O se preferite, il termine coniato da Greg Stolze in un articolo pubblicato - pare incredibile - sulla player's guide di Vampire: the Masquerade (Revised):
The Gamer Nuremburg Defense:
http://forum.dwellindarkness.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5028&p=27574#p27574[size=15]“But I Vad Chust Followink Mein Character Concept!”:[/size]
The Gamer Nuremburg Defense and Vampire: the MasqueradeBy Greg StolzeAt the end of World War II, some German soldiers argued, at the Nuremburg war crimes trials, that they were not personally responsible for atrocities they had committed. True, they were the ones who’d pulled the triggers on unarmed civilians, but (they said) it was actually their officers who were guilty. The soldiers/triggermen were innocent because someone else told them to do it.
This is the so-called Nuremburg defense: It’s not my fault. I was just following orders.
The tribunal didn’t buy it.
“The Nuremburg Defense” has become a punch line. IN his novel Thank You For Smoking, Christopher Buckley suggests a “Yuppie Nuremburg Defense” for America in the Reagan-Bush era: Not my fault, I was just paying the mortgage.
The Nuremburg Defense for Gamers is: Not my fault, I was just following my character concept.
We’ve all seen this, right?”
“Dr, Saarkov wouldn’t give a crap about rescuing those guys. He’s a follower of Nietzsche and the Path of Power and the Inner Voice. If they weren’t strong enough to avoid capture, he’s only coddling them if he helps them escape!”
“Lotus would never go into the woods at night. She’s terrified because of her experience with the Lupines. Look, the Phobia flaw is right on my character sheet!”
Your character concept is “keeps a low profile, avoids trouble.” Your character concept is “macho loner, sticks his neck out for no one.” Your character concept is “devious weasel who sell his own grandma for two pints of O negative.”
Nothing in the rules stops you from building characters like this – arguably, the Curmudgeon, Bravo and Conniver Natures encourage it. From your perspective they look fun, cool and interesting. To your Storyteller they are landmines in the lawn of his carefully tended plot, waiting for his riding mower to detonate them in a painful explosion of bad blood and ruined stories.
Rather than blow up your Storyteller’s chronicle (which is also your chronicle, and your fellow gamers’ chronicle), it’s important to understand why some character concepts look sweet on the outside but are actually toxic, not just to your Storyteller’s plans but to the other players as well.
Half for Self, Half for Others
The flaw in the Nuremburg Defense is that it assumes human beings have no basic level of behaviour that they owe one another (such as “nonmurdering”). In fact, legal and ethical thought holds that certain decency standards do take precedence over patriotism and authority.
The flaw in the Gamer Nuremburg Defense is that it assumes your character exists only for your gratification when, in fact, she’s part of a story that involves everyone else in your gaming group. Gaming is a social activity, and if you want to get in the game, you have to give to the game.
Maybe you want to play Truck the Combat Monster, a Brujah whose response to trouble is “use Potence to follow the path of most resistance.” If all the other players have devious schemers whose best attacks are harsh language, it’s not going to work. Your character is going to start a lot of fights the other characters can’t survive.
Maybe you want to play a snobby rich Toreador and the other characters are bestialized Gangrel and extra-slimy Nosferatu. Maybe you want to play an angst-ridden neonate who can’t cope with his murderous hungers while the other players just want to kick some ass and drink some blood. The precise nature of the conflict doesn’t matter; what matters is, your character doesn’t fit.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that gaming has no place place for individuality. Conformity is bliss! Submit to the gestalt! Freedom is a cancer, which must be SUPPRESSED by ANY MEANS NECESSARY!
Wait, no, that’s not at all what I’m trying to say.
While your personal preferences aren’t necessarily bad, they aren’t the Holy Grail, either. They’re not precious and inviolate, and if they need to be sacrificed so that the chronicle can work, well, it’s a damned shame, but it’s better than sacrificing the game so that you can have your dream character and no story.
When you’re coming up with a character, it’s fine to start by considering only what you want, what piques your interest and sounds fun. The next step is to ask, “How is this character going to be fun for the other players?” If your character isn’t going to contribute, why the hell would they involve their characters with her? Maybe you really want to run a gangsta-mack Five Percenter who hates Whitey, but if they other characters are all honky stockbrokers, what could possibly unify the group?
Traditionally, the answer is, “The Storyteller bends over backward to provide some barely plausible excuse or necessity.” Let’s face it though: The Storyteller has enough work without laying 20 miles of road out to your isolated character’s Unabomber shack.
Not only is that a lot of extra effort – usually the character concepts that require the Storyteller to romance them in aren’t worth the effort. Let’s examine some of the most commong. The Lone Wolf character is such a hackneyed trope that the developer actually budgeted 5,000 words in this book’s outline to put it paid. But there are others.
The Power Broker – Instead of being a disconnected Lone Wolf, this gal is overconnected. She’s the icy manipulator who uses everyone as her pawns, trusting no one and always ready to sell out a “friend” for temporary advantage.
Fine.
The Power Broker is better than the Lone Wolf in the short term – she’ll help you out so that you help her out later, or she’s setting you up so that she can sell you out. But eventually she’ll be faced with a deal where selling out her fellow Kindred is too good to plausibly resist, and after that, why would they have anything to do with her? She can work for a while, but the Power Broker in her pure form has a limited shelf life.
Mastah Slayah – A battle-optimized character with little backstory, few social skills and no interest in the political intricacies of vampire society. This character is built to survive fights, which can (again) be very helpful in the short term. But Slayahs tend to survive and not prosper. Without some rudimentary ability (or motivation) to get along, they become obsolete just like the Lone Wolf. You maybe invite this guy along when you’re going to shake down a debtor, but you don’t want him sitting next to you in Elysium.
The Creep – The guy with bumped-up Contacts, Investigation, Computer and Obfuscate, usually Nosferatu, usually has a subterranean lair that would make your standard D&D party nostalgic for the Tomb of Horrors. The Creep is holed up under the opera house and sees no reason to venture out when he has ghoul pigeons and sewer rats to take care of business. The Creep’s patsies and proxies can contribute to the group, but there’s a hidden cost. Either the Storyteller has to split her attention between the characters who are running around actually doing stuff and the Creep in his lair, or she has to face the Creep’s player’s complaints that his character never gets any attention.
The underlying theme to these (and most) toxic character concepts is fear of weakness. The Power Broker doesn’t want to be manipulated or coerced. The Slayah doesn’t want to get beat up or killed. The Creep doesn’t want to venture out where it’s risky.
One of the hard lessons of roleplaying is that it is not our characters’ strengths that make them interesting and fun. It is their weaknesses.
(segue)
