[Norwegian Style] Role-playing epiphany: Characters rule!

[contracycle]

About which...  I have to tell that I agree on some of Jaakko observations, but not on the conclusions. 

Hmm, but, it wasn't so much an argument to a particular conclusion as an expression of preference, surely?

At any rate, I can certainly accept your accounts of enjoying character driven stories arising from characters that were in part designed by others or only in your control partially or temporarily, but suspect that like Jaakko I would not find this engaging.  I wouldn't be at all happy having to integrate a Secret proposed by others, and likely couldn't find significance in any decision I made for a character in which I was not personally invested.  So his description of his experience is one I recognise; having and playing the character is a sizable chunk of the whole point of play for me.

[Jaakko Koivula]

This has been interesting, thanks for all!

It seems I personally have reached a point, where I just have to get out there and play more games. With characters, without characters, with shared characters, etc.

I think that a strong, one-person controlled character is the most natural medium for me to play with. But does that character need to have a character sheet or stats, or is it enough that I just have this vision of the character in my head, etc? Just need to experiment a bit and see what turns up.

Actual Play time ->

[Tomas HVM]

I think that a strong, one-person controlled character is the most natural medium for me to play with.

This is my stance too; having a character to identify as "mine" in the fiction, makes the fiction so much stronger to me.

But does that character need to have a character sheet or stats, or is it enough that I just have this vision of the character in my head, etc? Just need to experiment a bit and see what turns up.

Funny; I'm writing on a new game these days, and yesterday I contemplated making it without character-sheets, even though it has strong characters and is almost totally character-driven. The idea is to make easily memorized character-flags, and to set the characters against each other in strong relationships, in a fictional frame so simple and recognizable you just can't miss the target.

So; my plan is to help the players get some really hard visions of characters in their head, and to let interaction flow forth from those visions.

Go game!