Casting Shadows

Here we go, into our second week of the 10th Anniversary edition of RPGaDay! The prompt for Day 8 asks us about our favorite character. For those who have responded to this or similar prompts in the past (it’s tied to a tent pole concept for RPGs, and so also this event) and you are looking for a variation, the bold single-word prompt is character. I know you were hoping for favorite, but the last day has dibs on that prompt. Besides, contrary to the copy-paste memes, it’s good to be able to talk about your character with your fellow gamers.

I gave some example characters in the podcast episode, so I will go with the prompt today.

Why do I say it is good to be able to talk about your character with your fellow gamers? For this intentionally short response, I will limit what I am going to say to one foundational point. When we play an RPG, we take on the role of one or more characters. The thing that we do as our play is to make decisions in the context of whatever situation these characters are in, in accordance with the things that those characters can do and if necessary be a part of using the game system to sort out some or all of the consequences. Inherited gamer humor from the ’70s passed on still today, suggests that it is okay to talk about the system, but boring or somehow lame to talk about your character. When these humorous observations get passed on to younger generations, they tend to gloss over or simply fail to provide the social context of when it is and is not appropriate to talk about characters and how it is and is not done. The end result is that some people feel like it is a faux pas to talk about what ends up being vastly more than 50% of any given session – the character – and thus, by accident, we end up with bad procedure masked as accepted practice.

When we are talking about playing an RPG, a huge part of what that experience turns out to be is figuring out who your character is, what they can do, what their world is like and how they fit in it, what the expectations for them are as the game frames them, and how the character is represented in writing, changes as a result of events and experience, and is presented to the other players in play. Why on Earth would we not talk about all of that?

Even if we are more interested in the mechanisms of play or in using other mechanisms of play to allow our decisions to affect the creation of story as much or more than the character, the character in a Roleplaying Game is the linchpin around which all the other stuff accretes during play.

It has its place in conversation about our games.

I, for one, am far more likely to ask you about your character and what you have done with them in play than I am to ask about other aspects of the games. I want to know how you see the game through that lens of character. I want to know what aspirations play has created for the character and how you think the character will begin addressing them. I want to know how they react to things, and how they see themselves.

I am asking you about how you play.

As a bonus, I will get to know you a little better as well. Knowing me, that is unlikely to ever happen without the boundaries of the game and the doorways into understanding that the characters seem to be.