Stuck on the wheel

A fine article about why players make the same character over and over — or the same subset of characterss.

Vampire, Mage, and AD&D, to name just a very few, consistently deprotagonize player characters. The suave character botches a seduction roll and the game or the GM assigns an outcome that undermines the character concept. The fierce character whiffs and stumbles through combat sequences. A great deal of table humor during RPG sessions comes from the system undermining the characters. Well, I’m sorry to say, but that’s the textbook understanding of dysfunctional. And we’re not even talking about railroading here. If system railroading consistently create story outcomes that aren’t satisfying to the unconscious story preferences embedded by the player in the character, you see the player creating the same character over and over again.

An interesting observation. It’s been noted that my own PCs tend to have one of two patterns: the Loner (embittered, seeking redemption, seeking connections to humanity) or else Supporting characters (subordinating their own desires to others).

Armchair psychology origins of that pattern aside, it’s interesting that none of those characters have ever actually had that pay-off moment where their particular yens were laid to rest. The Support characters are unlikely to — that is, after all, one of the dangers of being that sort of character.

Of the Loners, one memorable Amber character had the moment blown twice — first in the F2F game she first debuted in (in the final ep before the plug was pulled on the game, she finally met her mysterious Amberite parent — who turned out not to have much of an interest in her, except to take back the sword that had been her companion since her childhood), then in the PBEM game where I recycled her (where the payoff turned out to be so dissatisfactory, and not just for my character, that it led to all sorts of meta-campaign brouhaha).

I call to mind as well another dark and driven grim fighter I played in a long campaign. It turned out that the Main Bad Guy of the campaign was the fellow who had slaughtered his village, sending him out on a path of life-long vengeance. Eagerly awaiting the final confrontation … he got taken out with a Sleep spell in the first round, and slept through the final, climactic battle. Perfectly legal, perfectly in keeping with the rules (I should know, they were my own home brew), and utterly frustrating to the character’s story arc.

Edward, another character in that pattern, had a few moments in the sun — the echoes of the Alternate Amber where, rather than being the sneaky-sleazy assassin son of Bleys, he was the Champion of the Queen, created a subtle influence that would have ultimately (if the overall story hadn’t ended) been a significant resolution for him.

I suspect the closest I’m likely to get with getting this metacharacter’s tale resolved in some fashion will come in Nobilis (assuming that Sian ever gets to catch her breath).

In just talking with Doyce about this, in the context of more player-directed systems (InSpectre, Donjon), similar to the idea behind this article thread, it occurs to me that this would still be a problem. It’s one thing for players to know “what they like” in a character — it’s another thing for them to (a) recognize where the story needs to go and to (b) be able to take it there. And self-awareness of the untold tale isn’t necessarily better — some players, at least, might find it narcissistic to externalize that sort of an inside story (assuming they recognize it as such), especially with other game stuff going on around it. Further, while the “beer-n-pretzel” systems above let the player control the tactics (the instances in an individual game session), controlling the story arc may well be a different matter.

An interesting idea, though. One worth pondering as a player, as well as (if I ever managed to get my character-related stuff going in IDC) a GM.