Who cares?

[kalyptein]

I tend to think of my character by way of a computer analogy.  I've got this virtual machine inside my head where I run a model of my character.  I feed it all the data I have on the game and it tells me what it would do based on that.  Whether any of its "desired" actions ever makes it into the game depends on whether I decide to vocalize them to the group.  I might see something I'd rather have happen and do that instead.

So on the one hand the character has no literal existance, its not like it can overrule me.  On the other hand, I went to the trouble of detailing it so that I could use it as a guide.  Often I have no particular notion of what I want to do.  Left door or right door?  Kill him or let him go?  Either one could lead to a fun outcome.  If I have no metagame agenda to pursue, I use what the character wants to do to make choices.  In that sense his wants are important because they are going to inform my playing some of the time.  I guess you could say the character *does* exist: as an algorithm intended to select from an array of choices.  Sure I'm "wanting" (or at least willing) to act on its suggestions, but I only want to because I can't think of anything I actually want.

I could flip a coin to make decissions.  The coin doesn't want anything, but you'd understand what I meant if I said "the coin says to go right".  It seems that talking about "what a character wants" can be useful as long as you understand what that means.

Alex

[Mike Holmes]

That's a circular argument, Ralph. Yes, if Deep Immersion has as part of it's definition as being uncaring about other player's preferences, then it's bad. But I could say that Narrativism is about doing NArrativist things despite what other players think. That is, if there's an "Immersionist" at the table, then any attempt to play in the Narrativist mode is just as bad an idea.

So, all you've said is that incoherence can exist, which we already knew. You then make this even more clear by pointing to the case where Immersion can work, which is when everyone is on the same sheet of music. GNS again. So, it's not the mode, it's coherence or incoherence.

Mike

[MachMoth]

Okay, if the discussion is if the character exists, then no.  Characters don't exist, because we made them up, and pretend to think like them.  If that's the discussion, I think we have way to many posts, and way to long of posts.  

I thought the whole start of the matter was whether the fact that your character "not existing" was point enough to throw against someone claiming their character's motives count more than their own.  Obviously, its a matter of reading either too deep, or not deep enough into the statement.  Saying your character has wants, does not automatically imply he exists.  It implies that the wants you have given him exist, in the context of the game.  It really shouldn't have to be spelled out.  If someone here thinks that a fictional character they created out of the blue, and play in a roleplaying game exists (eg. has living flesh, desires, and kills mosters outside your door at night), please step forward, and we will find you a shrink.  Otherwise, I'm still missing the point.

[Marco]

It really shouldn't have to be spelled out.  If someone here thinks that a fictional character they created out of the blue, and play in a roleplaying game exists (eg. has living flesh, desires, and kills mosters outside your door at night), please step forward, and we will find you a shrink.  Otherwise, I'm still missing the point.

Well ... there are the "play yourself" games ...

Hey! Hey! What!? Baker ACT!? Get yer hands off me!!

-Marco

[Christopher Weeks]

I've got this virtual machine inside my head where I run a model of my character.  I feed it all the data I have on the game and it tells me what it would do based on that.

If we imagine that this is more correct than merely an analogy, is the character still just as equally ficticious?  Still just a part of you?  What if this is how multiple personality disorder works -- just to a larger and clearly harmful extent?  Are the multiple personalities likewise ficticious artifacts of whichever personality is the "real" one?

Why are we so sure that a single brain (meat computer) can't run more than one person simultaneously?  Or, if a part of your mind/brain figures stuff out about your character's motivations and you are completely unaware of that process, is it still just you "choosing to portray that in the game?"

I realize that this is a stretch beyond RPG theory, but it interests (at least, and hopefully not only) me.

Characters don't exist, because we made them up, and pretend to think like them.

That is certainly how the majority of what we're doing feels.  But is it the only thing going on?  I'm playing with the notion that characters in some sense to occupy a position of at least limited autonomy.  And I don't think it's safe to disregard it as obviously foolish.  You suggest that the only way that a character could "exist" is to have "living flesh, desires," etc.  But while it's obvious that they don't have living flesh, I don't think it's as clear that they don't have desires.

It's funny, if this had started from any other position, I'd be arguing that characters are simply our creations.  It's just that the more I consider it, the more I find niche arguments that leave room for doubt.  Anyway, thanks for the writing everyone.

Chris

[M. J. Young]

I've got a feeling that everyone is right here, and everyone is talking past each other and not getting anyone else's point, and that we've been through this before.

In the previously referenced http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6608">Player-Character Distinctions thread

On the characters, put me down as an author who has had characters refuse do to things. That's ridiculous, I hear. How can a fictional character you created refuse do to something you want him to do? Just write that he does it. It's not so absurd as it sounds, though. I can't just write that he does it. I can, if I wish, destroy who he is and create a new character with the same name, snap the disbelief suspenders of every reader, and derail the intended focus of my story with this jarring shift, but I can't make a character do anything that serves my plot merely because I want him to do it. Sure, characters do things that surprise readers; but you have to build to those, and they become major points of character development. A character has to struggle with that kind of decision for some time before making it, and the reader has to see him struggling. Otherwise, it's nonsense.

Certainly every character I create is drawn from somewhere inside me. On the other hand (as shown in a thread not long ago about Myers-Briggs types) I can take tests as different characters and get different results. Several are extroverted (I'm introverted). I'm intuitive, but most of my characters are sensing. Nearly all my characters are, like me, thinking--but one is feeling. Also, most of my characters match me as perceiving, but one (and not the one who is feeling) is judging. Once I'm in my character's head (written or role played), I know what that character would do, and it's not always what I would do, or what I would want done for the purposes of the story or the game.

I find the fact that I can put myself in the mindset of the character to the point that I score differently on psych evals fascinating; but I've never thought of myself as someone who is "deeply immersed" in my character--rather as someone who understands "how my character thinks" and can thus answer questions for him.

That brings something new to my mind; but first, to continue the thought I started,

First, I wish to concede to Kester's excellent distinction between characterization and what I might call in a word personality. I think this clarifies the issue very nicely. Of course my characters don't really have "personality", desires, goals, concerns, or issues--they only appear to do so because I have drawn these aspects within them. I have goals for them on two levels--those which I attribute as their goals and those which are strictly my goals for them of which I do not consider them as recognizing. That is, in one story currently in editing, the character has been transformed into a sprite. I have a goal for him which he has, to deliver the sprites from the oppression of the humans; I have another goal for him, to have the ability to transform between human and sprite forms in future adventures, but he has no knowledge of this goal, and as close as he comes to it is wondering whether he will ever be human again. So saying that the character has desires or any of these other aspects of "personality" is only a shorthand way of distinguishing my goals attributed to him from my goals externally for him. He has no personality; he is characterized as having aspects thereof, and seen as having such aspects by the reader, to the degree that I am able to convey this.

Characters are not real; Ralph is right.

Yet (this is the new bit, perhaps) they are in some sense objectified. Let me try to explain that.

I can imagine sitting down to a Myers-Briggs test and trying to answer all the questions the way my wife would answer them. I've done this on quizzes before, trying to figure what answers she would give (and she's done the same to me). No, we never get them perfectly right--but we do know each other pretty well, and we get close most of the time.

My wife is a real person; when I answer the quiz on her behalf, I'm asking what would my wife say or do here?

My characters are not real people. Yet at the moment I sit down to take a quiz on their behalf, I have objectified them--they are in every relevant sense as real at this moment as my wife is, in relation to the quiz. I am asking what this person is like, and providing the answer I believe this person would give.

So in that sense, the characters are real. They are objectified constructs of people within my mind, not less real than anyone I know who is not me. In some ways they are more real in those circumstances, because I actually do know some of those characters better than I know my wife (of almost twenty-seven years).

I think I can be wrong about what such a character would do or say or think; I probably have been wrong, and have been called on the carpet by an editor who recognized that I was out of character. Those imaginary characters have an objectified reality to which they remain true, even as they grow and change. They exist.

Ralph is right that they only exist as what I created them to be. John is right that such characters have characteristics of which we are often not immediately aware, because they have real personalities which although initiated by us often reveal unexpected facets even to their creators.

I think, therefore I am. I don't know about you. All I know about you is an objectified image in my mind of who I believe you are. That's all I know about my characters, too. I'm not so crazy as to think either that you don't all exist in bodily form somewhere, or that my characters do; but as far as personalities go, to me theirs are as real as yours. If they surprise me less often, it may be because I know them better.

--M. J. Young
Who has obviously gotten tired of both sides of this argument and would like to see everyone admit that either side is nonsense.

[contracycle]

While I hesitate to say that "this is how multiple pewrsonality disorder works" but I do think this whole business of constructing fictional personalities is an interesting one.

Of course we inherently have some capacity to construct models of other peoples minds, as MJ pointed out.  Predators need to at least some extent to be able to poredict their pray; social beings who negotiate systems need to at least be able to make an educated guess about the state of mind of another person with whom they are negotiating.

I don't particularly find it contradictory that a character with a non-objective existance can suggest/impose actions and behaviours that do not appear[/] to arise from the "normal" mind of thw "host" - and nevertheless remain non-existant.  The character is serving as an alternative channel to self expression and in a capacity of self-exploration, too, I think.  The character is a mask for the self, and allows the player to experience reactions and inputs from others (based on, reacting to, the mask) which they would otherwise not have recieved.  Again, this makes it unsurprising to me that "new" ideas occur - the person has engaged in a non-standard dialoge with others.

But I donlt think it is particularly meaningfiul to discuss such characters as if they had a truly independant existance - they do not.  Every single time the character acts, it is becuase the player directed it to act - with all the ambiguity of cause and effect that follows any action, even without such masks.  There are no circumstances in which I will accept that the CHARACTER compelled the PLAYER to do anything; it is the player that compelled the character, even if this is not consciously known to the player.  Even if the reasons and raionale are not known to the player.  Even if it was a snap decision.  Even if the player is surprised by their own behaviour.

[Gordon C. Landis]

I may have said something similar to this before somewhere (it seems familiar), but a search hasn't turned up anything, so . . .

What is important (in my mind, and I suspect in the minds of Ralph and Ron) about "there is no character" is that the responsibility for what happens during play always falls upon the real human beings who are playing.  The character should never be seen as a valid reciepient of blame, praise, excuses, explanations, or complaints - those honors fall upon the players alone.

"My character" is always shorthand for "I as my character."  Now, I'd certainly agree that ther must be something powerful in that I-as-my-character thing (as opposed to simply I-as-author or I-as-game-player), otherwise we wouldn't be all, like, passionate 'n stuff about this hobby that has (exceptions like Universalis aside) playing a role as one of its' core features.

Maybe that just adds up to "what M.J. said."  Plus a little of "what Christopher said" (via Plato, in another thread).  If so, I consider myself in good company . . .

Gordon

[jdagna]

Arguing this topic is a little like arguing whether or not a virus is alive.  A virus has everything we associate with life except to the ability to reproduce by itself.  For that, it needs a host.  It provides instructions to the host and lets the host make copies of the virus.

Players are hosts to their characters in the same way.  They give the character life.  But the character (and game system) provide instructions to the player about how to do this, and these instructions are external to the player in most game systems.  

I'm going to continue using verbage like "my character wants" when I encounter instructions that make it clear how I should portray that character.  One reason I'll stick to this terminology is that I imagine my character as a real person, not just a sheet full of numbers, and this imaginary person has all the real qualities of any other person I know - much like M.J.'s example.

[erithromycin]

It may just be the groups that I play with, but I only encounter "my character" when people are objecting to things. I wonder if "my character wouldn't" is more common that "my character would" in other people's experience?

Some of it seems connected to the whole "my guy" thing, where this kind of thought about characters seems to be intimately connected to a player's defence of their prefered means of interaction with the game. Now, admittedly, running a big LARP which more or less has a PBEM tacked into the middle to run downtime between sessions, the whole 'my character' thing comes up quite a lot - when a player says "I convince X to do Y" and I can't get in touch with them, I have to interpret, according to my understanding of their character - sometimes "my character wouldn't" is about making it clear how people should assume it would behave, and sometimes it's just pissiness masquerading as deep artistic schtick. I agree that character's aren't, you know, real, being made up and all, but that's not to say that people can't have relationships with them - it has to be remembered that suspension of disbelief must not only apply to the game but to the participants.

I suspect that "My character" has at least a couple of identifiable/infered functions, the first of which is defence of suspension of disbelief -

My character does this because that's how he has to behave to maintain integrity [in the sense of being a cohesive entity within imagination and/or faithfulness to the tropes/themes/ideas/powers that are associated with them]. I encounter this in a lot of the games I play, and I'm not sure if that's connected to the whole WoD/Vampire frustrated narrativism chockful of bennies for munchkins thing, and also the "not rollplaying" mentality that seems connected - it seems, sometimes, like some primal cousin from which GNS and other models could [nay, did] spawn, and do wonder what would develop from those that I don't point towards The Forge or rec.games.frp.advocacy, but I digress.

My character does this because it's an object, and thinking about it like an object enables me to manipulate it for my own ends. Can you objectify and object? I think you can, though with this suggestion I'm trying to suggest that "my character" may be a deeper symptom, probably of a difference of opinion about roleplaying between the player in question and the rest of the group, or, indeed, between the players desires - it can be hard to get across, hard to grep too, that you can enjoy Narrativist games and the like and also enjoy leveling up and getting a +N weapon of deity.

My character does this because that is how he has been constrained by the choices that I have already made for him [which I'd imagine would be consistency, so that might be harking back to that first one]. This one crops up a lot, and I think it's connected to media sources that have central characters who don't develop. The Terminator does, Conan does [to pick two], hell, even the Lone Wolf and his Cub change a bit, but in the continuing campaign there's often this feeling that character's should only gain power, but not "change" change - this sort of thinking seems intimately connected with why comics got bad in about 1975, but that's a whole other discussion, probably for somewhere else too.

Anyway, that's what I think. Can you tell I make it up as I go along?
--
Drew

[pete_darby]

Okay, to paraphrase what I said in the Plato thread, and all these are higly personal opinions:

1) We are not responsible for the contents of our minds.
2) We are responsible for the expression of the contents of our minds.

In building a mental model of a character, we're making something in our minds that we're not entirely responsible for, if only because it's sitting in our heads along with everything our parents said, every TV show we ever read, and neurons fired by passing cosmic radiation, etc. We can't control the input completely, so we can't control the system.

When we set our models running, they interact with other players models, the game mechanics, our internalised models, and all the detritus in our heads. It's a little beyond me to think I have complete control over that process, even for the parts of it that are going on inside my head. Sometimes, what that model throws out as the words, thoughts and deeds of the character won't be what I would have conciously chosen them to be. Sometimes, what I consider to be the optimal course of action for the character will "feel wrong" when applied to the character. I'd go as far as to say, what feels wrong can tell you about GNS choices you make, but that's another thread.

But.

Unless I'm feeling particularly catatonic, at some point words are going to have to come from my mouth representing the intended actions, words, whatever of my character. And, in the absence of neurological disorders, I'd like to think I've got a pretty good handle on what I say. And even if the model is returning results loud and clear that, in this situation, this character would do this, I can subject it to an Internal Lumpley Principle; that response is unsatisfactory for me, get me another one.

If you find you're doing this a lot, it's probably a sign that you should change the character, either in the details or wholesale for a new one. No biggy.

Internally, characters may have a level of "independence", but since rpg's are a social past time, that independence is filtered through the conscious interpretation of the player.

To put it through another anecdote; while rehearsing the role of Polonius in Hamlet, the director put me through an in character interview. I'd decided to play Polonius as a kind of renaissance Henry Kissinger, totally deidicated to serving his King's policies by any means necessary. Bearing in mind how Hamlet treats Polonius' daughter ("get thee to a nunnery!"), the questioning moved to where that line between his daughter and his king lay...

Director:   But what if, say, you were spying on them together and he attempted to rape her, would you reveal yourself and stop him, or would you watch and use the information later to improve your king's position?

Polonius:   Well, I certainly wouldn't watch...

The session was terminated there, while me and the director collapsed into fits of laughter screaming "Jeez, what a scumbag!" I know I hadn't thought of the answer, and I was in an environment where any spontaneous answer was "right," making it quite different form most role playing campaigns. Now, I can't claim that Polonius is my creation, nor does the character that answers that way arise inevitably form Shakespeare's text, so the responsibility for that mental model of Polonius can't rest entirely with either me or Shakespeare. If I were playing Polonius in an rpg, I'd have to consider the sensibilities of the other players, the development of the game, etc. before answering. That's just polite. But that would also make it a different character as far as anyone else knows.

I feel another definition coming on:

The character is the mental model of a person under the nominal control of a player, as expressed through play.

I think that has the advantage, in the final clause, of shutting down the relevance of the internal character and whether they are beyond the control of the player, and focuses on what the player chooses to portray in the game, hence GNS choices and all that funky grooviness.

And the usual corrolaries that the sheet is not the character, but the represntation of how the character engages with the system, etc etc.

[Marco]

I've got a feeling that everyone is right here, and everyone is talking past each other and not getting anyone else's point, and that we've been through this before.

In theI think, therefore I am. I don't know about you. All I know about you is an objectified image in my mind of who I believe you are. That's all I know about my characters, too. I'm not so crazy as to think either that you don't all exist in bodily form somewhere, or that my characters do; but as far as personalities go, to me theirs are as real as yours. If they surprise me less often, it may be because I know them better.

--M. J. Young
Who has obviously gotten tired of both sides of this argument and would like to see everyone admit that either side is nonsense.

I've thought this from the begining--but as I think the point about how a character's wants are interperted is *illustrative* of different aspects of GNS, I think it's worthy of *some* discussion--that is, the definition of a "character's want" is different from G to N to S.

cognitio cognito ergo congnito cognito sum.

-Marco

[Jason Lee]

I was all worked up about this thread. Ready to voice my impassioned opinion about how characters do exist. Now, someone has said most everything I was going to say, so I'll just add a little.

First, my hat goes off to MJ for the whole talking past each other bit, and my hat also goes off to kalyptein for using the same analogy I was going to.

*****

Ok, we've got a statement a player makes: "It's what my guy would do."

1) I've seen this statement used by players to rationalize behavior they know the group won't approve of; the most irritating 'My Guy!' defense.

2) I've also seen this statement used to illustrate the guidelines for internal consistency of a character.

Same damn statement with two meanings. A person may mean the second, but be attributed with meaning the first unjustly. Saying the statement itself is the problem (the implication that the character controls the player) is blaming the symptom.

*****

A character (or setting element, or whatever) is an imaginary construct (or mental model if you prefer that phrasing). One thing that seems to be missing thus far in the discussion is that his imaginary contract exists not only in the player's imaginary space, but also in the shared imaginary space once it has been integrated. By integrated I mean the process wherein imaginary contracts from a player's personal space are proposed into the shared space, their procedures (input and output rules; how a contract behaves) altered by group consensus, and are then stored in the shared imaginary space. Certain procedures become less open to edits once integrated into the shared space; with the group ultimately deciding the value of an individual procedure; often with the player who owns the particularly construct having the most say. Meaning, an imaginary construct exists beyond simply the player because some of its procedures are stored within the shared imaginary space.

Wow, that was dense. Sorry.

Point being, a character is about as real as Microsoft Word is. Though, the basic logic system is different, the medium which stores the data obeys different rules, and the procedures are more open to alteration.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

While I hesitate to say that "this is how multiple pewrsonality disorder works" but I do think this whole business of constructing fictional personalities is an interesting one.

Heh. The interesting thing is how often it happens. Jack Spencer Jr as he behaves and acts her on this forum acts differently on other forums he posts to or chats he's participated in. He acts differently work than he does at how. He behaves differently with friedns than he does with family. We like to believe there is a core individual regardless of our circumstances but this tends to overlook just how much of ourselves changes with circumstances. I used to joke "I have multiple personalities, unfortunately they are all just me." It's true.

THe character is an extension of this.

[MachMoth]

I've got a feeling that everyone is right here, and everyone is talking past each other and not getting anyone else's point, and that we've been through this before.

This is what I've been trying to say from the start.  Admittedly, I'm not that good with my wording most of the time.  Comes from studying too many languages.  Makes it so you can't express anything in any of them.

I kind of have to agree with kalyptein and Jack's analogy of the computer programs.  Programs/Data exist as nothing more than pulses on a round disk.  Yet, when interpretted properly, they have a very real appearance, and can even seem to act on their own.  However, the data does not act without the processor, and vv.  Similar, the character can not act without the brain, and the brain can not act out without some sort of character data.  Much like we act differently in different company, we are acting the part of a different character in a game.  In that respect, the character exists, because we are that character, if for only a moment.  As part of that character's existance, the paradigms change.  Actions become narrations.

In different settings, most people have different personalities.  These could be seen as different characters, sharing many of the same elements.  At one party you could be drinking tea, and talking about the stock market, and in another you get drunk and try to get laid (sadly, this character doesn't have much experience).  The personality used is effected by the rules of the environment.  In a game, the rules are far different.  The world exists as narration, thus the character does too.  The three dimensions are broken down into a single audible world, and you act accordingly.  That is much the point of roleplaying, you are the character, just in a very different environment.  

If you think of the character as a seperate entity, then it only exists as paper and pencil.  But, a character you play, exists as you, expressed in paper and voice, instead of actions.

I'm sorry if this makes absolutely no sense.  Like I said, I'm not very good at explaining things, especially in the literal world of GNS, so if I need to reword something, please let me know.