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camwynOnce in a while, consider having the bad things that your characters do actually be their fault. Or, barring that, have them at least genuinely believe it was their fault.
I see a lot of stuff in games that I play at and in discussion groups about RP where this becomes a problem of sorts. You see, the player decides that it would be great to put their character through something very painful or nasty or awful. In the case of 'good' characters, this often takes the form of acting evil in some way. Since these characters are perceived by players as being 'good', they are often influenced by an outside force of some kind in order to make them do the bad thing. This is reasonable; this happens all the time in fiction.
What gets up my nose is the characters' reaction. There's angst aplenty, because the characters realize they did something Bad, but they don't seem to take any responsibility for it. 'Oh, my God, I did something bad!'- yes. That's great. That's an honest reaction. 'It must have been this other thing acting on me!'- um. Not so cool. People who do that in real life get snorted at, you know. Mel Gibson, by way of example. "I would never say horrible things about the Jewish people! It was the booze!" might be his official statement, but I suspect more people are rolling their eyes and going "shyeah right" than not.
Mind you, it's perfectly natural for people to react this way, and I understand that no one really wants to take responsibility for doing or saying something dreadful. Mr. Gibson certainly doesn't, although his publicity people seem to be working on that. It just seems to me that sooner or later in a large enough game, the law of averages ought to play out in favor of someone saying 'oh, my God! I did an awful thing! How could I have been so foolish!' instead of 'oh, my God! I did an awful thing! That terrible spell / curse / other person / phase of the moon / evil deity / horrible space monkey / booze / pills / coach / peer group made me do it!'.
I guess it's just that I get enough of people whining about how it isn't their fault in RL, and would sort of like game characters to be better about it than celebrity mucky-mucks who think 'I'm sorry if I offended anyone' is somehow a substitute for 'I did that, I shouldn't have done that, and I'll do whatever is in my power to make it better'. 'The horrible space monkeys made me do it' is a realistic response if Hollywood is anything to go by. It's just tired, trite, and overused.
Seriously. If you like angst, why not try a little shame or guilt next time? It might be fun.
I see a lot of stuff in games that I play at and in discussion groups about RP where this becomes a problem of sorts. You see, the player decides that it would be great to put their character through something very painful or nasty or awful. In the case of 'good' characters, this often takes the form of acting evil in some way. Since these characters are perceived by players as being 'good', they are often influenced by an outside force of some kind in order to make them do the bad thing. This is reasonable; this happens all the time in fiction.
What gets up my nose is the characters' reaction. There's angst aplenty, because the characters realize they did something Bad, but they don't seem to take any responsibility for it. 'Oh, my God, I did something bad!'- yes. That's great. That's an honest reaction. 'It must have been this other thing acting on me!'- um. Not so cool. People who do that in real life get snorted at, you know. Mel Gibson, by way of example. "I would never say horrible things about the Jewish people! It was the booze!" might be his official statement, but I suspect more people are rolling their eyes and going "shyeah right" than not.
Mind you, it's perfectly natural for people to react this way, and I understand that no one really wants to take responsibility for doing or saying something dreadful. Mr. Gibson certainly doesn't, although his publicity people seem to be working on that. It just seems to me that sooner or later in a large enough game, the law of averages ought to play out in favor of someone saying 'oh, my God! I did an awful thing! How could I have been so foolish!' instead of 'oh, my God! I did an awful thing! That terrible spell / curse / other person / phase of the moon / evil deity / horrible space monkey / booze / pills / coach / peer group made me do it!'.
I guess it's just that I get enough of people whining about how it isn't their fault in RL, and would sort of like game characters to be better about it than celebrity mucky-mucks who think 'I'm sorry if I offended anyone' is somehow a substitute for 'I did that, I shouldn't have done that, and I'll do whatever is in my power to make it better'. 'The horrible space monkeys made me do it' is a realistic response if Hollywood is anything to go by. It's just tired, trite, and overused.
Seriously. If you like angst, why not try a little shame or guilt next time? It might be fun.
