The Playing that Evens Things Out

[benlehman]

(quotations may be exaggerated for dramatic purposes.)

Vincent said to me: "The point of Dogs is that you go in thinking you are heroes, and you realize that you're playing the bad guys."

I said to Vincent: "The point of Dogs, to me, is that you go in thinking you are bad guys, real zealots, the SS or the inquisition, and you realize that you are actually good people, trying your best."

Every satisfying character arc I have ever had has played out this way -- at the start, the person is a caricature, and they become human in terrifying and startling ways. I see this in character arcs, written across my past -- Raidant, Takam, Eric, Mike, Kent, Mark, Cyrus. They began as form and became as substance.

The joy of this play, the process of this play, the inescapable purpose of this play is not the creation and celebration of these mythic types, but the destruction of them.

I do not believe it is possible to play an RPG character without eventually becoming aware of them as a human being and, by coincidence, destroying their "archetypal" role as a hero or a villain. (Archetypal is in quotes because I want people to know that I don't mean archetype in any sort of Jungian or Campellian sense {spoon. me. gag. with.} but rather in the literary sense.) This development of this compassion (in equal parts sympathy and disgust) is central to RPGs as a tool for moral development.

Which is what they're for.

Comments

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

I just realized your differing opinion could be about my last line, and not the process itself...

Oops.

So -- is it that you don't think that this sympathy process occurs or that you don't think it is the purpose of RPGs?

yrs--
--Ben

[funwithrage.livejournal.com]

I think it occurs in some people. Not so much in me. I think I have a pretty good handle on why, to choose a neutral example, Ben Sherman acts the way he does, and it doesn't make me loathe him any less or feel any more sympathy toward him: at the end, I think, we all have choices about the way we act. Which could, yes, be why I don't play characters I don't like.


And I don't think it's so much the point of RPGs, though we all get different things out of them. Seeing things from different viewpoints is definitely a bonus, but I don't think those viewpoints have to be--or, in my case, should be--those you'd find contemptable. Hrm. Do you want this to become a discussion about human nature and sympathy or the points of RPGS? 'Cause I could do either, albeit post-Procon.

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

Last thing I want to get into is an argument about human morality.

My point is mostly that the process of playing a character gives you compassion for that character -- which invokes both sympathy (for characters you didn't want to like) and disgust (for characters you did.)

Whether this is a good or a bad thing -- let's put that aside.

[wirednavi.livejournal.com]

It is also possible to say that playing a character the forces you to frame them in more palatable terms than the ones you would usually address them with, because otherwise you couldn't enjoy playing them. This isn't really the same as compassion.