Jun 25 2009
Is Making Compatibility a Dump Stat Really Necessary?
Into every gaming group, a jerk tends to fall. I don’t necessarily mean the players, though it’s been hard to avoid those too. But I’m hard put to it to think of even one game I’ve been in that has not at some point had a PC (not necessarily a player, many of them were nice people really) who didn’t play well with much of anyone and seemed to be bent on alienating the entire group.
I’ve never been fond of the type. Part of this is that my playstyle is as much about the group-feeling as anything else, and while these antagonistic relationships may be amusing for character development, they ruin that. (Particularly in games in which there isn’t much tabletalk, and particularly in virtual games. More problems with play by IM than I originally thought, I suppose.) Is it really that bad to want to be able to focus on camaraderie rather than “All right, buddy, quit leering/threatening/attacking things we’re trying to negotiate with, it got old five sessions/pages ago”?
I’m not going to completely say I have no use for characters like this. But I’m going to come close. I have next to no use for characters like this, I don’t understand their popularity, and I’d rather not have to deal with them.
What makes them so popular? I’ve never been quite sure. I suppose in one sense, there’s the fact that there aren’t as many consequences for being a rude little git in most roleplaying games as there are in real life. If you can pretend to be the kind of person who commands anything from the power of the earth to a couple of legions, why not want to pretend to be the kind of person for whom common courtesy is completely optional?
For some people, the conflict is in itself amusing. I’ve no problem with that as a concept, but it’s not really to my tastes personally—at least, not without a clear idea how it’s supposed to work ahead of time.
And, I suppose, it’s realism. Most groups don’t know each other, and they certainly aren’t going to get along at first sight. (This is why if I ever run another game, I am making my players cross-backstory.) Though while I can accept that, I tend to play focused on the idea that realism also means we can’t make people too incompatible, or they’re going to ditch each other at the first available opportunity; we really can’t have that.
So my call would be, particularly when dealing with a new group, ease up. Try to keep it to merely irritating rather than completely obnoxious, or at least see whether the people around you are interested in that kind of dynamic before you introduce it. It’s probably not that big a difference to you, but you never know how much of an impact it might have on someone else.
Wow, it sounds like you are exactly the same kind of player I am and you have exactly the same kind of group as I do. My guys play D&D so they can give people the finger and get away with it, and don’t give the slightest consideration to how they’re going to keep the party together so they can actually play. I’m not like that at all.
I certainly don’t make the choice to not get along with the others. It just inevitably seems to happen in every game I play in. I’m guessing it’s not a function of the characters I create.
An interesting insight, though, comes from a writing perspective. One of my teachers mentioned that if you need conflict, just take any two characters and push them closer together until something happens. Now try doing it with four or five characters. The conflicts that would arise, supposing they were non-violent, would most often be difficult to resolve as an independent matter. Really, how often do you talk to someone you dislike and end up liking them more? It’s not impossible, but it’s by far less common than any other result. Generally, something has to happen to aid in resolving the conflict. This is nice and easy in writing where the author knows what the characters need (supposing the writer wants the conflict to end). Obviously, roleplaying complicates the matter. But you can bet that the paladin and the thief will stop butting heads so much when the paladin risks her life to cure the thief’s terminal poisoning that the thief got disarming a trap that the paladin would have fallen to. At least temporarily. You rarely hear the phrase “thanks for saving my life, jackass,” in a serious manner. Obviously, the resolution has to be very specific to the situation. The thief’s problem with the paladin may not be her dislike of the immoral and lawless, but instead her obsession with saving everyone. In that case, her selflessness might do little to improve his opinion of her, even if it did help him.
As in real life, resolving conflicts with fictional characters is hard. If you don’t do it right in writing, it seems fake or unrealistic (you beat the crap out of me, so now I’m going to join your party!). If you don’t do it right in gaming, nothing gets done. There is no catchall solution. You may need to try many times even if you have the right method. The best general way to find it is to identify the biggest point of contention and diffuse it. That’s generally not easy, as out of one point of contention grows many more (try thinking of someone you personally dislike and singling out the single greatest thing about them that you dislike. Even if you can, it’s likely you’re missing something).
This turned out to be much longer than I’d planned. Point is, conflict is inevitable, but it’s treatable. Sometimes, it will treat itself. Heck, it’s pretty frequent, as the event-ridden lives of adventurous characters provide a good environment for it. But it’s not really anyone’s fault. The only problem is perpetuation or reinstating AFTER resolution. If people have started getting along but then stop, it’s time to figure out what’s going on (if the on-off thing happens often enough, it starts getting really annoying. See poorly-done love interests).
Joshua: I have seen fractious and antagonistic characters be great for story development in some games; I think the distinction for me is whether the player is acting, or acting out…
You may have seen a situation in the past, the “fourth for bridge” situation or whatever you want to call it, where you’re part of a small game group that tries to increase its membership. Members will try to bring in their interested friends, but discover that said friends have no idea what they’re getting into.
Most people have a period at the beginning of their RPG career where they acclimatise to the concept of roleplaying (you can listen to Mike Krahulik do this in the first few Penny Arcade D&D Podcasts). The idea that it’s a fundamentally collaborative environment is new for some, and so they may develop some bad habits, usually involving random actions with no explanation, some of which may cause extreme damage to the storyline.
Some few never really leave this state. It’s not many people, but I’ve met a couple of players who could discern the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge just well enough to completely ruin the game for everyone…