How long should characters last?
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At the risk of ignoring philosophical arguments, game theory, and various hypotheticals…
Until you no longer enjoy playing it. Only thing that matters.
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I love this topic so much, because I have learned over the years that I seem to be on one extreme of the spectrum for how one enjoys PC play.
I like to play characters that provide Conflict. Capitalization intentional because I’m talking in the sense of storytelling, not like creeping everyone out or making them uncomfortable. Conflict is the motive force that drives storytelling.
My ideal trajectory for a PC goes something like this:
- Learn the setting and current trends in the IC community so that I can find some niche that will let me be snag in the skein or otherwise be a walking provocation to some group or trend. (About half the time this manifests as some kind of class warfare because that’s what’s near and dear to my heart)
- If I’m not already, get myself real educated on both the position my character is going to represent and that of those I’m likely to conflict with. This step is necessary for later.
- Seek out Conflict. Both with potential adversaries but also with Allies, who I look to challenge to step up to the stage of Conflict as well.
- Cause a Big Problem (aka Create a Story). In the pursuit of this, expose as many weakness in my own activities as I exploit in others. This is super important. I am not trying to win I am trying to make Conflict interesting. Fighting a foe that always wins is boring.
- Fucking die. Or something else but just give up the reins. Dying is sort of ideal though because remember those Allies? They’re holding the torch now. If it’s been done real well, the death may cement the motivation of the Allies and/or seriously put them at odds with the people who had a hand in the death.
- Repeat.
I strongly suspect that I love this pattern because I’ve been the Forever GM since the 90s. Playing a character, for me, is less about the story I am experiencing and more about being the hand behind experiences that others enjoy. I also really like being a Conflict-driver because there is truly no one a character is closer to than the people they are at odds with. It’s a kind of intimacy that, done in a positive and collaborative fashion, is unique to the medium.
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- Am I still enjoying it, as @TNP said.
- Is their story done?
By ‘done’ I don’t mean, like, dead. For me a story is over when they’ve achieved their goals or reached a place of happiness and stability. There’s no story to be had in “Tomwell loves being a priest and has resolved his struggles with family history and burdens and is in a very nice relationship, life’s pretty good no complaints!” Story’s done. That can be 6 months of play for one character, or 5 years for another.
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@TNP said in How long should characters last?:
At the risk of ignoring philosophical arguments, game theory, and various hypotheticals…
Until you no longer enjoy playing it. Only thing that matters.
It’s an acceptable risk.
But for example even in the context of having fun, do you get ‘alt envy’? “My Gangrel is fun but ooh look at that Mekhet Bloodline, I could play a ninja instead oooh!”
And also looking back, do you have ‘flagship characters’ you just ended up playing for a damn long time - say, more than a year?
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@Arkandel said in How long should characters last?:
And also looking back, do you have ‘flagship characters’ you just ended up playing for a damn long time - say, more than a year?
Ooh, I’m gonna immediately contradict everything I wrote above… I played the same character on Castle Marrach over a decade, but that was with some real long (like 3-5 year) breaks. I can’t think of that game in any other capacity than through that character’s eyes.
edit: Wait, no, I’m still good. That character was also a walking provocation and they also died both figuratively and literally a couple times.
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@Arkandel said in How long should characters last?:
@TNP said in How long should characters last?:
At the risk of ignoring philosophical arguments, game theory, and various hypotheticals…
Until you no longer enjoy playing it. Only thing that matters.
It’s an acceptable risk.
But for example even in the context of having fun, do you get ‘alt envy’? “My Gangrel is fun but ooh look at that Mekhet Bloodline, I could play a ninja instead oooh!”
And also looking back, do you have ‘flagship characters’ you just ended up playing for a damn long time - say, more than a year?
As a person with terminal altitis (it’s a real disease, shush you), I get where you’re coming from here but for me it’s really about what is fun.
In some systems (I’m looking at you Hero Games 6e!) it’s almost more fun to /make/ the character than it is to /play/ the character.
Cuz I like math.
On a MU* however for me it’s fun factor each and every time. Play a character until it’s not fun. If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong IMHO. There’s nothing wrong with having fun with more than one character though.
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@Mourne said in How long should characters last?:
In some systems (I’m looking at you Hero Games 6e!) it’s almost more fun to /make/ the character than it is to /play/ the character.
One of my hobbies is going to the websites of games I don’t play and reading all the theme and wanted stuff and then mentally making a character that I never app.
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To answer my own damn questions…
I always build characters aiming to play them for a long time. Obviously the success rate on that is low. But I’ve had at least three characters whom I played for over a year each. They tend to be the most ‘fun’ simply because I carry memories with me much after they (or the games they were on) are long gone.
The most important factor - again for me, obviously - is the group I can surround a character with. Themes, staff, even the PC’s niche or type come and go; when I roll them everyone might want a scholar or an assassin, but six months later the demographics change. However if I have friends who’re active and I get regular scenes… I don’t care.
Unlike @Mourne I’m not an altoholic. If I get a PC I like, I stick with them. And I’m pretty bad splitting time between any of my hobbies, let alone characters.
All that flies out of the window if my social group falls apart. And there are so many circumstances outside of my control that can cause that; RL circumstances can cause favorite partners to stop logging on. Drama or staff changes - or another game launching - can steal my faction’s activity levels. And just like that, I move on like a drifter (or rather, I used to, when I still played).
However if all that works out and I have regular scenes on my dance card? I can run the same character forever. If I ever run out of goals I reinvent them. All it takes is a few PrPs to uproot and turn their precious, well-organized lives into a complete mess - and here we go again. There are many tropes for this (“… just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in!”) in literature.
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I played Harkan for around 15 years on A Moment in Tyme (with a relatively-short hiatus of playing him on Dragon’s Fang), through three timeline resets. That was probably too long, especially for someone who started as “my dead character’s brother,” but the timeline resets gave me opportunities to tweak him so that he still had goals/purposes.
I agree with the idea that you should play a character as long as they’re fun for you, and with the idea that I tend to play a character (if the health of the game allows it) until they’ve completed their goals or reached a plateau. I recently retired Zack after nearly 2 years because he was just too comfortable not the Network’s Dome setting, and while seasons were fun with him, hiatuses between seasons weren’t. He had what he wanted, he was there for 20ish years, and he had just come to accept the strange luxury of The Dome even if it feared on his socialist nerves.
I think it’s really important to know when you’ve come to the end of a character’s story (or stories), because if you can’t find new goals, you’re going to have a hard time connecting with anything that’s going on. Want and Do Not Want drive so much of stories, if your character has what they want and doesn’t have what they don’t want, it’s going to be hard to keep them involved, changing, and interesting.
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@TNP said in How long should characters last?:
Until you no longer enjoy playing it. Only thing that matters.
This. I stop playing a character when I can’t come up with anything else fun to do with them.
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@Arkandel I have no idea how to answer this. I’ve never had a chance to actually retire a character. Either a playgroup/game fell apart, or I didn’t want to be there anymore.
Closest I’ve come was Arx, but the dice retired him for me.
I think I’m content to keep a character forever, unless he gets written into a corner.
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The last time I thought I was done with a character’s story staff asked if I would mind starting a new chapter where he’s the pope. So I clearly have no idea.
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My favorite experience is having an actual ending for a character. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve played a character, IC retirement is one of the most satisfying ways for me to finish playing.
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Most satisfying end to a character goes down as the selfless mentor who murdered and sucked the life force out of @Tat.
Def agree that IC closure is ideal, but sometimes it’s just not in the cards. Last year I picked up a character I created that I had to put down for 4-5ish years, and it’s been with the intention of playing them until the end of their story – which I have some ideas for.
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@helvetica said in How long should characters last?:
Most satisfying end to a character goes down as the selfless mentor who murdered and sucked the life force out of @Tat.
God that was good. So fucking good.
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@helvetica said in How long should characters last?:
Def agree that IC closure is ideal, but sometimes it’s just not in the cards. Last year I picked up a character I created that I had to put down for 4-5ish years, and it’s been with the intention of playing them until the end of their story – which I have some ideas for.
If this is who I think it, we should talk sometime.
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I’d echo other statements and simply say that keep playing until they are no longer enjoyable.
I’d add to that and define ‘no longer enjoyable’ to mean a couple of things, such as ending their arc or completing what I as a player had set out to do for them.
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Until its story is told – and until it no longer is useful in helping others tell their stories.
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My initial response is “until you stop having fun with it”, but the older, wiser me includes, “or until you start hindering other people’s stories”. Because despite what some people may want/feel, the MU* isn’t all about you.
Basically once your xp bloat begins making other people’s involvement in things useless it is time for you to do something. That doesn’t mean you have to give up the character just because you have a lot of xp, but you can take a step back from active roles and delegate activities/responsibilities/missions to others. This way also prevents you from hindering other people’s stories without giving up the character.
Also, XP bloat isn’t the only way to hinder other people stories. You could have very low xp and just be rude or inconsiderate, or taking all the spots on events or cliquing up with others to keep certain characters out of the loop just because you don’t like them. But the rule still applies. If that’s what you’ve done with your character, then you’re hindering other people’s stories and your character’s run should be over.
But usually its the XP bloat thing.
Disclaimer: This is all completely arbitrary based on what I’ve noticed most MU* s tend to be. But whether the game world’s players are expected to be cohesive or a bunch of individuals who aren’t beholden to each other, that should be something made clear by the game runner.
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This is an area where I have to be careful not to graft what I want onto other players. I can’t really do a character for more than a couple years for various reasons that just come down to the kind of story arc I enjoy. Endings are also pretty important to me, they reorient how I view even characters I’ve semi-lost interest in and make them feel more satisfying, kind of helping to highlight the good parts and make the meh ones feel more distant. The first character I put to bed properly was one where I’d left the game for a while but come back for the finale on @Faraday’s Battlestar Pacifica out of nostalgia, and being able to put a pin in her was somewhat revelatory for me in terms of ‘oh, this sure is a thing I found really satisfying in a way I didn’t know MUs could be’, since idling out or the game losing steam is more the norm. All that said, I know that a lot of players don’t need that kind of button and find ongoing play for years a really satisfying part of this hobby. I’ve also found myself unable to play games I otherwise enjoy because retiring a bit meant the loss of IC relationships and continuity I really loved, so it’s kind of a picking priorities thing.
I think how to deal with dinosaurs is a different question and you can do it in a lot of ways beyond forced retirement (XP caps, staff being firm about rotating out certain IC positions, etc). Those things aren’t easy but I think they’re doable. I’m also excited to see more games build in clear ends to story arcs (even anthology-style like The Network) and I’d like to see places play around with time-jumps, but you need to be really upfront with your playerbase if that’s something you want to experiment with and it’s also more a narrative choice than one made for anti-dino purposes imo.
