12-19-2017, 05:57 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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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.
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12-19-2017, 07:07 AM | #32 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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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. Quote:
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. Quote:
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.
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12-19-2017, 07:45 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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12-19-2017, 07:53 AM | #34 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
12-19-2017, 07:57 AM | #35 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
Some heroic bully fictional examples :
Professor Snape Raistlin Majere, possibly. Tony DiNozzo from NCIS |
12-19-2017, 08:30 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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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!
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12-19-2017, 08:57 AM | #37 |
Join Date: Feb 2009
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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!' |
12-19-2017, 09:02 AM | #38 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
'If they cannot figure out a way to make that land have mana, no one can!"
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12-19-2017, 10:09 AM | #39 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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
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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. |
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12-19-2017, 10:24 AM | #40 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the week: Bully
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.
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Tags |
bully, disadvantage of the week |
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