Aug 16 2008
Impractical Applications, Week 9
This week’s Impractical Apps is going to be a little different, mainly because I couldn’t run game this week. Or do much of anything else. I’m going through a bit of a rough time, if you’re prone to massive understatement.
So instead, I’m going to ask a rather touchy question.
The adventurer–the PC–is often the one standing between the world and its end. They’re the ones who get the tearful NPCs dissolving on their shoulders, the first target of the foe, the light in the darkness, running from one issue to the other with nary a pause for breath because that’s their job. And in some groups, particularly the ones for whom RP is secondary to a good series of conflicts, that’s fine.
But consider looking at it from the other side. How are these heroic souls functioning? Can they really handle being the ones on whom the world depends, not having someone else to fall back on? Who heals the healer? Who comforts the comforter? Who rescues the hero? To whom does the party go when they’ve lost one of their own and need shoulders to cry on themselves? And what effect does the answer to this question, or the lack thereof, have on them?
I played this question once, a while ago, and never quite came up with an answer. In the real world, I’ve been looking at a question like this from the inside. I’d rather not, honestly. But that’s the great skill of a really good GM or a really good writer: can we distill this pure horrendousness that is life and the real world into something that gives our players or our audience a chance to deal with all the really juicy feelings, and yet allows them not to have to be brought down by those things that in the real world destroy us?
This is what we’re for. It could even be–gasp!–good for us. If they’re interested, and we’re interested, then by all means, let’s do it.
I think this is the question that gives rise to the Romantic Interest Without Any Real Character. Not that it’s not an important question, but that’s an answer to avoid.
Been there, seen those. Know what you mean.
Though I’d been looking more at how the heroes handle it, as well; these things do run both ways.
Yeah, but even heroes break eventually. It’s part of being human or equivalent thereof; if they were walking statues in that respect, it’d be rather boring, now, wouldn’t it? Besides, there’s something absolutely lovely about writing the little interludes in which they allow themselves to be overwhelmed a bit and someone else to talk them through it. One of the best scenes in a game I played a while back was one such; no action, just talking, but even the rather excitement-oriented GM agreed that it was something exceptional.