thread: 2006-01-11 : Two kinds of me
On 2006-01-11, Bob the Fighter wrote:
One of the great pitfalls of, we'll call it, "traditional" character creation is this notion that it can and should be a singular process. Most games I've come across don't really say anything about the *context* in which you should create a character; they merely establish "game balance" and give you the mechanical apparatus to physically make a game character.
Granted, in some games, it's implicitly implied that characters' skills should play off one another, a la D+D, but this, if anything, further entrenches the idea that each character is an island unto itself. After all, you're not just a cleric, you're the Party Cleric, and damned if anyone else is going to trod upon your niche.
When we establish characters that are relevant to each other, we make them inevitably intertwined. I mean, that's just what *happens* when characters actually interact meaningfully in a story! I was watching Farscape recently, and a friend of mine kept calling Crichton a jerk. We all couldn't imagine why the most empathic, good-natured guy on the ship could possibly merit this negative view, so we talked about it. As it happened, we concluded that one of us just wasn't used to characters who actually express concern for other people's wants and needs.
Apparently, he'd been watching too much Seinfeld or something. Emotional investment in something besides oneself is kind of, well, central to compelling character interaction, and calling that "shared character ownership" is merely another way of putting it. Granted, when dealing with the shell-shocked creatures known as Tabletop Gamers, it makes sense that such phrasing would be a bit, er, off-putting. But all they really need to get is that their characters are no more self-contained than the players are.
That's not a rhetorical statement; that's literally true, in my opinion. If you've got a room full of players who don't give a fig about having fun *with each other*, then they aren't sharing their characters very much, are they?
I also get what you're saying: it's not that you are making it such, as if Vincent Is Now Deciding that characters are collectively owned; rather, you're pointing out that such has always been the case, and you saying it doesn't make it any more or less true. Just, perhaps, clearer?
It's like Buddhism and the idea of no-self: Buddha wasn't making up something new, 'cause we're already all indelibly intermingled within each other and could never untangle it all, yea, even unto death. He was just pointing it out.
