Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo)
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To be clear, I haven't had antagonism directed at me, but I rarely do antagonists. But I have see the sorts of doublespeak that happen around them. 'Jane/John is such a bitch/creeper, did you hear how (s)he did/does X ic thing I find gross/offensive/manipulative' is just as often a reference to a player as a character. I've seen it as staff, as a player, even on this forum.
I honestly feel that our 'separation of IC/OOC' exists more as a comforting fiction than any sort of norm. At least in my experience. YMMV.
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@kanye-qwest said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
@apos ehhh i played a mildly acerbic - mildly - person and had people treat me like a heinous bitch IRL because of it. I didn't talk to people OOC much, because I don't get like to get down like that. Experiences will vary, and if you are playing a terrible male character I think you get away with a lot more than if you are playing a 'terrible' female character.
Quoted for truth. So much painful truth.
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@kanye-qwest I'd say more YMMV. I played an absolutely horrible bitch of a vampire on TR. But everyone was aware that it was IC. But part of it may have been that I absolutely let her be wrong, and publicly so. She was a beatstick, a dog on a chain, but man, she'd bark her damn head off if she had an opinion. I still snicker to this day that she ran the only Elysium in town for awhile. Folks either loved or hated how she ran it.
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@miss-demeanor said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
If it helps, I absolutely adored Victor Fries from B:TAS. He was one of the few truly relatable villains in the Batman stable.
I understand this sentiment.
I saw Heart of Ice on September 7, 1992. It was Labor Day, and it was the series' premiere episode (I didn't get to see the Man-Bat episode, which aired on the Sunday before). And it fucking blew me away. I was hooked.
I have a partner now. Two kids. And if any of them were taken from me the way Nora was taken from him, I would have taken the same path. I think most of us would.
Fries, like Batman, was a victim of circumstance. Fries, like Batman, is extremely intelligent and gifted. And if it weren't for that goddamned soup, he would've capped Boyle and had his revenge.
Anyhow, I digress.
If you're going to play an antagonist -- and a true, iconic one, not like the Condiment King or someone like that -- please play it smart.
On the flip side, if you're going to play a protagonist, please don't be a fucking mong about it.
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With comic stuff there are def some chars who just shouldn't be playable for various reasons
Like, some villains shouldn't be playable just because they're not chars who should always be around, like Apocalypse and Sinister and Doom
But there are also chars who shouldn't be playable because they're just inherently gross, like, Carnage who's a sexual-sadist spree killer or Empath and Daken who're basically just super-rapists
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My real issue with the Ramsey Bolton kind of characters isn't so much that they get to do bad things. Plenty of perfectly normal-looking good-guy-saying-the-right-things characters, both in their applications and on the grid, turn their kinks on or whatever in private.
My issue is that unlike novels or series where such characters get away with it for a variety of reasons - their thematic position allows them immunity, others consider the consequences of attacking them, etc - on MU* that doesn't happen. It's quite frequent (practically guaranteed, even) to see neonates standing up for that cute ghoul who's getting verbally attacked by the mean ol' Elder, or for peasants and minor nobles to stick their noses up at High Lords.
And when it comes to actual villains? To characters who in fact are IC obnoxious or get in the way? I've seen the occasional murder-party form, complete with OOC boasts about how they'd do it. Mind you, it doesn't actually happen often but for many players being the antagonist and seeing that kind of talk is discouraging on its own, which is why not many rear their disagreeable heads (or get to keep them for long).
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel Bonus points under the heading of 'all the sigh in the world': when said white hat murder party does things to the 'bad guy' that are ten times worse than anything the bad guy ever did, which is pretty common.
Oh fucking well.
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<sarcasm> BUT HE DESERVED IT! TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE! </sarcasm>
It can be really thematic, and good RP, when a couple of people go overboard. But when the kill squad entirely goes above and beyond, that's just... yeah.
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@surreality I don't even mind that. IC hypocrisy, mob mentality and all that stuff is fair game. I'd actually love to see that kind of roleplay take place in a game even if my PC ended up getting torn to shreds.
What I do mind, very much so, is the OOC element in these things. And not even just the crossing of the IC/OOC line - the communicating of information, planning over pages, etc - which is bad enough on its own, but the animosity shown over public channels. The "I'm gonna kill him if he does anything!" kinds of empty boasts that really damage the collective gaming culture significantly, since they make this the norm.
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@Bobotron @Arkandel I would love to see that if there was some self-awareness involved. As in, 'oh, gods, we've become what we despise' and so on. That dawning moment of horror is kinda amazing.
But that pretty much never, ever happens.
Oh fucking well.
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@miss-demeanor said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
@kanye-qwest I'd say more YMMV. I played an absolutely horrible bitch of a vampire on TR. But everyone was aware that it was IC. But part of it may have been that I absolutely let her be wrong, and publicly so. She was a beatstick, a dog on a chain, but man, she'd bark her damn head off if she had an opinion. I still snicker to this day that she ran the only Elysium in town for awhile. Folks either loved or hated how she ran it.
Ok, but your average WoD game seems a lot more chatty OOC and sandboxy than any game I'd like to play. I don't want to feel like I need to be smiling and explaining myself on channels or befriending strangers just to RP a character. Like I said - that's not my jam.
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Sadly a lot of people, as we've discussed ad nauseum, is the MUSH power fantasy thing. Other character tropes I am really tired of is the 'good at everything' person. It's annoying to be talking to someone in RP and them go 'Oh, I know. <blahbityblahbity about topics>' especially with no stats to back it up.
@Kanye-Qwest
Well, that's fine. But a lot of us view a lack of OOC communication and collaboration to be a very bad thing. Like, talking to each other to ensure that there's not OOC animosity is fucking important in these hobbies. There is no tone to text, and sometimes it's more necessary than others. ETA: And I don't mean 'Oh, sorry, my character is just an asshole...' which can be okay if it's done right, but is usually just 'LOL I'm gonna be a shitheel of a human' when done. I mean the whole 'You RP something, someone goes apeshit/gets in a bad place/etc.' over it, and then there's OOC animosity and shit because of that. -
@kanye-qwest I actually consider preemptively explaining/warning others about your character to be a suspicious marker.
My preferred method of playing is to just pose. I don't like talking to people I'm in RP with too much about my character's mindset, intentions or anything like that; I'd rather chat about anything other than the RP I'm already doing.
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@bobotron said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
But a lot of us view a lack of OOC communication and collaboration to be a very bad thing. Like, talking to each other to ensure that there's not OOC animosity is fucking important in these hobbies.
Well get your shit together, Summer.
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@surreality said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
'Lone wolf/solitary crackpot/always goes it on their own' character tropes.
Whenever I meet snipers, I usually just say, that must be nice, I'll call you when I'm doing anything outside and we have hours of notice so you can belly crawl to your position and not move ages, then, when things go sideways and the firefight is on the OTHER side of the building, you can complain OOC to us that you have nothing to do. FFS, grab a SMG smartgun and get in the game!
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It is painfully obvious when lonewolf independent characters are created because someone has the burning need to be the central, driving protaganist in the story. They never seem to realize that other people on a MU don't just exist as the supporting cast for them.
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I think the phrase 'questionably viable' is a bit subjective. A concept that might cause one person to raise their brow at it might be perfectly fine in the opinion of another person. That said, I will admit that there are some tropes that I am positively tired of. They often fall along the lines of being able to do ALL THE THINGS EVER! despite being relatively young and, in my experience, are the kind of characters the players try to get into the role of center of attention. This is the kind of thing I feel staff should keep an eye out for and, if necessary, put a very quick stop to.
ETA: If anyone wants a good example of what I mean, read the webcomic Ensign Sue Must Die. It is the perfect example of that trope, plus several others.
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here." - ― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
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@apu said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
They often fall along the lines of being able to do ALL THE THINGS EVER! despite being relatively young and, in my experience, are the kind of characters the players try to get into the role of center of attention.
I think there's a math to this. Starting characters often get gimpy level 1 rookie sheets, where it makes little sense to say they're older than 25 given their skill levels can barely handle the most mundane things when dice come out.
Then, after a year on grid, through rp, and xp through noms, they become 20 year old admiral-commando who's the best at everything, even though they just get laid and hang out at the bar. Props to faraday for making a system where this doesn't happen.
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@apu said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):
I think the phrase 'questionably viable' is a bit subjective. A concept that might cause one person to raise their brow at it might be perfectly fine in the opinion of another person.
It's more a factor of what some of the folks in the thread earlier were describing, re: characters that work well in fiction, but don't often make grand PCs on a MU* for a variety of reasons. (Some may make awesome plot NPCs or short-term antagonist NPCs, but they don't make for enduring PCs very well.)
There are versions of these tropes that do work -- for instance, the 'lone wolf' who is grousing all the time about all the teamwork they have to do now in <theme> when they'd rather be working on their own -- but they tend to have players aware of the limitations of the trope and compensate for it intentionally in ways that make the character not actually that trope at all in practice. Without that awareness on the player level, you have that asshole who is filing a dozen jobs a day and sucking up staff time like a shopvac on steroids because they have to do everything solo, and if they're not interacting with anybody but staff outside of OOC socializing and minimal BaRP brooding quietly in a corner and not talking to anyone, well... why be there at all?
Oh fucking well.
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Ah! Yes. I see what you're saying now. That is definitely a horse of a different color.
