I was reading Carol Hazenfield book on improv, Acting on Impulse, when I ran across this gem:

And don't forget that in the best scenes, characters are changed. Very often, we improvisers will refuse to change, saying "By my character wouldn't do that!" We share this misconception with our colleagues in scripted theater. Well, guess what? Your character is capable of doing anything - which is the premise of theater. And the most interesting theater is predicated on the promise that the audience will see people behaving out of character. That's how you get a play like Agnes of God, where a young, devoted nun kills her own baby. Nobody would pay money to see a two-hour exploration of a day in the life of a real nun: prayers, work, meals, prayers, bedtime.

Aside from my amusement that RPGs aren't the only form that has to deal with the "my guy" problem, I found the contention that audiences like to see people act out of character interesting. Could this be true in RPGs as well? I've had a few experiences that seem to confirm this for me at least. Anyone else?

--Paul

It depends entirely on what else is going on.

The story in which the otherwise devoted nun kills a baby for no reason at all other than the shock value? Sucks.

The story in which the otherwise devoted nun kills a baby, but surrouding material gives us some insight into why? That could be a good story.

It is in a sense wrong to say "my guy wouldn't do that", but it isn't wrong to say "we haven't demonstrated how my guy would come to do that".

Posted By: MeserachIt is in a sense wrong to say "my guy wouldn't do that", but it isn't wrong to say "we haven't demonstrated how my guy would come to do that".

True, but in my experience, justification after the fact can be even more interesting.

--Paul

This happened day before yesterday in our Joy Division game.

The player created a hands-off surveillance expert who ended up getting his hands (karmically speaking) VERY very dirty.

It was sweet.

Posted By: WiredNaviPeople don't want to see characters act out of character, especially in a roleplaying game.

People do want to see characters change irrevocably.

Toe-may-toe / Toe-mah-toe?

Keep in mind that all of what I'm saying is based on my experience, and could be a matter of personal perspective.

Like Meserach said above ('the surrounding material', etc.) I think it's a manner of context. Irrevocable change is cool. It makes stories. The very possibility of it provides interest. Decisions that you can't back away from once you've made are awesome fodder for stories - in fact, I'd say that's what stories are - a trail of irrevocable changes to a character and the context in which they are made. Anything which alters a character in the context of what's happening around them is neat.

On the other hand, a character blatantly acting out of character, with no context for it, no justification or, leaves you with... what? Especially in roleplaying games, where we're explicitly creating something which has no representation, I think it's important for players to be mostly on the same page. If your character is provoked by a decision and does something weird, that's one thing. Having a character do something weird unprovoked - by which I mean without context - is extremely disruptive. It can be great - if I believe there's a context and some kind of meaning behind it, and if I wasn't relying on that context not existing for my own enjoyment of the game/story.

Even in media, though, this is important. When we watch a TV show, we're participating with it in that same process. We're letting it tell us a story and that story is building up in our minds, piling up momentum and detail from all the episodes before, until everything that the characters do is meaningful in the context of the past and has ramifications for the future.

Now, the rules may be different for, say, a dungeon crawl, where people taking the most tactically sound option , but I'd postulate that part of the 'character' you're actually playing in such games is your own tactical wherewithal. Again, players around you will build up an expectation of your character based on how competent you seem to be at the miniatures wargaming part of it, and how much you tend to modify your perception of the best tactical option based on the personality of your character.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

(Possibly related: I have, in the past, been pretty irritated while playing board games (say, Settlers or Puerto Rico) when someone would decide that they were going to play for different stakes. "I'm going to get the most stone!" they'd say, or decide that some other player's strategy was degenerate and needed to be actively screwed up, at the expense of doing the best they could at the game. Of course, given the nature of a lot of these games, the ramifications of their decisions would alter the game for other players, disrupting their plans, etc. I found these times when players would essentially decide to change their own goals in the game to be frustrating and disruptive, because all of a sudden my assumptions about the game and my ability to actually think ahead were seriously affected. I couldn't anticipate what they might do, and so it felt as though I might as well not be playing the game with them. A lot of the actual gameplay decisions they made weren't any different than things I've seen done by bad or inexperienced players - but I didn't get irritated at the inexperienced ones, because I hadn't built up any expectations about them, and I felt that they were still trying to be in the same game.)

I encountered this a LOT in online games with PC leaders who would want to make draconian decisions that would preserve their political position and would then want to turn around and be everybody's best friend again after they were petty despots a moment ago. It's sort of a failure to live up to what you're playing, and it makes it difficult for everybody around you, because they don't know which character they're supposed to be interacting with.

Are you suggesting that this behaviour is out of character for a leader?
Maybe these characters were playing someone intentionally two-faced.

Joe,

I've had the same experience as Joshua in online games. I have not encountered this behavior nearly as often in face to face play. My armchair psychologist theory on this is that there are not as many social reprecussions in online games. You are buffered by distance, figuratively and literally.

Posted By: Mark WAnd on the flipside, I've definitely had the experience of getting flak about being "inconsistent" or "out of character" for playing a character who wasconflictedorimmature. In my experience, some people have this notion of character that really doesn't extend much beyond the "pick two keywords and play them out no matter what" style.

Yeah. That's most often the issue which I encounter in games when characters behave in conflicted and/or contradictory ways. There are many games which reward you for sticking to a handful of keywords/stats/disads/whatever.

Surprise is interesting—if the character has been credible and transmits a rhythm.

I've recently (in one shot) and for a while developed the culture expectations of ancient Fae characters where I want unhuman decision process interacting with PC mortal culture politics.

Several interesting things about 'character':

1. a race that is mysterious and unpredictable can still give a rhythm of credible expectation
   
2. such beings can deceive easily
   
3. such beings cannot surprise easily (because they tend to keep you off balance a lot)
   
4. such beings generate a constant suspicion response from PCs
   
5. such beings are still culturally bound to certain things (their pledges, their names, their blood) and can then surprise or seem out of character on these points
   
6. many times, out of character is actually lack of information about the character
   

I find culture clash to be a great character challenge in RPing.

This thread is a good example of why I like reading StoryGames. I've already developed a new perspective on "acting out of character" thanks both to the original post and the comments of other users.

I do agree that consistent change makes more sense, but when I look at my own personal actions and those of people around me we all act out of character on occasion. Of course, we usually have some reason for doing so. Perhaps it's worth asking my players in the future, when their characterization seems to have changed, what the character thinks of recent events.

Posted By: WiredNavi

On the other hand, a character blatantly acting out of character, with no context for it, no justification or, leaves you with... what? Especially in roleplaying games, where we're explicitly creating something which has no representation, I think it's important for players to be mostly on the same page. If your character is provoked by a decision and does something weird, that's one thing. Having a character do something weird unprovoked - by which I mean without context - is extremely disruptive. It can be great - if I believe there's a context and some kind of meaning behind it, and if I wasn't relying on that context not existing for my own enjoyment of the game/story.

This sounds logical, but I don't know if I buy it in practice. Sigourney Weaver said that one thing she learned from playing Ripley; is that there is no need to try to make a character consistent; from scene to scene. Make her tough as nails here, and then scared of her own shadow there, and thoughtful next, and then careless, gregarious, anti-social...

Rather than find it implausible or confusing; the audience finds the character to have the depth of a real person. And they fill in their own explanations for the variation they see. And they probably pick whatever aspect resonates with them personally-- and decide THAT is the 'real' essence of the character.

Even in media, though, this is important. When we watch a TV show, we're participating with it in that same process. We're letting it tell us a story and that story is building up in our minds, piling up momentum and detail from all the episodes before, until everything that the characters do is meaningful in the context of the past and has ramifications for the future.

The long-running serial form-- with flawless continuity-- is unusual, in the history of storytelling. And yet it is considered to be the norm, when gamers talk about campaigns, and TV series and movie sequels and novel trilogies.



This is only a rough notion, but I wonder if it is the players' limited expectations which prevent them from enjoying characters which are more unpredictable than the players expected?

Posted By: xenopulseI just, for the life of me, cannot understand how people can think that characters have no personality, no identity, nothing that makes them who they are, and that they can just do anything without any justification at all. I mean, that's the mark of plot-driven stories whose characters are just tools for whatever event the author wants to have happen next. That's not how real people are, and it's not what we expect from Homo Fictus.

The truth is, though, that if you're invested in the character, in the story, you'll often find that you can infer some reason for inexplicable, out of character behavior. We never see the inner lives of our fellow human beings. We guess about them based on their actions. If a person does something "out of character", we often say that we can't understand it, can't accept it... but none the less, they've gone and done it. "He seemed so nice and normal."

The story where Aragorn gives up, or turns to evil isn't The Lord of the Rings. But I can imagine that story. It doesn't seem all that much of a stretch, actually. Now, the orc thing? I'd really need to see that. Maybe it's self-loathing, a rebellion against his destiny, a really cute orc, a dark enchantment? Tell me the story.

I really like the quote in the O.P. because it gives insight into other (non-gaming) approaches to characterization.

Aside from the aesthetic, artistic, and story aspects, this issue also touches the challenges of social interaction and metagaming. I'm thinking of all the times I've been at a gaming table and one of the players does something that makes the game less fun for the rest of the group because "that's what my character would do." I've always thought that 90%+ of these cases were pure bullshit, because "my character" can react in several different ways when faced with a given situation.

Hell, I react differently to similar situations under different circumstances or when I'm in a different mood; sometimes I'll laugh and sometimes I'll bite someone's head off for similar offenses. So I think "my character" has some leeway to react in a few different ways to in-game situation and still be "in character"; as the player, I can pick an in-character response that is also satisfying for the group and the story. To me, that falls under the requirement to not be a jerk.

Posted By: xenopulseThat's not how real people are, and it's not what we expect from Homo Fictus.

Christian, there is a very large assumption in this statement. ;) I can totally understand that this is how you prefer your fictional characters, but perhaps consider that your preferences here are not universal? For me, it depends on the story, and the context of the story, on whether or not characters need to be "like real people" in order for me to be engaged. I expect characters to be like real people in a novel about human relationships; I do not expect characters to be like real people in James Bond movies (Sleep with the sexy villainess? Okay!).

Posted By: xenopulseI'm saying: if a character does things without justification, that sucks for my enjoyment of the fiction.

And I'm saying, if your character does something unexpected, your job as a player is to provide that justification, not to say that your character wouldn't do that because it's out-of-character.

--Paul

Paul: Yes! Emphatically yes, if by "player" you mean the player who made that choice to have the character act that way. Unless you agree beforehand to put the burden of justification on someone other than the one who brings up the act.

[[snark]]

And Curly, I guess I'll never have to write character backgrounds again, or really, try to immerse myself in a character, or give them any kind of personality traits. I'll just pick a name and have people do random things, and my readers will magically get attached to these erratic characters. I mean, just look at Nanowrimo and all the stories that come out of that, where people just write whatever comes to their mind--they are on the same level of character involvement as the best Shakespeare plays and literary bestsellers, right? There really must be no rhyme or reason to why some literary characters are popular and everlasting and others fall flat, and the difference between plot-driven and character-driven really is non-existent, even though people talk about it all the time.

Same for setting, I assume. If I just have aliens show up in the middle of a historical romance, people are going to make their own justifications and no one's going to feel cheated. I really never need to justify anything in my writing, and all writing is of equal quality, whether the characters, plot and setting make sense or not.

[[/snark]] :)

I think your points about interpretation are well taken, but they're not the same as some consistency in characters and the author having well-founded reasons for how their characters act. I'm not talking about heavy-handed techniques that tell people what the story means; I'm talking about characters that have actual personalities.

There's a great book on writing called A Story Is A Promise that talks in depth about how we create expectations in readers through our writing, such as establishing the genre AND the characters, and any deviation needs to be within the promised parameters and be well justified.

Well, I think most of the speaking-past-each-other here is a confusion between "justifiable" and "justified." Curly is pointing out that seeing actual justification is unnecessary, and in fact audiences prefer to fill in the blanks themselves. But this in fact implies that the character actions are justifiable, as Christian said. Justifiable: able to be justified. It's important that the possibility exists, not that the action explicitly takes place in advance, or as part of the story text. And not that the justification is done by one or another person.

Now, there was also something about "when that justification is missing or bad", which is maybe what Curly was responding to. I think it makes more sense to say "when that justification seems impossible" or whatever, but it's mostly just wording at that point. It's not that the story lacks an actual justification, it's that it not only lacks a justification (which is usually a good thing), but in fact there appears to be no justification available -- usually meaning that the action is at odds with what previous actions suggest, etc. etc.

Personally I think roleplaying gamers are a little too wrapped up in concrete, actual justification -- thus the "it's what my character would do" phrase in the first place. It's kind of like reading a story where you have the author sitting there right in front of you, and whenever you want you can just break off reading and go "explain this! that makes no sense!" It feels like there's a lack of trust in our fellow-gamers going on, and I experience it myself for sure.

CMC, I don't think that deliberate surrealism, a la Carroll or Lynch, is the same thing as what we're talking about. Surrealism is all about irrational or subversive causality. If I sign up to play a surrealistic game, that's fine, but in general I'm not going to. Saying that surrealism can be used to make worthwhile literature isn't the same thing as saying that it's appropriate in a roleplaying game.

There's a great book on writing called A Story Is A Promise that talks in depth about how we create expectations in readers through our writing, such as establishing the genre AND the characters, and any deviation needs to be within the promised parameters and be well justified.

There's a reason the writers of these books are known as "script gurus" as opposed to, I don't know, script writers. They don't really understand what makes for a good story.

They're succesful in selling their books because they present a way of writing the executives calling the shots understand. The people deciding which scripts get produced and which aren't are not creative people, they're accountants. And they don't understand creativity, they understand things like "on page 3 the theme of the story should be expressed in the dialogue". The executive turns to page 3, sees the theme expressed, and thinks it's a good script.

Most of the writers winning the oscar for best screenplay in the past 15 years didn't follow these "rules", actually.

Xeno, I can agree with that. Everyone is going to have their "line in the sand" about where those actions feel right or not. Yours is closer than someone else, that's fine. Maybe it would help if we all agreed on some common understandings, metrics, words... whatever... for this thing were grappling with? A vocabulary for discussion?

This discussion resembles a game table, where the players disagree about whose interpretation should prevail.

We've tried to buttress our preferences with citations of authoritative sources, snark, reason, yielding on certain points while standing ground on others, asserting the sanctity of personal preference...

Is there some criteria we can all agree is good enough to make a decision and proceed?
Or is our social contract a muddle?

Yes, Thomas. Thanks.