Post by The Librarian on Apr 27, 2010 12:17:22 GMT -7
This post is thanks to Dalton. I may or may not agree with every point he makes, but there is good stuff here so you should check it out.
The following links are REQUIRED READING.
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Mary_Sue
images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/2/26/Marysue.jpg
Approximately 86.0291% of the characters you play (give or take 10%) are Sues. Cut it out. I am going to rant a little now, but the difference between this and all the other billions of rants you see on these forums is that I will try to offer help and solutions. Pouting over spilled milk is fine and dandy but if nobody goes to get a towel it will just set into your carpet and make it smell funky.
Now for this exercise I will teach you how to not be a retard. For starters, read a couple of books. Several well written fiction series are:
For younger readers:
Warriors (the one about the cats, not the other Warriors)
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
For older readers:
Dragonlance
The Forgotten Realms books
Steven King (well I hear he's good; I don't like his work myself)
Now as you read, don't just kind of skim through the pages. Really think about every event as it happens, as well as the writing styles used.
For the writing styles, notice several things. Take note of the punctuation. For one thing, professional books hardly ever use ellipses (...) because they are stupid. Often times, when you think you need an ellipse, you actually need a semicolon or other severely underused symbol.
But also take note of the use of descriptive text. Tolkien is considered by many to be longwinded in his descriptions. He spends several paragraphs describing a Hobbit Hole. He spends PAGES describing Bilbo, and Bilbo's friends and family. But when Tolkin describes a scene, the longwinded descriptors suddenly disappear and the story flows. Tolkien doesn't interrupt a fast paced conversation to remind you in grave detail exactly how many curly brown hairs are sprouting from Bilbo's left foot.
Now, that's a novel. How much more important flow is when you are playing in real time! A few huge, longwinded descriptions have their role. You should totally have a detailed profile full of physical description for your character. When describing something new for the first time (say, entering a room) feel free to expound upon important things (but please, you don't need to use more than a sentence to describe any given body part, unless you are with a specific group of people that WANT to read a poetic spew about how your eyes are as the delicate foam that forms on the crests of sea waves after a storm when.. I'll stop now)
Anyway I will cease expounding upon this for now. As you gain experience reading professional works you will begin to understand when you should and should not be longwinded.
Now, another thing to look at is characterization. Whenever you read a book, or watch a movie, you should be really picking apart characters. What is it about characters that makes you like them or hate them?
Who doesn't love Tasslehoff from Dragonlance? Entire internet fanbases exist for Gaston! Why is that? These characters have a realistic blend of strengths and flaws, turning them into believable people who contribute to the story. Their strengths play out without dominating the story and making other characters less important. At the same time, their weaknesses hold them back, but it DOES NOT BECOME AN ANGSTY PITY SESSION!! This is important! Everything about a character, the flaws and the strengths, should in the end contribute positively to the story to make it overall more deep and exciting. I can't tell you how many idiot Sues in the Keep have tried to say they're NOT pathetic attention whores. "My character is so deep! She has a dark past and her parents were abusive and her father raped her and she's afraid of men and is afraid to accept the love of a man now!" Whatever.
Another exercise I consider important is self-projection into the position of other characters. Empathy is an important trait to roleplayers, and I dare say if you are incapable of empathy then you will probably never be a very good player. You need to be able to picture yourself in the situation the person is facing. If you're doing it right, you should feel a chill down your spine when there's a strange rustle in the bushes. Your eyes should water when the character gets poisonous monster spit in his face. You should tear up a little when his older brother, whom he has looked up to as a role model and champion all of his life, leaves him for dead with a sneer as soon as something more convenient comes along.
If you can't feel the pain and joy of a canon character from a professionally written book, you'll never be able to connect with your own characters in a way that will allow you to breathe life into them. Argue all you want--it doesn't change facts.
But don't just read really good stories. Once you get used to feeling for characters (or realize you have no empathy whatsoever and decide to become an hero) you should start reading crappy stories. You will begin to notice that in lame fanfics, and crappy stories like pretty much every made-for-TV Disney movie, it's hard or even impossible to empathize with the shallow, two dimensional crap protagonists because they have no life or personality.
Strengths and flaws when it comes to characters are more than stats and power levels and crap. Being a likable person is a strength. Being smart is a strength. When people say stuff like "My character isn't very strong, he just uses his brain and that's why he can DEFEET EVREETHANG" I die a little on the inside. But it goes beyond even that. There's more to roleplay and story telling than combat. We've probably all met the healer that randomly goes around insta-healing every wound and depriving people of the joy of roleplaying a character's recovery process. We've all met the rich Sue who happily hands a bag of flawless diamonds to every pauper, trying to make himself look like the good guy but all he does is completely destroy the joy of playing a character who doesn't have infinite money to fall back on.
But this is not to say I think every person who plays a rich, powerful character is awful. I've seen people play GODS and do it very, very well. I've seen characters with a nearly infinite resource to draw upon--soldiers, money, land, food--and pull it off to amazing effect for public RP arcs that kept me entertained for months at a time!
So to repeat what I said earlier: your character's quality is more than a list of powers. And to repeat what I've said in almost every rant, ever: COMBAT ODDS DO NOT NEED TO BE FAIR!! If somebody is roleplaying a dragon, your little neko slave does NOT instantly deserve a 50% chance to win. I'm tired of people getting pissy because they think that they should be able to win every fight, and that insurmountable odds instantly means godmoding. If I was playing a dragon, boy, you better believe it'd be hard to kill. But it wouldn't mean I'm godmoding! My dragon character would go down if you came at him with a Sword of Dragonbane or something equally worthy, but contrary to what Heroes of the Lance on the NES claims, dragons do not die from Magic Missile.
Being the good guy also doesn't mean you instantly deserve to win. Sure giving the victory to the good guy in the end is a gratifying conclusion, but that's just it--victory at the END. Most of the best stories have heroes who lose time after time, day after day--then, only after reaching a point that seems hopeless, they have an epiphany that allows them to take their opponent by surprise and claim their triumph.
Anyway, the most important thing about a character is their ability to make positive contributions to the fulfillment of the game. I don't care if your character is Lyle the Farmhand or King Shiftmoon of the Shadow Folk; I don't care if your character is as helpless as an infant or has the power to bind the spirits of darkness to his very whims. All that matters to me is that your character contributes to the story and makes things more fun for everybody, rather than sucking life from the game like a literary vampire and ruining the fun of others just to give you a moment in the spotlight (before everybody gets bored and logs out anyway).
Oh, and on a somewhat related side note... Next time somebody says something like "I am casting Protection from Evil so your villain has a harder time hurting me" don't respond with some pseudo-philosophical asshat retort like "Well good and evil are subjective and my character THINKS he's a good guy so it doesn't work". It just makes you sound like a godmoding twit BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE.
This thread will remain open for discussion, despite the fact that most of it will involve people flaming me for being an opinionated jerk and thinking I am somehow entitled to tell you all how to roleplay. But I'm open if anybody actually wants to learn from me and is humble enough to realize they're not God's gift to the roleplaying community.
The following links are REQUIRED READING.
www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Mary_Sue
images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/2/26/Marysue.jpg
Approximately 86.0291% of the characters you play (give or take 10%) are Sues. Cut it out. I am going to rant a little now, but the difference between this and all the other billions of rants you see on these forums is that I will try to offer help and solutions. Pouting over spilled milk is fine and dandy but if nobody goes to get a towel it will just set into your carpet and make it smell funky.
Now for this exercise I will teach you how to not be a retard. For starters, read a couple of books. Several well written fiction series are:
For younger readers:
Warriors (the one about the cats, not the other Warriors)
The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings
For older readers:
Dragonlance
The Forgotten Realms books
Steven King (well I hear he's good; I don't like his work myself)
Now as you read, don't just kind of skim through the pages. Really think about every event as it happens, as well as the writing styles used.
For the writing styles, notice several things. Take note of the punctuation. For one thing, professional books hardly ever use ellipses (...) because they are stupid. Often times, when you think you need an ellipse, you actually need a semicolon or other severely underused symbol.
But also take note of the use of descriptive text. Tolkien is considered by many to be longwinded in his descriptions. He spends several paragraphs describing a Hobbit Hole. He spends PAGES describing Bilbo, and Bilbo's friends and family. But when Tolkin describes a scene, the longwinded descriptors suddenly disappear and the story flows. Tolkien doesn't interrupt a fast paced conversation to remind you in grave detail exactly how many curly brown hairs are sprouting from Bilbo's left foot.
Now, that's a novel. How much more important flow is when you are playing in real time! A few huge, longwinded descriptions have their role. You should totally have a detailed profile full of physical description for your character. When describing something new for the first time (say, entering a room) feel free to expound upon important things (but please, you don't need to use more than a sentence to describe any given body part, unless you are with a specific group of people that WANT to read a poetic spew about how your eyes are as the delicate foam that forms on the crests of sea waves after a storm when.. I'll stop now)
Anyway I will cease expounding upon this for now. As you gain experience reading professional works you will begin to understand when you should and should not be longwinded.
Now, another thing to look at is characterization. Whenever you read a book, or watch a movie, you should be really picking apart characters. What is it about characters that makes you like them or hate them?
Who doesn't love Tasslehoff from Dragonlance? Entire internet fanbases exist for Gaston! Why is that? These characters have a realistic blend of strengths and flaws, turning them into believable people who contribute to the story. Their strengths play out without dominating the story and making other characters less important. At the same time, their weaknesses hold them back, but it DOES NOT BECOME AN ANGSTY PITY SESSION!! This is important! Everything about a character, the flaws and the strengths, should in the end contribute positively to the story to make it overall more deep and exciting. I can't tell you how many idiot Sues in the Keep have tried to say they're NOT pathetic attention whores. "My character is so deep! She has a dark past and her parents were abusive and her father raped her and she's afraid of men and is afraid to accept the love of a man now!" Whatever.
Another exercise I consider important is self-projection into the position of other characters. Empathy is an important trait to roleplayers, and I dare say if you are incapable of empathy then you will probably never be a very good player. You need to be able to picture yourself in the situation the person is facing. If you're doing it right, you should feel a chill down your spine when there's a strange rustle in the bushes. Your eyes should water when the character gets poisonous monster spit in his face. You should tear up a little when his older brother, whom he has looked up to as a role model and champion all of his life, leaves him for dead with a sneer as soon as something more convenient comes along.
If you can't feel the pain and joy of a canon character from a professionally written book, you'll never be able to connect with your own characters in a way that will allow you to breathe life into them. Argue all you want--it doesn't change facts.
But don't just read really good stories. Once you get used to feeling for characters (or realize you have no empathy whatsoever and decide to become an hero) you should start reading crappy stories. You will begin to notice that in lame fanfics, and crappy stories like pretty much every made-for-TV Disney movie, it's hard or even impossible to empathize with the shallow, two dimensional crap protagonists because they have no life or personality.
Strengths and flaws when it comes to characters are more than stats and power levels and crap. Being a likable person is a strength. Being smart is a strength. When people say stuff like "My character isn't very strong, he just uses his brain and that's why he can DEFEET EVREETHANG" I die a little on the inside. But it goes beyond even that. There's more to roleplay and story telling than combat. We've probably all met the healer that randomly goes around insta-healing every wound and depriving people of the joy of roleplaying a character's recovery process. We've all met the rich Sue who happily hands a bag of flawless diamonds to every pauper, trying to make himself look like the good guy but all he does is completely destroy the joy of playing a character who doesn't have infinite money to fall back on.
But this is not to say I think every person who plays a rich, powerful character is awful. I've seen people play GODS and do it very, very well. I've seen characters with a nearly infinite resource to draw upon--soldiers, money, land, food--and pull it off to amazing effect for public RP arcs that kept me entertained for months at a time!
So to repeat what I said earlier: your character's quality is more than a list of powers. And to repeat what I've said in almost every rant, ever: COMBAT ODDS DO NOT NEED TO BE FAIR!! If somebody is roleplaying a dragon, your little neko slave does NOT instantly deserve a 50% chance to win. I'm tired of people getting pissy because they think that they should be able to win every fight, and that insurmountable odds instantly means godmoding. If I was playing a dragon, boy, you better believe it'd be hard to kill. But it wouldn't mean I'm godmoding! My dragon character would go down if you came at him with a Sword of Dragonbane or something equally worthy, but contrary to what Heroes of the Lance on the NES claims, dragons do not die from Magic Missile.
Being the good guy also doesn't mean you instantly deserve to win. Sure giving the victory to the good guy in the end is a gratifying conclusion, but that's just it--victory at the END. Most of the best stories have heroes who lose time after time, day after day--then, only after reaching a point that seems hopeless, they have an epiphany that allows them to take their opponent by surprise and claim their triumph.
Anyway, the most important thing about a character is their ability to make positive contributions to the fulfillment of the game. I don't care if your character is Lyle the Farmhand or King Shiftmoon of the Shadow Folk; I don't care if your character is as helpless as an infant or has the power to bind the spirits of darkness to his very whims. All that matters to me is that your character contributes to the story and makes things more fun for everybody, rather than sucking life from the game like a literary vampire and ruining the fun of others just to give you a moment in the spotlight (before everybody gets bored and logs out anyway).
Oh, and on a somewhat related side note... Next time somebody says something like "I am casting Protection from Evil so your villain has a harder time hurting me" don't respond with some pseudo-philosophical asshat retort like "Well good and evil are subjective and my character THINKS he's a good guy so it doesn't work". It just makes you sound like a godmoding twit BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE.
This thread will remain open for discussion, despite the fact that most of it will involve people flaming me for being an opinionated jerk and thinking I am somehow entitled to tell you all how to roleplay. But I'm open if anybody actually wants to learn from me and is humble enough to realize they're not God's gift to the roleplaying community.