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Rumble and Rant.
First of all, I had a lovely Christmas. :) I'm in a good mood, all things considered, although a bit bummed about the closing of Brass and Steel. I'll miss the place. And, after reading the metaplot, rather bummed that things never really started to heat up. It was a cool idea. Ah, well.
However, inspired by a rather snarky (but true) rant on fanfic, is one of my pet peeves on RPGs.
People playing the same damn character all the time. This was a real problem in my gaming group back in high-school and college with one or two people. No matter what the genre, they'd essentially play the /same/ character, with a couple of cosmetic changes. Not character templates, but the /same/ /character/, with just the names (and sometimes species) in the background changed.
I hate this. I hate it with the big hatey hate. When I'm GMing, a lot of my fun comes from seeing how the PCs react to the events in the world around them. I like to see the conflicts, the moments of cooperation, the revelations and all of that. When the party remains basically the same, I already know how they're going to react to anything I throw at them. /They/ already know how they're going to react to any given situation. There's no growth, no surprise. It bores me, and I lose the desire to make up cool, interesting NPCs for the PCs to interact with.
I can understand being attached to a character, or just not wanting to go through the fuss of creating a new one, but I just wish that more people would sit down, and try to play something they've never played before. If they usually play heroic characters, try a villain. Play the leader type? Try a loyal servant, or someone with stage fright. It can be much fun, and even if it doesn't enchant them, they might gain some sort of new spin to put on their next archetypical character.
But, eh. I'm weird.
However, inspired by a rather snarky (but true) rant on fanfic, is one of my pet peeves on RPGs.
People playing the same damn character all the time. This was a real problem in my gaming group back in high-school and college with one or two people. No matter what the genre, they'd essentially play the /same/ character, with a couple of cosmetic changes. Not character templates, but the /same/ /character/, with just the names (and sometimes species) in the background changed.
I hate this. I hate it with the big hatey hate. When I'm GMing, a lot of my fun comes from seeing how the PCs react to the events in the world around them. I like to see the conflicts, the moments of cooperation, the revelations and all of that. When the party remains basically the same, I already know how they're going to react to anything I throw at them. /They/ already know how they're going to react to any given situation. There's no growth, no surprise. It bores me, and I lose the desire to make up cool, interesting NPCs for the PCs to interact with.
I can understand being attached to a character, or just not wanting to go through the fuss of creating a new one, but I just wish that more people would sit down, and try to play something they've never played before. If they usually play heroic characters, try a villain. Play the leader type? Try a loyal servant, or someone with stage fright. It can be much fun, and even if it doesn't enchant them, they might gain some sort of new spin to put on their next archetypical character.
But, eh. I'm weird.
no subject
Well, two examples for either side, and one middle-of-the-road. ^^
- I cast myself as a Lilim most of the time, in IN terms. (Except when I'm a Habbalite, but that's another story. ^^) I play umpty-billion Lilim. My first actual IN character ever? Bright Lilim. Next game? Bright. Next games? Dark Bound and Dark Free. I've got like eleven to thirteen Lilim and variant-Lilim stored up, plus NPCs/vague-concepts. I know Lilim. I'm good at them; I'm comfortable playing them, be it 'fluffhead' or 'hard and practical and businesslike' or 'totally against type', 'bright' or 'gray' or 'black'. I'm more than fine playing Lilim - but I try to get at least one new 'hook' in every character.
- For real games, I've played: a Bright of the Wind (Marches-focus), a Bal of DH, a Bright of Fire (templated off
- I have... [counts] Five or six variants off my Betharan by now. She's FUN to play with, and I know her really well and am comfortable playing her ninety-five percent of the time, but I'm running her in, basically, one timeline per variant (except the IST-Lilim --> LightningBright, because that's a real campaign). In every timeline, she's in totally different scenarios, and she's got different mindsets; it's just that she's still her, and her general base mindset and speechpatterns don't change unto unrecognizability, unless that happens as the timeline progresses.
...so basically, IMO: "Recycling characters or pulling them out from different points along a base timeline is perfectly cool, it's just that you shouldn't recycle a Coke can into an identical Coke can every time. Try a Pepsi can or a piece of aluminum foil instead." ^^
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The thing that just 'gets' me is people playing the exact same character, almost every time, in almost every genre. It's like the identical twin syndrome in AD&D. Character A dies, so Player A comes up with what's pretty much the same sheet, and says that it's Character A's twin brother. My players have always been a bit more subtle than that, I must admit, but it still gets...stale when you start a new game, and you know the concept that every player is going to go for before they say it.
I find it...frustrating. It's a pet peeve. :) It generally has no effect on anything except that, when tabletopping, I get burned out as a GM more quickly. *shrugs*
no subject
Recycling a character for a new game...depends, IMO. Though I admit that I've never tabletopped, and haven't been RPing for that long (maybe...three years by now, four if you count horrible freeform games?). [grins] Like, say, if I played a Bright Lilim in Game A, and then 'rewound' her into her Dark Lilim form for Game B (and didn't railroad Game B into following the exact same threads I had set for backstory in Game A), or vice-versa, it could be interesting. Or if I played X Habbalite in Game A, which was bright low-contrast and very canon-focused, and then pulled him out again for Game B, which was dark high-contrast and very noncanon, the same, as long as his concept still worked.
I think it depends on how much is being recycled to start, how much the character is allowed to change, and what kind of game the character's in. (If you're playing X character all the time and your games are low on character development or plot or both...yeah, boring as hell. If you play X in ten very different games/settings, though, and you aren't getting bored with playing him, and the games go reasonably long or complex...it can be interesting to watch the variants develop. (Heck, take my Nybbases: I play him all the time, but wow is my first serious Nybbas absolutely nothing like my INL one except superficially. [grins])
But like I said, I've never tabletopped and haven't played much. And YMMV, of course. ^^
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I don't notice it as much when I play as when I GM. I'm not trying to give anyone grief about what they have fun playing, really; it's just something that makes /me/ twitch.
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Which is one nice thing about IN -- you can change a lot about a character by tweaking what Word they're involved with.
O:>
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[nodnods] Gotcha.
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Or make people generate characters for their buddies?
I'm addicted to doing different characters. (The quasi-MPD one was, mmmmmmm, yes, well. Apparently addicted to the same thing...) Character type X? Done that, wanna do something different now.
Now, if a game doesn't quite get off the ground, that's different. I've tweaked a character I really liked and wanted to use and the campaign never quite suited her (and was dead, and a different GM, anyway). And I'll do it again if I ever get the chance -- i.e., a good GM, a campaign that fairly rare psionic powers work for, and me and da spouse playing. Because really she needs to have the interaction there. The street rat and the rich guy and them the only telepaths they really know of who aren't relatives out to murder the rich guy for his money...
Because sometimes a character is just... too under-used in a game. The game was too short-lived, the GM didn't really work out, stuff like that.
I can see getting burned out, though I'd probably start trying to put spins on things -- this one rescued the princess last time... How'd he like to rescue a princess werewolf this time?
Predictable player-characters are an evil GM's toys.
no subject
And until the burn out, I do try to put spin on it. But after a while it just feels like, I don't know, if the players aren't going to bother to try and come up with anything new, why should I? Selfish of me, I know, but character interaction is what really revs my engine in a game. If it's stale, it's just hard to keep being interested.
beware!
Sometimes I feel like I could do more with a character type than I've done at a certain place, and copy it onto there.
I don't really change names if they still fit with the archetype, however unless I need to. Then again, I grew up in places that didn't really have 'themes' so it's not like I could build someone off of one. If there is a theme though, I be sure the character fits with it, even if it's very closeley related to an old one.
Re: beware!
Heh. I probably should have put my rant in different, more positive terms. Instead of saying 'my pet peeve is', perhaps I should have said, "I really /love/ to see it when people play character types that I haven't seen them play before. It gets me interested and all happy when someone who usually plays cynical loners comes up with a character who's a devout, politically-minded priest, or when the guy who's almost always the leader of the party turns in a sheet for the devoted servant of another PC. It inspires me to think of whole new things and plots and relationships in a way that getting new versions of old characters (even old, cool characters) doesn't. Simply because it's fresh, and new, and there's more Stuff to play with, as a GM. New party dynamics, new subplots to explore (having a party that is normally up for hack-and-slash turn in characters which are manipulators and courtiers is close to my definition of sheer bliss), and I--as a GM--tend to get more 'into' the game, because I don't know the characters as well. I have to discover them through events and setting, just as the players are discovering them, and /that's/ what really gets my motor revving. It makes me happy."
That's what I was trying to say in my post. However, since I'm a bitter misanthrope with communications issues, it came out negatively instead of positively. :)
Re: beware!
I freely admit to having most of my characters be fairly similar. It "just happens", but to me at least, they have individual personalities and minds of their own. :) But I do try hard to make sure that I am not playing two too similar characters at the same time. If I have a friendly, golden, happyjoy cleric going in one D&D campaign, I will be playing a grumpy, codger with a different religious focus in the other. (-If- I play a cleric at all, which I for some reason seem to end up doing...) I tend to play nice and friendly characters, and am totally inept at playing the backstabbing kind. Which is why I find playing Beleth both fun and challenging. Every RPer should at one time or another be forced to play an iconic character who is VERY different from what they normally play. It's a treat. ^^
Yup!
Re: beware!
Anyway, I try to keep my characters different, but many times I end up applying for something really similar to what I already have. oops @_X
I'm not very good at backstabbers either, so if my character's going to be bad, they're gonna be clearly bad :D