Sep 08 2008
How They Say It
One of my favorite ways to try to get a read on a character’s competence level is by asking them what they’ve done. Not just for the sake of learning their heroic deeds, mind you; that’s only a small part of it. What matters more to me is how they view what they’ve done, and how they talk about it. Observe the differences:
“And the dragon of Sparrow’s Reach bore down on me, its gaping maw open wide, the fire from its throat as hot as the heart of the Inferno. I stared back at it without fear, and set my spear against it, and as the vile beast flew towards me I thrust the spear into its mouth, past its razor teeth, down into its gullet. And so I defeated the dragon of Sparrow’s Reach.”
“The dragon of Sparrow’s Reach? Oh, right, that…. It flew in, and I panicked and shoved the spear in its general direction, and my spear went into its throat and killed it. They made a much bigger fuss than they should’ve. And I didn’t exactly come out of it quite as clean as they said; do you have any idea what a mess it makes when you stab something like that in the throat? It was only what I had to do, that’s all. The praise is a bit much.”
“Eh, that dragon. The Frosty Quay Wyrm was harder. Really, all I had to do was aim my spear in the right place. Nothing more, really. For me, it was all part of the job.”
“So there we were. One dragon bearing down on us, breathing fire like old Bill’s oven on baking day, and just me, my spear, and my horse, and the horse was a bit busy panicking to count. At least I’d dismounted before the dragon arrived. So I set my stance against it, waited for the right moment, and stabbed. And it worked. I hadn’t expected it to work, but there it was, and… well, no more dragon of Sparrow’s Reach.”
Honestly, if I were talking to the first one, I’d ask him what he was trying to prove. I’ll grant that that is indeed the standard tone for the narration of epic fantasy—and I’ll admit, I’m biased, I dislike it even when it’s being used in that manner. It sets my teeth on edge. But when someone’s talking about their own accomplishments in this way, it sounds way too much like they’re blowing their own horn. I’d be inclined to think that they’d just borrowed someone else’s ballad and cribbed the names and dates for themselves, and would honestly doubt whether they’d even seen the dragon of Sparrow’s Reach up close. Maybe I could work with them, but I’d spend the first month trying to wean them off of that approach; who’d want to sound like an apprentice bard with delusions of grandeur when talking about their own achievements?
The second would be just as off-putting, but for different reasons. Humility is a virtue, but that level is just sickening; I’d expect someone like that would have something to prove, but not the same thing as the previous speaker. Maybe they’re trying to toady up to me?
The third: okay, clearly they know what they’re doing, but the ego—get it away from me, now!
The fourth: I like this style. It’s conversational, and while it isn’t completely matter-of-fact, it’s no more dramatic emphasis than I’d see in someone telling me about something interesting they’d done the other day. If, as in this case, someone’s using a conversational style to describe a feat worthy of its own ballad, this tells me that not only do they know what they’re doing, but they’re confident; they might figure the deed will grow in the telling anyway, or they might just not be looking for the recognition.
What do you think?
Kameron–you make a good point about that. I’ll admit, my biases against the first may be a combination of the system I mess around in and the fact that, as I said, epic voice drives me crazy. Probably because I’m used to having a lot of vocabulary to throw around at a moment’s notice, and anything that screams out to me “Let me grab my thesaurus, I’m engaging in dialogue” seems like trying a bit too hard.
The last one–well, leaving aside the rather distinctive simile, that sort of conversational tone is the kind I try to use for my most effective characters. “The real badasses”, as Tomcat put it. I’ve gotten into arguments about this with one of my online friends, since we both operate in a system where the watchword is “EPIC!”, and I keep maintaining that while the epic voice does theoretically match the feel, someone who’s really awesome and knows it won’t use said voice, instead staying y procolloquial and avoiding hyperbole. After all, if you’ve got enough of a reputation, people will read all sorts of extra details into your understatements, and even if you say it like it is the tale will grow in the telling. No need to help it along, right?
Patrick: Thanks; I hope it ends up coming in handy.
Ishmayl: You make a good point; that could just be modesty and not excessive modesty. I’d say you’d also want to judge it depending on how long it had been after the fact; if I were the kind of person who’d naturally respond like that to having won the battle I was describing, I’d probably revert to that sort of mode after a while, but within the first few weeks after the fight I’d probably still be thanking [insert source of divine intervention, luck, protection or similar things here] that I was still alive, and more than a bit in shock about the whole thing. Unless, of course, the incidents started chaining together and not giving time to come down off of the incident-high (this actually happened to one of my characters, with the end result that after five or six rather impressive defying-the-odds moments in short order, she started believing her own legend and ended up routinely using a slightly less folksy and more snarky version of the fourth voice).
The first: the culture that sort of thing comes from has some good examples in Beowulf. People talked like that because it was expected of heroes to make their accomplishments sound as impressive as possible. A hero who didn’t theoretically had ego issues…
The second: And would basically be the cultural equivalent of this guy. I really don’t know anyone who’ll say what they did wrong while dragon-slaying if they want to get hired to do it again.
The third: Egotistical jerk? Maybe. But damned if he’s not gonna have cheap tavern wenches hanging off his every limb. Makes for fine characterization, at the least.
The fourth: Yeah, this is about right if you want to have someone sound like how we’d expect an individual to sound in the modern convention of speaking and storytelling, and that really is important if you want your game to be consistent (not everyone will talk like Beowulf and Odysseus and such, so no reason to have anyone except to make them strange).
Brick: Yeah, but most of the worlds I operate and have operated in don’t seem to be created with the cultural expectation that everyone talks that way, so I wasn’t operating off of that feel, just the kind of tone I usually see. Question, though; would you happen to know what in such cultures would trigger the same kind of opinion of a person that Tom got and that I tend to get from Example #1?
Well, let me think. The problem is that boasting is valued in those cultures. The only way to seem overly egotistical is to be weaker than you say you are, in which case, yeah, you’ll be disliked. Also, bragging about something other than bravery, such as wealth or something, is generally frowned upon.
It seems to me that there’d be a certain method to how you boast about your courage, though. Not just the language, but a few other expectations…. could be worth looking into further.
Firstly I would like to know what kind of a world is it that one can kill a dragon with the merest thrust of a spear?
That aside should the rather bizarre event occur I really couldn’t say which voice I’d prefer when sitting ina tavern and enjoying an evenings entertainment with a few mates. I guess each voice(and there’d be way more than four I would suggest) has it’s place. Epic voice for epic deeds(dragon slaying would have to rank up there.) and perhaps the simply ‘Yeah I shot the bunny at a hundred paces. What of it?’
We recently had a situation where a dragon(albeit a cave dragon ie. no breath weapon nor magic) was slain by a roll of the likes I’ve never seen in my years of gaming. Once the party got over the shock and the weird sense of anticlimax that comes with such and unexpected result, their comments were more on the lines of “Well thank fuck for that cause I really wasn’t keen on fighting that bastard.”
GIve it few weeks and a bit of poetic licence and who knows how they’ll regale the peasants at the Hairy Dogs Bollox tavern.
So lets do the numbers
Number one- Settle down mate! I’m not the queen.
Number two- I bet you shat yourself too mate but hell I’ll shout you an ale for being the one who did the job, even if you are a bit shy on it.
Number three-Dragon shagger eh? Hey I hear there’s been a big red bastard raiding up a storm down south. How’s bout we head down there and sort the fucker out. You can stab it and we can go fifty-fifty on the hoard.
Number four- Well all’s I can say is I’m glad it was you and not me standing there.Sounds like you should be laying low for a bit. You know those things have partners and they have a habit of taking revenge on those who’ve made them singular, so to speak.
As for picking the badass. Sorry, noe of ‘em get my vote. The real badasses of the world are the one’s who don’t say a damn thing.
P.S.- Can’t think of a story written i epic tone but the movie Excalibur is almost exclusively uses it. Does it detract? Hell no! Love the movie. Those guys never had a normal conversation in their entire lives. If you have something to say you threw your chest out and roared it to the heavens. Now that’s living!
Haven’t seen Excalibur, so I wouldn’t know.
What! Goddammit man. Go and get it and watch it now! Holy crap I can’t believe it. How old are you anyway?