03-19-2017, 09:34 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Character arcs
Yup. When I bring a character into a game I usually have some drives and ambitions in mind, in part so that the GM can integrate them into the plot, but these can drift over time.
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03-19-2017, 12:34 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Atlanta GA
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Re: Character arcs
But a character arch isn't necessarily about what the character wants so much as the player. Maybe you make a character that had something happen that turned him into a coward in a game where danger can't just be avoided. Then over the course of the game you have little things happen or find reasons for him to push past the fear this one time. After doing that he starts to not be so cowardly. Perhaps you make a loaner in a team oriented game where as a player you know he's going to have to work as part of the team like it or not. Then as things progress you let him gradually learn the value of a good team. When I think about a pre-planned character arch those are the kind of things I think of. They seem simple, but the are big changes for the character. The may seem meaningless as they are mostly in the player's hands, but they do have enough moving parts to allow for other PCs to screw them up.
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03-19-2017, 01:38 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Re: Character arcs
As a players, a story arc emerges from what I know about (or discover about) the character and what the GM throws at me.
As a GM it's part of my job to give each player a chance at as much 'screen time' as they want (within reason) and to remember to give them a chance to resolve or develop things about their character that they are clearly interested in focussing on. That doesn't happen at the start of the campaign much but emerges from what the players show me.
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Michael Cule,
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03-19-2017, 01:40 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Character arcs
My first instinct is to chime in with everyone else and say "no way! My character has long-term plans, but I'm just playing it how it lays". Of course I never start play with a long arc of character development mapped out in advance. After all, as others have pointed out, it never pays to ignore the fact that half the fun of roleplaying comes from your lack of control over the story.
But on reflection, I think I probably often do have some fairly loose 'arcs', if you like, in my head while creating a character - and I'm certain I'm not alone in this. Zero-to-hero is the most common. Just to take the most obvious examples, it's very normal to start off a campaign by thinking:
Etc. My point is just that these industry standard zero-to-hero stories imply arcs of character development - (albeit a very particular kind of character arc). If so, then starting play with some sort of character arc in mind is much more common than most of the comments here so far would imply.
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03-19-2017, 02:15 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Character arcs
I suppose I do consider the possibility of character arcs when designing PCs, yes.
After all, taking a Disadvantage which amounts to a Fatal Flaw tends to be an implicit buy-in for a character arc where the character either learns the error of their ways or dies dramatically as the result of his or her poor choices. I am usually the GM, but when I am a player, I will often discuss potential character arcs with the GM to give him ideas for furture plots. I'll make explicit my character's in-game goals and to what extent I as the player actually share these goals and to what extent I would be perfectly happy for the true character arc to be something completely different, where my PC learns that their goals were wrong-headed, based on incomplete information or the results of Fatal Flaws s/he needs to confront. Every time I float a potential character arc, I try to include multiple possibilities, all of which would appeal to me as character arcs. For example, I try to give examples of possilities that involve the PC succeeding at a goal, failing and possibly even having events render success and failure at a given task meaningless. My most recent PC came with several potential character arcs inbuilt. Which one of them ends up being most important and how they turn out is heavily dependent on what the GM chooses to do with the setting and NPCs, the choices of other players and the success or failure of various Influence skills in play. The PC had backstory involving unrequited love toward an important NPC around the backstory which gave them all superpowers, almost two decades ago, whom the characters would be meeting again in an insane asylum. She, in turn, was established before the start of play as pretty genuinely crazy and having spent all those years obsessed with another NPC, who bears all the signs of being the Big Bad, of the first 'season' at least. While it was pretty clear that my PC would be emotionally affected by meeting her, it wasn't decided beforehand whether the character arc would be my PC finally getting over his feelings as he saw how impossible any relationship would be and/or taking on a more brotherly, protective role to make up for his perceived failure all those years ago, or an even more melodramatic love triangle with the Big Bad, where the PC is trying to save the budding supervillainess with the Power of Love. Hell, or a heart-wrenching Shoot the Dog arc where he discovers that no matter how he felt for her once, she's a dangerous monster now and he'll have to kill her to save others. Or to save himself from Falling into Darkness. The PC didn't take any game-mechanical trait specifically mentioning The One That Got Away, but his general Disadvantages made it pretty clear that he'd be easy for her to manipulate into helping her if she had any interest in that. Or, you know, get his help even if she wasn't trying to manipulate him. I did declare to the GM that the PC would be reacting to her at an extra +3, over and above all the ways that my PCs' range of White Knight-ish Disdvantages made him react positively to Damsels in Distress, as if she had a Friend Perk for him. I also said that both me and my character hoped it was mutual, as the reason my PC was sent to talk to this inmate was specifically that the people sending him believed he had the best chance of managing friendly relations, but I wouldn't impose any restraints on the adventure by game-mechanical traits that would ensure that the NPC really was friendly. Some nine sessions into the game, it's still not clear what arc we're on, though the brotherly thing would be considerably more creepy if it happened now, given that they've shared some distinctly un-sibling-like moments after being reunited. Similarly, that same character has a Quirk-level* Hero Worship of another NPC, who might or might not be the real Big Bad. I asked the GM to make sure that the NPC had been a noble person once, for the trait to make sense, but that his moral standing now was up to the GM. Of course, I noted that it would make for much better drama if the NPC was a Well-Intentioned Extremist or even a Hero Antagonist, as the people whose side our PCs were on** weren't exactly morally upstanding. Finally, I noted, as a personal desire for me as a player, that it would be most interesting if the answer to which side was 'right' was ambigious enough for no realistic choice under the circumstances to be truly satisfying. It's thus entirely undecided whether my character will oppose his old commanding officer and his group of old comrades and friends, entirely against his personal inclination, or if he'll betray his word (a big no-no), his country (same) and risk his Dependants (yikes) by switching sides. In both cases, I planned for a character arc that would involve these people and certain themes, but I didn't plan for any specific ending or even course for the arc to take. That will result organically from events in play. *That's over and above that character, along with plenty of other Antagonist NPCs, being included in a Sense of Duty. **By default and without much of a choice.
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03-19-2017, 02:27 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Character arcs
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03-19-2017, 08:04 PM | #17 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Character arcs
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It's true that real life doesn't have plot arcs - but then again, real life is not being conducted for the amusement of "players" who are secretly controlling things from behind the scenes. (Well, so far as I know, anyway...) My point is that the analogy between in-game stuff and real-life stuff has real limits - and one of those limits is that it fails to account for the desires of the players. Which is unfortunate, since the desires of the players constitute the whole point of the exercise! Over the years I've got the sense that in your group, the players tend to desire a fairly simulationist mode of play. This makes your comments, above, about treating the game as a simulation rather than a drama quite understandable. But surely there's also a narrativist element there? Even a slight one? After all, I also get the strong sense that you want to be simulating something fun, engaging, even dramatic, rather than just something real. To my mind this means that, to a certain extent, the game is a drama, from the players' perspective. I suspect that means there's got to be something like "plot" or "character development" going on. I might be wrong, though! Quote:
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I suspect this means that plot arcs, character development arcs, etc, are likely to be a feature of many (most?) games.
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03-20-2017, 03:23 AM | #18 | |||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Character arcs
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A clearer idea of how the setting works and how characters relate to it ("simulation") makes the impact of the events within the setting stronger("narrative"), and increases my involvement with the game ("gamist"). That motivates me to improve the simulation and the narrative,. It's a virtuous spiral of increasing game quality.
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03-20-2017, 04:33 AM | #19 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: Character arcs
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When the linear-story hero tries to sneak into a base, either he manages it, or he gets caught. He doesn't fail to bypass the outer ring of alarms and get casually shot by the guards. A narrativist GM/player composite might well dice or choose between those first two outcomes, with utter failure not even a possibility because this isn't a sufficiently dramatic point at which to fail. I tend to prefer a system in which characters can have a reasonable idea of their odds of success and have to make sensible choices about what to try. I've run a game in which the long and detailed plan for a sneak attack on the enemy base worked, and in a film that would be anticlimactic; in a game with the right players that can be entirely satisfying. An example of an extreme simulationist might be that story people sometimes tell about Space Master, where the GM made the group's pilot roll to get through a space hazard of some sort on the way to the adventure proper, he fumbled, and everybody died.
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