[Norwegian Style] Role-playing epiphany: Characters rule!
Jaakko Koivula:
I actually think that you guys might not feel that differently about characters in illusionist-play. Contracycle pointed out, that a strong character can ease the player into GM's story. This is most propably true. You don't need to have all this narrative power or chance to make the story into something different, if you're totally immersed into your dead set fatalist samurai -character. Your character wouldn't dream of trying to cock up the daimyo's plans, so you as a player don't do either. But that actually is also what Greyorm said. Character is just used as a window into GM's story. It might be a strong characterful character, but it couldn't really act as a proper protagonist. Sure the GM might make him the hero of the story, but the player couldn't do anything with the character. If you would have been arbitrarily given some completely different character in the beginning, you could use that as a window also and the story wouldn't change at all.
It seems to me, that you might need a suitable character to enjoy illusionistic game. Greyorm's experience with CoC might be a good example on what happens if you bring a "wrong" kind of character into a game like that.
Contracycle mentioned character control being important. The risk about that might be, that in a truly illusionistic game, the GM might take even that away you: "You can't do that, you're supposed to be the hero! Ummm, 29 guardsmen barge in and tell you to stop! Then they leave and take the child with them." That's another reason why I think that characters don't really matter in illusionist-play. It's the GM's show. You can either enjoy it, or then go somewhere else. What character you play, really doesn't enter into it. The characters only matter as a tool to make the play bearable.
Which actually might sound like quite a big a deal, but oh well.
Callan: I sort of agree with you on that random facts don't necessarily add up as a story. They might though. And Im not sure if a randomly emergent story would really be that much worse, or "less worthy" than a consciously created one. But I also think that you don't necessarily need strong player defined characters or protagonists, to create a story. For example, in Matthijs' Orc In The Well, there are really no characters at all. No player is playing a character. Each just tells what the orc feels or what happens to him. Sure you can create a ton of NPCs along the way, like adventurers peeking down the well and dropping rocks on the orc, but they don't really seem to be "characters" in the sense that role-players tend to think about them. And still the game is blatantly aimed at creating a story. Story of what happens to the orc in the well.
All that said, I personally enjoy character-based story creation more. And somehow I even find it more artistically pleasing. I personally might create better stories, when Im doing it via characters, than when Im just churning them out whole. But is that just a personal preference, or something that has some bearing in a more general sense also?
Callan S.:
Quote
Orc In The Well, there are really no characters at all. No player is playing a character. Each just tells what the orc feels or what happens to him.
*snip*
Story of what happens to the orc in the well.
No character?? I'm kind of in a moment here where it's like there's this big elehphant in the room and your saying there is no elephant, as you sit astride it's back and guide where it moves with some reigns? The orc isn't a character?
On the other subject of the whole illusionist thing, I would think you guys would want to avoid trying to figure ways in which illusionism is somehow functional - it's lying, and dysfunctional. Doing things that appear functional doesn't make it not dysfunctional. No matter how much bread you add, a bullshit sandwich is always a bullshit sandwich - don't really need more 'smelly chamberlain' thinking. Participationism, where everyone knows they aren't going to control anything or anything much, is the furtive yet basically honest/functional version of illusionism.
Jaakko Koivula:
Well yes obviously the orc is a character. But my point was more the: Quote
Sure you can create a ton of NPCs along the way, like adventurers peeking down the well and dropping rocks on the orc, but they don't really seem to be "characters" in the sense that role-players tend to think about them.
I should have just included the orc in as well.
What I mean by this, is that the orc isn't a proper playable character really. He's just sitting there thinking about stuff and having stuff happen to him. He can't affect the reality of the story at all, he just can alter his perceptions about it. Playing that sort of character in a "normal" role-playing game would be just ludicrous.
"Ok, there's the dragon. He is going use flaming breath on you all. First combat round, what do you do?
"I use dual wielding to get the fire resistance from my dagger. Then I do full attack with power strike."
"I cast magic missile and take a 5 foot step backwards!"
"I remember how my uncle used to talk about dragons, before he was killed last week. I feel completely terrified about the great beast, but somehow even that doesn't really seem to matter."
Maybe the orc also doesn't feel like a role-playing character, as he is so internal to the story. There is no differentiation between the story and the character. There's just this one clump, where you can't separate one from the other.
And yeah, it would be prudent to notice the difference between illusionistic-play and participationism. Atleast I have been pretty much thinking about them both, when writing about illusionism in this thread. I still think that a strong character might help participationist-play work better and might even make illusionist-play bearable. Not ethically laudable, still.
contracycle:
Well, umm, no, on participationism v. illusionism. The difference between the two is use of overt force as opposed concealed force. That doesn;t necessarily imply functionality either way. There are plenty of accounts of people being perfectly happy in games with concealed force; they're just not the same people who want to control story themselves.
On the orc in the well, people in fiction can be "characters" in the most trivial sense and not really characters in a fuller sense. They may exist purely for reasons of setting or colour. They are not main or viewpoint characters.
Callan S.:
Jaakko,
I'm inclined to make a sexist remark about men only thinking in terms of doing, and men thinking if they're not doing, they're nothing. I'm male so I have my own perspective on this.
The game is called 'orc in a well' - why are you playing that game if you aren't interested in the orcs position on all this? On how he takes things? I mean you even say play is describing how the orc feels. How can you do this if you aren't interested in how he feels on this? Why would you do this?
There's a book out there called...butterfly and the diving bell, or something. About a real life guy who had a stroke and afterward could only blink one eyelid. That's a HELL of a well! In fact after completing his book, dictated by blinks, he suicided (well, had himself killed, technically, but he was so far down the fucking well he couldn't do it himself - how would that feel!?).
He was still human, a person, a real life character.
Now, I'll totally grant someone could go up to an activity centered around the orc in a well text and simply not give a damn about anything in the activity. But that doesn't mean orc in a well has story without characters, it just means people are capable of partaking in an activity they don't give a crap about.
You say there isn't a strongly defined character in 'orc in the well', yet he's in the damn title of the game! How much more defined can you get!?? Yet I totally grant no matter how defined, people, or more specifically gamers, are capable of turning up to an activity and ignoring anything about the activity that doesn't suit their dream of 'what roleplay really is'.
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"I use dual wielding to get the fire resistance from my dagger. Then I do full attack with power strike."
"I cast magic missile and take a 5 foot step backwards!"
This isn't story - story is a reflection on WHY people take actions, not just a verbatim list of actions taken. No, the fire resistance isn't a reason (it's no more story than someone putting their socks on before their shoes is story) - why are they going against the dragon? None of this apparently 'story making' action answers that, so it isn't story. It could be used as part of a story, but in itself, it isn't. That or if you want to use a definition of story that has it just being a verbatim repeat of actions, okay, I'd grant your point. Just keep in mind that gamers have had a history of being told by game book after game book that they are really making a story, when perhaps they aren't. The brain damage threads are a hypothesis on what that does to a young mind, in terms of what is called story.
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"I remember how my uncle used to talk about dragons, before he was killed last week. I feel completely terrified about the great beast, but somehow even that doesn't really seem to matter."
Frankly this character is more interesting to me even as he does nothing? Is he a brain in a jar, carried by the other characters, and can do nothing? Or is he capable? If he is capable and yet keeps doing nothing AND if there is no reflection on why he does, I'll grant that it's slipping toward non story/just verbatim repeating of details.
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Maybe the orc also doesn't feel like a role-playing character, as he is so internal to the story. There is no differentiation between the story and the character. There's just this one clump, where you can't separate one from the other.
Maybe that's how roleplay, as in playing out a role, is always supposed to feel, rather than feeling any disjuncted seperation between character and story? Maybe that's part of your epiphany?
With your hypothesis that you can have story without characters, I'm really not convinced by your orc in the well evidence. Either you were ignoring the point of the activity, or you were playing character so very naturally and fluidly you were unaware of it, like you breath without having to think about it or notice that your breathing. Or maybe there's a third option, but I'm not seeing it as yet.
Gareth,
The difference is consent, not force - indeed it strike me at this moment and looking at the glossary 'force' is a bugaboo word invented out of a failure to recognise lack of consent (or a desire to ignore it). I mean, really "The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player"? It's the players character, by the rules, yet somehow by magnificently applied technique apparently it isn't? Or it's just straight out lying/doing something they said they wouldn't, perhaps? As I understood it, participationism works off consent, like a magic show works off consent rather than trying to genuinely con anyone into thinking real magic is happening. But I've read functional patterns into forge ideas before, only for them to eventually get touted in insane ways (LP comes to mind), so maybe I don't get the forges use of the word.
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