thread: 2006-05-25 : System and character sole-ownership
On 2006-05-28, Sarah wrote:
A few thoughts, some of which I think might connect to what Levi is getting at. (I started this out in marginalia, but it's really too big - I hope it's not too digressive for the comments.)
Okay. We're human beings. We're also social animals.
What that means is that—with the possible exception of those who live at the far end of the autistic spectrum—we have a hyper-keen and quite nuanced sense of what constitutes a "feasible model" of a human being, or of a 'person.' (I'm using "person" here to refer to anything with a more or less human-like kind of sentience.)
Not only are we much better at modelling people than we are at modelling anything else, we're also a whole lot pickier about models of people. We are capable of incorporating a great deal of nuance and subtlety into our mental models of fictional people, and we notice (and usually react negatively to) even very minor deviations.
I think that this tendency is reflected in the way we respond to fiction. A television show, for example, can have all manner of inconsistencies in its plot or its setting, and people will usually put up with it. They may snark about it mightily, but usually enough people will still be able to enjoy the fiction for the show to remain a success. It's generally only when the audience starts to feel that the characters are behaving "out of character" that people start muttering darkly about the show jumping the shark. "Character rape" is considered a grievious offense to suspension of disbelief in a way that plot holes and other inconsistencies simply aren't.
So when Levi talks about the 'value' of the character, what I think he may be talking about (and I hope he'll correct me if I've got the wrong end of the stick here) is the importance of consistency of character in maintaining the in-game fiction as something that everyone can continue to engage with/suspend their sense of disbelief in/enjoy as fiction. I understand his concern, too, because I think that consistency and complexity of characterisation is, for some very basic and possibly even hard-wired reasons, a pretty vital component to most people's enjoyment of fiction.
In other words, this isn't just an immersion issue (although I do think that there are a host of other issues that relate to immersion here). It's also a plain, old-fashioned suspension-of-disbelief/this-is- what-I-need-to-give-a-damn-about-the-story issue.
Sharing the authority for characterisation gets particularly tricky, I think, because of the extent to which we demand that our models of people be both complicated and consistent.
You can do consistent, sure - but will it still have the nuance and complexity that our hyper-aware monkey brains require to accept the character as a 'real enough' stand-in for a person? On the other hand, if you strive for nuance and complexity, will the model still have enough consistency to register to our hyper-aware monkey brains as "oh, yeah, that's the same person, all right."
It's a hard balance to strike even with concentrated authorship, and I think that the more you distribute authority for the maintenance of the character, the harder it can get.
I'm not saying that this means it "can't be done," or any of that sort of nonsense, mind you. Of course it's possible to spread out authority-over-character. I think Levi's right, though, in pointing out that in order to make this work, you've got to have players who are willing to accept the attendent responsibilities. Characters are, for all of the reasons I listed above, unusually high-maintenance fictional constructs. If everyone isn't willing to put in the work on them—to "pay attention," as Levi put it, to what they need to retain their "value"—then yeah, you can run into problems.
This makes LBK go "Yep."
That pretty much nails what I originally had in mind, yep. Though Tony does raise a really interesting question about character development and the directions the *other* players may want your character to take, based on specific value to them rather than basic integrity.
This makes SK go "Same dilemma as plot, really"
Sort of the same dilemma you run into when the players differ in how they want to see the story go, really, isn't it? Except with the added headache that characters are (arguably) far more delicate on the SOD level than plot is. (It doesn't take too much wrestling over character before the character ceases to be acceptable as a fictional construct. Plot and setting both strike me as somewhat more robust.)
This makes LBK go "Based on what you want!"
Plot and setting are more robust if your focus is on the character. Is the character a tool used to explore the setting, or the reverse, or something between? I think different people will give different answers within that range.
This makes SK go "Yep, you're right"
I'm probably just falsely universalizing my own tastes again.
This makes LBK go "No worry."
We all do that.
