132 replies to this topic

[dal10]

who knows.

[Spokes]

"Overpowered" characters

I had a conversation a little while ago regarding "power gaming" in play-by-post threads and whether or not I thought a character was overpowered in a particular scene. I said no, and I stand by that call-- the scene fit the character and advanced the story. Still, something about it struck me the wrong way, and after a bit of reflection I think I know what it was.

Many years ago, I knew a guy who was a decent enough person, but his family had Money and he could get a bit arrogant about it. We got into a discussion about cold cuts of all things, and he made some comment about how he would only eat the high end deli stuff, never the prepackaged cuts. I remember thinking how boring that much be, not leaving the really good stuff as a special treat and how, in the end, he was spending more money than I was and ultimately deriving less enjoyment from it. How could he ever have something special if he always had to have the best?

Looking at it this way, "Is this character overpowered?" may be the wrong question to ask. Even if your character isn't "over the top", and even if they aren't railroading the other characters and even if their actions are serving the plot, there is still a very dangerous and seductive trap you can fall into by always writing your character at the edge of his or her abilities. If you run your character full tilt all the time, and then you hit a climax point in the story, when there is a need to really escalate the character for a dramatic moment, you may find yourself with nowhere to go. You can't lift the character up to meet the challenge without it getting ridiculous, and keeping him at the same level is just Tuesday at the office. You could have him stumble and face plant, but that's probably not what you want to have happen and even then, you run the risk of making the reader question all of the awesomeness that's come before.

Mistakes, character flaws and failures do more than give a character flavor. They give you running room so that you can really lean into the music and crank up the volume for the final movement of the story's symphony.

[Thom Frankfurt]

Very nicely put.

[dal10]

So i was browsing the naruto, manga/anime universe, fanon site today. 2-3 years ago i would have read some of these characters and just thought, this guy is awesome. Now i realized just how broken some of these characters are. They take the relatively strong characters in the series, and basically make them ants. Some of the characters aren't that bad, but some of them are basically gods.

Take this guy for example.
http://narutofanon.w...com/wiki/Fuyuki

He is actually pretty different from most of the god class characters on the site, as his abilities are based on taking a simple concept and pushing it to an extreme. But his background basically makes him the designated victim until he becomes a virtual in universe god. That being said, i made a strategy to defeat him because i could, which i won't bore you guys with unless you want me to.

Then you get to the ridiculous op characters.
http://narutofanon.w...ki/Muzai_Kaguya

Besides the megalomania, he is pretty standard i can't possibly lose fare. Besides using abilities that break the universe itself, though they are logical extremes of standing principles, said guy designed the character to be an uber wolverine who can project his claws anywhere with more mana/ki/whatevs than anyone else on the planet. that being said i also figured out a way to kill this guy, but yet again, i won't bore you with it.

also, he took over the spot of the guy above.

Sorry about the rant, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Edited by dal10, 06 January 2014 - 07:37 PM.

[BaconTWOfourACTUAL]

BlackWidow, on 23 October 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

Wow. Fantastic write up! Really !

And now for the poop parade.

While I agree with almost everything you said....there is a point where you have to realize this is not character development for a novel. This is FAN fiction. If I like to RP in my leisure time, or actually enjoy any part of a fantasy world, it's mostly not for the choices my character makes, it *IS* for what they are. The vampire, the cyborg....the vampire cyborg. I _DO_ in fact, choose to role play these characters for WHAT they do and who they are, not the choices they make.

While that is a true statement...
The whole point of an RP 'universe' is that everyone does have a role to play.
Everyone can't be the machine gun toting commando ripping through beau-coup bad guys with a knife in your teeth.

Macabre definitely made a good point, it gets overly boring to read how you saved the day by expelling excellence out of your jump jets and firing your awesome ammunition, from your 30 ton light mech... skulling an Atlas with your machine gun.

Often times the road less traveled makes for a better story.

Edited by BaconTWOfourACTUAL, 27 January 2014 - 05:33 PM.

[Arnold J Rimmer]

BaconTWOfourACTUAL, on 27 January 2014 - 01:18 PM, said:

Often times the road less traveled makes for a better story.

This.

It's why the first character introduced in my story here is a civilian, that the next are infanteers, and that the only times 'mechs have been mentioned (so far) is externally, with no frame of reference for the pilot themselves.

There's more to stories than 'AMAGADPEWPEWPEWSPLOSIONdealwithit.jpg'.

[BaconTWOfourACTUAL]

Arnold J Rimmer, on 27 January 2014 - 04:40 PM, said:

There's more to stories than 'AMAGADPEWPEWPEWSPLOSIONdealwithit.jpg'.

LMAO.

I picture, A Spider riding on the shoulders of an Atlas, who in turn is riding into war on the backs of the bear cavalry with ER LLas attatched to their left eye sockets and the right is the ARTEMIS for their shoulder mounted LRM75.

[MacabreDerek]

Forgot I left this here....

I may need to post a few more ideas

[Arcainite]

When I was crafting my character's backstory and putting myself in so many famous conflicts, I definately didn't want to project myself as invincible. This is why I had myself LOSE to one of the enemies I'd sworn revenge on in the Black Widow Company of Wolf's Dragoons. Had I won that fight, I would have been stepping into Mary Sue/Invincible territory. The nerve damage from that duel to my hand and the further spreading of it from an attack by mere guerrilla rebel/terrorists gives me as much character as all my backstory's many successes against the Davions.

[Muriel Steiner]

So I don't do online role-playing, but I've been a tabletop role-player for decades. I'm also student of psychology and sociology in addition to reading a great deal about literature and character development. It's pretty interesting reading all of the different ideas about how characters should be developed and what an "interesting" character looks like. Even professional writers disagree on such subjects. For me, all this experience, observation and knowledge boils down to one thing.. Every person is the star of their own story.

Thinking back to the OP's statement about how a hero running back into a burning building is boring and stale, while a protagonist who must live with the consequences of making a less heroic decision is more interesting, I have to call "bs". The fact is, I've read BOTH of those stories before and people in real life might make either choice. (so BOTH actions are realistic) Neither of those choices is innately superior to the other from a literary perspective. The idea that a character is "less interesting" just because they make the heroic choice completely ignores the fact that things don't always, or even usually, work out as planned. What happens when a character does EVERYTHING right and still fails? Now THAT'S interesting reading.

If a character is "OP", then the universe (and the GM) isn't trying hard enough. There are people in the real world who are good at everything, but those people have problems too and who can THEY turn to for help? (remember, we're keeping things realistic,not having a "mr. perfect" in our story is unrealistic) In essence, the story itself is a living, breathing being. Players should try to develop characters so that the character works with other characters, and the story should also be developed in such a way that it will work with the characters. There is no such thing as "OP Characters" only under-powered adventures.

"Die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain": From a story perspective, sometimes a character loses meaning even if they live, and this is the worst fate of all. Remember that your character probably wants to live. Even if they can think of no reason that they should continue to live, there is an inexplicable desire to live that exists completely separate from the willingness (or lack thereof) to die. In other words, if you can think of any way that your character could reasonably NOT die, than you should take it. Remember that real human beings will commit the most evil, gruesome, and "uncharacteristic" acts in order to live, then they will justify those actions. That said, some people sacrifice themselves for others, and some people, regrettably, die for nothing. In the end, a real hero will sacrifice as much as they need to in order to save others, but they don't WANT to sacrifice anything that doesn't need to be sacrificed.. a real hero would die kicking and screaming, clawing an scratching with blood on their fingers, tears in their eyes and brown and yellow stains on their pants, doing every little thing they could think of to try and live, "grace" be damned. A real hero might have nothing to regret , but they'll have regrets anyway. Anything less is un-heroic (or is it? it's your story, right?). I would say that a character death shouldn't happen unless it "needs" to happen.. but let's face it, this is unrealistic. Untimely deaths are often more interesting than timely deaths. Sometimes a meaningless death creates the most meaningful events in the story.

I guess the point I'm trying to drive home is that role-playing is about group story-telling. Two-dimensional characters are those characters who the story hasn't explored enough. Even characters who start off boring should become more interesting if they're forced to play a role in an interesting story. Life makes people interesting. In many ways "bland" characters.. those who aren't developed much going in.. or those characters to whom the least has happened at the start of the story, are those characters who are most likely to have interesting developments DURING the story.

[Aranzor]

I've been reading over this discussion recently and comparing it with the stories I've written that for now have been purely for the enjoyment of those within my guild. For the most part these are small which I've purposefully done so as to match enthusiasm with the interest of the group. For the most part I've tried to keep the reality of each article, from fluff to history of the group, as close to a realistic and likely outcome as possible, without delving too greatly into the ridiculous or the absurd.

This being said, 2 requests have been brought to me and I am not sure whether they are advisable or even possible. The first would be a full-length story arc, spanning over one of the history sections I came up with. The second was an even shorter form of story than I write, intended to be released with the guild's newsletter, roughly akin to the way Sherlock Holmes stories were published in newspapers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

My question to those out there is if you have a story in mind, how would you determine 1.) At what point is the level of interest worth the undertaking, and 2.) Can stories like this be cut down to a short enough level to run only every other week and still maintain a proper flow in the story?

[RogueSpear]

It depends on the scale of your tale. Flavour pieces can be done in as little as a sentence, but grand epics obviously take a bit longer. To me, the level of interest that's most important is my own. Do *I* want to tell this story? If I do and I'm not being paid to write anything else, I'll just go ahead and start scribbling.
Personally, I'm rubbish at writing more than a couple thousand words without outside intervention, one of the main reasons I love the format we've had going here for the last couple years. Everytime I post, I get feedback, some criticism and then someone else does some writing and adds more for me to react to. I've had some luck trying to divide grand arcs into self contained chapters/scenes and that could work for your weekly article.

On an unrelated note, realism is great in stories because they make them believable. I've been reminded a bit of late though that it is possible to get bogged down too much in detail (My own personal pitfall) and that reality is often quite surreal. Keep in mind Russia was founded by one viking and his sons...nearly all of whom sacked Constantinople. Under the Rurikid dynasty it grew large enough to be referred to as 'The third Rome!' In case you're in the same trap I'm in, remember you're allowed to go over the top on occasion and still be realistic!