thread: 2006-01-24 : Still More Character Ownership
On 2006-01-25, Tris wrote:
Let the events of the game's fiction decide if you are protagonist or not?
"SPLAT"
"...oh man, meaningless character death. I hate that."
"Deal with it - turns out you weren't the protagonist."
In other words: Unless someone knows a given character isn't a protagonist, they'll invest in that character as if it were a protagonist. When you tell them the character isn't, and kill them in a fairly meaningless way, that still sucks. Whether it's my character, your character, or a joint character.
In other other words: If I went to watch Spiderman 3, and at the start Spiderman was killed by some mook, and the film was all about the guy who took over from him, that would suck because I already have emotional investment in Spiderman as the protagonist, and suddenly telling me he isn't, and just died isn't fair.
It's the character death I'm struggling with, I think. I dig players sharing investment in a character, and I dig coming into and out of the limelight, but the random death? Defining a character as "not main protagonist right now" and then killing them isn't any more satisfactory than just killing them.
I humbly contest.
This makes JK go "You mean like Mystery Men"
Even if you do this through the narrative (and we do anyway), the primary protagonists aren't chosen by some godhood. They're chosen by the players, as they play -- if you give a character attention like they're a protagonist, chances are they will be in most functional games. So what's the big deal?
