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[Humor] "Ci sta da personaggio".
Moreno Roncucci:
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 Masquerade
By Greg Stolze
At 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.
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Moreno Roncucci:
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Good stories are built on conflict, full stop. A character with no weakness can’t be conflicted. A character with no fellows can’t have a conflict of loyalty. A character who’s unbeatable in a fight can’t produce real fear. (You did want to play a horror game, right?) A character with no morals can’t face a difficult ethical decision, because without morals no decision is difficult.
Cowardly character concepts are limiting. Characters built only to avoid trouble are boring. (Besides, dying can be a stone groove – check out Christopher Kobar’s essay below this one.) Characters with weaknesses and problems produce good stories because they come complete with issues to explore and trials to overcome.
(Here’s a little metagame min-max secret: Storytellers are reluctant to kill interesting characters with good plot hooks. If a character doesn’t tie in to the group easily or provide story fodder, I’m not going to lose much sleep over his Final Death. On the other hand, if a guy hands me a neonate who committed diablerie, who’s on the run from his sire, who’s on the police’s shit list for a crime he didn’t commit as a mortal and whose mom was Embraced by Setites when he was 10 years old… hell, I’ll fudge dice rolls all night to keep that guy around. He’ll always be in trouble, but the way he oozes plot development every time he blinks saves me weeks of preparations.)
Purifying Your Concept
The bad news is that characters who never fail at everything are boring. The good news is that characters who are weak at some things and good at others are interesting – and you can turn a toxic character into a team player with fairly little effort if you’re willing to think about the needs of the group and the needs of the Storyteller. Here’s how.
Bend. If your character type doesn’t fit, change it. You don’t have to throw it away completely, just moderate or mitigate the parts that produce strain. You can still have your homey vampire among the white boys. In fact, the contrast can provide lots of tension. Just tone down the virulent anti-white sentiments.
Or consider our old friend Mastah Slayah. He’s far from useless to the group, and the less combative they are, the more his stock rises. Now you need to edit the concept so that they aren’t useless to him. Maybe he’s a transplanted hillbilly who doesn’t knock dick about politics – but wants to learn. Now instead of an unplayable fish who sees no reason to get out of water, you have Bram Stoker’s A Makeover Story. He has a direction in which to develop and the other characters can get him there. Which leads us to…
Change. Even if your character concept is less than helpful to the troupe, it’s not graven in stone. How many buddy cop flicks have you seen where the protagonists start out hating on another but, by the time they’ve filled the screen with 60 minutes of cordite and mayhem, wind up as the best of friends? That dynamic can fix characters who are otherwise doomed for long-term play, like the Power Broker example. Sure, she starts out thinking her coterie-mates are suckers (so to speak) whom she’ll gladly pimp out when she can get a good rate. But in the course of play, look for reasons for her to take them more seriously, come to respect them, rely on them or even admire them. It’s easy to put a bad interpretation on people’s actions (especially vampires’ actions), but if you see your fellow characters the way their players want them seen, a Power Broker’s change of heart can become surprisingly plausible. “Hey,” she realizes, “maybe people aren’t just tools!” (Or “Maybe violence doesn’t always work out well.” “Maybe some things are worth risking my neck for.”)
Defy. It may be that your character concept is only a pain some of the time. In that case, it may work to simply play against character… when it really counts. After all, Han Solo is a cynical mercenary for most of Star Wars, but in the end, he finds something that’s more important. To take a more highbrow example, Hamlet dithers his way through the first four acts before ganking the king. That’s fine; it would be a pretty lousy play if the ghost said, “Kill the king!” and Hamlet did it without even pausing to accidentally kill his girlfriend’s dad.
Hamlet, like Han, changed over time – and so can your vampire. In the end, stories rely on people who can change their world and are changed by it. Rememebr that your character concept isn’t the be-all and end-all: It’s only the beginning.
Trevor Devalle:
Che ne dite dell'espressione:"Ma l'ha fatto il mio personaggio?"
Ezio:
Hmmm... si, ma anche no.
Stavolta devo dare ragione a Rafu e Korin. Moreno ha anche ragione, però, quella frase... non ha quello scopo.
Se non sbaglio "Ci sta da personaggio" è una frase nata nel gruppo di giocatori reggiani, che poi altri hanno fatto propria, insieme al "Grande Giocatore".
Questa definizione è di molto antecedente alla scoperta del gioco indie, e non ha mai voluto essere una frase "pubblicitaria". Semplicemente è la difesa TIPICA di un certo tipo di giocatori da 'ste parti.
Non sto scherzando: la usano davvero, seriamente, credendoci. "Eh, scusa, sai, ma ci sta da personaggio" è qualcosa che mi è capitato di sentire uno squinterno di volte a giustificare le più perverse boiate, e già la usavamo per descrivere questo atteggiamento quando nessuno di noi aveva la più pallida idea di che fosse The Forge o Cani nella Vigna.
Non è quindi una frase costruita a tavolino per indicare una perversione: è un vero e proprio meme che si è diffuso all'interno del nostro gruppo e ora sta attecchendo anche altrove. Una certa forza ce l'ha, altrimenti non sarebbe mai uscita dal nostro gruppetto, ma rimane comunque un in-joke: se lo capisci vuol dire che già sai cosa si intende.
Dato che la nostra piccola comunità è una vera e propria macchina da guerra sforna-meme non ci si bada ormai neanche più.
Potrei parlarvi della "Sfida Interpretativa" (un classico al pari di "Ci sta da personaggio"), della "Endemia" o di "Uaueuiuo il Corruttore" o, ancora, di quello che sembra essere il più recente: "Sei preso da un vortice di vento... INTERPRETA!" (poi ve ne parla Mauro...). O spiegarvi che è un "Rinaldi" (Spiegel, ci sei?)
Tutte questi piccoli meme potranno essere poco efficaci dal punto di vista comunicativo, e non funzionare al di fuori della stretta cerchia in cui sono nati, ma è così perché non sono mai nati per essere strumenti di divulgazione u.u
PS: Chiaramente Phil Foglio ha giocato tutta la vita con pessimi master e giocatori. Se avesse avuto dei Bravi Master non ci sarebbero stati di quei problemi. Mi sembra ovvio.
Moreno Roncucci:
Ma anche Greg Stolze risulta essere un "pessimo GM": notare come, proprio nella guida del giocatore di Vampiri, dia per scontato che i giocatori si debbano adattare "alla storia del Master" e che vada a simpatie e antipatie nella scelta di chi far sopravvivere e chi no... :-)
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