narcasse | zOMG: crazy RPers and character creation

bad_rpers_suck reports on the crazies.

Now I’ll freely admit that I’ve based at least one original character’s physical description on a friend and on occasion I tend to pick whichever of my flaws is most glaring at any given point in time and base a character’s actions on the logical progression of that fault to the extreme but this business of creating a character simply to abuse is beyond me. If I disliked someone that much I’d probably rather go play some 1st-person-shooter or bitch about the fact to blow off steam rather than RPG a character based on them.

Of course the really weird part in all this is that the character in question was based on a girl who wouldn’t date the RPer, which is pretty much wank fodder right there.

Let that sink in. He was RPing a character with a hugely wanktastic backstory/life based on a girl who wouldn’t date him. It doesn’t get much freakier than that really.

I suppose this is where you might argue that many RPers or authors might create characters that were they real; those authors/RPers would happily get into relationships with. But I’m not entirely convinced. Just because you might give a character certain desirable traits doesn’t mean that this would necessarily translate well into this reality. And with certain valued attributes, invariably come complimentary neuroses.

Say a character is supremely confident in public life, in total control of any and everything around him; in private he won’t allow himself to feel any affection and doubts his ability to interact normally with other people.
Or if he’s kind and generous of spirit, eternally hopeful in front of the masses; when he’s alone he has more insecurities and fears than Freud could possibly have catalogued.
Or if he’s mild, passive, a charming drifter; he’s also marked by his first heartbreak which has invariably twisted his view of the world.
And so on. Because even the most apparently perfect characters have glaring flaws. It makes the game more interesting like that, makes of life an infinite nest of possibilities and terrors and hopes and fears and dreams.

At the end of the day for all the boundaries between reality and fantasy, both sides are more interesting without perfect templates. The character creation concept isn’t so far removed from the idea of another human being or non-shoggoth as the case may be.
Creating a character to beat up is just as pointless as creating a perfect Stu avatar.
Besides, the one time I do recall creating a character just to beat up was in The Sims just after someone had stolen my video recorder, so it was probably justified.

Put briefly, would I conceivably want to be in a relationship with anyone who was similar to any of my characters? Probably not, they’re all too neurotic and I’d be far too aware of their flaws. And of course, me being me, I can’t imagine I’d be capable of doing anything other than contributing to their further damage.