rehashing character concepts (split from very old thread)

[Mojo]

I'm seeing a lot of agreement here with the idea that players will create characters to address an issue in their own subconsious.

This has a lot of resonance for me as I am reading "the hero with a thousand faces".

I think this is getting at larger issues with roleplaying. I know that when I started playing as a teenager I used roleplaying as a way of addressing my adolescent issues.

I think for most players and GM's this kind of "therapy through play" is an unarticulated area. I imagine (I have not played like this yet) that kickers would "force" resolution but are dependant on players being able to correctly create a situation that connects with the characters story.

A game that is specifically designed to tell the hero's journey could help players successfully resolve this kind of stuff (an idea I am working through at the moment).

Thoughts?

[Albert of Feh]

It made me realize that I tend to play the same character over and over again - a strong-willed, competent and trained (but not ubercompetent or whiff-proof) individual with very deeply held convictions.  Crucially, this character's backstory ALWAYS involves a substantial outside force that threatens the character's self-identity, either directly ("You are not who you think you are") or indirectly (by threatening something the character holds dear).  In response, the characters must grow and move forward lest they be lost to the outside force.

I continue to make this sort of character, without consciously trying to do so, even though I've played the story through to conclusion at least three times - including one time when the character ultimately couldn't come to terms with the necessary sacrifices, and had very satisfying tragic ending.

*chokes*

You know, Hans, I can't help but notice that my Sifters character this year, Andrew Keats, was not only exactly this archetype, but I've considered him the most satisfying character of my gaming career to date. Furthermore, my next character for that game (still in planning, but much looked forwards to), while approaching the issue from with a very different tenor, is still approaching this issue. The choice was not entirely unconscious, but I wasn't thinking about it in these terms, so they seemed more different than perhaps they are.

For those of you who don't know, Hans is my older brother. I can't help but find this inordinately amusing, especially since I am almost exactly the age he mentioned when he first tapped the archetype.

...now, what does it say about me that my first instance of the character is the one who ultimately couldn't make the necessary growth, thus leading to his own destruction? (Well, that's not entirely true. He made the necessary sacrifices as he saw it, he just didn't understand what he was or what the sacrifice really meant, which lead to him making the wrong sacrifice, which lead to his own destruction. Not exactly any more encouraging, is it?)

[Decurio]

Hans, I can completely identlify with you.  The characters I have played over the years fall into the same archetype over and over and I finally figured out why: a) they are an attempt, like you it seems, to explore something central to my own self-identity, and b) I have never played the character type to a point of completion. The campaigns I have been involved in all tend to peter out long before any real sense of completion has been accomplished. (Its rough when everyone goes home every summer...I'm in graduate school, so the semester system wreaks havoc with our gaming:)

[Nev the Deranged]

I've been reading this thread a while, and I understand why so many players have archetypical characters that they regularly return to. It's an interesting discussion.

I noticed, though, that nobody has piped up to say that they don't play similar characters repeatedly. I look back over my own characters and few of them are even similar, let alone thematically unified. Or if they are, it lies beyond my analytical powers to discern. The only thing I note is that they are all more "effective" than I am- but I'm pretty sure that's a common theme of ALL role-playing characters. I mean, how often do you play a character who is less effective than you are in real life? Maybe for a particular game with an unusual theme, but not in general.

So, I'm wondering about the experiences of others who don't fit the mold being discussed here, and if maybe there is some kind of underlying psychology behind that style as well. Are we "searching for ourselves"? Are we making some kind of statement? Are we more secure in our real personas, or less?

Anybody have any thoughts? And if this seems too divergent from the topic it can be split off into a separate thread, or whatever.

[neelk]

So, I'm wondering about the experiences of others who don't fit the mold being discussed here, and if maybe there is some kind of underlying psychology behind that style as well. Are we "searching for ourselves"? Are we making some kind of statement? Are we more secure in our real personas, or less?

The characters I build are very different from one another, because I tend to build them as conscious attempts to explore different thematic and philosophical ideas, and what I'm reading right now is a big influence on what I will play. However, there is a consistency of technique that will let the other players peg a character as a "Neel PC". The way that I make characters is as a response to a philosophical idea, so most of my characters are either pushing towards or pulling away from some kind of code or ethic (though that ethic varies wildly from character to character).

I didn't actually recognize this fact myself: I found out when I had a conversation with the other players in one of my old Boston groups about what sorts of PCs we each tended to play. This was an incredibly fascinating conversation, because the regularities that were obvious to all of the others were usually completely opaque to the player himself -- until it was pointed out. This was so striking that I no longer believe introspection and reflection are enough to let anyone identify the essential regularities in the sorts of characters we come up with; that's something that the other players can judge best.

What's really interesting about this is that now that I know about it, I can see how it works very clearly. I'm currently trying to figure out how to play other kinds of characters, to broaden my range (this will be useful for GMing, if nothing else), but it's really tricky! The style I've used is the one I have the most practice at, obviously, and it's kind of a pain to not use it as a crutch when trying to develop another.

[gregkcubed]

Neel,
I think you make a great point. When I was younger, i had a rash of psychopathic characters - they generally fit thematically into the campaign pretty, but often they didn't. (I don't even want to think about what this says about my inner being :) - maybe just that I was the younger brother.)

At some point, it became clear to me that this was like 99% of the characters I was playing. Eventually, it seemed like a good idea to try another archetype. Since then, I've tried to vary the characters, although looking back on them, there are certain common thematic qualities throughout most of them.

Honestly, I'm not sure that there's a good way around this. Role playing is fundamentally an expression of one's self, and it seems to me impossible or at least very difficult to remove all common thematic qualities from a role.  Isn't really good acting just an ability to hide one's own self while in the role? And for most actors, they have the advantage of not having to write their own script.

Actually, thinking back to it, the characters I've developed that were most different were the ones that we used for play-by-email, back when email was *new*.  The ability to spend some time thinking about the ramifications of the story led us all to rely less on our "crutch" of spontaneous role and more on the storytelling.

We're playing today and I hope to have a discussion about what kind of characters we all usually play.

Greg