The Three Levels - An introductory thread

[LordSmerf]

Hmm... That is one way of looking at it.  I made the point purely from personal experience (i've worked with maybe five or six different groups of players, but all of them are from the same geographic area).  I guess you are right though.  However, the fact that there must be some relation, even if it is just that you find the character interesting to observe and develop will serve the purpose of the Second Level.  If we can see that you like or dislike character X and what qualities you specifically like/dislike then we can gain a better understanding of you as a player.  In fact this doesn't nessecerily have to be between a character and his creator, it could be someone elses character and a player.  That's kind of interesting.

Thomas

[Mike Holmes]

If we can see that you like or dislike character X and what qualities you specifically like/dislike then we can gain a better understanding of you as a player.  In fact this doesn't nessecerily have to be between a character and his creator, it could be someone elses character and a player.  That's kind of interesting.

Good point. And thanks for including that. This way, we can use any theory derived to talk about Universalis (I am one of the designers), too. See, there are no characters that are "owned" by any particular player, they are all shared communally. But one can make similar associations as you do above. For instance, players tend to like the protagonist characters that they create, and tend to hoard them to an extent. While the villains tend to become common property. That's a simple, and rather obvious statement, but shows how the theory can be applied on a broader scale.

What are the implications of this, however? I mean we've discussed a term here called Protagonism quite a bit which basically means the quality of being a Protagonist. As in "The GM stole my character's protagonism." Meaning, basically, the player's ability to be interested in the character. That probably includes idenitfication in some cases, but also simple sympathy, etc.

The "relationships" here are sorta one-sided, however. That is, the player has feelings for the character, but the character is, generally speaking*, unaware of the existence of the player. And in any case is a figment of the player's imagination, so can't be an active participant in the relationship.

I've often thought of it in terms of the character being a partitioned off mental entity. Not to say that the player actually has Multiple Personality Disorder, but that the player sorta tries to effect that to an extent. To the extent that they do this, they're having a relationship with themself, I guess.

Any Pshychologists here who can speak to this more accurately?

Mike

[LordSmerf]

I don't know about partitioning a character as part of yourself.  That would seem to indicate that there is some essential difference between playing characters that you have created and those that other people have created.  This is true to some degree because characters you create are "yours" in some sense.  However, i've found that i am often at least as fascinated by characters of other people's design.  For instance, i'm incredibly intrigued by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time character Matrim Cauthon.  He's simply engaging, and i wouldn't mind playing him in some RPG if the oppurtunity arose.

What about interpretation or vision of a shared character?  I've got a couple of characters of shared design.  A friend and i got together and designed a matched set of about a dozen characters.  Each of us has a few preferences (i like charcter X, he doesn't; he likes character Y, i don't), but there are some of these characters that we both really enjoy playing.

I guess it could be argued that we have different versions of the character "partitioned." I'm not saying that the idea that the character has a relationship with the player is invalid, i'm just not quite sure that it is valid in any appreciable number of cases.

I think that it's interesting that most Universalis players consider a character to "belong" to certain players while villains are shared.  I've found that villains can be as compelling as the "good guys."  Besides, it seems to me that Universalis is one of the few games suited to a play style that doesn't lock you into one side of the conflict being "good" and the other being "bad."  That's one of the things that looks the most interesting.

Anyway, i'll have to spend some more time thinking about the Second Level interaction since it is, for me anyway, the hardest to grasp and understand.

Thomas