Character 'types'
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So, MSBites! Do you have a character "type"?
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Is there a kind of personality you choose for your PCs? Do you mostly play military folks? Clever people? Seducers? Jokesters? Do you quip with most of your characters? Are they typically polite or rough around the edges?
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Do most of your characters fall within a certain range between 'good' and 'morally gray'?
And for two more - this time controversial - bonus points!
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Do you judge others either for the types of PCs they usually play? As in, do you ever roll your eyes and go "pft, that @Arkandel rolled a snarky hipster in his early twenties again. Is that all he knows how to play?"
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And finally... do you judge others for the type of character they are playing and if so do you associate the player's views with the character? For example if someone played a Slaver on Shang, or a racist on a nWoD game.
In these cases above let's exclude cases where people are being actual OOC jerks. Obviously most of us would judge someone who's being an asshole as a player, but that's outside this thread's scope.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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Really the only common thread with my characters is that I quit making male characters a few years ago (I could never figure out how to make them more comolex for some reason). I have had a few personalities overlap and I do tend to like the strong 'of few words' mentor style PC but dont really play it all that often.
If we are using the DnD alignment most of my characters tend to be lawful neutral but ober the years I have had them dotted across the spectrum.
As for the other things well despite my years in the hobby I have never really gone much further than the level of the characters on a game. I tend to just judge a player by their own actions not the actions of their character.
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I guess I am drawn towards characters that have a very bubbly, friendly, upbeat personality which hides varying degrees of pragmatism. Or ruthlessness.
And yes, I judge people for everything, though I try not to let it spill out into my outside voice, so much. I think anyone can play a slaver, or a racist. But if that's like...your type? Yeah I might start to assume you have some ooc leanings that way. Possibly this would be a bad assumption, but I still make it.
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I try to go for variety, I really do, but I tend to have a lot of stoic, detached characters.
I also have a lot of characters who feel like they aren't good enough. Their core struggle is that they have to strive to be be better to achieve stability in their world. And I don't mean that douchebag who is clearly the best and acts like they aren't, but someone who can even be as competent as everyone else and feels like they aren't. Maybe they grew up being always beaten down and told they weren't good enough. Maybe they failed their military unit, costing people lives, and it's informed everything else in their life and they just don't feel confident enough about anything anymore...
So a lot of my characters either:
a) Are emotionally distant and/or stoic
b) Lack self-confidenceSometimes it's both.
I do mix it up sometimes. Garden is a good example of that. She's emotional and she's confident af.
Audrey @ Reno, however, is an example of A. She fronts most of her emotions while drinking away the rest.
There are some people I judge for the characters they play. Usually it's those who play very two-dimensional characters that I end up dreading getting into scenes with, esp. one-on-one because I know it's not going to be an engaging scene, there won't be any effort on their end, etc. Meh.
And I rarely associate the character with the player. I'm an author. I dabble in screenplays, too. I don't think, say, Guillermo del Toro is racist for Django Unchained. I'm going to (and have) write some pretty terrible people into my works (we don't hate Rowling for Umbridge!). I actually rather enjoy playing antagonistic characters, but it is hard because of the OOC lashback you receive sometimes. People do often want games to be very ICly copacetic with sunshine and rainbows (this came up in the MU* Gripes thread, re: people wanting immediate resolutions between wronged PCs so everything is right again) and they have a very hard time with antagonistic PCs. Even mildly so.
I love when there can be strife between my PC and another. When two characters don't get along well. I think it's great! But a lot of people can't handle it because they get so invested into their PCs that they think: 'This person's character doesn't like my character, so the player doesn't like ME.'
This is part of why I ST. I can create all kinds of horrible NPCs to play around with. It doesn't make me a bad person! It just lets me stretch my writing legs a bit (plus while I enjoy writing antagonists, I don't want to play them all day; they're best as part-time alts).
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Passion seems to be the connecting threads for most of my successful characters. (By "successful" I generally mean that I end up playing long-term and don't get tired of/abandon.) Sometimes it's super wildly apparent passion, sometimes it's brewing beneath the surface, but I gotta have it. Sometimes I play dark and snarky, sometimes bright and shiny, but they all tend to have that connecting thread of passion.
Degrees of self-loathing also tend to crop up often in my characters. Especially when they're hidden behind various levels of confidence or vanity.
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Almost all of my characters are emotionally scarred. Be it a Sire that tortured their sanity away, or an uncle that fed them people flesh, hyper-demanding parents of a perfectionist noble house, or cultist parents that promised them to the Devil, they are all fucked up, but they are all curious about the other, "normal" side of the fence. Sometimes that curiosity is macabre (like if I am playing a Vampire or something similar), and more often than not just makes themweirdos trying to adjust.
And no, most of times I don't judge you for the characters you play. I will only judge you if you bring that shit to OOC channels and try to act like some condescending Invictus asshole while we are talking about Transformers. Then I will just assume you don't have a character, and that the Invictus asshole you "RP" ICly is just an avatar for your own idiotic behavior. Don't get high on your own supply.
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I have a couple of types I play (there's really 3 main ones, all considered). I used to try and stretch my wings and play different things, but those characters never stick. I've been doing this thing long enough that I know what I like, so I do what I like.
I try really hard to not judge people as people for what they choose to play, though that doesn't mean I won't avoid them. If they are playing something I don't want to interact with, I won't -- that's not a judgment on them as a person, though, it's a choice I make for my own fun purposes. I might judge somebody not for what they play, but for the portrayal of what it was they choose to play. If someone is presenting their PC as a caricature of a type of person that exists (especially if that type of person is marginalized in their day to day life), yes. I am judging them as a person. Hard. Every time.
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@arkandel said in Character 'types':
a Slaver on Shang
I think this might not be a good example. Shang is a...is there a game version of Shit-Posting? It's a place where it's just as likely someone is doing it for the irony as the wish-fulfillment, though I honestly believe it's far more the latter.
If someone played a slaver on a game where there's an entire faction of slavers, I'd be more concerned that I'd be encouraged to RP themes I wouldn't want to, but this is a factor of the game pushing those themes. I can't really blame someone for playing themes presented.
(This, incidentally, is why I hesitate in making a 7th Sea game based on a Pirate Island. Someone might take that as an invitation to play, y'know, a more traditional pirate, and I don't trust myself to frame the themes to discourage this. I would play the hell out of it if someone could, mind.)
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain what is the difference between a traditional pirate and what ever a nom traditional pirate would be?
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@thenomain said in Character 'types':
I think this might not be a good example. Shang is a...is there a game version of Shit-Posting? It's a place where it's just as likely someone is doing it for the irony as the wish-fulfillment, though I honestly believe it's far more the latter.
If someone played a slaver on a game where there's an entire faction of slavers, I'd be more concerned that I'd be encouraged to RP themes I wouldn't want to, but this is a factor of the game pushing those themes. I can't really blame someone for playing themes presented.
On Shang there is an entire faction of slavers though. It's pretty popular, too, although many kinds of unconventional concepts are there.
At least from my personal experience although it's been a while since I was on the grid there there was no correlation between the players and the characters - in fact the ones you kind of had to watch out for were the independents, sandboxing most of their RP, and not those who held membership in one of the various in-game organizations and who were subject to more oversight by staff and fellow players.
Obviously in this YMMV though.
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I typically choose more cerebral characters. Tactical and strategic leaders rather than fighters or confrontationalists.
Surprising nobody I also tend to make them rather aloof, eccentric, and rather smug-up-the-nose-not-looking-down kind of people.I'm not at all good at playing people that are stupid or ignorant, nor overly friendly social butterflies.
As for other people, I don't really tend to link people to character so much as I do... link characters to OOC personae?
I know it's basically anathema, but if your PC is consistently X-thing, then I start to think in the back of my mind that you are also that thing. I rarely interact with people OOC, so that's not really an issue. And it's certainly not a case of IC bleeding into OOC, but it's a thing in my head. -
@magee101 Rape and pillage and slaughter vs yah haaar swash and buckle.
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I stopped trying to play/create male characters. I just always felt like I wasn't quite 'there' with those, no matter what those around me said.
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@macha Sounds accurate to me.
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Let's see...
My default character is usually a selfish rogue sort, if I don't have any other big plans.
The other go-to tends to be grizzled vet types. "War is hell, I've seen some shit" kind of thing.
I don't tend to play happy characters. Mostly, they're deeply unsatisfied with... something. Themselves, their situation, like, society, man. Whatever.
I do tend to play PCs who've been doing their deal for a while, whatever it is. The whole fresh-faced, newly Awakened/Embraced/knighted deal doesn't really appeal to me. That's, like, the backstory.
I also really like playing wiseass sarcastic PCs, but what can I say. That's fun to me.
Oh, and I also tend toward morally grey at best sorts.
As far as other people's PC types... I mean, there's a few things that might get me to give some side-eye. Mostly the "really dumb, vaguely offensive stereotype" sort.
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@magee101 said in Character 'types':
@thenomain what is the difference between a traditional pirate and what ever a nom traditional pirate would be?
Less rape in the latter.
@arkandel said in Character 'types':
On Shang there is an entire faction of slavers though.
The point is that the game's context matters. Shang's theme is largely "whatever, with sex". People's choice of character in that theme is going to be extremely different than, say, "17th Century Fantasy Swashbuckler".
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain lets face it, whatever, with sex, is a very appealing theme. Sorry to derail! Ima go hide in my corner again
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@thenomain Shang does apparently have a deep and convoluted lore.
But it's played as 'whatever, but with sex', which I think is the more important thing. -
I am not sure I have a type though there are a few concepts I recycle a bit I tend to play a bit of everything.
The one constant is I play characters that will do just about anything to avoid authority over others in any way. I have gotten suckered into being a leader type a couple of times on MUs and the headaches always leave fun in the dust so now I bake that avoidance into the character from jump., The other thing I always include is a trapdoor that can be used as the ooc reason the character is gone if I decide to bounce from the game. That way I can give those that would be affected at least an IC reason that can be reacted to or ignored as desired once I am gone. -
@magee101 said in Character 'types':
@thenomain lets face it, whatever, with sex, is a very appealing theme.
Most of the most popular games are variations on "whatever", so yes, it's very appealing.
@tinuviel said in Character 'types':
@thenomain Shang does apparently have a deep and convoluted lore.
Yeah, I skimmed it once. It's there to set up theme and setting and conflict but mostly it's there to encourage "whatever people want to play". I'm sure that Trump's history can be deep and convoluted enough for a TV Movie of the Week, but what we get is pretty shallow.
