Character: What's In The Word?
I came home the other day, for some R&R, and noticing my "home" (in contrast to my "away") group was ready for my (violent if anything) Gaming, I thought I might get some ideas from my past campaigns of AD&D. So, there I was, flipping away at the folder of memories, where I keep stored all my characters and evil ideas (both tried-out and new), and I noticed something that made me think.
I came home the other day, for some R&R, and noticing my "home" (in contrast to my "away") group was ready for my (violent if anything) Gaming, I thought I might get some ideas from my past campaigns of AD&D. So, there I was, flipping away at the folder of memories, where I keep stored all my characters and evil ideas (both tried-out and new), and I noticed something that made me think: All my characters were permeated by a somethingness that made you read them and think: "Yeah, duh... Of course it's one of his characters... Can't you tell?". That made me question myself yet again, in a typically Socratic style: How does one make a character, and why does one's character act like she does?
When we design a character, what do we aim to achieve? What makes a character we have designed desirable to us to play, or not? A simple way to put it, is we design a character so we can expedite in an imaginary (and, indeed, ideal) world what we would wish reality to be. Whoa! Hold on there! You're saying my Ravenloft campaign is "idealized"? Yes, kind reader, and I implore you to view the wider picture: Is it not an ideal world, one where friends all band together, and succeed in whatever they do? In RPGs, you'll notice, the goal in general is to strive for what you want, and to suffer as much as is enjoyable to the player, but ultimately, be rewarded with success. So, since we see that the world is already in a sense ideal, would it not be fitting if the people who roam it were ideal in the same exactly dimension?
I noticed from my own experience that what you desire to play depends quite decisively on your general emotional state at the time. When I started-off, I was full of fire, and I wanted to leave an impression, so I played an extremely-low charisma antisocial sylvan-elf, with too much muscle-power and dexterity, and way too little general usefulness. When I was going through a very difficult exam period (incidentally I was having trouble with my love-life), I found myself playing a human monk of the god of suffering (Illmater for the FR buffs), with so many healing-based skills that he was a walking clinic. Could this mean that at this point in my life I was feeling hurt, or that what I desired inside was some healing?
By now, you might be wondering "why am I reading this?" and thinking that publishing my sad life is my secret perversion, or my way of screaming to the world that I need therapy. It is not, however, that simple: What I'm trying to explain is that in a RPG, we try to be (read: Role-play) the avatar of our ego-ideal (more details by a Mr. S. Freud). The ego-ideal is the image we have in our mind of what we would be in a perfect world. Not to be confused with the super-ego, which is implanted in our minds by our parents during childhood, the ego-ideal is completely a manufacture of our own mind and set of values. Look at all the players you know, they all exhibit characteristics that are omnipresent, despite their playing many different characters. To prove this point, I'll cite a few cliches, and you try and see if you recognize them:
The silent guy who is definitely most likely to become an axe-murderer later in life will always play a broken character, probably a mage, or a psionic. The flamboyant twit who can't stop chattering and insists on being the center of attention, will play a bard, or any other role that does little useful except annoy others. The guilt-ridden guy will play a cleric, doctor, telepath or other non-destructive kind of person, and the order-obsessed police-officer will always be the paladin, detective, commander or samurai. (No offence meant to the above. I myself am an antisocial savage elf in most of my free time.)
What all these players, and indeed all of us are trying to do, is role-play what we wish we were, but can't be in real life. What we crave to be called in life is what we are heralded as in the roles we play. Nobody plays what they are; everybody wants to play the only thing they wish they were, even if in truth they would never do it given the chance (I doubt many of us would be up to being cyber-mercenaries, or even more so, barbarians. Especially half-orc ones. With axes. And funny accents.).
Have you noticed how some players, and probably you too, have a stack of characters, but only a few of them are important to them? You must have seen players with cherished and loved characters they absolutely loved to play but don't any more. You're probably thinking that they love them because they symbolize many fun-filled times and countless hours of enjoyment, and not all the jargon I'm hosing you with. You'll be impressed to find that this much is true! Have you ever wondered why they never play them any more? Why they always speak so fondly of the times they had as so-and-so-the-something-or-other, and reminisce of the amazing adventures and near-death experiences, but never pick up the sheet and dice to become them again?
It's because the ego-ideal the character symbolizes is one that the player can't relate to any more. In layplayer's terms, it's a wannabe they don't wana-be. They can't relate to them, in the same way anybody has trouble relating to another players avatar, and so they feel out of their skin "being" them. Maybe something made them change their outlook on life, or something important shook their belief in something they were very sure about. Maybe their mind has evolved into new ideas and concepts, and finds the concerns they had back then trivial and unimportant. This is especially pronounced with younger players, whose mind is evolving constantly from a childish outlook to an adult one and is characterized by rapid changes in both emotion and values in general. Make a little more sense now?
What's the moral of this story? RPG character designing is more restrictive than you think. Not at all a bad thing, mind you, because the only thing limiting your imagination (and indeed, your will to play), is your mind's craves and wishes, not the game's mechanics. Next time you're Gaming though, and a player wants to be something that doesn't fit in, don't give her a hard time. It's not nice to clamp-down on a player's character-design and core-concept, because apart from being a creation of hers, the player is also a symbol of what she wants to be. She'll feel happy when her avatar succeeds, and sad when she fails, but she will be definitely struck if you force her to change the behavior or characteristics of her character.
Bottom line? Don't let anybody tell your character how to behave. He's your soul's avatar, and equally sacred as you.
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I can relate. My players do the same thing.
Not sure that I agree 100% with the last paragraph, but the rest is good.
Mind you, what does that say for those of us who like CoC & similar games? These are worlds in which Eldritch Horrors lurk in the shadows and character death / insanity is common. Is that our idealized state? One in which we're more likely to fail than to succeed, and in which we face next to impossible odds?
Adam G. - Yes. We live our lives with an illusion of impossible odds and world-shaking stakes. Isn't it a nice idea to think that they are actually true, that your paranoia is justified, that you are as put upon as you feel?
dig the premise, not the conclusion. Let's deal in extremes and talk about that psychopath.
The concept is solid as long as you make it a little more conditional. That doesn't, however, mean that player psychologies need to be conceeded to. I think it a fine and responsible thing to do to call a player on her psychological hang ups.
See, what you're saying is let the psychopath get on his power trip because that's what his soul is crying for. It's him, and you've got to respect it. I'm saying there's nothing wrong with forcing the psychopath's character into a situation where they have to face up to their powerlessness. We're mostly friends here, and, unfortunatly, friends often don't say things to one another because they are friends. (To all of you who know me and are reading this, I'm still not over that Andrea thing and never will be you untrustorthy sons of bitches). In a game, you have the flexiblity to bring something up that has been reflected in their character, at least to get a symbolic conversation about it started.
-J.S.,
Desperado in the Culture Wars,
Cosmic Bandito Emeritus
So does that mean that all DM's are schizophrenics with a serious God complex?
"All my characters were permeated by a somethingness that made you read them and think: "
I can't really say the same. But then again, mayhaps this is because I keep stronger, tighter shields between me and my characters.
"I noticed from my own experience that what you desire to play depends quite decisively on your general emotional state at the time."
If you had no emotions, would this mean you had no general emotional state, or simply that it had no effect on what you desired to play?
Could it be... that one's personal -desire- of what to play, is not consulted on the decision?
"Could this mean that at this point in my life I was feeling hurt, or that what I desired inside was some healing?"
While I could apply Occam's Razor and slice your article into little pieces, I don't believe it was coincidence. Yes, it is entirely possible. And your article was, in my opinion, written well for the views it tried to express. But I doubt that your experiences would be true for everyone, even for a majority.
"Look at all the players you know, they all exhibit characteristics that are omnipresent, despite their playing many different characters."
As a counterpoint to that theory, I suggest that the people who play a new character every week, are not really given the time to get into the new character. I can easily guarantee that the characters of players around me do NOT display omnipresent qualities; however, rather than declare my own viewpoint null since they have not played "many different characters" for me to compare in the light of your theory, I simply wish to state that there is a connection.
"Nobody plays what they are; everybody wants to play the only thing they wish they were, even if in truth they would never do it given the chance"
Simplified, this is escapism; everyone plays... someone different, or in other words, someone in a situation other than theirs who is also not them. And given the currently, widely accepted "laws of physics" for this world, it is quite unlikely that they would be able to ever "learn magic" :)
"Have you noticed how some players, and probably you too, have a stack of characters, but only a few of them are important to them? You must have seen players with cherished and loved characters they absolutely loved to play but don't any more. You're probably thinking that they love them because they symbolize many fun-filled times and countless hours of enjoyment, and not all the jargon I'm hosing you with."
No, not really. All hold equal importance to me. I love them not for the symbols; the character sheet are the symbols, and I don't need those to play. I love them for the personality they have.
"You'll be impressed to find that this much is true! Have you ever wondered why they never play them any more? Why they always speak so fondly of the times they had as so-and-so-the-something-or-other, and reminisce of the amazing adventures and near-death experiences, but never pick up the sheet and dice to become them again?"
No, oddly enough, I've never wondered. It was because, after so long of those near-death experiences, they [unamazingly enough] came too close on one adventure, and are now dead.
"It's because the ego-ideal the character symbolizes is one that the player can't relate to any more."
Once I know the character [which has never, to date, required more than two consecutive game sessions, and often less], I am always able to play them afterward. Years may pass, and no difficulty. I also remember, through their memories, everything that happened to them, just as fresh as if it had been two days ago [which, for them, it was].
"In layplayer's terms, it's a wannabe they don't wana-be."
Assuming that "wannabe" was ever a factor.
"They can't relate to them, in the same way anybody has trouble relating to another players avatar, and so they feel out of their skin "being" them."
Well, yes, this IS kind of the definition of escapism. And, in that mindset, the POINT of roleplaying in general :)
"Maybe their mind has evolved into new ideas and concepts, and finds the concerns they had back then trivial and unimportant."
I take umbrage not at the term "evolve", but at the implications that this can only take place one way; and at the common presumption that embracing a new paradigm means leaving the old behind.
"This is especially pronounced with younger players, whose mind is evolving constantly from a childish outlook to an adult one"
What defines a childish outlook? What characterizes an adult one?
"Not at all a bad thing, mind you, because the only thing limiting your imagination (and indeed, your will to play), is your mind's craves and wishes, not the game's mechanics."
Craves and wishes may not be the right word. Self-discipline, on the other hand, does provide very important restrictions.
"Next time you're Gaming though, and a player wants to be something that doesn't fit in, don't give her a hard time. It's not nice to clamp-down on a player's character-design and core-concept, because apart from being a creation of hers,"
Helping the player adjust it to something which DOES exist in the world, however, so everyone can be playing the same game... is giving her an easy time. It's helping her out. Because while some of the character creation process, on our side, may be rolling up stats, generating character sheets, and the like, a concession needs to be made to the character, whose every aspect might not be created by the player.
"She'll feel happy when her avatar succeeds, and sad when she fails,"
Neither of these strike me as particularly true, nor as being under any obligation to be.
"but she will be definitely struck if you force her to change the behavior or characteristics of her character.
Bottom line? Don't let anybody tell your character how to behave."
I do agree with the end bit, to this extent, but for more direct reasons - namely, that the player knows her character best. And even so, I only object when the GM is refusing to keep updated on the character. If the GM knows the character just as well as I can communicate, I trust the GM to play her for a time.
-Coilean mac Caiside
Jee Bongo did you forget about exploration? I mean RPG's are a great way to get a partial answer to the "What if I did/was…" question.
What if I was a drug addict? What if I had a death wish? What if I actually went into a burning building to try to save a baby? What if I was a total pacifist? What if I was obsessed with plectaines (gotta plug in one of the rare modern greek words I know)?
A character doesn't have to be an idealized self, it can be an alternate self, an anti-self or the epitoma of a thing you hate the most about yourself. A character can also be imposed by the Game Master or the scenario (remember those pregenerated characters so many adventures used to have?)
What Bongo describes is just one possible (and frequent) manner in which one can choose/create a character.
And as far as character concepts go, I totally dissagree with the "don't tell anybody what type of character to play" angle you're giving. A GM, if he/she wants to run a game that is enjoyable for everyone needs to put certain limits.
Here are mine:
I strongly encourage the players to discuss what kind of party they would like to be before they make their character (unless the game isn't suited to that (like Vampire where your secrets are often your most prized posessions)).
I don't allow players to play rapists, mass murderers or child molesters. There would be no fun for me or the players I usually play with. Although a character could have that as a "dark secret from the past" or have been the victim of such an act.
I don't allow people to play "party parasites", you know the player who steals from the other players, who backstabs or sells them out or even worst are built so that they eventually turn on the other players.
I don't allow too unballanced parties (in games where there are character classes). Ex: while I don't insist on every D&D party having a cleric an all bard party would probably get vetoed.
I don't allow characters that will ruin a campaign. i.e. letting someone play a priest of Bane while another plays a Paladin of Helm, or letting someone play a Hunter in a Vampire Game or even worst letting someone play a ghoul in a hunter game.
I will encourage players to try something else once in a while. i.e. Hey Nancy ever concider playing something other than a drop dead gorgeous but savage barbarian?
The rest is up to the group as a whole.
PS: to Starhawk.
Schizophrenia isn't the split personality or multiple personality complex by the way.
Schizophrenia encompasses a wide aray of mental disorders (like multiple personality). The schism refered to in schizophrenia is one with reality. Just like all squares are rectangles and not all rectangles are necessarily squares, most people with multiple personalities are chizophrenics but not all schizophrenics have multiple personalities.
On that note,
Cthulhu Matata
Sam,
Pardon my lack of a psychology degree. Thbbbbpt. hehe.
;-P
Starhawk
All is forgiven Starhawk.
PS: Aren't you supposed to "He who knows?"
Sorry I read too much Marvel comics as a teen.
Cthulhu Matata
Commonalities between characters? Definitely. There are some players like Coilean, who pride themselves on playing very unique characters every time. And there are some players, as Sam noted, who like to explore traits different from themselves. Having said that, my experience is more like Bongo's. The vast majority of players I've observed consistently use certain physical or character traits.
Consider just a few players of my acquaintance: Sara, who always plays extremely beautiful women with remarkably-colored eyes, long hair, substantial magic/psychic powers, and a yen for romance; Tim always plays rational, calculating characters with no particular attachments and a very acerbic sense of humor; Ian always plays greedy characters (he likes dwarves if it is a fantasy campaign) whose primary motivation (aside from helping the party) is accumulating wealth; John likes to play gruff old men with a flair for comedy. Me - dunno, except my ref tells me that my characters always enjoy a chance to get outraged. Which is probably true.
But WHY are there commonalities? There's a $64,000 question. How does our everyday life affect what we do at the tabletop? Do we need to kill things and have easy victories when our lives are stressful? Do we need to heal things to compensate for damage we've done elsewhere? Do we need to try out qualities we'd like to have by practicing using them in character first? These are the really interesting questions that Bongo only touches on lightly, and that there are no simple answers to.
I recall a psychological paper on the Net suggesting that a female player used her male character as a way of exploring certain qualities of confidence and extroversion that she felt she didn't possess in everyday life. John Ford's book, Growing Up Weightless, has a similar plotline in which the protagonist uses the confident persona he played in RPG to inspire himself to take charge in an emergency situation. Personally, I think Bongo's right in implying that there's a strong degree of wish fulfillment in many players, that we play the person we'd like to be in our favorite stories, and that the type of person and maybe the type of stories we want to be in change over time.
But there's a lot more than wish-fulfillment going on, as Coilean and Sam point out. It's complicated, interesting, and there should be a lot more discussion of why we choose to play the games and the characters that we do.
Characters as soul's avatar? Maybe sometimes. Maybe not all the time. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a character is just a quick mask. But I wouldn't deny that a good character provides a great deal of psychological satisfaction.
Are characters sacred and immune to clamp downs? Definitely not. As Sam pointed out, people who roleplay have to want to play together. And your "sacred" soul's avatar may not be my cup of tea if you want to play a backstabber, a child molester, etc. A ref may find it difficult to integrate you into a serious feudal Europe campaign if you insist on playing the wise-cracking timetravelling Aztec sorcerer with an albino walrus familiar. If you want other folks to respect your desires for play, you've got to respect theirs.
Bongo seems to provoke the most interesting discussions.
How do I choose what kind of character to play?
I think I react to the last PC I had. Since I have the highest death rate in my gaming group (I go through characters as fast as Shoemaker goes through tires) I get to change characters often.
Last time I played a Duro captain who, among other things, was very bossy (of course I was bossy the other players were supposed to be my employees). We all died last week so now I contemplating playing an introspective and introverted character who will be the group's noble's bodyguard.
Why will I try that? For kicks i guess. See I'm not to instroverted in real life (not anymore at least) so why not try that.
I guess we all come to the gaming table with our expectations and our "dreams" for our character. For me though all that is not an end but a mean to an end. I don't play to have a great paralel life. RPG's are the excuse I have to see my friends on a regular basis. Some people have cards, baseball or bowling, We have RPG's.
I play a character that will give me one more reason to make me look forward to seeing my gaming buddies next week. Just like the GM tries to give us one more reason to come back.
To each one's own reasons I guess.
At least in my case, I was nodding along with the entire article. Certainly people will often play a character who is a polar opposite from their real self or who has a particular quality switched, but if you think about it.. seems like even those characters are often /mostly/ the person. Let's see, if I take me, and then crank up my charisma, what happens? What if I make myself really brave?
Of course characters are often orthogonal to the real person's outlook, but at least in my experience that sort tend to be either an "iconic" character or one that is quickly forgotten after death. If not, they often take on the traits of the player, like it or not! My own experience in online social roleplaying (MUCKs and MUSHes) has made up my mind that I'm definitely Chaotic Good in real life.
Madison's "quick masks", far more often than not, fall squarely into a stereotype with few distinguishing characteristics.
In Vampire LARP, I was always struck by the number of obese nerdy women playing characters whose scores in physical attractiveness was very high. They dressed the part too - unwisely sheathing their doughy folds of belly in black sheer textile. They often used their character attributes in game to get close to male players who were in real life, physically attractive (regardless of their character scores). It made me very sad to see people so desperate for sexual attention that they would resort to engineering it's facsimile in a game.
Personally, I fit with Sam from Quebec. I play a character that will give me one more reason to make me look forward to seeing my gaming buddies next week. It's not Shakespeare, but then, neither are most of the artistes I see who take the "art" of role-playing intensely seriously.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury,
Please excuse my uncoutheness at not having responded for so long to the hordes of wonderful comments you have been sharing with me and the other readers of Gamegreen. What can I say to my defence except: Scuba-diving is more attractive than net-surfing...
Sam, as always, you are the star comenter of my work, and I'd like to tip my chapeau in your direction for the use of the (exceedingly rare) plectaine (which is in fact a slightly engli-fied version. The propper pronounciation/suffix is plek-TA-ni, but we all find the ubiquitous plectaine more euro-friendly.)
Coilean, thankyou ever so much for taking all that trouble to compile such exhaustive a comentary on my humble article, it is truly an honour to note that there are people out there who bother to coment that much.
The rest of you, thankyou from the depths of my alien heart. It's always a pleasure to see that there are people left scratching thier heads, grinning at the corner of their mouths, frowning in outrage or clicking "back" in boredom after coming into contact with my work.
For the rest of it, I'd like to say just one word of wisdom:
FNORD
PS. Albino walrus familiars might give +2 to cake-baking checks, but I've found that aztech characters in general benefit more from a familiar of either the quadriplegic Neil crock, or the eunuch lemur of Burma persuasion, as they both grant a whopping +5 to philately and stamp-collecting checks. All familiar with this type of game need no reminder of the deadly spell combo stamp-collecting does with the "cure minor migrane/menstral cramp" cantrip... Needless to say many low-level Aztechs have saved their bacon because of this. Study on this.