Powerful Ego
We’ve already talked a good bit about intelligent items, so what do you say we take this one in another direction? A sentient sword might have a habit of imposing its will on your character, but they aren’t the only sort of creature with that power.
Let me tell you about my buddy Dewayne. Like me, he was the son of a British MP. We were best mates at school, and we always had each other’s backs through thick and thin. Now that the pair of us were being shipped off to the countryside on account of the Blitz, we would have a whole new roster of younger kids to terrorize. A little pocket money extortion, some light intimidation, and the occasional teaching of lessons to smart mouths were all within our purview. So before the cults, the terror, the string of horrible murders, and the Byakhee themselves entered the picture, we knew exactly who we were.
“Dude… What if you were a Crabbe and Goyle type while I did the Malfoy thing?”
“Hell yeah!”
And so it was. The problem is that my dim-witted cohort was played by a brilliant actor. I found myself struggling to stick with a snotty posh accent while my partner was nailing “dim-witted tough guy.” In consequence, I found myself slowly transforming from Draco Malfoy into Barry the Baptist. Not exactly what I was going for.
My adventures in Cthulhu meets Narnia meets Hot Fuzz were a lot of fun, but it was also a learning experience. An extremely strong personality has a way of distorting the rest of the campaign around it, which leads me to my question of the day. Have you ever met a fellow PC whose force of personality changed your own? Or, if this admittedly esoteric topic is outside your experience, hit me back with this: What is the strongest character personality you’ve ever encountered in a game? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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So, Thief is in love with treasure, and Fighter is in love with the blood of his slaughtered enemy. (Or his fancy new gauntlets)
I’m not really sure what, if any, effect Goldie and Mr. Stabby are having on their welders. (Maybe the fact that Thief is letting Goldie sit on her rightfully stolen treasure?)
Perhaps the two items had different purposes, but the strong Egos of Fighter and Thief have imprinted on THEM?
Haha! Take that, Careful Reader and your alleged plot holes!
Yeah, Careful Reader! Eat it!
I swear man, that guy is such a drag.
Had another player with the “I don’t care about anything except my friends,” type muscle man playing beside an “I care about how other people see me and I love fire,” type thinky character. My thinky character ended up coming up with a scheme to slowly conquer the world. Muscle man was so thrilled that now he cares about everything while my Thinky character only really cares about getting the job done (since as long as Muscles is around Thinky is safe from Gods, Archdemons, and Ancient Dragons). I have had a great time with the relationship these two characters have. I present an idea and Muscles makes it happen, filling out details to the finest point of minutia.
So you’re saying that your relationship has warped your respective starting values in unexpected ways…?
Yes indeed. Sorry, not terribly clear on my part. Usually, I don’t see strong personalities in characters until well into a game. In this one, they started strong and became something more than either of us expected.
I would say that the most impactful pc personality that I have ever seen, even if it didn’t really warp everyone else’s pc personalities, was Alex Jones, who I have described constantly in the comics of this webcomic for obvious reasons. And while he may have not warped the characters personalities, he certainly did warp the campaign with getting the first group broken up and us starting a new one of evil characters.
Yelling at people is good. Yelling at people until they turn into an evil super group is great. Doing so in the fictional rather than the real world is best.
You know, despite being based on Alex Jones with the insane and ridiculously stupid conspiracy theories and general personality, he actually never really yelled.
Oh I’m sorry. I must have misheard. I was under the impression that you were playing this guy.
.
It was more like he simply had complete confidence that all his utter stupidity was completely accurate. There was no need for him to yell excessively, except in fear when he thought something was far scarier then it actually was, like when he thought, and then convinced the rest of the party besides my guy who actually rolled well on that knowledge check, that the fire mephits we were fighting were actually elder fire elementals, causing him and them to run away.
I like to roleplay, and tend to create characters with very strong beliefs in whatever their background made them (the monk raised by a paladin, the Drizzt-expy, and now an anti-deist druid, etc). Combined with my natural exuberance and every (most) player’s desire to have plenty of time in the limelight, I feel like I have to make a concerted effort NOT to drag the entire party along behind me.
I think I’m pulling it off reasonably well this time because my character is a bit of a loner, so it’s not out of character for him to stand around just glaring at people. But looking back on my history, I realized I’ve played a succession of low-charisma characters (outside of one-shots I mean), possibly so that I have an excuse NOT to talk during social challenges. Recently I’ve started playing 5th edition though and I’m thinking about trying out a Bard at some point, but I’m a little worried that every scene will turn into “The Spoony Happy Hour”, starring me, myself, and I. So I think I need to look for a way to play some lighter character concepts- a more “go with the flow” type.
Ima throw out a variation on the advice I give my power gamer pals: Why don’t you play a “social buffer?” Have you considered playing your bard as a hype man for another PC? Being a toady could be great fun.
I honestly had not considered that in any variation- I’ve never really attempted any sort of shared backstory before. Next time character-creation rolls around, I’ll have to query the group and see if anyone wants to play the type of character who could benefit from a herald or the like.
“We walk in the garden of his turbulence!”
Probably just the Canadian player in our group. No matter, what he is playing, we always find ourselves falling into his accent.
Interesting point… I wonder if this is a particular problem for accents? I think it’s a common experience to self consciously imitate a foreign person in conversation with them. Maybe my example is just an extension of the same phenomenon.
It even happens when he is doingblike a French accent or whatever.
I’m pretty sure it’s Fighter who’s having an effect on Mr. Stabby.
“Blood! Blood-blood blooooooood.”
—Mr. Stabby
Well, since many, if not all the times, you need to play with other people, in a minor or mayor way all the time each and every player is being changing things because for the other players. For example a DM who says to you “For the last time: NO! you can’t play a vampire necromancer in this game, is a romance game set in the 17 century Vienna! AND before you ask no, neither a whispering way necromancer!” Not something that have happened to me, but for some other people that kind of personality can change you.
I just wonder which kind of personality you are asking? When i started to read today comic and question i was thinking of, for example, the Exalted fair folk. The personality of one of that things can change you, very much in fact. Then i was thinking, this is not about that kind of personalities, it’s about that kind of, physical and real, person that has an overwhelming influence on you. Maybe the kind mothers use to say their children to stay away because that kind of boys are bad boys who smoke and live a life of sex and rock and roll, and their children are in danger of learning how to be cool by being around them. Can also be about the kind of personality that changes you for the better, that lets you left behind your rage and hate and being a better, and boring, person. This is not an arcane topic, but an arcane question.
Sorry for the long rant, my through train has not breaks! At least for now, the new ones must come from Japan in a few months.
Well hey, good luck in Japan. Thanks for doing your part to fill out the comic’s IP address “Where’s Waldo?”
Any dang way, all I really meant with today’s question was this: My buddy had such a strong in-game personality that, between the first session and the third, my starting concept had changed to accommodate it. Have you ever experienced something similar? Does that make sense?
Sorry, sometime i think too much about some things. Once, when i realized that a bunch of cats who ambush a 1-level party can produce a TPK i started to talk about life and death in such a way that the rest of the group was thinking that i was roleplaying an abyssal exalted.
Also glad to contribute to this comic whit my walls of text :p
My Fiend warlock found a drow staff. It was powerful, but caused anyone who wasn’t a drow to become brainwashed. Needless to say, much roleplay a fireballs were had that day, with a side of spider demon fetus summoning!
Was anyone’s personality permanently changed?
Nah, my warlock was still just as insane.
Tangentially related: My Paladin recently became host to a spirit that gave him obscene strength, (23) but also made him crazy impulsive and gave him something of a daredevil streak. I’ve been given the criteria by the GM (“While hosting him you gain the flaw “I’m fearless and not afraid to take great risks”) and given free reign to interpret this however I please. I at one point decided to body-slam someone off a 60 foot balcony. (He was a team member who unbenkownst to me was driven temporarily insane and would attack whoever was nearest.)
Confusion is a hell of a drug.
I haven’t had much experience with that kind of thing. But thinking back on my own character stories, leads me to believe this is because in the instances where it did come up….. I was the one with that character.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize half of my favorite characters I’ve played strongly impacted the game and how other characters were behaving. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say they totally warped other characters out of their original shape, but a little bending here and there probably occurred.
Though in one of my most memorable games, I’m pretty sure everyone wound up warping everyone else out of their original shapes and into a unit with a singular purpose. Or perhaps you could say the mechanics of the game were the root cause of the character warping.
Afterall, when the best ammunition hands down is EX-Explosive ammo and you’ve found yourself in a position to get away with using it whenever you want, how would you avoid the eventual result of “We can solve any problem. Except not causing fires and explosions while we solve problems.” ? =P
Keep an eye out for a related comic in the next couple of weeks. I expect the full story of this PC then. 😀
While thinking of what to comment on for the artwork for this comic, I had three thoughts. Each more alarming than the one before.
The first was, “So what is that monster that Fighter/Mr Stabby killed anyway? A Yeti? Some kind of goat-headed demon? I don’t see any signs of a body. So that means Fighter either dragged the giant head in there to the loot pile from down the hall (ALARMING!) or…..? It’s some kind of mutant/creature sub-type pile Beholder!? There are no good answers here!!! …. Classic Fighter!”
The second was, “Hmmm that obelisk is sitting at an odd angle there. Is it sitting in the loot pile? Sure looks like. And if I look closely I can see its got some cracks in it. Did Goldie cause Thief to Hulk out just to add a probably dangerous item to the loot pile? What are you even going to do with that Thief? It won’t fit in a bag of holding and if you try, given the writing on it, it’s probably going to explode or tear an opening into another plane.”
The third was, “Mr. Stabby and Goldie both appear to be longsword or such. Goldie wants to be ‘together’ with Mr. Stabby. Uh…… what happens if you try to dual wield intelligent magical items? What if their goals are opposed! ….. What if they’re aligned!!!!!!?”
So basically what I’m saying is today’s comic was a good one. =D
I’m pretty sure Fighter killed a Wild Thing:
http://news.usm.edu/sites/default/files/Wild%20Things%20Parade.jpg
That’s still a 6 on the alarming scale. =P
Dewayne? As a name for the son of a British MP?
Pronounced du’-weɪn, if it makes you feel any better. He liked rocks.
While it wasn’t exactly force of personality I did once have my characters social role completely changed by a different characters.
It was a Vampire the Masquerade game, and I was playing what was intended to be a real horrible sociopath of a vampire mobster, barely holding on to scraps of his humanity through his discipline (the concept, not the powers).
Instead he ended up as one of the moral pillars of the coterie, simply because the high humanity Tremere of said other player offered him everything he actually wanted in exchange for an alliance.
You see, while my character didn’t care even slightly about the kine, he was smart enough to realize that his new friend did and that the sweet gravy train he was now on would stop if the latter got too upset, so I ended up backing him whenever he pushed for non-horrible solutions to our problems and facilitating said solutions through the bit of animalism I took to make feeding easier, rather than the fortitude and trusty thompson I thought would be my primary contribution.
That’s an intriguing point of comparison. You decided to allow this change of focus in-character, while my difficulty was maintaining character-voice out of character. Still, I think there are some similarities. In your case, it sounds as if this Tremere was played so skillfully that you (the player) wanted to change to bring your character into alignment with the other. It must have been a fun game. 🙂
So I’ve been having a related problem in my 5E game that I DM. Two of my players are playing charisma-based con men, and (un) fortunately for me, said players are extremely persuasive and good looking in real life (my fiance and her best friend to be precise). I have to admit, it’s a bit of a struggle to prevent them from running roughshod over my NPCs, because the players are rolling nat 20 on their Persuade (metagame) checks even when their characters are not.
Is this something you’ve run into before? Where your players are a little too good at manipulating the DM?
Sure! I talk a bit about this over here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/gather-information
The post comes off as more one-sided than I really am though. My opinion is basically that, in the same way you might give a player inspiration for coming up with a cool maneuver in combat, they deserve some kind of mechanical bonus for coming up with clever ideas is social situations. Expanding the inspiration rules to include this seems like a fair play. Same deal with raising or lowering check DCs. In that sense, I wouldn’t sweat it. Rewarding players for coming up with clever/entertaining ideas is OK in my book.
That said, if you feel like your players are manipulating you outside of the game, then I would fall back on the mechanics. Clarify the DCs. Make sure they know that “impossible lies” won’t work. No convincing the king he’s a chicken just because you rolled high!
Hit me back if I’m misunderstanding the situation. I’d be happy to talk this one through a bit. 🙂
It’s definitely a case of players manipulating me outside the game. Not that I mind too much haha. I realize I misstated the severity of the problem earlier, because honestly it’s more amusing than a problem. Both of my players have pretty stellar charisma scores IRL and know it, and have absolutely no compunctions against turning on the charm. Recent example:
DM: “The ogre groggily lurches to the cave mouth, sees you, and raises his club to strike!”
PC: “I dodge and yell ‘Hey Mr. Ogre! I just want to be your friend!'”
DM: “Roll persuasion”
PC: “7”
DM: “The ogre is unimpressed with your antics and-”
PC: “But Mr. Ogre, we just want to be friends!” Player leans in and looks deep into DM’s eyes, smiling flirtatiously
DM: “Errrr… right. The ogre… uh… stops trying to squish you…?”
It’s not a problem, especially since I’ve come to expect it from those two. But I will admit they’ve probably gotten away with more than I should have let them. I was just curious if you’ve run into issues where your players are more persuasive than their characters are.
I totally agree with your point though, in reacting to player actions regarding both tactical and social engagements. I’m always moving DCs up and down based on their actions, and granting advantage where the situation warrants it.
Heh. If anything I’m harder on Laurel’s characters than I ought to be, just to try and keep things even-handed for the rest of the table. Mostly things like “If my character dies you’re sleeping on the couch” are played for laughs. Of course, if I actually did manage to kill off her favorite PC, who knows what horrible fate might befall me?
Any dang way, in your particular case, I would say to stick to character for the riposte. Imagine the ogre shouting something like, “Torg already in committed relationship!” before swinging away.