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But Why
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Can this thread please be moved out of Game Gab so we can fully engage with the bad faithness of this original argument?
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@spiriferida
The appeal to me is playing someone who is making the world a better place, not someone who wallows in extreme privilege and pretends doing something nice every few months makes it okay that their daily luxury is built on crushing the majority.You can play a bad guy if you want but I won’t play on a game where the bad guys are white washed as being the heroes. Nobles and Royals are bad people. Even the best of them. You can not participate in noble society and still be a good person any more than you can be a billionaire and be a good person today.
The very word Noble is propaganda to make horrible people seem like they are somehow better than everyone else so they deserve to enjoy every luxury no matter how many people have to suffer for it.
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Sometimes it’s fun to play the villain.
Yes! It is! I never said people shouldn’t be allowed to play Nobles and Royals. I just don’t understand why you would want to be the bad guy.
Much of this thread is people being baffled that I can’t understand that part of playing the game requires you ignoring all the inconvenient truths about the peasants living in abject poverty and the mass murders of innocent people that are necessary for the institution of Nobility to continue.
I do understand it. I’m just baffled that anyone is able to enjoy a game where that is a requirement.
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Now tell me how many upright noble truly good redeeming people were on Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, and Firefly.
I disliked Battlestar for the very reason that everyone was a ***hole.
Farscape’s characters started off pretty bad, but it was a prison ship. Part of the appeal of that story was them becoming better people as the story progressed but they were not part of an elite class who held power over other people. They were criminals on the run.
The same is true for Firefly. Two people on that ship who were born into privilege was the Doctor and his sister and they gave that privilege up to escape the people hunting them.
But if they had not been on the run, if she had never gone to that school, they would still be living their best lives in the core not caring a fig about the people suffering around them or how unjust society is.
Other than Wash, the other truly good person on the ship was Shepard Book.
We never learned the details of it, but he was apparently a high ranking military official who gave up his power when he saw first hand the evil they did. He did what he could to make things better then when he saw that the system was unredeemable he walked away.
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Firefly is principally based off of the themes and aesthetics of the Lost Cause myth of the Confederacy, as a heads up
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
You can play a bad guy if you want but I won’t play on a game where the bad guys are white washed as being the heroes.
I get you. I’ve been genuinely angry with GMs for letting ‘heroes’ get away with being callous or murderous, especially in games where the heroes really are supposed to be proper heroes.
I’d argue that the nobles are all bad people thing doesn’t quite stand, since they didn’t choose their parents. Very few people of any type are good people in ‘Game of Thrones’ but poor and working nobles are in the IP and there’s plenty of room for a character who reacts to the accident of their birth in a decent way, or makes an effort at it in spite of the systemic pressure.
That is a different game than a Masq of The Red Death But The Red Death Never Shows Up kind of Lords and Ladies game that I suppose might exist. (It’s probably a Regency Romance, though, does that count as L&L?) I don’t think such a game would include RPing grinding the faces of the poor with impunity, though. Just glossing over inequity and where the money comes from. If that’s just not part of the story and people don’t want it to be, why the heck not? Not your cup of tea, sure, and I feel the same, but no worse than how Pern games typically remove how Pern is a crapsack world where most people do a lot of hard labour and way too many of them have absusive parents.
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@De-Villefort said in But Why:
Sometimes it’s fun to play the villain.
Yes! It is! I never said people shouldn’t be allowed to play Nobles and Royals. I just don’t understand why you would want to be the bad guy.
Much of this thread is people being baffled that I can’t understand that part of playing the game requires you ignoring all the inconvenient truths about the peasants living in abject poverty and the mass murders of innocent people that are necessary for the institution of Nobility to continue.
I do understand it. I’m just baffled that anyone is able to enjoy a game where that is a requirement.
No one is ignoring it. But you’re implying that we should all feel guilty for partaking in a literal hobby that is completely separated from actual history.
If you’re gonna virtue signal about what types of characters are the ‘right’ ones to play, at least be honest about it.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament that’s no fun, when you can totally troll on others playing things you don’t like while totally not responding to the same thing in the things that you do like.
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Like I
personally would never play a member of an aristocratic caste as a hero for basically the same reasons @De-Villefort cites. And I also find the habit of L&L games being full of charitable, heroic aristocrats doing good to be more than mildly nausea inducing for all the whitewashing. But like, I’m not gonna yuck anyone’s yum about it that’s wild. I would wager that Power Fantasy in one form or another eclipses all other motivations for roleplaying, indicting people’s motivations based solely upon their engaging with a “problematic” genre (show me an unproblematic genre that is based on actual humans) is myopic and just comes off as cluelessly self-righteous.edit: idk where the line is here can the whole site just be R&R please
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@shit-piss-love I just think it’s weird that in 2023 we’re having some kind of odd debate about what kind of characters is ‘okay’ to portray yourselves as and to do otherwise implies there’s something wrong with you as a player. As if you’re not altruistic enough as a human because you happen to enjoy medieval fantasy tropes, even if, yes, the historical aspect can, and probably should, be side-stepped. Since it seems to me that most rational people would agree from a historical standpoint, yeah, that’s pretty bad.
But really, point to any point in the length of human history and show me something that wasn’t horrible that was caused by humans. And I’m sure as hell not going to go deeper than surface level in noting just how bad humanity is from a larger scope. That’s not the point. The argument to me feels more like moralistic grandstanding than anything else.
It’s…it’s really not that deep.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament said in But Why:
The argument to me feels more like moralistic grandstanding than anything else.
Yeah that’s where I land. Like I have my personal prefs of what I want to play and in what genres. Others have theirs. “You are bad for wanting to play this type of character and/or in this genre” is just bargain basement self-aggrandizement.
I’m actually gonna go a step further here in disagreeing with the OP. I also think it is Absolutely Fine and Good to play an evil, serf-oppressing, conflict-profiting, violence-dispensing, privileged aristocrat who is actively engaging in Bad Things. The assertion that it is only morally defensible to play Good Folk Doing Good Stuff is puerile and trite. Engaging with such a role is no different from reading through Antony Beevor’s Fall of Berlin.
This hobby allows for a lot more than simply playing heroic characters. Playing an unheroic character can be a vehicle for exploration of the human experience, and can be equally valid whether or not that character goes through a redemption arc. Our world is complex and built on circumstance and context; it can be interesting to explore ideas like “why good people do bad things” or “what drives someone to rationalize acts of evil” or even simply “what is the internal experience of someone who is put in a position with few options that don’t hurt someone”.
Even more simply, narratives are built on Conflict. Villains (and I am using broad terminology to describe what is a very wide spectrum even before contextualization) serve narratives by prompting Conflict. Heroes with no Conflict just sit around and have tea parties (obligatory: playing TeaMU is a morally defensible activity even if i personally find it boring af).
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@shit-piss-love said in But Why:
@Testament said in But Why:
The argument to me feels more like moralistic grandstanding than anything else.
I’m actually gonna go a step further here in disagreeing with the OP. I also think it is Absolutely Fine and Good to play an evil, serf-oppressing, conflict-profiting, violence-dispensing, privileged aristocrat who is actively engaging in Bad Things. The assertion that it is only morally defensible to play Good Folk Doing Good Stuff is puerile and trite. Engaging with such a role is no different from reading through Antony Beevor’s Fall of Berlin.I think, in a way, it’s important to have people play villainous characters to allow people to play heroic characters. I gotta say that since I came back to MUSHing I have gotten so weary of social RP with no consequences or conflict. I feel like a lot of what I do is just sit around talking to people about their lives even in fantastical settings. There are some exceptions, but it has seemed rare to me (and my times are pretty shit right now, so that’s likely a factor). Looking back at old logs, there was still a decent amount of the social stuff, but there were also a lot of plots with combat or sneaking into things, or where power plays and factions tried to vie for authority over another group. I also have a tendency to play the “fighter” archetype, so maybe I’m just frustrated with not being able to engage in that part of the Power Fantasy (hence playing a scholar on Concordia, I don’t have to consider that aspect).
Maybe this isn’t all because of villainous PCs, but there were a good chunk of IC player conflicts that spilled into the larger playerbase that show up in some logs and that I recall. On Star Wars games, I remember a lot of IC strife and conflict created between the Imperial/Sith and Alliance/NR/Jedi players because of diametrically opposed factions. Some of this was deeply annoying – every WoD game in the late 00s-early 10s had to have the Changelings split into two freeholds – but it still generated new stories that weren’t just TeaMU*.
tl;dr: villains villain so heroes can be heroic and vice-versa.
they/them
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@shit-piss-love said in But Why:
edit: idk where the line is here can the whole site just be R&R please
I mean, 100% to everything else you said and I know this comment was probably supposed to be purely facetious but still
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@shit-piss-love said in But Why:
edit: idk where the line is here can the whole site just be R&R please
I mean, 100% to everything else you said and I know this comment was probably supposed to be purely facetious but still
Yeah mostly I was just trying to throw some salt and pepper on my last sentence in the paragraph to maybe avoid a rules infraction.
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@somasatori said in But Why:
I think, in a way, it’s important to have people play villainous characters to allow people to play heroic characters.
Hi it’s me I’m the person who plays exclusively non-heroic or outright villainous characters. For me personally I think it is that in my 30+ years of RPing I’ve GM’d 90%, and so my default mode of operation in RP is to try to be some kind of motive force that gives others players something interesting to work with. That can be outright villainous but it can also mean being an iconoclast in a world of true believers, and lower class character (with class consciousness) in a high class world, or a criminal in a world of rules followers.
Tangentially, this preference is also what has turned me off MU* over time. This could be a whole other thread but going against the grain (ie. from my perspective, providing the Conflict that makes narratives interesting) has a high chance of provoking an equal OOC reaction that gets you gatekept.
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@shit-piss-love I have basically the same history as you do, it sounds like. Mostly GM, mostly villain to antiheroic at best. The one character I did play who was truly heroic (a Summer Court Changeling) became so obsessed with his ideals that he fell from grace and became antiheroic. Speaking of ooc bleed, in that case I was able to use the ooc to extract the character from being connected to VASpider, so at least it worked out in that case. I played a lot of WoD, and personally opinion, I don’t think anyone is heroic in that setting regardless of their intention.
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@shit-piss-love said in But Why:
Tangentially, this preference is also what has turned me off MU* over time. This could be a whole other thread but going against the grain (ie. from my perspective, providing the Conflict that makes narratives interesting) has a high chance of provoking an equal OOC reaction that gets you gatekept.
I’m not sure if it’s an OOC reaction exactly. I mean, it is, but not in the way you might think. A lot of people RP to get away from RL for a while. Having that bitchy boss or unpleasant customer right there in your fun pretendy times when you’re trying to GET AWAY from just those sorts of people will naturally lead people to avoid such a character. Particularly if you play an iconoclast and not an outright villain, this sense of exasperation can be pretty demoralizing.
It’s not that they don’t like you, they just hate dealing with your character.
There’s not much to do in this case other than make your intentions clear, just like when a scene involves something more heavy like torture. Just say outright: “My character is a hateful, bitter powergobbler who only feels good when making someone else miserable. Is it okay to have a scene of X?”
Alternatively, you can have a character who is both a villain and really likable. It’s hard to do, but when it works it’s great. Londo Mollari from Babylon 5 is a good example (which has been played to great success on MU*s).
… Man, I would kill for a good Babylon 5 MU*.
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@STD My experience was more that if you are playing a character whose goals run at odds with the norm, and you’re trying to do it in a way that respects the consent of others, your situation is that you will succeed at nothing unless those others consent to lose. And that happens so infrequently as to be essentially never. You can be an antihero/villain/difficult person that other people really like to play with but that doesn’t translate into success of your goals. The prevailing group play style in MU* is “we’re all here to collaboratively beat the bad thing” and any kind of rock in the shoe, no matter how fun to RP with, is going to get iced out of actual impact.
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My experience with most “I’m the Villian” people (but certainly not all) was that they tended to be ready to accuse people oocly of being not as great/hardcore a RPer at them, not wanting good stories, ect when rolls or RP didn’t go their way. Just like a lot of people who aren’t villains, but there was a lot more just…personal attacks. Or huge rants concurrent with a tense scene, ect. Things that just made it exceptionally unpleasant to deal with. Part of this may be because on most of the places I played you could not use +rolls to force another PC into certain actions. (Social dice were PvE, not PVP). Because the players that were highly dependent on (and were allowed to purchase with no check in by staff, despite the fact it was OBVIOUS what the player wanted to do with the PC) that not being the case, they were understandably frustrated that they’d invested all this shit into things they couldn’t force on other players at their will. But they’d usually take it out on the other players in the scene.
Or, they were primarily interested in disrupting huge things, not so much doing a lot of small things or building up stories with others. The person who cannot be bothered to accept any small group or one on one invites or whatever, but will show up to every business scene and then get very very upset when they can’t blow it up. The person who never orchestrates a scene that anyone can come to, but damn if they don’t come to every event they disdain to disrupt it because they don’t like “boring” stuff like that anyway and if people weren’t so pretty princess unlike the RP badass they are then it wouldn’t be a big deal.
It’s just obnoxious. And boring. And very, very, very common.
But, I have seen quite a few people do it well. Betrayals that were amazing once they unfolded. People who built tension into everything they did, including small stuff. People who were polite about disrupting other player events, and became collaborators at others to really spice things up in a way that was fun for everyone but the people who need to win all the time (which honestly comes from all different sorts of players).
I think it’s hard engage with people you hold disdain for. That’s the problem with a lot of people that I’ve seen be highly unsuccessful with villain characters. They don’t hide their disdain for anything but their own RP very well. But it also very much depends on the game, because it is also the case that there are some games where that kind of “i want to be in conflict with other PCs as my source of enjoyment” just…won’t work for a variety of reasons.
However the people who are stellar RPers I cherish. Most of my go to folks make complex and not dudley do right PCs. I met someone on a feudal type place who betrayed pretty much all the other PCs after doing months of work to be in a position to do so. They almost got caught a few times, but did not. When they finally set their plain in motion my PC was really affected, and at a stroke I lost months of RL work that she’d been doing too, but it was an amazing experience ESPECIALLY once they succeeded and then you could look back at all the times that things could have gone differently, and also admire their ooc discipline too for not waivering and also not giving anything away OOC either. It changed the scope and course of that game! And I know there were definintely people mad about it, but that’s going to happen no matter what. Staff can make room for stuff like that to happen. I think more should.
