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View Full Version : Roleplaying Have you ever rooted against your character?



Seppo87
2016-06-23, 09:02 AM
Usually players tend to identify with their characters and root for them.
If the character succeeds, they feel accomplished. If the character fails, they feel dissatisfied.
As simple as that.

Sometimes, some players don't, in order to better roleplay the character.
They think that the player's desire (i.e. to succeed or to preserve PCs life) may differ from the character's desires (which may very well make different choices driven by his feelings), so they try to stay as detached as possible.
On various levels, there are different degrees of "acceptable failure".
Insulting the merchant because the PC is a punk, most will.
Fighting a lost battle and dying to buy a couple seconds to a doomed town because the character was raised there and won't run, most won't. Some will.

But we can go deeper.

Have you ever found a character in fiction unlikable because of his actions? That kind of character that you, as a person, want to suffer an horrible death?
Sure, it makes the show more interesting. You know it does. You like the show he's in. You can also like the character on an abstract level.However, on a personal level, you root against the character. Because he's a jerk. Or for any other reasons.

As roleplayers, we're both spectators and storytellers. And I believe it is very possible that the character one himself wrote turns out to be one of those character you end up wish they fail.

This has just happened to me.

My last character is not good.
It turns out I can't root for a character with evil tendencies.
While I like my PC a lot as a player, both mechanically and narratively, it makes me feel somewhat uncomfortable as a spectator, because I really feel he deserves to fail and be stopped.

Despite it being arguably weird, I am finding the whole experience extremely interesting.
It's also very stimulating for roleplaying because he's so different from me, I have to really think it through.

(Who knows if George R.R. Martin felt the same about Jeoffrey?)

What about you? Ever been there?

Blue Duke
2016-06-23, 12:11 PM
Does being hopeful the character will die so i dont have to play Curse of Strahd that day count ? because oh god i had that the last time i played CoS.....i just dont like it but my group has latched onto it.

Braininthejar2
2016-06-23, 04:51 PM
Well, there is a character I've been playing for years (there have been some long breaks) who started as a wizard in Dragonlance at the time of the gods returning, and upon witnessing a vision of the Cataclysm became an antitheist
( his view boiling down to "the gods allowed their servants to mess up the world in their name, doing nothing until it was too late, and then wiping out whole cities to cover their incompetence")

He started as an ordinary "adventurer" on the outskirts of the main plot, then became the head medic of the realm (he had been researching various things to learn to cure wounds without the aid of priests, and ended up pushing the local medical knowledge a century or two, acted as a medic, hiding his power, during a jaundice epidemic, and ended up with a county for his efforts), turning the story into a mix of game of thrones and dr House.

But if he ever gets into epics... gods have been killed in this setting. The GM told me she'd kill me if I start any time travel shenanigans, but still, I have a feeling I might end up as the final boss in my own campaign...

A_Man
2016-06-23, 05:02 PM
I think in VtM youre supposed to think this way ha ha, so yeah, often. Currently my PC is a crazed religous fanatic who believes himself damned and meant to keep mortals righteous throught torture and pain.

He's an absolutely monstrous person, killing some after they confess as he believes that the living will commit more sins and one sjould die perfect.

Hate him, but love him at the same time. Dark Ages Vampire is the nest kind of valpire game ha ha

The Fury
2016-06-23, 07:50 PM
There have been a few times that I just would have preferred my character to fail. Small stuff like when another player comes up with a good prank for my character, I think it's a funny idea so I find myself asking the DM, "Do I really need to roll a save for this? I mean, it'd be hilarious if I failed." usually the DM doesn't quite gets that I don't want my character to willingly fail a save. My character definitely doesn't want to slip on a spot of grease and tumble down a staircase, but as a player I'd find it funny to see it happen.

On a slightly darker note, I played a Pathfinder character that I really liked, mostly because she developed into one a lot more emotionally complex than I'm used to playing. In brief her most basic motivation was to save her town, on a dangerous border of the kingdom, and her family. In the end she did succeed, but this lead to another line of thinking; how can she be sure that this will never happen again? Realistically, she's probably the best person to keep the kingdom's border safe, but while she's not a bad person she is, character alignment notwithstanding, definitely not a good person. To me it always seemed like she might be aware of this, so even though she set out to be a hero she seemed to think more like a villain by the end. She already crossed a few lines, and damaged a few relationships which never got repaired by the campaign's end, suggesting that they might remain that way for good.

If you can forgive that lengthy setup, that's the kind of character that I'd like to see fail. I'd like to play the character again, maybe five or ten years later, or even if she were middle-aged. I could see her as the kind of bad guy that shows up only to get humiliated by the heroes over and over, but refuses to stop hounding them. I could see her ruining her relationship with the family she tried so hard to protect. I could see her sending letters to her friend but never getting a reply. I guess I see an older version of this character as a villain, but the kind of villain quietly wishes to be a better person. Maybe that's why I'd prefer to see her fail-- you don't learn much through success, but you can learn quite a lot from failure, and she seems like someone with a lot to learn.

GorinichSerpant
2016-06-24, 12:49 AM
Once I played a shapeshifting fox who was meant to be an irredeemable villain. I included some imagery of foxes being hanged in the game and would have played up his terribleness, but the game was somewhat cut short. If that game had continued then I hoped to get one of the other PCs to cut off his head.

mikeejimbo
2016-06-24, 10:37 AM
For me, the story comes first. The overall story going smoothly, followed by my own character's arc. Frequently, something I want as a player for my character is at odds with what the character wants. And I often like when my characters come to a tragedy in their arc, although not always because they're evil. Sometimes just because I prefer that story.

Quertus
2016-06-24, 04:02 PM
I've made characters that I hoped someone would redeem. Not quite the same thing, I know.


But if he ever gets into epics... gods have been killed in this setting. The GM told me she'd kill me if I start any time travel shenanigans, but still, I have a feeling I might end up as the final boss in my own campaign...

Does Dragon Lance no longer have certain limitations on time travel? It'd be a pity if that got lost in translation.

Knaight
2016-06-24, 04:10 PM
I take a certain perverse joy in running my characters into the shoals of their personality flaws at high speed, regardless of character. It's part of why I can have a great deal of fun with a character who is dumb as a rock, or generally useless, or whatever else. Characters I actively disliked as people and wanted to see fail and die horribly are rarer - for one thing, I mostly GM and have lots of NPCs to cover this, for another, even the nastier characters generally end up involved in things that do some good because of what the GM is doing. Still, there have been a few where I do like seeing them fail miserably, as long as it doesn't compromise a goal that I'm rooting for as a spectator.

The Fury
2016-06-24, 04:37 PM
I've made characters that I hoped someone would redeem. Not quite the same thing, I know.


I don't know... Maybe? I personally like characters that come off as redeemable but in a fair number of RPGs that's almost the same as being a character doomed to failure. This really does hinge a great deal on how the game is being played, though as I've mentioned before RPG settings tend to be very cruel places to live. So if you made a character that you hope will be redeemed, there's a good chance that they'd just be a character that could be saved but isn't. Not to say that there isn't potential for decent tragedy there, because there totally is.

Vitruviansquid
2016-06-24, 07:50 PM
I often root against my character because my characters are often total scumbags.

Benthesquid
2016-06-24, 11:25 PM
I've played Fiasco, so...

FlurryOfPosts
2016-06-25, 02:41 AM
My first D&D character was a CE drunk. He was a straight up jerk and failed at everything. I eventually started putting him in evermore dangerous situations to allow his story to resolve in the only way it could: his unnecessary death. However, fate had different plans. He took a dagger for an innocent girl, and actually pulled a reverse Harvey Dent. Instead of dying a villain, he lived long enough to see himself become the hero.

Jay R
2016-06-25, 08:44 AM
The obvious answer to the question is, "Yes, of course. Every time he's dominated and tries to kill the party." I suspect that's not what you mean.

When my original D&D paladin had his alignment changed to chaotic (which mostly meant "evil" then), I was rooting for him to eventually be changed back. But in the meantime I played the character as well as I could, including backstabbing PCs and/or stealing their stuff. [It was pretty easy while they still thought he was a paladin.]

SethoMarkus
2016-06-25, 12:25 PM
All of my characters (PCs), even Evil ones and those who are jerks, tend to have at least some sort of redeeming quality or trait that makes them, at the very least, relatable in some degree. The strict officer is a jerk because he holds everyone, even himself, to a higher standard, and kindness is not a part of that standard. He isn't mean spirited out of spite, but frustration at incompetence. The evil wizard doesn't kill and maim because of the lolz, but because only the strong survive and the only way to comhat his paranoia and feel safe is to show that he is powerful. My PCs might not be good or likable all the time, and I may not wish to see their demise, but I do try to make them at least pitiable if they are in that spectrum of "scum".

NPCs that I run, however, have no such qualms. I can, and have, run villains (and even "allies") who are just the worst, and I actively hope the PCs knock them down several levels.

Anytine I play a PC, I put a little bit of myself in the character to better immerse myself. As such, I have not been able to bring myself to make them despicable enough that I strongly dislike them enough to root against them.

SirBellias
2016-06-25, 01:22 PM
In the campaign I'm currently in, the characters usually come out worse than they arrived. My character started as a gung-ho champion of a minor God, looking to build up the presence of the mercenary guild he is part of. Over time, he has become a ruthlessly pragmatic ruffian who killed the only other member of the mercenary guild in town to turn the garrison over to a criminal gang he joined. There were some mitigating circumstances (or so he thought at the time), but all in all he's changed for the worse. I'm kind of hoping he dies while defending his honor against a paladin that may or may not be hunting him... That would be one of the most fitting ways to go. So yes, I want him to fail, but I want it to be vaguely climactic.

goto124
2016-06-25, 09:22 PM
The strict officer is a jerk because he holds everyone, even himself, to a higher standard, and kindness is not a part of that standard. He isn't mean spirited out of spite, but frustration at incompetence.

I really don't know how I can enjoy being in the same party as a jerkish strict officer who orders his teammates around over the smallest things ("Why did you give me this spoon? Get the other spoon! No, the OTHER spoon! Don't make me smack you!"), especially when reacting back is still wrong because "he's your leader" and "he's trying to improve you". I go through plenty of this "you're wrong in everything so just follow my orders and don't make your own decisions" experience IRL, I don't want to repeat it in-game.

I generally don't want to play with unpleasant PCs in a game that's supposed to be fun. Especially if it's the type of unpleasant that's described above.

valadil
2016-06-26, 05:57 AM
No, but I've played with someone who roots against his characters. All his characters would be weird freaks of nature. He put them in the game to see them self implode. Sometimes it was entertaining, mostly it was obnoxious.

Actually, I have one character in a Mage game that I'm not 100% rooting for. The game's dissolved and I don't know how it would have ended. Anyway, my character had an avatar who eats people. I suspect I could use that for power. Instead I've been trying to reign in the avatar. Had we kept playing he probably would have tempted me into letting him eat my enemies. My character is terrified of letting anyone else find out about this, so the other players don't know.

I'm rooting for my character to control this problem. If it gets out of hand, I don't think I'd be rooting for him if he starts offing anyone who finds out. Like, I have sympathy for the character but if the other players decided he had to be put down, I'd probably agree with them out of game.

KillianHawkeye
2016-06-27, 03:08 PM
I can't say that I've ever actively rooted against any of my characters. I think that if I honestly wanted my characters to fail, I probably would just stop playing that character.

That being said, however, I have a few times played characters who didn't much care about their own lives, whether it was because they had an advanced case of fatalism or they just believed that sacrificing their lives for their allies or to accomplish their primary goal was a fine and just end. I also do not shy away from an unexpected character death. I would rather play a game where the consequences are real and my character can lose or fail or die than one where my character always succeeds and survives just because he is a PC. And while I do try to get into the mindset of my characters so that I may better roleplay them, I maintain enough of a separation so that I do not feel bad when bad things happen to them.

I know and have known many players who take it too personally when their character is hurt or killed, and several DMs who start to pull their proverbial punches when they realize they've put a PC at the edge of death, but I neither request nor desire such favoritism. I have many character concepts that I've yet to have a chance to play and I think of new ones all the time, and playing a new character can be an interesting change of pace, so I frequently skip the mourning of a dead character in preference of the excitement of having a new one.

SethoMarkus
2016-06-27, 03:56 PM
I really don't know how I can enjoy being in the same party as a jerkish strict officer who orders his teammates around over the smallest things ("Why did you give me this spoon? Get the other spoon! No, the OTHER spoon! Don't make me smack you!"), especially when reacting back is still wrong because "he's your leader" and "he's trying to improve you". I go through plenty of this "you're wrong in everything so just follow my orders and don't make your own decisions" experience IRL, I don't want to repeat it in-game.

I generally don't want to play with unpleasant PCs in a game that's supposed to be fun. Especially if it's the type of unpleasant that's described above.

I never said they were nice or good characters. Also if note, he was not the superior to the other PCs, just his background was as an officer. (He started play as Lawful Neutral and devolved to Neutral Evil.) Sure, he showed disappointment with the other PCs when they fell short of his expectations, but they were in no position of obligation to heed his expectations, nor really even care.

While I do not see any reason for PCs to all get along or like each other, my group always makes sure that OOC the players are all on the same page and are confortable/having a good time. For that specific example all of the characters were in the darker side of morality and did get along (as they oppressed NPCs).

I apologise if I stirred negative images or memories.

Sajiri
2016-06-27, 04:11 PM
The character in my longest running game thats still going, I didn't dislike her exactly but I did find her...kind of dull to play. I was far too cautious as a player early on, which translated to my character being, well, cautious and letting all the npc's take the spotlight. I originally intended for her to be a little like a female jack sparrow, but she was nothing like that, so I started telling my DM I wanted something really awful to happen to her, something that would drastically shift her personality.

Well, at the halfway point in the campaign, the island she was in charge of got betrayed then invaded, forcing everyone to flee, she used her own ship as bait to lead most of the invaders away from the rest, ended up fleeing to a gateway to a different world, caught in a holy explosion that left her blind and crippled, and washed up alone on a beach where she was dragged into a prison island meant to hold magical people with exceptional powers for a 10 year timeskip.

Now she's kind of like a female deadpool x big boss (complete with metal arm), DM granted special powers/abilities to make up for the disabilities I willingly gave her and played with for a while, and far more fun to play. Never been so glad to have such an awful string of events happen to my own character.

Kane0
2016-06-27, 04:58 PM
Oh yeah, definitely been there.

I once played a sly and cunning warlock who sidled up to the party in order to hide in plain sight while he rebuilt his criminal empire in the regions underworld. He would do the most despicable things in the name of revenge against those that took his life as a crime lord away, each time getting away with it by the barest of margins.

Oh i hated him so, and the players too. He was so wickedly fun to play, but i wanted him to get caught. I wanted his progress stalled at every opportunity, his well laid plans brought to ruin each time. But he was too good at what he did. He greased the right palms, deployed the right scapegoats, avoided the right traps.

I was very relieved when he died tragically fighting the big bad, so he could never become the villain we would clash with in another campaign. But the thing is the party IC had no idea of all his deeds behind their backs and he had been friendly and helpful to them pretty much the whole time in order to maintain cover and keep alliances, so they rezzed him.

My favourite campaign to date.

Seppo87
2016-06-27, 05:28 PM
Oh yeah, definitely been there.

I once played a sly and cunning warlock who sidled up to the party in order to hide in plain sight while he rebuilt his criminal empire in the regions underworld. He would do the most despicable things in the name of revenge against those that took his life as a crime lord away, each time getting away with it by the barest of margins.

Oh i hated him so, and the players too. He was so wickedly fun to play, but i wanted him to get caught. I wanted his progress stalled at every opportunity, his well laid plans brought to ruin each time. But he was too good at what he did. He greased the right palms, deployed the right scapegoats, avoided the right traps.

I was very relieved when he died tragically fighting the big bad, so he could never become the villain we would clash with in another campaign. But the thing is the party IC had no idea of all his deeds behind their backs and he had been friendly and helpful to them pretty much the whole time in order to maintain cover and keep alliances, so they rezzed him.

My favourite campaign to date.

My character is very similar, although he's not trying to get back his criminal empire - instead, his goal is to take over the existing one.

I would be interested if you shared some methods from your experience.
What steps to take and when, how to make allies and how to decide who and when you will strike next, how to stay undetected and untrackable...

(maybe it's best via PMs so we don't derail the thread)

Draconi Redfir
2016-06-27, 05:40 PM
i try my best to make my characters as little like "me" as possible, to further enhance the line between "me" and "them".I don't PLAY a character, most times I’m merely acting as the conduit for their actions to escape the realm of my mind. This mainly only works in text format, but in rare circumstances it works outside of it.

For both my paladin and my fighter in previous games I’ve desperately wanted a scene where an army of demons or enemies of some sort is chasing after the party so they can turn and stand their ground to hold them off as long as they could to let the others escape. I’m not really sure if that would count as rooting "against" them since they're aware they will likely die, buuut i dunno. that just always seemed like a good way to go for me.

Other times I’ve had situations where My characters loose attachments they had with the groups and decide to leave for their own reasons. As a player i of course want them to stay, but since i don't actually control their actions, merely channel them, i can't actively stop them, someone else needs to find some way to convince them to stay. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

In another example i can think of, i had a character who ran a sort of dying circus act, they really only held onto it because it ran in the family, and they wanted to keep it that way, but with the rise of TV, Radio, and other events unique to the story, it just wouldn't survive much longer even without outside intervention. So i set up a scenario where another layer burned down the tent despite my character's best attempts at stopping them, and they were forced to move on and accept the new technologies and rules of the world they'd been avoiding for so long.

So yeah, wanting your character to "Fail" their goals is pretty common I’d say. Be it to encourage them to stay, leave, change, or stay the same, the actions of the character can be vastly different of the wishes of the player. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. what matters to me at least, is that it's interesting.

goto124
2016-06-28, 03:28 AM
I would rather play a game where the consequences are real and my character can lose or fail or die than one where my character always succeeds and survives just because he is a PC. And while I do try to get into the mindset of my characters so that I may better roleplay them, I maintain enough of a separation so that I do not feel bad when bad things happen to them.

I have many character concepts that I've yet to have a chance to play and I think of new ones all the time, and playing a new character can be an interesting change of pace, so I frequently skip the mourning of a dead character in preference of the excitement of having a new one.

Huh, I'm the exact opposite. People keep saying failing is fun, but I've never found that to be true. I've never gotten to the point of failing in a fun way. I can't maintain the separation - if I don't like the character, they don't get played at all, and if I like the character, I REALLY like the character. My most dramatic failures made me break down IRL and I avoided the forums (it was a PbP) for a month, leaving the other players going 'lolwut?' while I picked up the nerve to explain things to them.

I'm very dry on character concepts. My characters are very plain. I can't bring myself to play anything the internet offers. Every character I play ends up being bland and generic anyway, because I can't pick up the courage to make decisions I consider hurtful to my fellow players and GM. People on the forums keep hammering in how I should never have to say "that's what my character would do" as an excuse, but it's gone to the point where I can't do anything except follow everyone else.

I created a PC with the intent that she'll never reach her goal, even though she's constantly striving to reach it. She was still unfun. Even when she had a goal, the RP itself was really boring. It was like trying to run across the infinite plane of nothingness - you have a goal to reach the portal at the nonexistent end, but there's nothing at all in between and you're stuck doing a boring repetitive thing forever.

How do you people make fun characters? How does one make decisions that doesn't make me break down into tears?

2D8HP
2016-06-28, 05:53 AM
How do you people make fun characters? How does one make decisions that doesn't make me break down into tears?*hands goto124
a handkerchief, because that is apparently one of the marks of a good paladin*

BWR
2016-06-28, 09:40 AM
I had a priest as a Companion in Ars Magica (a sort of secondary PC), whose mission was to infiltrate the covenant where those filthy godless magi lived and get the people there back on the Church's side and then see what sort of dirt he could get on them. He managed to stage a revolt and burn a few buildings before leading the literal torches and pitchforks mob into the tower, which was a power regio (think demiplane), and was never heard from since.
He was a blast to play and I even fooled one of the players into thinking he was a nice guy, and while I played him to the best of my abilities I always hoped he would fail in his mission.

FunSize
2016-06-28, 03:34 PM
Once, in a Vampire the Requiem game. My Nosferatu character was a volatile, monstrous prick who had a tendency to fly off the handle and ruin the more delicate plans of other characters (and he was a racist on top of that). I was 100% expecting him not to make it out alive (or undead, rather). I figured an illicit Embrace would have sealed the deal...

Surprisingly, he made it out better than most of the other characters by the end of the story (half of whom were executed by the Prince at the end).

In a different group, this character would not have worked at all, but thankfully the people I played with liked the drama that came along with having such a liability around.

The Fury
2016-06-29, 11:52 AM
Huh, I'm the exact opposite. People keep saying failing is fun, but I've never found that to be true. I've never gotten to the point of failing in a fun way. I can't maintain the separation - if I don't like the character, they don't get played at all, and if I like the character, I REALLY like the character. My most dramatic failures made me break down IRL and I avoided the forums (it was a PbP) for a month, leaving the other players going 'lolwut?' while I picked up the nerve to explain things to them.

I'm very dry on character concepts. My characters are very plain. I can't bring myself to play anything the internet offers. Every character I play ends up being bland and generic anyway, because I can't pick up the courage to make decisions I consider hurtful to my fellow players and GM. People on the forums keep hammering in how I should never have to say "that's what my character would do" as an excuse, but it's gone to the point where I can't do anything except follow everyone else.

I created a PC with the intent that she'll never reach her goal, even though she's constantly striving to reach it. She was still unfun. Even when she had a goal, the RP itself was really boring. It was like trying to run across the infinite plane of nothingness - you have a goal to reach the portal at the nonexistent end, but there's nothing at all in between and you're stuck doing a boring repetitive thing forever.

How do you people make fun characters? How does one make decisions that doesn't make me break down into tears?

I appreciate that this might just be something that we'll never be in full agreement about, but I will generally prefer a game where failure is at least possible. In my own case, without the threat of failure no success or victory feels genuine. Even the characters I gave as examples have their share of victories, just with some comedic pratfalls and deep personal failure thrown in.

Though I suppose that even comedic failure can feel pretty mean. Not everyone is up to being the butt of a joke. I actually once had a DM explain to me that the reason why my characters are always the butt of jokes in his games was because I never got upset about it. Maybe being a butt is just something I'm better at than most people.

Now, on the note of "That's what my character would do," I'll admit that's one that I struggled with for a long time. The problem I, and I think others, have had with that excuse is that players often use it as justification to be terrible to NPCs or their party mates. I have much less of a problem with it when it's used to justify an action that undermines the party's overall goal, or one that comes off as self-destructive. Like, why are you taking the Maguffin that can defeat the Lich? Because it can also used to cure your little brother's illness. That kind of thing

goto124
2016-06-29, 09:26 PM
But... your brother won't survive anyway if the Lich destroys the world. That sort of thing.

Even if not the world, it's a Lich right? It'll destroy at least a city. I'll have to convince my party that saving my brother (who is he? A random NPC in my 'backstory'?) by destroying an entire city is totally worth it. If the campaign doesn't just end on a comedic note, the GM will have to play out the realistic consequences...

KillianHawkeye
2016-06-29, 09:34 PM
People keep saying failing is fun, but I've never found that to be true.

I don't think the argument is that "failing is fun," at least I've never heard that. I think it's possible to have fun despite being in a failing situation, and I think that succeeding is more fun if it isn't guaranteed to happen.

Like, for example, the party gets into a fight with some really tough monsters. The battle is difficult, requiring everyone to give it their all and work together and even come up with some crazy, creative strategy that only a desperate person would ever think of. If we win, the victory is so much more satisfying and memorable than an encounter consisting of "we effortlessly slay a bunch of weaklings for the hundredth time," and if we fail, there's still a pretty good chance we had a good time because it was dramatic. To put it another way, winning without a challenge is boring, and even if we can't lose we need to believe that we can.

Note that losing doesn't always mean that you die or that horrible things happen; sometimes it's just a setback. Then again, it's a proven literary technique to have the villain of a story do some awful things to give readers/viewers an emotional investment in seeing the villain defeated. This applies equally to roleplaying games, but it can be magnified even more if the villain does those things directly to the players or to whoever or whatever the player's characters care about. In fact, in any decent story about good triumphing over evil, it's basically required that bad things happen (or at least there should be a very real threat of them happening if not for the actions of the heroes).




How do you people make fun characters? How does one make decisions that doesn't make me break down into tears?

Without actually knowing you better, all I can say is that it takes time, experience, maturity, and possibly medication.

I think a good starting point for you would be to take a long, introspective look at yourself and try to answer the question "What things do I consider fun?" It sounds to me like you don't have a concrete answer for that, and maybe that's why you don't know how to make a fun character. Heck, maybe D&D isn't even the right game for you!

Anyway, good luck and happy gaming! :smallsmile::smallsmile:

Knaight
2016-06-30, 02:30 AM
I don't think the argument is that "failing is fun," at least I've never heard that. I think it's possible to have fun despite being in a failing situation, and I think that succeeding is more fun if it isn't guaranteed to happen.

In the context of certain characters, catastrophic failure absolutely is fun.

The Fury
2016-06-30, 01:17 PM
But... your brother won't survive anyway if the Lich destroys the world. That sort of thing.

Even if not the world, it's a Lich right? It'll destroy at least a city. I'll have to convince my party that saving my brother (who is he? A random NPC in my 'backstory'?) by destroying an entire city is totally worth it. If the campaign doesn't just end on a comedic note, the GM will have to play out the realistic consequences...

Not a logically sound scenario, I'll admit. But hey, I invented it on the spot before the coffee kicked in. Though the point wasn't that it's a course of action that I'd approve of. It was if a player said that their character took that action and claimed that it's what their character would do, (hopefully explaining why,) I could at least understand it.

As for the GM-- Well, if they didn't want that to happen maybe they shouldn't have used a Maguffin that has uses running the gamut of curing terminally ill brothers and destroying Liches, (I have no idea what that would even be.)


In the context of certain characters, catastrophic failure absolutely is fun.

True, though in the context of certain characters success is hilarious.

LeighTheDwarf
2016-06-30, 02:27 PM
One of my characters is arrogant and manipulative. He's not outright evil, but he is deeply flawed. I don't wish for him to fail in his main goals or die a horrible death, but I do feel happy when someone puts him in his place, or he faces consequences for his actions that show he's not as great as he thinks he is, because that's the sort of thing that spurs character development toward becoming less selfish and more principled.