Rumble and Rant.

[pyrephox]

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.

Comments

[sariel-di.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Personally, I can argue for either side of the 'new or old characters' thing - on the one hand, new ideas are good, but on the other hand...mm.

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 archangelbeth's Betharan), a Malakite Vassal of War (photojournalist), a Free Lilim IST DH (later TraderBright; stereotypical), a Gamester Lilim (later IST Lightning, with a JudgeBright variant; very against-type), a Habbie of DH (later Swordkite), a baby Seraph-Bal of Fate (later Seraph of Judgment), and a Bright of Judgment (Destiny-ish). All of 'em fun, all of 'em different.

- 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." ^^

beware!

[sewa.livejournal.com]

I kind of have character 'types' that I can easily jump back to or alter to fit a new theme or something. Aria wasn't an original creation for Brass and Steel, and she's a character I pretty much carried around for a long time, but it's not exactly the same. Aria on Brass and Steel is very different from how she is in other places.

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.