User blog comment:Lord Khaine/First and Third Person Descriptions/@comment-4536066-20140611172803

This is generally the creed I follow on the subject. While many players are able to use first-person and easily continue to distinguish their identities, there is no noteworthy advantage to using first-person in roleplay to counter the obvious disadvantages. Conversely, while there are absolutely players using third-person who have trouble distinguishing their identities, there are advantages to using third-person that first-person lacks (such as readability and ease of distinguishing OOC chatter from IC entries).

"no one seriously thinks that they are there characters when using first-person descriptions" While asking someone outright if they think that, in real life, they are 320 year old elves who wield magical bows, they will probably say "no" and roll their eyes at you like you're being obnoxious and obvious. However, I personally have had multiple conversations with other players wherein they effetively implied that they and their characters were interchangeable to a fault. For example:

And so on. This wasn't the only case of this sort of thing that I witnessed, either. It's especially true when people have OOC authority equivalent to their character's IC authority, like a player being a second-rank in his clan where his character is the court steward. I've seen people in situations like that start trying to order other players around and have to be reminded that they're not actually a steward IRL, just a kid at home with the ability to kick people from the CC.
 * "Anna has a hard time with empathy, huh?" I said to Anna's roleplayer shortly after going OOC.
 * "What? No, I'm very empathetic."
 * "Anna, not you. I mean, she just forced a juvenile to sit in a pit full of garlic because she's a vyre and the garlic didn't bother her personally."
 * "She's basically me, and I'm very empathetic."
 * "She's not you. She's a vampyre. You are not Anna."
 * "Except she pretty much is."

I also uphold that limiting yourself to one single character has similar troubling effects. Generally, I have found that people who insist on having one single main character and no others will try to flex that character into every situation possible (so that he can play in that rp, instead of doing what some of the rest of us do, which is to pick the most appropriate character from our archives). While I am sure there is an exeption that makes this rule, it regularly leads to horribly overdeveloped characters who gain everything and lack only inconsequentially. A brutal warrior who spends all of his time growing his combat abilities, wields a dozen swords and melee weapons, is versed enough in politics to have held a half-dozen courtley positions, can handle bows and crossbows and throwing knives and javelins, knows teleports and basic spellcasting, speaks and writes like the loftiest courtier, gets invited to (and attends) royal balls where he is either the handsome, swift dancer or attends the ball even though he spends the entire time against the wall being pissed that he's here and insisting that social finery is stupid, can stalk with the finest of thieves and achieve feats of agility deserving of acrobats, is interested in doing everything, regularly hunts dragons, can sing artfully, understands navigation and sailing, either takes up or infiltrates the latest trendy religion, and speaks a dozen languages from all of his travelling. But the best part is, when he tells you about everything his character can do, he doesn't even see the glaring flaw in his character design, writing it off as all completely fine because it all happened in roleplay.