Playing the Exception

[Gambor]

While it's certainly not ubiquitous, it's by no means rare for a hero to be set apart by great skill, strength, or some other factor. To take Lord of the Rings as an example, Legolas is a prince, Boromir is the next in line to the Stewardship of Gondor, Aragorn is Isildur's heir, and Gandalf is an Ainur who takes leadership of the Istari, arguably becoming the most powerful being in Middle-Earth (Sauron included).

I've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple days. The concept that the "main character" should be special is not unusual, but I think the root of this is the difference between the first and last page of the story. When people think of a character, they often fall into the trap of wanting to make a character at the end, rather than the beginning, of the story.

[Dwarfshark]

Though following up on the Lord of the Rings analogy, the PC's would arguably only be Sam and Frodo. The rest were NPC's...

But anywho.

It takes all kinds by way of character concept. I don't know that I've ever played a character with any "special gift" and generally put something a bit dark or tragic in a background. To my mind travesty is what motivates people to either curl up and die or do something special.
_________________
"The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life."

-- Calvin

[Gambor]

If we start separating the characters between PC and NPC, we move into wholly opinion territory, a land of bountiful speculation. Besides that, there are many and varied examples to pull from outside of LotR that fit the criteria. The point is that it is no more valid to dismiss one side of the coin than the other, when talking of fiction.

As far as it goes making character for cooperative storytelling though, it becomes much less feasible to stray to far from the norm. While every character needs to be more than the stereotype, the archetypes exist for a reason. The point of the world source material is to help everybody understand what those archetypes are. It doesn't do much good; however, if it is ignored willy nilly. The reason it matters what Felinae society is like is because without that understanding we can't appreciate when a character makes those departures from the norm. When such departures are made without thought or taken lightly, it weakens the world and in so doing, it weakens the game.

Fortnight is a strange place, where a handful of people will take a fort, then stand in that fort and face an army of thousands. It's a place where people die without dying, and the ability to throw a fireball or shatter stone with a sword doesn't make you stand out. The town is full of people with exceptional skill and strength. But they are still people, they still come from a world, and it behooves us to understand and respect that world so that we can play in it.

[Josh]

Not to belabor a point from my last post, but I think this conversation is focusing on a superficial area. In the end focusing on what a character is (half vampire, half werewolf, half fetish clothing advertisement) isn't really any different than focusing on a character card. Such an exercise in isolation doesn't lead to creating a character for a LARP but rather a characature. In any instance simply looking at a character through that viewpoint will create a character with no depth - one that isn't ideal for the social interactions intrinsic to the LARP experience.

If players start off trying to define who their character is, how they behave, what they stand for, and then build a backstory with the intent of supporting and explaining that character construct it won't really matter what specifics are in the history, even if they are exceptional. In general, I think what Jonathan is ultimately shooting at is that it isn't at all compelling to interact with a Mary Sue/ Gary Stu sort of wish fulfillment character because they seem mostly hollow. It ultimately isn't the exceptional qualities that is the problem, but the lack of any other meaningful quality.

To somewhat use the already mentioned LotR characters as an example - yes, Legolas is a prince, Boromir is heir to the stewardship, and Aragorn is Isildur's heir (Gandalf is not a horribly realistic character to bring into the discussion - he was modeled intentionally after the Wandering Odin iconography from Norse myth and intentionally serves the role of higher authority guiding the spirits of the other characters), but that isn't what makes the characters interesting. The defining qualities of Boromir is his levels of duty, desperation and despair which causes him to lust for the ring - his role as heir was only to give a perspective to why he was compelled by duty and what lead to his desperation and dispair. Similarly Aragorn being ultimately king of gondor is just a literary venue to explore the dueling interests of desire and duty. In both cases what the characters are matters very little other than to help understand who they are, and the same sentiment should apply to Legacies.

Legolas is an excellent example of when there is no "who" but only a what. He is a prince, an elf, superhuman graceful and agile, a brilliant shot, and the most boring damn character with any major involvment in the story, save for random quips between him and Gimli. All he is is a "What" and that makes him far less compelling than the other characters.

With all of that said, I would highly encourage players download the very rough first 4 chapters of the new PG and read chapter 3. It has been more than a year since I uploaded it so references to Scarborough are rampant, and it is not at all polished, but I *hope* it provides a good compliment to the rulebook; the rulebook focuses on building the character card but the PG is designed to help actually build the character that players are playing.