[Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Thinking about well-known fictional characters, the one who I recall first who's described as being a bully is Harry Flashman. And interestingly, while his original version, in Tom Brown's Schooldays, was clearly shown as a bully, he was also an unambiguous villain who came, moralistically, to a bad end. MacDonald Fraser's version's bully status is more ambiguous; as I recall (it's a while since I read the books), we only see him bullying people occasionally and briefly, and mostly fairly trivially. TV Tropes might say "Informed Flaw", even.

Because of course he's the protagonist (and the narrator), and while he's an anti-hero, the books need to maintain a certain level of reader sympathy. He's certainly selfish, a coward, and a lecher, as we see amply illustrated, but those traits are funny -- and while they make him a jerk, well, we can most of us admit to a certain preference for not getting hurt and a liking for sex, so we can manage a degree of sympathy for Flashman's instincts.

So even the classic bully gets it toned down.

(I do also recall the classic Tomkinson's Schooldays, including the very end...)

While Flashman is funny, I don't think there is much doubt that a real person who acted like him would be utterly, utterly awful. I recall plenty of instances of petty bullying, not to mention, of course, one violent rape and multiple instances of questionable consent, that in modern law and morality constitute rape as well.

I wouldn't ever want to know Flashman socially in real life, but as a fictional character, whose deplorable behaviour victimises only other fictional characters, he's entertaining.

There's is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying fictional depictions of awful human beings when no actual people are hurt.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

Hmmm.

A character you enjoy playing need not be a pure wish fulfillment.

Agreed, in principle, which is why I rather think that I may be slightly overdoing things by so assidiously and self-consciously avoiding making my characters someone I might consider cool.

It's just that I remember vividly the kind of characters one would create at ages 11-13, when they were pure wish-fulfilment, and shudder at the thought of anything that might even hint at such tendencies.

My favourite fictional characters are usually the witty, cynical, sarcastic ones that get all the best lines, cutting jokes and precision F-Bombs, so my PCs are usually one or more of tongue-tied, shy, poorly spoken or prone to bowdlerised language, more apt to be the butt of the joke than the cool deadpan snarker.

Come to think of it, the only two PCs I can remember playing who did get any good lines were both deplorable people*, which probably made me feel more comfortable, as they were obviously no kind of wish-fulfilment.

*Not just Comedic Sociopaths, like sitcom protagonist, but really deplorable. Both were magic-users and both had murdered their teacher, but otherwise, they each had their own flavour of evil. The cold, callous snobbish necromancer who used poison to kill a truly appalling number of NPCs in the campaign (starting with his own parents) and the selfish, manipulative little brat sorcereress who specialised in mind-affecting magic.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

But they do need to be someone you can feel comfortable with being for any length of time.

I'm not sure I would put it quite that way.

To play a character, you have to be comfortable with pretending to be him. Just as a writer has to be comfortable with understanding his characters well enough to portray them compellingly and an actor has to be comfortable enough with his character to play the role.

This doesn't have to mean that you find the character admirable or even that you would be willing to socialise with them if they were real people. In fact, there is a valid argument to be made from an artistical and philosophical standpoint that portraying a character with traits and values that positively appall you can make you a better artist... or even a better person.

There is nothing wrong with people who view roleplaying as an artistic endeavour and who, partially or wholly, select 'roles' as characters that challenge them, because portraying such a character is outside their experience or their comfort zone.

To take an example from fiction, I'm reading Phillip Kerr's Bernie Gunther series of noir detective stories, many of which are set in Nazi Germany. Reinhard Heydrich, Josef Göbbels, Arthur Nebe, Ernst Kaltenbrunner and many other leading Nazis are among the main characters.

I enjoy the experience of reading about the characters, even while recognising that in real life I should never choose to befriend them or socialise with them, and I hope that the author enjoyed writing about them. I certainly don't think that the author is in any way defient or morally culpable for choosing to spend his time inhabiting the minds of these characters and I don't accept, personally, that spending my time reading about them makes me someone to be avoided.*

The ability to convincingly portray a character that is compelling despite having extremely negative traits, whether that's because the audience loves to hate him or because sometimes even extremely flawed characters can appeal to audiences, is not something for which to do condemn people. To me, at least, it's something to which to aspire.

*If I am, which I am in no way ruling out, it would be because of something I did that negatively impacted other people, not because of my tastes in art.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

And there are a large number of people for whom being a bully is a wish fulfillment: they regard being allowed to be ****** towards other people as a grand thing.

Being able to say 'But I'm just playing my character!' is an excuse that only leads you so far.

I would not be comfortable with someone at the table who actively enjoyed playing a bully. And if they volunteered for the job, rather than having it thrust upon them by the GM, then I'd rather not share social space with them.

If you play a Murder Hobo character by killing the other players and taking their stuff, you are Doing It Wrong.*

Less dramatically, but no less true, playing a character with negative traits should never mean that a player treats the other players** with discourtesy or disrespect.

If your character has Bad Temper, roar at NPCs or even other PCs, by all means, but don't use it as an excuse to be short-tempered with fellow players around the gaming table. And just because your character has Greed and Miserliness, don't try to get out of paying for the snacks.

That's really a fundamental rule for roleplaying, not to mention any other social gaming or sports. Don't let the interaction built into the rules of the game, whether that's competition in football, Battleship or Monopoly, or taking on the roles of fictional people in RPGs, negatively colour your interaction with the real people with whom you are playing.

*One of the few cases where I would be completely comfortable telling someone that he's Having Fun Wrong.
**Including the GM.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by Icelander

To play a character, you have to be comfortable with pretending to be him. Just as a writer has to be comfortable with understanding his characters well enough to portray them compellingly and an actor has to be comfortable enough with his character to play the role.

This doesn't have to mean that you find the character admirable or even that you would be willing to socialise with them if they were real people. In fact, there is a valid argument to be made from an artistical and philosophical standpoint that portraying a character with traits and values that positively appall you can make you a better artist... or even a better person.

I accept that there are people who feel this way, but just as when I'm reading fiction, when I'm playing a game I like the character I'm playing to be someone whom I want to see succeed (which provides motivation for me to help make this happen). I can sometimes feel that way about a smart unpleasant person, but very rarely about a stupid one, and the essential uncontrolled-ness of Bully as written puts it in the "stupid" category for me.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I can sometimes feel that way about a smart unpleasant person, but very rarely about a stupid one, and the essential uncontrolled-ness of Bully as written puts it in the "stupid" category for me.

There are some real-life roles where bullying behaviour is necessary or at least useful: drill sergeants are a prime example. The distinction between voluntary-when-appropriate and involuntary behaviour is important, though. And people with this disadvantage are not in a good position to judge.

[Celjabba]

Some heroic bully fictional examples :
Professor Snape
Raistlin Majere, possibly.
Tony DiNozzo from NCIS

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I accept that there are people who feel this way, but just as when I'm reading fiction, when I'm playing a game I like the character I'm playing to be someone whom I want to see succeed (which provides motivation for me to help make this happen). I can sometimes feel that way about a smart unpleasant person, but very rarely about a stupid one, and the essential uncontrolled-ness of Bully as written puts it in the "stupid" category for me.

To a great extent, I can identify with that sentiment. I don't make it a requirement that I like or admire characters that I roleplay, but I confess that I've never played in any campaign so devoid of gamist elements that the other players would have accepted a party member who was incapable of contributing to their collective success. Nor am I 100% certain that I should be capable of deliberately failing at most everything that the character tried on a sustained basis.

It's okay for the character to have different goals than the players and to play up fatal flaws in the character's nature that ensure that he'll never reach his ultimate goals, but it's quite another thing to make stupid decision after stupid decision until the character dies of the dumbs. For one thing, in a genuine emergency of the sort that adventures in RPGs tend to be, it would make for a pretty short and frustrating session.

So, yeah, I guess that I can live with nearly any flaw in a PC, but being unable to handle himself in an emergency is kind of a deal breaker. And someone really stupid is not going to be able to survive the kind of adventures that I prefer to play.

I don't mind the PCs thinking they are stupid, lacking academic achievements or even being perceived by others around him as stupid. They don't have to be intellectual, bookish, educated, philosophical, deep-thinkers or any of the other hallmarks of intelligence. They just have to have good practical problem-solving ability under pressure; so they can survive against the kind of overwhelming opposition that tends to be the norm in RPGs.

To some extent, of course, having any kind of Mental Disadvantage is detrimental to purely practical problem-solving ability for a character. Uncontrollable compulsions that lead to suboptimal behaviour or arbitrary self-imposed rules that limit the choice of the least bad alternative in a crisis are self-evidently not rational. But, hey, if the characters were too rational, they wouldn't get themselves into these interesting adventures in the first place.

I don't think Bully is any more (or less) obviously stupid than Bad Temper, Charitable, Compulsive Lying, Lecherousness, On the Edge, Overconfidence or Trickster. Nor, for that matter, Pacifism: Cannot Kill or Vow: Never use weapons.

If anything, Bully with high SC represents a character defect that the character might be aware of and trying to fix, which he can control to some extent when it is really important. That seems rather more rational than a self-imposed Mental Disadvantage like Pacifism: Cannot Kill which the character maintains even after repeated evidence that his supposedly 'principled' choices harm more people than the alternative.*

*Looking at you, Caped Crusader!

[Kalzazz]

Intelligent quest givers / Human Resources help greatly by taking the observed flaws of heroes into account

If Bully is more than normally disastrous (A certain amount of disaster is par for the course when dealing with disad rich GURPS PCs) for a given quest, then don't hire that dude for that quest. Or live with the resulting disaster

'So for the expedition to the land without mana I have hired a passel of Mages with Dependency Mana!'

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

'So for the expedition to the land without mana I have hired a passel of Mages with Dependency Mana!'

'If they cannot figure out a way to make that land have mana, no one can!"

[Tomsdad]

Bully has come up in my games, (NPCs and PCs, but more generally NPC). I actually quickly like it as a Mcguffin, because it describes a tendency towards a behaviour, but how the behaviour manifests tends to be down to other factors. So basically it fit into an overall whole rather than being a one note thing

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Early-seasons House thinks he has Intolerance (stupid people) [-5]. He actually has Intolerance (everybody who isn't me, and sometimes me as well) [-10].

heh I'd say he thinks he has intolerance stupid people but actually has bully. But then there are a lot of disads that are easily prone to "he has X and is thus a terrible person, but I have Y and that's OK".

House is an interesting character he has things going for him (like ultimately some aspects of his driving goals) but yeah ultimately he is an arsehole and fairly often a bully.

He is in fact a pretty good example of a character who has decided that while they could go about things in a different way have decided that they get better, quicker or easier results by exercising their advantage over others at their expense i.e. bullying.

The difference is he doesn't seem to go out of his way to engineer such situations were then employ these tactics, but well they are his go to.

He is a pretty tame example of a magnificent bastard*, the ur example of this has already been given (Flashman). But well there are many of those who we like or at least find compelling on the page, screen or what have you. But in real life we'd find in real life unpleasant pretty quick!



*House is a variation in that he's a "briliant arsehole", becuase if he wasn't as good as he is at diagnoses etc and acted like that then he's be treated very differently! A point to keep in mind when you consider how many real life bullies are allowed to get away with it because of the perceived benefits of keeping them sweet in their social context.

[David Johnston2]

Currently I'm reading a Twisted Small Town book called "Because I'm Watching". One of the characters is a bully in that she always thinks she knows the right way to do everything and will endlessly get on everyone's case until they conform to it. So she has Bully and Delusion: It's For Your Own Good.