mostly because I have no proper sense of time and limited impulse control), but I see my Magiqal self as very much me personally, in this moment, albeit with a different (and hypothetical) set of possible actions and limitations.
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That parenthesis in the spoiler was me.
I know Griffin and I share a joining day, but yours must be pretty close to ours as well!
And real life things going on during TMP were the source for the quote from me.
But yes, coming in about the same time Viv did, and with my chosen forum name, I was feeling a bit wary/like someone might think I was a not-so-friendly plot-wise. (that never happened, or at least was never said where I could see it )
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I didn’t realize that the origins were different from the current iteration. That’s another facet to consider, how when a person joined influenced their in-world self. Do you find that interactions with people who were closer to your starting point are preferable to interactions with newer people who have entirely fictional selves?
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I joined when the whole forum was in-world as well. I crafted a backstory ( Finding the Way: Becoming a Mountaineer - #15 by Sellalellen )where the school librarian had snuck a copy of the Guide into my bag, and then went on from there, as me, but in slightly different circumstances. I almost see it as a “parallel dimension” self, with finding the Guide being the splitting-off point that leads my story in a different direction than the story of my character. So while she is essentially me, I do feel like (in keeping with the splitting dimensions analogy) the gap between character Sel and real Sel is getting wider, but not by so much that we’re two entirely different people. Just two possibilities of the same person? Idk I haven’t gotten philosophical about this in a while.
As for interacting with players who prefer to have a character entirely separate from themselves, I did find it strange at first, simply because there had never been a way to do that before then. Now, it’s no different to me than interacting with anyone else, though I can find it’s harder to get to know their real self sometimes.
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These answers are excellent and really help me to think about how I want to form myself in-world. The point you made about it being a bit difficult getting to know the real person is a good one. I want to embrace this community and get to know all of you and hope you guys get to know me so I think I want to keep In-world me myself. That was a weird sentence. Anyway, I could alternately see why someone would rather have the distinction if they were looking for an immersive escape.
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I think that’s really one of the big draws of this fantasy world for me, is that it’s much more immersive because you’re yourself, only plus magiq. You don’t have to try to put yourself into the shoes of someone from another culture or society (like in DnD, for example), imagine yourself going to a magic school like Hogwarts or Brakebills and create pretend experiences to draw from, etc. Your in-world life can be your regular life, but with this added enhancement. I think that’s what makes the “magiq-verse” unique, and why I’ve fallen in love with it.
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If you go on the Magiq wiki (Basecamp 33 Forum | MAGIQ Wiki | Fandom), you can see some of the archives of what the forum used to look like. As The Monarch Papers ended, the forum was restructured. It’s gone through quite a few changes and now there’s much more meta (out of world) content.
I’ve been around since close to the beginning (Fragment Two). It’s hard to fully describe how things were, but there was a time when no one knew anything about CJ. We were only communicating with him through NPCs, primarily Endri. We started to get to know CJ through his vlogs, and eventually the Cabinet Of Otherworldly Wonders category was created to house meta content. The Discord was created around Phase Three, and that led us to really start getting to know each other. I mention all this because, for a long time, we didn’t really have avenues to communicate outside of the in-world categories and I feel like that shaped us. Most of us didn’t come in playing characters, we came in as ourselves and played along with the Magiq aspect.
Personally I would advise people to come in as themselves. Partially because then the regulars will get to know your authentic self. But also because I feel like there’s a very real risk of Main Character Syndrome. Especially for people still getting acquainted with the lore of the world. Magiq is a thing that happens of course, but it’s fading from the world, and even when the remaining scraps are honed, it’s very dangerous and unpredictable. So when someone comes in with a character concept that is super entrenched in magiqal doings…it can be kind of problematic? At any rate, that’s my perspective on the matter. 
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More fantastic input! I used to play text based RPGs based on fantasy books when I was a kid and everyone other person was the True Hero from the way they wrote themselves. These are good things to state openly. I haven’t made it all the way through the books yet but I’m eager to participate and it would have been embarrassing to say something like, “Her entire being radiated with Magiq.” Not that I would say that. Lol. Just an example.
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