Rootin' fer the Underdog

[SlurpeeMoney]

Alright. Everyone's chatting about the comparative bonuses of Random vs. Player-determined character generation, and I've noticed a bit of a trend in the posts... Everyone's looking for characters that are more powerful than most everyone. It's as if a player character should be something better than we are, which makes sense as an escapist move... Sometimes.

What's wrong with playing the underdog? I suppose this goes back to rewarding failure, but starting right in chargen. Why do we feel it neccessary to be more powerful in-game than we are in real life? I mean, some of the best stories ever told are about the underdog succeeding. Isn't it more fulfilling to over-come over adversity knowing the odds are completely against you, that you DO NOT have the ability to do what needs to be done, but you tried anyway, and goddammit, you did it!?!

Besides which, there was a theory my English teacher in High School presented: "There are only two types of stories that are interesting. In one, ordinary people are put into extraordinary circumstances. In the other, extraordinary people are put into ordinary circumstances." I've usually kept to this when writing my own stories, and it's never really occured to me that I never really do it in role-playing. I mean, most of the time in role-playing, it's extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstnaces... Where's the fun in that?

Just a thought.
~Kris
"The Underdog."

[Nathan P.]

Well, in many games, if you aren't more powerful than the "average" you don't make it. If you don't want to play that kind of character, don't play those games, is what I say.

I mean, this is kind of a psychological question, isn't it? Why do we want to play people who are different from us at all? Why play at all, really? Can we really answer those?

Personally, I tend to play characters that are different, not necessarily better, than myself. In fact I often end up going "this guy is too good. I want to be weaker".

Some thoughts spinning out of your thought, I guess.

[daMoose_Neo]

I imagine alot of it pertains to why you're playing.

As an actor, I take on roles different from myself mostly for the chance to look through someone elses eyes.
As a role player, though, it usually is to take on a heroic stance, and heroes are, rarely in our own minds, Bob from down the street. Course, in a modern game its easier to see ourselves (average) as heroes as opposed to a high-fantasy worlds.
In a modern setting, we have a frame of reference and in general one person isn't strictly more powerful than another. A couple of differences are all that can seperate some people.
In a high-fantasy world however, more akin to the middle ages, the "average" person is a peon, uneducated, powerless peasent. Thats not all that fun to play.
Or, "less powerful" characters are portrayed comedically. Granted, some of us are guilty of that in design. Myself, my 'Dungeons for Dummies' game goes as far to make the players purposely powerless and builds mechanics around failures. On the other hand, though, the reward can be greater. With DfD, when players overcome even some simple challenges it is quite a feat, which the players can feel good about over coming.

If you're in a system or group that rewards power, than no, its worthless to play "underdog" characters. If you're playing for characters, however, it doesn't neccesarily matter what your stats are, you will be happy being able to express and explore the character as you see fit, be it a hero or a peasent boy.

[Caldis]

I think it all comes down to having power to affect the shared imagine space.  Historically game design has given the most power to affect the SIS to the most powerful characters.  Weaker characters are relegated to supporting roles or their influence is at the whim of the gm.  

That's not true of stories, Frodo can be the most important character and yet not be the most powerful.   Systems that allow you to affect the outcome of the story despite your relevant power levels alleviate the need for powerful characters.

[timfire]

This thread reminded me of an old thread. I'm not sure how relevant it is, but it's probably worth checking out anyway.

Mechanic for weak characters to surmount the odds -comments?

Anyway, I think there are two issues developing in this thread. The first is the idea of playing... err, heroes. The second is having a *mechanically* powerful character, with the assumption that the mechanical power translates to power inside the SIS.

Arguably, there's no such thing as a 'normal' (protaganist) character in fiction, there's always somthing special about the main character. So the extrordinary character is not unique to RPG's.

Now on to the second idea. I agree with what Caldis was saying. All players want significant characters. Players want to feel that they are contributing to the SIS in a meaningful manner (relevant to the CA at hand). The assumption that they need a 'powerful' PC to do this, I will venture to say, probably stems from the tradition of task resolution (as opposed to conflict resolution). When there's a direct connection between mechanical power and PC 'power/skill/etc' the logical train of thought is the player needs a 'powerful' PC in order to be significant. (System Does Matter.)

I bet that if you seperated resolution from PC ability, you would see more 'underdog'-type characters being played, as the players wouldn't feel threatened by a 'weak' character. (*)

And to a certain a degree, I've witnessed this with my game, The Mountain Witch. PC skill is irrevelent for resolution purposes in MW. And on multiple occasions, I've witnessed this moment in chargen when a lightbulb goes off in the player's head. They realize that they don't need to worry about min/maxing, they can simply play their character however they want, and it won't effect their ability to influence game events.

[edit] Hmmm, I bet some of those Universalis folks could come up with some play examples relevent to this idea. [/edit]
______________
(*) Of course, I'm not sugggesting this would be a 'better' system, just different.

[Callan S.]

And to a certain a degree, I've witnessed this with my game, The Mountain Witch. PC skill is irrevelent for resolution purposes in MW. And on multiple occasions, I've witnessed this moment in chargen when a lightbulb goes off in the player's head. They realize that they don't need to worry about min/maxing, they can simply play their character however they want, and it won't effect their ability to influence game events.

I've suspected this, that character power is simply about being able to effectively give creative input into the game, but have never had a chance to test it. Hacking in code of Unaris (sp?) reminds me of this...totally nothing to do with PC power. Instead it's direct concrete influence.

Mind you, regardless, it's fun to play a powerful hero. Just not all the time (ie, for the sake of actually having narrative power)

[GreedIsGod]

I absolutely despise playing stupid people in a game, and I patently refuse to do so.  I'm always imagining ways to turn my apartment into a fortress and engineer weapons out of kitchen products and use magic to sidestep all limitations on action and I want to do the same with my PC.  Whether or not he's physically powerful depends on the setting, but personally I despise the 'underdog' because I despise weakness.  I'm definitly a social darwinist capitalist pig and I think if stupid people starve, good riddance.  I'd much rather play a condescending than a peasant boy.  Yecht.

[daMoose_Neo]

It's not neccesarily stupid people though.
IE Frodo is quite intelligent, but in RP terms, he'd get his hide OWNED by anyone, even a Goblin, Orc or Urukai, even though Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn mow them down by the hundreds.

Lets say you had the chance to play a 12 year old Page or a 23 year old Knight in a setting akin to Dark Ages Earth. Intellectually, for argument, lets say the Page ranks higher than the Knight. Now, lets also say, the Page is also a young girl.
By comparison, the Page is physically weaker than the Knight (by virture of training and age difference, not being sexist here) and likely socially weaker as well, because throughout our history women and young girls were relegated to the kitchen.
Now- which, from a roleplaying perspective, would be more fun? Not effective, but fun?
Your typical Knight, who is of course Male, Strong, and well armored or the kid-Page, a girl who is fairly intelligent but lacks the physical or social strength to affect as much change or input as the Knight?

Every character has something about them that is unique or "stronger". Granted, others might be stronger still, but each character has at least one shining attribute, as does each person. The "underdog" will usually be the last on the list in terms of overall power, but that doesn't mean they aren't interesting and possibly effective characters either.

*Additional Ramble*
Underdog is also reletive. Yea, your Knight has a Strength of 18 and a "Great Butt Whuppin Sword" that gives +5 to all rolls. Big whoop, we're doing a campaign of polical intrigue and you have an intelligence of 13 (not brilliant but still closer to average). You're not stupid, but that Count over there? He has an 18 Intelligence and an 18 Charisma.

[Roger]

I mean, some of the best stories ever told are about the underdog succeeding. Isn't it more fulfilling to over-come over adversity knowing the odds are completely against you, that you DO NOT have the ability to do what needs to be done, but you tried anyway, and goddammit, you did it!?!

If the characters are really underdogs, then most of the stories won't be about them succeeding.  Most of them will be about them failing.  That's the defining quality of an underdog.

If your players find it "fulfilling to face adversity knowing the odds are completely against you, that you DO NOT have the ability to do what needs to be done, but you tried anyway, and goddammit, you failed miserably" then go for it.



Cheers,
Roger

[Roger]

Now that I look over it, this is exactly how Call of Cthulhu works.  Or can work, at least.  We might win a couple battles, but we all know we're going to lose the war.

[M. J. Young]

The first outsider reaction we received when Multiverser got out there was from a gamer who thought the "play yourself" idea was bad. His take was that he did not see himself as a survivable character and was not arrogant enough (his description) to suppose that he would be interesting to play.

In terms of how Multiverser works, that's not important. So you're not survivable, and you die, and now you're in a different world requiring different skills. You'll become survivable, and part of the fun in that case is being able to recount how you did so.

More on point, though, I think there is something else hidden in this. When we role play, generally we want to imagine we are doing something which we could not really do. That can be accomplished by creating a world in which all the choices are different, and that's certainly part of play (medieval fantasy, science fiction, wild west, and horror all rush to mind). However, the other way we do that is by playing characters who can do things we cannot.

Further, contrary to what that one gamer suggested, most of us are arrogant enough to believe we're smart enough; we see our weaknesses usually in physical prowess. (Not all of us, but quite a few.) Thus if we want to imagine doing things we can't really do, we naturally turn first to being stronger, faster, more agile, and otherwise more physically adept, because those things are easier to imagine being good at and more readily suited to play. Sure, we could imagine that we are the smartest scientist or philosopher in the world, but there's not much we can do with that, particularly when we're pretty smart already, at least in our own estimations. (Besides, trying to imagine being smarter is tricky. How do you do it? About the only choice is to pretend you figured out things you didn't, understood things you didn't, invented things you didn't, and that gets pretty dull if it's all handled by mechanics.)

So I think that one drive to playing the character who is extraordinary is inherent in the very notion of playing someone different from ourselves: we do it so we can imagine doing things we couldn't really do, so we have to have characters with the capabilities to do those things.

--M. J. Young

[Bill Cook]

An underdog can just be a system oddity.

I created an accountant character for a TROS game who was untrained with weapons but had a terrible temper. He failed as a musician before he came to monetary clerking because his hands would tense during performance; flubbed notes would exacerbate the cycle until one day, he smashed his lute to bits during a performance.

The whole point of this character was to drop him into highly stressful situations and have him strangle people. There's not an explicit mechanic in TROS to handle locks. (At least, we couldn't find one.) But the Seneschal and I talked about it, and we agreed on a house rule. He merely convulsed on the sidelines, terrified and impotent, whenever the party heroes started swinging swords about. When my turn came to announce, I'd say things like, "I wet my breeches" or "I pull my vest over my head and wretch."

During a crypt raid, ancient horrors defended the inner tomb. Our fiercest warrior caught a cruel blow and fell to his knees. Billowing dust, the skeleton creature raised its sword over his head. At this point, my accountant overcame his terror, charged wildly into the fray and shattered his lantern into the dead man's ribcage. It caught on fire and came after this new attacker.

Even though my roll to hit and damage dealt were probably not impressive, the narrative was; and the fact that this ninny found the courage to rescue the hardened, soldier-felling merc, no less.

He was very satisfying to play.

[Madeline]

I played in a game once where we were basically normal people attempting to save the entire world.  It wasn't hugely satisfying even when we succeeded, because it was implausible.  Were those characters not PCs, they would have died or been jailed, and failed.  While "given a victory" seemed better than "tried but blew it bigtime", it wasn't really Good.

If the characters aren't equal to the challenge of the plot, then I don't see how the game can be "won" by player action.  And if player actions aren't the things advancing the plot, where's the "game" part come in?  I agree with Roger.

[Nathan P.]

'Nother thought - if you want to play an underdog, choose a game where you play underdogs. Look at Hunter: the Reckoning, from WW. Played as laid out in the game text, the characters are totally screwed. The absolute best you can expect is that you'll go insane and self-destruct after you take out one infinitesmal part of the evil forces threatening the world, instead of before.

This is no way precludes you from having an awesome, "muchinkined"-out character, or whatever.

So I guess I'm saying that game design can include playing underdog characters while still enabling you to fulfill your hottest man-o-muscle dreams. You just need to find that game.

[GreedIsGod]

*Additional Ramble*
Underdog is also reletive. Yea, your Knight has a Strength of 18 and a "Great Butt Whuppin Sword" that gives +5 to all rolls. Big whoop, we're doing a campaign of polical intrigue and you have an intelligence of 13 (not brilliant but still closer to average). You're not stupid, but that Count over there? He has an 18 Intelligence and an 18 Charisma.

I will always choose intelligence over any other statistic, with wisdom, charisma and strength equal in relevance depending on my character concept and the game.