Has your character ever stopped you from playing them, even when you didn't want to?

[FelineArchmage]

Has your character ever stopped you from playing them, even when you didn't want to?

I'm talking in the sense of that "this is so ingrained in my character's personality and the way that act that they would do this, even if it resulted in becoming an unplayable/dead character".

Our campaign is getting very tense now, and I've been thinking about this for the last 2 weeks or so... depending on how the plot goes and how my DM decides to play it all, my character could possibly become unplayable because of her own personality and the decisions she would make. I have no desire to stop playing her (because she still has stuff to do, damnit!), but I can't go against her personality, how I made her, and who she turned out to be.

Edit - Just to clarify: I'm not talking about being unplayable as in 'my character doesn't get along with the adventuring group and wants to leave' or 'hurr durr I'm gonna run in and be a stupid person and get killed'. I'm asking from purely story-related and plot reasons.

[Pelle]

There's no shame in retiring a character that doesn't work with the group. After all, "that's what my character would do" is not considered a good excuse...

[FelineArchmage]

There's no shame in retiring a character that doesn't work with the group. After all, "that's what my character would do" is not considered a good excuse...

Oh, it has nothing to do with our group! The adventuring group is rad. This is all story-related and I'm asking in a story-related sense.

[LordEntrails]

but I can't go against her personality

This is your fallacy. Of course you can change the personality of your character.

Your first and really only important obligation is to the group of humans playing the game and to make sure that you and the character(s) you play add to the enjoyment of the game.

Now, maybe you role-played yourself into a corner, but it doesn't mean you can't get out of that corner. Maybe you stop playing that character. Maybe you retcon the character's personality. Maybe you have the character have a life changing revelation.

There are dozens of ways to get out of the corner you made. You just have to decide which one works best for the enjoyment of the game.

[Pelle]

You mean like she would rather sit home and watch Netflix than go questing? If she's unplayable, don't play her.

[FelineArchmage]

This is your fallacy. Of course you can change the personality of your character.

Your first and really only important obligation is to the group of humans playing the game and to make sure that you and the character(s) you play add to the enjoyment of the game.

Now, maybe you role-played yourself into a corner, but it doesn't mean you can't get out of that corner. Maybe you stop playing that character. Maybe you retcon the character's personality. Maybe you have the character have a life changing revelation.

There are dozens of ways to get out of the corner you made. You just have to decide which one works best for the enjoyment of the game.

I've never understood people who can just change a character's personality that they've been playing for a long time without thinking long and hard about it. I cannot in good conscience just "change the personality of my character" who I have been playing for some time now and who has gone through growth and changes to become who they are now. But hey, you do you.

Second of all, and this is my doing for not being clear, it seems I've given off the impression that I'm unhappy about my characters possible future decisions (I'm not). I am fine with the possibility of her being dead or unplayable since it's getting close to the ending of major plot points (and I also trust my DM). I am happy and proud of playing her on how she would react and the decisions she would make. Unplayable characters (i.e. death) happen all the time, I will live.

The point of the thread was to see if this personality conflict between the character and player has ever happened to you. I was just curious. I do not need advice and nor am I looking for it, but thank you for your concern and advice - I will keep it in mind for the future.

[D+1]

Has your character ever stopped you from playing them, even when you didn't want to?

Never. Not once in over 40 years of playing.

Our campaign is getting very tense now, and I've been thinking about this for the last 2 weeks or so... depending on how the plot goes and how my DM decides to play it all, my character could possibly become unplayable because of her own personality and the decisions she would make. I have no desire to stop playing her (because she still has stuff to do, damnit!), but I can't go against her personality, how I made her, and who she turned out to be.

Characters SHOULD change in reaction to the events that occur around them. But there is something of an unwritten obligation to have characters react to events in ways that ENGAGE them with the campaign and other characters, not in ways that make you as a player want to remove your character from the game so as to preserve them from ever becoming something other than some idealized concept you have in your head.

When you start playing a character, no matter what they started out as, no matter what you PLANNED for the character, you never know what events will actually transpire in that characters life. You can have an idea for an emo, gloomy, gruff character that only winds up experiencing win, triumph, success, wealth, etc. You can create a character that you want to have rescue princesses, build a vast magnificent castle, and be King Aragorn adored by all your subjects, and yet experience only struggle, misery, lack of money or real success. You can create a character that is a halfling wanna-stay-at-home-and-grow-potatoes gentleman, but find yourself with your uncle's bloody sword in hand, facing down trolls and giant spiders, fighting for your own survival and the fate of your world as you trek endlessly to where you can destroy an artifact. Frodo COULD hand the ring to Sam and tell him, "Good luck. I'm going HOME...". Hell, through the whole story he agonizes repeatedly about, "I really don't want to do this!" but that is not why you roll up Frodo as a PC.

This is a roleplaying challenge that you face. Your challenge is to FIND a reason for your character to continue with the adventure. That's why you, the player, set your butt in the chair and roll dice. The DM, I have no doubt, did NOT promise that your character would only face dangers and difficulties within your comfort zone. It's almost certain that if the current situation in the campaign are difficult for your PC then they are to some extent also difficult for all the other PC's too. But even though, "I give up. I'm going home," is an option for ALL of them, it's just not an option they really consider because choosing that option makes it pointless for you as a player to be at the game table.

If, as you say, your character is perfectly okay with all the other PC's in the party, then try this motivation on for size: "Yes, I really REALLY want to give up on all this, but these are my friends and we are in this together and I will NOT be a coward or some wilting flower who walks away when the chips are down. I HATE this, but I WILL ENDURE IT." Your character doesn't have to say that out loud. They don't even have to say it directly to themselves. Maybe they reach that conclusion deep down, but refuse to admit it to themselves. So they PRETEND to be the same person, but deep inside they DO change, and make the choice to stay and persevere, rather than give up and abandon the party to a collective fate without them. When the tense days finally pass, as they inevitably must, then your PC can go back to being who they started out to be - but now, at least deep down, they know that they CAN be more than they thought they could.

Or, you could continue on the present course, announce that your character is abandoning the adventuring life for the time being, and start a different PC - hopefully, one that you CAN keep with the rest of the party come what may.

[PersonMan]

This is your fallacy. Of course you can change the personality of your character.

Technically speaking, this is true. But on a practical level, no, not always. There are things people can do, but don't want to do, to the point where they "can't" do it, because it would impact their enjoyment of the game to a massive degree. Sure, you can always trade in your ineffective spy character for the cyborg with a rocket launcher to be more impactful in the game, but this isn't actually a solution for someone who wants to keep playing a spy. In the same vein, it's entirely possible for "change the character" to be off the table as a practical answer.

Or, you could continue on the present course, announce that your character is abandoning the adventuring life for the time being, and start a different PC - hopefully, one that you CAN keep with the rest of the party come what may.

You do know that you're responding to a dilemma that isn't there, right? This isn't someone saying "help, my PC may become unplayable", this is someone saying "given X and Y, which I do not wish to change, Z may occur, which is non-ideal but a fundamentally acceptable outcome, anyone had a similar experience?" - I don't think the point of the thread is to get holier-than-thou speeches on how it's a good idea to make PCs who want to stick with the party.

---

As for the actual thread topic: I've had something like this happen, but it was a long, slow process; in short, the character wasn't that well-suited for the kind of game we ended up playing. My goals, as a player, weren't aligned with the in-world goals of the character, and I already knew that making changes wouldn't actually solve the problem (since I would spend my time feeling bad for not staying true to the character, rather than feeling bad for not 'getting' to do what I wanted). In the end, due to the other players having somewhat similar issues, we rebooted the game entirely with a new party, and that worked out rather well.

[Jormengand]

There was the one SWN game I played where my character decided that the character who was clearly the main villain was the main villain, then we were railroaded into working for the main villain, so I made a new character who was pro-main-villain.

Then we ended up fighting the main villain again...

[Pleh]

I have had a couple characters do this and arguments to shame such behavior don't phase me.

My first was a Darth Maul clone who, upon witnessing the party just about blunder their way into their own destruction (almost literally) he didn't stick around to see if they survived. They were too incompetent to bother with. He wandered off and I made another character.

More recently, I had a spell-less ranger leave a campaign because it became more and more clear to the character that he was dealing with forces that would always be beyond his capacity to deal with. He "stayed behind" on a mission in the past because he felt he could do more good there.

None of my playmates have been selfish enough to require I change my character to match their game and neither have I made such requirements of them when they made similar changes.

[kyoryu]

"There is only thing my character would do here" is a very rare situation. In most cases, there's a number of things your character *might* do, that are within character, and make sense.

Very few people are that fixated and single-minded on anything, and given sufficient motivation will do what is required to maintain life/etc.

Many RPG characters are played as if they are that fixated, single-minded, and single-dimensional.

[Miz_Liz]

I've only ever had the issue once. I was playing a protection cleric, and she was extremely protective, to a fault. It made for some really great rp, but we came up against an enemy that could not be fought it became an issue. Due to our admittedly terrible time management, this level 14 (we were all 3) wizard creeped up on us and we didn't have a huge chance of making it out. Especially my clunky, slow cleric. I realized the only thing that would work for her as a character and given the situation was to give herself up to give the rest of the party time to flee. Me and the fighter stayed behind and held her back as long as we could, the rest of the party escaped, and we died valiantly. It was kind of sad, and I'm honored how much it affected the other PCs, but it would have felt wrong for her to run.

I don't foresee that happening terribly often, though.

[Luckmann]

It has never happened to me, but I could very easily see it happening. I don't think I would really lament it, though, since I try to not get too attached to certain characters since it tends to lead to more shallow roleplaying and drama. The character isn't me, no matter how much I empathize with it. But yeah, I can absolutely see it happening; things evolving in a (for the character) unforeseen direction, where it might end up having to choose between it's dreams and actually being part of this adventuring party.

At that point, I think I'd try to prepare myself for the inevitable fact that this character will become an NPC, and if that comes to pass, give the GM instructions on what the character would do or attempt, in case it ever crops up again - provided it survives.

Actually, scratch that, thinking about "surviving", I have actually been in this situation. On one of my favourite characters, too, a neo-fascist elf street samurai type character, named Tolkien. He got embroiled in a fight with multiple enemies in a store during a inter-/post-session type thing the GM was doing (so it was just the two of us), and although he came out on top, he was out of commission and dying fast, but the GM stressed that I had time to make one phone-call, just the one, although the rest of my team wasn't exactly next door.

It was obvious that the GM was throwing me this life-line to help me stay alive, but I ended up opting out of it, because I knew exactly what Tolkien would do, and I just couldn't go against that.

He ended up calling his sister, apologizing for not being able to make it home for Christmas like he promised. He had (in a previous post-session thing) met up with his sister while on a stint in Berlin (where she was established to be living) and promised that he would really visit her this year, honest. But he'd have to break that promise, now.

He wasn't even found by the other runners. He just went AWOL, dead in the gutter in what was labelled a store robbery or brawl gone wrong.

Just out of curiosity, any chance you could tell us more about your situation?

[RazorChain]

One roleplaying buddy of mine he retires his characters regularly when he feels when his characters have achieved their goals.

My characters have on at least one occasion gone over to the "bad" guys and become an NPC. One of my characters destroyed the multiverse in an attempt to save the woman he loved which pretty much made the setting unplayable, everyone was happy about the conclusion of the campaign except my buddy who didn't get to achieve his characters goals and retire him

It can happen that your PC's motives don't align with the group or the PC has issues that have to be resolved off screen or in a private session. It just depends on how you want to play it out. I've had PC's go off to resolve private issues and then come back 10 sessions later or never return.

If you still want to play that character then talk to your GM about it and see how you can resolve this.

[Koo Rehtorb]

You can always change your character however you want, and you can probably even do it without it seeming contrived.

I don't think it's a legitimate unwritten rule of gaming that you have to do so, though. There are certainly times where I will happily burn a group/campaign to the ground rather than change my character in a way that I don't want to.

[opaopajr]

Yes, but it's perfectly fine for characters to disagree heavily, even to the point of sitting out a certain party direction. They aren't glued to the hip, per se. They can, with GM blessing, either a) do something else as a separate side quest story, or b) retire from the party due to "irreconcilable differences."

This was easier in yesteryear when people were used to having a stable of PCs, to ride out as available.

[LordEntrails]

I've never understood people who can just change a character's personality that they've been playing for a long time without thinking long and hard about it. I cannot in good conscience just "change the personality of my character" who I have been playing for some time now and who has gone through growth and changes to become who they are now. But hey, you do you.

...

The point of the thread was to see if this personality conflict between the character and player has ever happened to you. I was just curious. I do not need advice and nor am I looking for it, but thank you for your concern and advice - I will keep it in mind for the future.

Either I wouldn't categorize such a situation as a "personality conflict", or I'm like D+1 and others who after playing since 1977 have never had the situation you describe. Guess it's simply I don't see a character's personality as being that important.

Hope you get the feedback you are looking for.

[chainer1216]

Im getting close to having to make a decision on this subject with a long time character.

Hes a former Lawyer turned spellcaster, his group recently bought and started renovating a large keep and hes the only one who can really run the place, and even more importantly hes got a child on the way whose mother is also an adventurer(npc) and the idea of forcing her to be a stay at castle mom while hes off fighting demons just isnt right and both characters would rather bring the child to the battlefields than have them raised by maids.

[jojo]

In response to the original topic, yes. I have had characters on more than one occasion who simply had to do this, that or the other thing in response to specific situations where said things were obviously going to retire the character in question one way or the other.

This is heavily dependent on the campaign, group and your own personal values i.e. "what you enjoy about playing DnD and why you enjoy it."

If you happen to enjoy RP and getting "into" character then you'll find this comes up fairly often and that "playing it out" will just be one part of what makes the game fun for you.
If you enjoy more of a "dungeon-crawl" type of experience then when these things come up it will probably be more frustrating than not.
It sounds to me as if OP is more the former sort of player than the latter.

As long as you're enjoying the game then neither answer is "wrong."

[Florian]

Has your character ever stopped you from playing them, even when you didn't want to?

No. I tend to create characters that want to participate in the ongoing action, not those who have their own goals and would logically need to be retired from the game when those goals are met. I see no real sense or gain in that.

[Satinavian]

I came pretty close on three occassion, but it never came to it.

1) Our group was arrested by our allies and PCs were questioned seperately. During the interrogation my character was threatened with being raped by the whole squadron. This particular character would have sold her soul to a demon to kill all those soliers instead if they had tried to follow through with this threat as she had access to forbidden knowledge to do so. As these were our 'allies' and the demons and stuff were actually the enemy of the campaign, it would have force retired the character. Luckily, no actual rape occured.

2) Another character was imprisoned after being tricked. But he had the ability to possibly break out. Unfortunately that ability would require a major earthquate in an inhabitated region. The less and less hope he had to get free any other way, the closer he came to employ this ultima ratio.

3) One character once decided he had to use a ritual spell that does require givig up his life as additional cost, because all other options were exhausted and the treat was too great. But it was a railroad plot and the deus-ex-machina plot resolution happened before he was finished with the ritual.

[icefractal]

Yeah, it's happened a few times. Mostly because of characters being able to achieve a goal that's more important to them than further adventuring. Sometimes because the goals/theme of the party as a whole changes to where the character is no longer a good fit.

I don't see it as undesirable to happen occasionally though. After all, in many games the party can change via PC deaths, and in /any/ game it can happen when players leave or join the group, so I don't see an unchanging roster as something vital.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Answer me this; have you never known -anyone- to act out of character for their normal selves IRL? Not even once? Humans (or humanoids, as the case may be) are not 100% consistent in their behavior. Internal conflict between the ideas held and expressed behavior can be a great avenue to explore with a character.

[DireSickFish]

Nearly happened in a Star Wars game we were playing. My character made a friend about a crazy explosive using terrorist to the Empire because he was the only NPC that actually had some characterization. So I flipped a pip to make him a contact. And a lot of my down time was spent helping him with missions or talking to him when we didn't have mission critical items to work on.

I'm playing a character that does most the groups computer work. We got access to an Empire database and were cleaning up some of the dirty work we did to them. Mainly so they wouldn't trace it to us and ruin our cover as we'd managed to get positions of power in the Empire. Anyway, not thinking I pin all of our bad stuff on my Terrorist buddy. The Empire would have a hell of a time taking him down and he's already a wanted man.

Wasn't till later that I realized that I'd basically just sold out my only friend. Said Terrorist comes back later int he adventure looking for revenge. Instead of fighting it out with him I owned up to the **** thing I did to him and tried to fall on my sword. GM doesn't pull the blaster so my PC gets to make amends. Was kind of disjointed that I didn't get to kill my character off there, would have been poetic.

[Delta]

I once retired a character after realizing that playing her to her full potential and according to her character, within a couple months she'd pretty much become the "secret ruler" of most of the campaign setting and the rest of the group would become more henchmen in her plans, killing all the other players fun. GM agreed with my assessment so I handed her off to become an NPC. I still love that character concept and am dying to play her sometime, but it probably won't ever happen.

[D+1]

You do know that you're responding to a dilemma that isn't there, right? This isn't someone saying "help, my PC may become unplayable"

Uh, no. I know the opposite. From the OP:

Our campaign is getting very tense now, and I've been thinking about this for the last 2 weeks or so... depending on how the plot goes and how my DM decides to play it all, my character could possibly become unplayable because of her own personality and the decisions she would make.

Emphasis mine. Am I forgiven for responding on that basis?

[Socratov]

Well, yes. For one time I decided that my gnome who started out cheerful, but over the course of a particularly brutal campaign ending (sort of a conclusion to 5e's starting adventure "The Lost Mines of Phandelver")lost 2/3rds of his clan and about 3/4 of his grove brothers and sisters that he was now powerful enough and shellshocked enough to take a break from adventuring and instead go on a sabbatical to restore the land and fill the gap that his dead grove brothers and sisters have left. While this may seem very dark not fun, the ending ended in an all out siege of a castle where a black dragon had nestled and where one of our own party had turned traitor. The 2 ending sessions were epic and I won't ever forget it. So with the end played out it felt natural to retire him as his mental scarring would not mesh very well with any group.

Other times I would just lose interest and felt that my character's goals and ideals would change so much that I might just start a new character and put the current one on the shelf. But hey, I like making new characters so I don't consider that a problem...

[2D8HP]

Has your character ever stopped you from playing them, even when you didn't want to?

I'm talking in the sense of that "this is so ingrained in my character's personality and the way that act that they would do this, even if it resulted in becoming an unplayable/dead character...

Early 1990's for a game of Cyberpunk, my "Fixer" just became an appendage/hanger-on for the unfolding story so I retired him.

And twice more recently for 5e D&D two very similar character concepts (inspired by Conrad's "Lord Jim" and Steinbeck's Tom Joad), one a human barbarian, the other a half-elf Rogue, got forced into situations that I felt that they'd rather die than continue in, so I played them that way, one jumped out of a window into what I call an "Empty Room", or "Shallow set" world, and the DM never had another session, the other PC fought his captors, trying to escape, got blasted with an acid breath weapon in line of sight of another PC, who started to fight my PC's captors as well, all of which the DM retconned away.

In both cases the DM's had previously asked me to submit back-stories for my PC's, which they accepted, and which seemed to me to indicate how my PC's would behave (at least I, who wrote the blasted things, thought so).

Given the "Tom Joad" (a rebel) elements of the characters, and the "Chaotic" in their Alignments, it seemed obvious that they wouldn't submit to captivity, and given the stricken with survivors guilt, and haunted and ashamed of an act of cowardice (ala "Lord Jim"), they would choose to escspe or go down fighting, but clearly the DM's didn't perceive my PC's the way I did (serves me right for re-using a back-story, that was good for getting to play, but not for playing)..

[Joe the Rat]

People change. Character growth means something outside of RPGs.

It comes down to what you want to do. If you feel that sticking to a particular set of motivations and attitudes that will remove this character from play but does so in a way that you find satisfying and appropriate, godspeed.

If you want to keep playing this one, look at what is driving this terminal route. What is there that could change, or must change to stay in play, and what are the consequences? Break a vow, abandon a quest, put aside a driving pursuit to help your friends or allies, learn to manage an out of control emotion. Accept that something you believe may be wrong, or at least allow the question.

And the fallout is a new piece to play with. Are the costs, the drawbacks, the broken promises worth the result for the character? Are there old allies that become enemies? Do you have to question who you are, or what matters?

Ultimately, you have to ask if this trait is truly central to the character's identity, and if you want to question if it is really who they are, really that important - and the consequences of staying as you are, or changing. Choices.

[Velaryon]

I cannot think of a time that this has happened to one of my characters (though it may have). However, I can think of three times it happened to other PC's in games I was playing.

The first was pretty straightforward: our party was captured by a pack of various lycanthropes, who disarmed us and took all our gear... except the cleric's holy symbol was built into his armor. The weretiger that led the pack demanded he remove his armor, and he refused because the player believed his character would consider that a betrayal of his faith. The DM tried to talk him out of it (even going as far as to assure him OOC he would get it back, if I remember correctly), but he wouldn't budge, so the lycanthropes tore him apart and he made a new character.


The second time, the party was fairly new (having abandoned our previous game and started a new one only a few weeks before), and we had two particularly rowdy dwarves in the party (confession: I was playing one of them). Said dwarves were so prejudiced against orcs that they would go as far as picking fights in taverns with half-orcs. The second or third time we did this, it landed the two dwarves in the local jail. Ultros, our party's star elf mage decided he didn't like the dwarves enough bail them out of jail, so he simply left town and the player rolled up a new character. This led to countless "Ultros escaped!" jokes (it's a Final Fantasy 6 reference, for anyone who isn't familiar), and the game went on another few weeks before the DM got bored and switched to another campaign.


The third and most memorable time was in a Star Wars d20 game, set during the time of the KOTOR video games (or more accurately, a little before those games). We were a team of four Jedi apprentices, right at the start of the Mandalorian wars. The Iktotchi received a vision from the Force, in which he saw Codru-Ji PC's master fight a duel against Revan (who at this time had either not yet become a Sith, or at least was not yet known to have become a Sith). He saw two visions of the duel - one in which Revan was killed, and one in which the Codru-Ji's master was killed. The Iktotchi told the rest of the party about his visions, and we decided to be extra vigilant and watch both Masters to try and prevent the duel.

That wasn't good enough for the Codru-Ji. His loyalty to his master went far beyond that of a normal padawan for his master. Codru-Ji begin life as a six-legged wolflike creature, before undergoing a butterfly-like metamorphosis into their bipedal adult form. This character's background was that his master had bought him as a pet, completely unaware that a few years later it would become a sentient creature. So his loyalty was some combination of that of a padawan for his master, a dog for his owner, and a son for his father. No way in hell was he gonna take even the slightest chance that Revan might kill him. So... he assassinated Revan, before any of the events of the KOTOR games ever even happened, thus spinning the campaign into a completely unexpected (but totally awesome) direction.