Another lame gamer rant: Character Creation

The BBQ Pit
21

I worked on the development of a game out there called Feng Shui, a Chinese-action-film (several genres of Chinese action film, I might add, from sorcery to John Woo shoot-em-up) based rpg with a flair for the tongue-in-cheek and the cinematic.

One of the great things they incorporated into the game were modifiers which improved your die rolls based upon your creativity. For instance:

“To your horror, a misshapen parody of a whirling dervish brandishing a pair of wicked butterfly swords spins like a buzzsaw down the narrow hallway in your direction; the sheer force of spinning his weapon tears the very paper off the aging walls in it’s vortex—and the door behind you clangs hollowly, followed by a sickening ‘click.’

“I shoot him.” Says Bud the Beretta Blastin’ boxboy.

He will roll to hit with no modifier.

But if Bud says:

“In the moments I have before he reaches me, I spin and try the knob, beating my head against the door, and crying “MOMMMMMYYYYY!!!” But while I’m doing this, I’ll unclip the dual .45’s from underneath my blazer, spin them twice for luck, and as he reaches me, I’ll leap, spinning and around and planting both feet against each narrow wall so I’m doing the splits, firing into his head and screaming at the top of my lungs “ALL THIS AND THE EGGROLL TOO!!!”

Difficult, sure. But he gets a +2 for creativity to his roll—after all, this is action cinema, and that’s a great shot.

If you’re going to roleplay, remember the key word: PLAY. CREATE. Have FUN fercryinoutloud! As it was previously mentioned, it’s acting. The playwright John Patrick Shanley wrote ‘Theatre is the safe place to do the unsafe things that need to be done.’ Same with role-playing—take a RISK. Explore the character, making him/her someone you’ve never been, never done, and COMMIT to your choices.

Which brings me to the one of the most horrifying but poignant rules of all:

YOUR GM IS NOT YOUR THERAPIST.

If you enter one of my games and intend to take your real life problems out during the session on me or my other gamers, you’re gonna be real disappointed real quick. People are here to play for fun—what you’re doing is lighting the fuse which will eventually end up with a coalition to ban role-playing games picketing the local comic book store because you took the game too seriously and hurt someone. You need therapy, see a counselor. You want to talk about your problems, do it before you play the game. I will not welcome you in my game if you intend to pander to your insecurities at the expense of 4 other people who just want to find the Golden Marmoset of Khaman-Loi.

Not to be insensitive—some issues are healthily addressed in the art of role-playing. But this is a GAME. You’re not paying me 150 bucks an hour so I can give all my attention to you. Have fun, or don’t play.

No offense, nothing personal, but get real.

So to speak.

22

May I? Thank you.

To the new player in the group:

I appreciate the fact that you have some experience role-playing. Nonetheless,

Don’t make a character who doesn’t fit into the game at all
I’ve told you about how we play, what the world is like, what sort of adventures the players have gone on. It’s pretty obvious that the world you’ve been invited into is a swashbuckling, derring-do, happy-go-lucky action funfest, with a lot of attention paid to making it a classic four-color fantasy adventure.

Why then, do you insist on creating a dark, depressing cleric, with a dull and fatalistic outlook on life? Why do you ask me if I can have something terrible happen to him, so that he can be drawn further and further into evil, so he can self-destruct? Why did you bring in that awful figure of a cleric, dressed completely in black, looking like a Goth off his diet, modified to have out-of-scale skulls for flail-balls?

We play for fun. We have laughed ourselves into conniptions with this game for over a year now. If you want darkness, despair and chaos, we can do that. But start your own freaking game if you want to GM.

Oh, and…

Call ahead of time if you’re not going to show up

I know, life can get in the way sometimes. But there are five other people involved in this game, and as opposed to sitting around my living room, wondering if you’re going to show up, we’d rather be doing pretty much anything else.

You see, I like this game. I spend a lot of time preparing for it. By the time you show up at 2:30 on Sunday, I’ve spent all day that day getting things ready, and have probably spent one or two evenings at home that week preparing the adventure. So, if you can’t show up, as a crucial member of the party, and you tell me ahead of time, I can skip all that, and have fun some other way. It frustrates the hell out of me if you know you weren’t going to be able to make it, but never bother to call.

And this one might ruffle some feathers, but here goes…

It’s great that your character has flaws. Does he have anything else?

I agree that great characters do indeed have flaws. But they overcome them; that’s what makes for a good character arc. Some of the people who think they’re great role-players make such neurotic, annoying characters that the only reasonable setting for them would be in a mental institution, getting the crap beaten out of them.

For GM’s sake, give the rest of the party some sort of reason to keep you around, at least. Try and be a useful part of the party, and you’ll be able to role-play your flaws all you want. Be a constant annoyance and a danger to other characters, and you are gonna get iced so hard and so fast you’ll think you got teleported to Pluto.

I feel better now. Thanks.

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A-fucking-men!

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Yeah, you’re absolutily right. What I was trying to point out is that youdon’t have to be Superman, with kryptonite immunity, to have fun in a RPG. Weaknesses help round out a character’s personality. However:

Don’t have weaknesses so devestating that your character is useless, unless the campaign supports comic relief-type characters. When I play Champions or GURPS, I make sure that whatever disadvantages I have will make my character more three diminsional, as opposed to making him completily useless in a given situation.

25

Man, I wished I’d realize this years ago! I’m getting that couch outta the gaming room! :slight_smile:

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WHOOSH!!!

27

WTF? I still don’t get it.

28

A-freakin-men to that. I just got rid of this wanker who was one of the dumbest individuals (both in reality and the game-world) I’ve ever had the misfortune to run across. He kept casting lightning bolts through the group to get a kobold running down a hallway, insisted on attempting to charm party members (and announcing to them too) every time they divided up treasure and kept casting Evards Tentacles IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GROUP. Then he had the temerity to act shocked when they axed him. What a putz…

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Amen there Pariah. I was one of those who brought his real world problems into a game and relized very quickly how pissed off a GM gets about this sort of thing. Now being a Vampire ST for 11 years, along with D&D, Shadowrun, and DC Hero’s I have learned a lot.

Let me add one:

If we don’t have a major combat scene in every gaming session don’t bitch about it.

This urks me more than anything. This is a Storytelling game stupid (Speaking of Vampire here). If we don’t have combat that means we got 4-5 hours of ACTUAL playtime in. Fuck you if you want to blow shit up.

You know, GMing would be great if it wasn’t for all the players. :wink:

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A search turned up one possible mention, buried in a longish thread last summer, of: Summoner Geeks. But this is a good spot to mention it again.

The animation was matched to audio from what was apparently an SNL (or similar) skit/commercial, and matched very amusingly.

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It was a joke, Pod. My suggestion about the duel was a joke. I thought my reference to the swordfighting in The Princess Bride was obvious…

In either case, this little misunderstanding has led me to think of a different solution to the “my character can beat up your character!” problem… just beat up the little braggart in real life.

(Note: That was another joke :))

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Aw, he could certainly kick my ass IRL. Unless I fought dirty.

33

Then fight dirty! Dirty fighting’s the best kind!

34

No good. She can’t get the Dirt Fighting feat until she reaches sixth level.

<Looks around to see if anyone got the really clever 3rd Edition reference, slinks quietly away when no one does.>

35

Uh, that would be the “Dirty Fighting feat”, not the “Dirt Fighting feat.” Podkayne can’t take the Dirt Fighting feat unless she is a vacuum cleaner.

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I did!

[Heretical admission]3rd Ed D&D is rather better than 2nd Ed AD&D[/Heretical admission]

To add to the OP (Or rather the generalised hijack) - even if you don’t want to be there, if you DO show up, at least TRY to make an effort.

We all zone out occasionally, but please…

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Word. And I don’t always need to roll the dice either.
When I am GM, the only rule that strictly applies is this:
[lawnmower man]
I AM GOD HERE.
[/lawnmower man.]

If I say your gun jams, then it jams. If I say the grenade was a dud, it was a dud.

If I allow a character to pull off some amazingly complicated move that is straight outta a John Woo flick because he/she was so good at describing it and it made the game that much more fun, so be it.

If your character futzes a basic dodge because you are too lame to add some creativity and imagination to it, so be it.

Don’t bother to argue with me, I won’t listen. I am the deity of your choice because you chose to play in my world. When you GM, I do the same.

Well, some characters are kick-ass, hell bent for leather, take no prisoners fighters, and others are sniveling cowards. Given this, it is easy to see that one character could indeed kick another character’s ass. However, I agree that it doesn’t need to be said because it’s usually obvious. Also, there’s a lot of dice rolling involved and sometimes people get their feelings hurt.
Although, if one character is being a bully, who’s to say that something untoward won’t occur? Characters who are continually being assholio typically get the smack laid down on them.

Also, I would like to add that:

Leave your inhibitions at home. If you’re not going to get into the game, WTF did you come?

Be thorough. Just like Fenris said, I’m not going to make you write down every little thing you have down to the lint in your navel, but if you have Benelli M1-S90, you better write down how many bullets you have for it. If you don’t, the first time you pull the trigger, all you’re going to here is a bowel-curdling CLICK!.

Do not underestimate your enemy. If I had a nickel for every time the 13th gen Inconnu neonate killed an 11th gen Brujah elder because the Brujah was an overconfident dick, I’d have 'bout a buck-o-nine. The extra four cents is because one time the Brujah lived but was so messed up she had to lay in torpor for about 750 years.

Just because one character can do it, doesn’t mean you can. Face it, we’re different. Just because one person can do something doesn’t mean you can, too. This should be glaringly obvious, but I’m continually amazed at the number of people who don’t think this applies to the game world as it does IRL. Example: three members of the coterie fleeing across the rooftops of a suburban neighborhood. One of them makes a daunting jump and keeps on going. The next member makes it too, if just barely. The third guy doesn’t and falls into the back yard.
The guy playing the third guy whines that his character should have made it, his main argument being that since the other two made it, he should have also.

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Ha. As it happens, I have three feats. All Martians have three feats. Three handses, too.

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I’d like to take this opportunity to rant against bad GMs.

Now, all of you folks who’ve posted in this thread sound like you’re great GMs, so this isn’t directed at any of you. It is dedicated to my GM, who may be the lamest GM in the history of gaming.

*Pick a system and stick with it! You don’t have to set up a crossover with every other system you’ve ever heard of. If I wanted to play “Vampire: The Masquerade” (or whatever system you happened to buy a book for this week), I’d bloody well be playing that game instead of this one.

*It’s called roleplaying, not rollplaying. I’m not against dice, but I don’t think we should have to roll them whenever our characters want to blow their noses.

*I realize that sometimes improbable things must happen to advance the plot. But when stupid, improbable things happen for no good reason, I must suspect that you are just being obnoxious. If a character is jogging across a field, it seems just a tad unrealistic for you to suddenly announce (and without rolling your precious dice, I note!) that he has run full tilt into a tree. Especially if we all know that you have a personal problem with the player.

*So, one of the other players in our group happens to be your roommate. And the two of you get together privately and hatch this wonderful scheme for her character to go insane and secretly try to kill everyone else. You don’t tell the rest of us any of this, but since neither of you are masters of subtlety we figure it out within the first few minutes. The first few minutes of the first of two multi-hour gaming sessions during which you refuse to allow our characters to make any progress in figuring out who this mysterious attacker is. That is not suspenseful. That is not fun. That is boring.

I realized when I started gaming with her that she’d never run a campaign before, so I was willing to cut her some slack. Besides, she’s running the only game on campus, and I like the other players. But as time went on she actually got worse instead of better. Her plot twists became more obvious! Her NPCs became more cliched!

I don’t think I’ll be gaming with her again next year.

Any of you GMs need a new player? :slight_smile:

40

Dirt fighting is a 3rd level commoner feat.

Marc