Self-Sacrifice and Roleplay

"It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

Aw, what the heck, I'll laugh anyway."


I was totally working on another post right after Ivory Tower Design, something unrelated that's been bumping around in my head a lot. Well, my buddy Chris suggested a topic that dovetails really nicely with last week's post. I looked down at the one I was working on, all 3/4ths finished, and I was completely ready to just blow him off. This one's almost done! I'd already talked about his suggestion a little, even. It could wait! But then, it came up three or four more times when talking about the post. Chris is right, this really does bear discussing right now.

There's a certain attitude among a certain type of roleplayer. They firmly believe that being willing to sacrifice their character's effectiveness for "roleplay" or theming makes them a better roleplayer than someone who built a mechanically effective character. This can infect the way the people around them think, because if they really believe this, they'll probably go out of their way to point it out when they've done it. They might even try to advise others to do the same or berate people who haven't.

Before I go any further...We're gonna talk about the Paizo forums a bit today. If you're coming from there? Sorry, but I mean everything I'm about to say. Try to take it as constructive criticism and look inside yourself to see if you need to improve how you play Pathfinder. Don't look to others to tell you how to feel or to validate your opinion. Think for yourself.

Ahem. Paizo's official forums are, in general, a preposterous little echo chamber full of bad ideas. Forums in general can easily fall prey to this, because people tend to collect where they all agree and push others out. Nobody on the internet really ever seems to want intelligent discourse. So, Paizo's forums and other similar places are why this otherwise preposterous idea still has legs.

I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth, but I'm going to try and explain why people think this way before going over why it's wrong. Basically, a lot of RPers see themselves as superior because they're willing to make a sacrifice and the "power gamers" aren't. Basically, they see a willingness to play a substandard character such as an orc wizard or dwarf sorcerer as meaning they care more about roleplay than someone who played a powerful combo, like an orc barbarian or dwarf cleric.


I want to be super clear here.


This wildly prevalent attitude is one of the worst ideas in modern gaming.


This is an awful way to think and will only serve to cause strife in your group.


Period.


Ahem. Now that I'm done being dramatic, let's talk about it. We'll start with the whys first. After all, I need to back up my statement with facts, so here we go. I'm sure this concept has a technical term, but I'm calling it false sacrifice. Yes, false. A lot of the people I've met insist that the mechanics are less important than the roleplaying and character building of the game, then try to insist they're a better RPer for making this sacrifice. This is a minor contradiction. Essentially, they've sacrificed something they don't care about and are insisting that's significant.

People do this a lot in real life too. They want someone to sweat about something so they'll trump up how big a deal it is. It's because they want something, even if it's attention. Even if it's to demean someone else. That's precisely what's happening here. Whether these people are jealous of the skill someone has with a system or of their effort, whether they have a false notion of how the game "should be played" or whether they just want attention, it's always the same. Throw away something that doesn't matter to you, and then crow about how you threw it away.

No, something that might legitimately set people apart as roleplayers would be to accept a challenge. Playing out of type, or playing someone with a mental or physical disability. Playing someone who's mute has no bearing on your effectiveness (most of the time, sorry casters) but it sure as hell is challenging to play. Being willing to accept a challenge sure would set people apart, but how often do you think I've seen these self-sacrificing RPers do that?

If you guessed never, you win the golden banana award. Just don't eat it, that gold metallic paint is toxic.

But I'm not done debunking this. I've proved that it's still stupid even if you take it to be true that a mechanical sacrifice would mean something, but the problem is...this is a very faulty premise. Let me ask you something to get you thinking about it: How much does your stats have to do with your character's background, personality, or in-game facts?

It's certainly not NOTHING. I mean, you can play someone who's a scientist, but without ranks in a science skill, you'd have to justify how he's just plain-ass not good at the job or something. You can't play a famous singer without some Perform...even people legendarily bad at performing have some skill they worked at or even learned along the way. In general you need to justify what your character HAS done with what he's ABLE to do. However, other than that? The two are fairly removed. There's a lot you can justify regardless of your stats, and even more you can justify after even four ranks of something, or one feat.

So imagine writing down your character: their personality, their physical description, their background, everything. Imagine taking that to someone who's never heard of pen and paper gaming and asking them to judge your character. To compare them to another, or several characters. Obviously they'd judge them based on what their given, they'd tell you maybe the idea of an orc bard is neat. Maybe they think it's dumb.

Okay. Now imagine trying to explain your point of view to them. Imagine telling them "I built my character with the personality in mind first and his mechanical effectiveness second." Imagine telling them "No, my character sucks and that means he's better."

Imagine the response you'd get. If you were doing this with my mom, you'd get something between a blank stare, a "so what" and a vague insult for being an idiot. Most people wouldn't care.

Was that a fair scenario? Nope! But why do you think a non-player would need to know how your mechanics work to judge your character? The rest is easily understood and judged. That's because mechanics and character are judged separately. They always will be, and insisting otherwise is a deliberate attempt to unnaturally support your point of view.

No, we know what this is about, don't we? They have a grudge against "power gamers" and are casting about for a way to put themselves above these people. In other words, it's arrogant, rude, and pointless. It's an obvious coping mechanism. What's worse, they'll declare anyone who cares about the game's mechanics is a power gamer. Anyone who put care into their character is a munchkin. And THOSE are BAD.

I already talked about Socialist Gaming. This intersects. Everyone should build the best character they possibly can, and deliberately building a bad one makes things worse on the GM. That makes things worse on everyone else, and the proud peacock preening about your shitty character isn't helping either.

Maybe I should try to clear up a misconception about "power gaming" even though I already did. It's not a fucking crime to enjoy the mechanics and systems of pen and paper gaming. It's half of the fucking game. Insisting we need to turn away and never mention its name reminds me of, at best, Voldemort.

And for the record, the fact that the adults in the series didn't like it when you said his name was an indication they didn't want to solve the problem, they wanted it to just go away and be forgotten. So, when I make that comparison, don't you ever go telling me his name had some sort of power.

Ahem. When people carefully craft their character mechanically, it's because they enjoy doing it. It's like tuning a car to get as much horsepower as you can out of it, and not necessarily about being the big man on the block. No, if someone has THAT sort of attitude, I promise you it'll come out over anything, not just a game's mechanics. Most of us simply enjoy doing it, and telling us that it's "backwards" or "not as important" is just as wrong as the reverse argument, telling someone that RP is for people who suck at the game. And yes, I HAVE heard that one.

This is maybe something you didn't know. We don't go into a system trying to make the most powerful character possible. What we do is that we take a concept and try to make it work as well as possible. We're not worried about being mega-strong, we want to take a cool concept and make it as good as possible. If your game has a "power gamer" and he's always coming up with weird concepts or wacky ways to build his character, maybe you don't really have a power gamer. Watch for people who are always building the same shit, or using build guides they found on the internet. If his concepts are always arcanist, magus, magus, arcanist, magus you might have a problem.

Being interested in the mechanics of PNP gaming and building interesting characters doesn't say anything bad about someone...and even if it did, Pen and Paper games are all about getting together with friends and collaborating. Everyone enjoying each other's company and building a story together. Telling someone they're playing wrong over something as trivial as being concerned with their character's effectiveness is against the spirit of the hobby.

So don't tell people how to enjoy things. In fact, don't EVER do that, not just in the context of gaming. If you really want to test your limits as a roleplayer, there are so many better things you can do instead of building a shitty character on purpose. Play against type by crafting a personality you would normally never play. Make someone with a mental disorder, whether or not you're getting bonus points for doing it. Pick a race or class you hate, play a physical deformity, or play a quirk you know is going to make your character look foolish. There's millions of ways you can test your limits and "prove" you're a good RPer that don't involve shitting on someone else or making the GM's job harder.