thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-02, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
This discussion fucking rocks.
I was asked by my dad some 15 years ago why the games I played had so much violence in them. So I tried figuring out how to make them non-violent and came up with politics - but it turns out politics is interesting because where half of politics is the carrot, but the other half is the stick.
Then a couple of years back, it occurred to me that what violence does is that it gives you a shorthand for conflict between characters where they care about what happens. Bullying (which really hasn't existed much in my games, except as an example of petty abuse of power) isn't the same as violent conflict because it's inherently inflicted on someone who doesn't have the power to resist, and is therefore irrelevant to the story. It's a digression in almost every case (barring those expository moments that show that the character is a bully).
Kewl Powerz are the same kind of shorthand. They say "This is how this character conflicts with hir antagonist." Mind control powerz aren't violent in the literal sense, but they're a popular choice; so is, I dunno, having a stretchy body. It defines the arena in which the character conflicts. As long as the conflict is earnest, where the characters have something to lose (at least nominally - is Aunt May really gonna die at the hands of the Scorpion?), you have earnest, dramatic conflict.
Naturally, this is what we avoid in our lives: staking the things we care most about on our moment-to-moment actions. But it's what makes a story.
