thread: 2006-01-24 : Still More Character Ownership
On 2006-01-24, Vincent wrote:
This following may look familiar to some of you.
In Band of Brothers, characters die. Named characters, characters we care about, protagonists - they die.
Here's my observation:
When it's your character's episode, I can bet that either your character is going to live through the episode, or his death is going to mean something.
However, when it's not your character's episode, I can't bet that your character is going to live at all, or that if he dies it won't be totally random: maybe an accident, maybe a tragedy, or maybe just part of the carnage that backgrounds the whole show.
Furthermore, for some set of named, faced, known characters, they die - like I say, totally randomly - without ever having an episode of their own.
I think that it can be fun to play all three kinds of characters - the kind whose episode it is right now, so their death is guaranteed meaningful; the kind who've had their episode, so no guarantees; and the kind who we don't know if they're ever going to get an episode, so no guarantees.
Matt: consider just for a minute: the game's Primetime Adventures, except that instead of mapping out your screen presence you roll for whose spotlight it's about to be at the beginning of every episode. One player might wind up with all 2s and 3s; another might wind up with all 1s and maybe a lone 2.
I think that can be a fun game.
This makes MSW go "that version almost got made"
So no argument there.
This makes TC go "Slashers..."
Slasher flicks always kill off "named" characters. But the product is not really meant to be attachment to those characters, but startling/scaring the audience.
This makes VB go "ooh, consider 28 Days Later..."
In which, the first time you see it, you a) love everyone a lot, and b) are in constant terror that they're about to die, which c) some of them really, really do.
This makes AJF go "Timely: I just watched the end of 'Brothers ep2 not 10 mins ago!"
This makes BR go "Interestingly, I liked the alternate ending of 28 days later more"
Not the "happy plane comes to save everyone" but the "dead man on the table, get the guns girls and lets roll out" ending. Of course, in none of these cases were the deaths random. They all were carefully paced and plotted into the narrative sequence.
This makes SAB go "I liked the alternate ending too..."
