Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo)

[Tinuviel]

@sg said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

@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!

While I agree that lone-wolf style snipers (the players of whom clearly have little idea how the vast majority of snipers actually do their thing...) are meh character concepts... if you're running a thing and there's a sniper-PC - using a system/theme in which snipers are definitely a thing - and you don't give them something to shoot at/do? They're not the ones at fault.

[Shaggy]

I've had to learn to temper my taste for lone wolf types. Most specifically, since I usually play on comic book games, I've had to accept that I can't play the Punisher. I love the Punisher. He's my favorite comic book character, which always strikes me as odd because I'm a bleeding heart lib who believes in almost total gun control and opposes the death penalty. But I found Punisher comics at just the right age and there's a purity and a sort of intensity to Frank's character that I've always found very appealing to write.

But he's not suited for cooperative games. He's anti-social, hyperviolent, unforgiving and taciturn. He's not capable of doing the light social play and his predisposition to killing his enemies means he almost universally antagonizes the more morally-upright superheroes. And conflict can be good, but you throw in that almost all of those other heroes have superpowers and Frank...doesn't. It's just not a successful recipe for your average superhero MU.

But I think that's generally something people have to be aware of - pick a character that works in the game. There's lot of stuff I'd -like- to play, but if it isn't necessarily a good fit for the culture or setting, if it's just going to create strife or leave you feeling left out in the cold, save yourself the trouble.

[surreality]

@tinuviel I'm on a yes/no on this one. Yes, you can pretty easily find something for them to do. Sometimes, realistically? It's gonna be 'find a secondary skill to focus on', like driving the getaway car/etc.

The concept of a sniper typically relies on knowing a target is going to be at a certain location at a certain time and taking them out, or in defense of a specific position/ground to be held against attackers.

In my experience, very few scenes on a game are structured that way. Many consist of '...and in the course of a seemingly normal evening, OMFG SHIT JUST GOT REAL.' That doesn't leave a lot of room for snipers to be snipin'.

This is no different from being on a game in which people who translate ancient lore or research the shit out of creepy weirdness are a thing. Not every scene is going to give them a moment to use that specialization, and it shouldn't. Giles McBuffyTrope is not going to be Mr. Useful Skill At The Ready in a scene where the group wanders into the midst of a gangland shootup, or the coffee shop gets robbed -- and, frankly, neither is the sniper as a sniper (though they'll likely be more useful since they know how to generally operate a firearm in general as well).

So, yes, it's possible to give them something to do that plays to their strengths -- for instance, Giles McBuffyTrope might, with his understanding of symbolism and anthropology, recognize some element of whatever the gang's logo is from generic art or cultural history and know, 'Oh, these dudes are sporting a reference to Norse culture that's big with Neo-Nazis', even if the usefulness of that info's going to vary. Similarly, Ms. Sniper Be Snipin' would need to be pretty damned good at situational awareness, and may make the best lookout in the group, taking advantage of her well-trained perception... just not her snipin'.

Throwing in something for someone to snipe from the rooftops, though, is as unrealistic and unreasonable as deciding that suddenly the gang just has to be a group of supernaturally-affiliated cultists just because Giles showed up and needs something to do, or the character who specialized in being a seamstress needs a chance to give Grouchy McBikerchaps a tux fitting.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality Well if you're approving applications that have "I am a sniper, sniping is what I do because I am a sniper" then, yeah, you need to give them stuff to do or give them the agency to find that stuff on their own. The same goes for your other example. If you're approving characters that are heavily invested in arcane lore or occultism or whatever... then yes, you need to give them something to do.

Approving an application is more than just a rubber stamp saying 'yes you can play'. It's saying that the kind of character you're approving is one you want to see played. If you approve a character that you know won't get spotlight time, or much in the way of fulfilling RP without making such concerns absolutely clear to the player, you're just wasting their time.

[surreality]

@tinuviel I don't know if the thread has just come full circle here (re: some concepts don't work well in this medium and should potentially be restricted), or if we just agree or disagree really strongly.

Let's say I have a scene posted for 'it's a normal day at the diner when two thugs show up and try to rob the joint', and Giles, the sniper, the seamstress, and let's say someone specializing in playing guitar, and another who is a crime scene tech are the ones who sign on to show up.

Are you suggesting that each of these characters should reasonably have a chance to demonstrate their primary concept skill in this scene or someone is a failure as an ST? (Sniping, occult research, tailoring, playing guitar, and investigating a crime that hasn't yet occurred?)

See, I agree that everybody in a scene should have a chance to do something useful and have a turn in the spotlight.

I'm most emphatically not on board with the idea that every scene has to be adjusted beyond a reasonable point to showcase everyone's conceptual focus snowflake factor.

Or are you suggesting that these concepts being approved with a laser focus that renders the characters useless outside that one task is idiotic and that people shouldn't be creating one-trick pony characters? (On this, I would agree.)

[Tinuviel]

@surreality If those people are signing up for an event like that, they're idiots. What I am saying is that there should be occult investigation plots, and sniper-oriented plots, and whatever else. Not that every scene needs to be dedicated to them.

One trick ponies that never grow aren't characters, they're cardboard cutouts.

[surreality]

@tinuviel Oh, I don't disagree that there should be plots that suit their niches. Or even that they should have a chance to be useful in a scene like that in some way (just not necessarily the way that is their fancy specialization).

It's the 'every scene should feature an opportunity to showcase their speciality by virtue of them showing up' interpretation that made me scratch my head, since folks like this absolutely do show up to various and sundry scenes on the regular. Like, more commonly than not, even.

[Tinuviel]

@surreality Well that wasn't what I said. Giving people stuff to do isn't at all the same as 'make sure they have stuff to do in every possible scene.'

[surreality]

@tinuviel I think of 'running a thing' as any given scene, rather than running a game, so that's probably why I was all... 'wait, huh?'

There are also some asshats who really do think every scene should have something to cater specifically to their snowflakism, which is... just not fun to deal with, but it's fair to say they are absolutely self-important idiots.

[Arkandel]

@surreality said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

Let's say I have a scene posted for 'it's a normal day at the diner when two thugs show up and try to rob the joint', and Giles, the sniper, the seamstress, and let's say someone specializing in playing guitar, and another who is a crime scene tech are the ones who sign on to show up.

Are you suggesting that each of these characters should reasonably have a chance to demonstrate their primary concept skill in this scene or someone is a failure as an ST? (Sniping, occult research, tailoring, playing guitar, and investigating a crime that hasn't yet occurred?)

Characters aren't and shouldn't be what they do. They should be who they are. The greatest fallacy in all of roleplaying is that you need to have a niche because that's what people want to see - newsflash, it's not true. If your character is boring or annoying I don't care if you are the only sniper, medic or seamstress on the entire game, we still won't have much to do together; no, not in PrPs either.

So what I would love to see in a PrP situation like the one above is just how these people coming from completely different paths of life respond to a couple of thugs trying to rob the bistro or whatever. I want to see the seamstress freaking out and trying to hold her shit together while the crime lab tech is paying attention to the details trying to figure out if they're armed and prepare for the deposition he'll need to give the next day while events are still occurring, while the sniper is completely unintimidated and unarmed, and is the only one present who will want to do something because soldiers are trained to do things.

How will these three characters interact through this? That's one third of the fun in this situation - not what kind of dice they have to throw at this, because who gives a shit. How will they relate to each other after this? That's two thirds of the fun, and the reason PrPs are so great even when they aren't amazing on their own, because now these PCs who would have normally struggled to have any scenes together and have something to say to each other (wtf does a sniper talk about with a seamstress if it doesn't lead to TS?) now do. Maybe the sniper hurt one of the thugs badly, and the CSR guy is trying to cover up for him in his report because he respects what happened, or perhaps he hates vigilante justice and in fact is bitching about it, then both ignore the tailor whose hands are shaking a bit while she's trying to be funny and uplifting.

That's more interesting. How the thugs are taken down is not. At all.

[surreality]

@arkandel ...and the guitar dude should be weighing the idea of braining one of the thugs with the guitar, but... but... he loves that guitar.

Yes, this. There's awesome story stuff any of these people could do in the scene but rarely does it have anything to do with their specific snowflake skill.

[Derp]

@surreality said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

@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?

This can also work for the lone wolves that volunteer to work on the team, but make everyone sort of uncomfortable.

Dorian: What would you say Blackwall's best feature is?
Vivienne: His absence, of course.
Blackwall: I can hear you both.

[The Tree of Woe]

@derp The Vivienne can also be difficult to pull off, because she's a sniffy manipulative bitch, which can be just the WORST without her being softened by a little humanity (like Vivienne was).

Also, it helps if she's right about pretty much everything (like Vivienne was, again).

[Derp]

@the-tree-of-woe said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

@derp The Vivienne can also be difficult to pull off, because she's a sniffy manipulative bitch, which can be just the WORST without her being softened by a little humanity (like Vivienne was).

Also, it helps if she's right about pretty much everything (like Vivienne was, again).

Sera: Vivienne? She's a bitch. But she knows. She better.

[Ganymede]

@the-tree-of-woe said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

The Vivienne can also be difficult to pull off, because she's a sniffy manipulative bitch, which can be just the WORST without her being softened by a little humanity (like Vivienne was).

@SunnyJ is the only person I know who can pull this off believably.

[Tinuviel]

@ganymede said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

@the-tree-of-woe said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

The Vivienne can also be difficult to pull off, because she's a sniffy manipulative bitch, which can be just the WORST without her being softened by a little humanity (like Vivienne was).

@SunnyJ is the only person I know who can pull this off believably.

The trouble comes when everyone and their puppy thinks they can play "sniffy manipulative bitch." But can't.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

The trouble comes when everyone and their puppy thinks they can play "sniffy manipulative bitch." But can't.

This is true. SunnyJ is not one of these people who can't.

[Tinuviel]

@ganymede You could do it. Doubt you'd manage to keep a straight face though.

[Ganymede]

@tinuviel said in Questionably viable character types and tropes (tangent from staff ethics convo):

You could do it. Doubt you'd manage to keep a straight face though.

Thanks. I am doing it, though. I'm playing a Stepford Wife Sanctified in Fallcoast.

[Miss Demeanor]

@ganymede Do you have the big hair and the 50's dress with the bullet bra and everything?