Undignified
Thought we abandoned that storyline, didn’t you? Well think again! Snowflake has not forgotten her vendetta against Elf Princess, and neither have we! I have no doubt that Lumberjack Explosion is just off panel in the palace’s taxi queue, mouth hanging agape in shock and horror. Dude shouldn’t be too surprised though. Nothing is sacred in gaming.
We touched on this in “Dignified” and more recently in “Edgy.” The takeaway in those comics is that maintaining a consistent tone is hard, and that it takes a dedicated table to make serious-face moments work. However, as much as I identify with Wizard in terms of scenery chewing, I also write a goofy joke-a-day style RPG webcomic. Some of my favorite moments around the gaming table are all about pop culture references, inappropriate one-liners, and fourth wall-breaking banter. And that means building characters than can withstand a little buffoonery.
The problem is the basic power fantasy. On some level we all want to be Batman, with his tragic backstory and no-nonsense demeanor. But every once in a while (about 5% of the time actually) the dice disagree. That means your badass power fantasy protagonist will biff his attack, fail to impress the princess, or fall flat on his ass when it’s time to leap heroically away from the explosion. Happily, there is another way.
As a point of comparison, I present to you my personal action hero. Just look at that pretty floral bonnet! That snappy one-liner! That patently ridiculous situation! Captain Mal can withstand getting sassed, disrespected, and made to look the fool. And that’s because the character is strong enough to survive the comedy. He may seem silly in the moment, but when the tone shifts back to drama, he’s able to transform into a serious-face action hero.
As Elf Princess is discovering today, it’s impossible to survive a campaign with your dignity fully intact. If there’s a randomizer involved, then you’re going to look like a dork at least some of the time. And for my money, it’s better to plan for that eventuality than to roll up yet another standoffish, cold-blooded lone wolf. That dude might feel like a badass, but he’s actually pretty weak against pie-in-the-face attacks.
So for today’s discussion question, what do you say we dive into the waters of pop culture? Let’s see if we can’t find a few other characters that can pull off the same trick as Captain Mal. Here are you instructions: Nominate one of your favorite protagonists, then tell me how they would react to an embarrassing situation. All clear? Then see you down in the comments!
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ah, dignity!
It’s that thing our DM targets when a fight goes too ROFLStompy for the players.
When heads start flying, roll for trajectory and be thankful for the gnomes ability to cast Prestidigitation once per day.
And Happy New Year btw.
I’m a big fan of Sand Dan Glokta from the First Law. Frequently humiliated by his torture-induced disfigurement – unable to eat solid food, liable to piss himself in the night and more frightened of gaving to walk upstairs than he is of death, he nevertheless manages to be frightening , impart because of extensive training in being frightening combined with a disregard for the suffering of others, and in part because he really isn’t all that scared of anything that might stop the pain. The ridiculous happens to him from the start of the story, he is keenly aware of it, and it gives him a human edge that makes him far more than just another ‘fearsome Inquisitor’ character. He doesn’t have to be cool in the face of humiliation, because the reader never forgets who he is and what he’s done. I think this quote sums it up:
“”You are aware, I suppose, that I lived through two years of torture? Two years in hell, so I can stand before you now. Or lean before you, twisted as an old tree root. A crippled, shambling, wretched mockery of a man, eh, Lord Hoff? Let us be honest with one another. Sometimes I lose control of my own leg. My own eyes. My own face.” He snorted. “If you can call it a face. My bowels, too, are rebellious. I often wake up daubed in my own shit. I find myself in constant pain, and the memories of everything that I have lost nag at me, endlessly.” He felt his left eye twitching. Let it twitch. “So you can see how, despite my constant efforts to be a man of sunny temper, I find that I despise the world, and everything in it, and myself most of all. A regrettable state of affairs, for which there is no remedy.””
For another, more obvious example, just about everything to do with Watch Commander Samuel Vimes. Hopefully this needs no explanation.
Oh, and Happy New Year to all the Handbook crew!
*in part, not impart,of course. Autocorrect, I think.
Sam Vimes does need explanation, not least for anyone who hasn’t read the Discworld books in which he makes an appearance.
Vimes starts out as the drunkard Captain of the Night Watch, where the watchmen whose faces don’t fit are sent. Over the course of several books, he sorts his life out while cleaning up the city and rising in society.
During the course of this he notably faces down a mob armed with a very nervous dragon (he has the dragon, not the mob), runs from an insane golem through a mass of stampeding cattle, makes fart jokes while running from a dinner date with werewolves, and fights a dwarf army single-handed while trying to read “Where’s My Cow?” to his son, who isn’t there, in a weird hallucination scene that warps reality.
He has serious moments, dignified moments, and awesome moments, but also a lot of less-serious moments. I think it helps that the world takes him more seriously than he takes himself, and also that Pratchett knew when to let the audience indulge in the character’s awesomeness as well as how to make us laugh.
Pratchett was such a good author. I wish I could find more Discworld books.
Vimes may be me favorite character. Any media. Full stop.
Glokta is too terrifying for me to consider his humiliation for the most part. Sure, he personally feels ashamed and humiliated about his condition, but there is almost no one in the Circle of the World who would dare laugh.
I think in the first trilogy there are a couple of people who might consider it… at least until the Last Argument of Kings rolls around and it turns out that the inquisition can be an effective organization even if you’re rich enough to bribe them. Once his name becomes synonymous with his particular brand of misanthropic callousness in the Age of Madness ect., though, I’d agree. Still, that almost proves the point. Anyone who can fall over during a torture session and still be terrifying has definitely got the formula for dealing with humiliation right.
I think I build most of my characters on this principle of ‘make them able to survive being funny’, or at least, work it around the character being a bit silly in their own right / appearance, and letting the serious setting they’re in shape them accordingly into a badass.
Take my Gunslinger Kobold, he started off as the ‘leader’ of our group (having hired the rest of the party to go on government-licensed tomb robbing), he’s got all the flaws of a Kobold (ego, dragon identification, iffy morals, greed, being a weakling), but his martial skills have, on several occasions, proven him to be exceptionally capable and he’s earned the weird respect of his team despite his obvious flaws and occasional bouts of greed. And he takes his job as a leader seriously!
Another character that rose to the leader role (sort of) is my Wizard Ratfolk. Originally he was a supportive infodump for the rest of the party, and was blatantly crazy (he collected eyeballs and occasionally ate them), and he was fairly neutral in his opinions. In time, he grew into one of the most powerful and masterful Wizards of the Golarion setting, and he took care for the party’s well-being, culminating in taking down one of the greatest, most horrible villainous fiends in all of Golarion.
On this assumption, I’m also building my Crimson Throne character – a drunkard fox, or more precisely, a Kitsune worshipper of Cayden Cailean. She can be silly and wild-mannered all of she wants, and may be worshipping a silly god, but in the course of the story, she’ll shape into a hero and champion through her deeds (or die trying, I suppose).
Hell, Cayden Cailean embodies an entire religion of ‘being
Malcolm Reynolds’, with a bit of freedom fighter/anti-slavery on top.
To wit, how my characters (who are mostly bunny-eared lawyers) would deal with embarrassing situations:
Ratfolk Wizard: May not realize he’s in one. Would mentally assess from a genius’s standpoint how things came to this position. Might ignore it if given a more pressing matter, being emotionally aloof and embodying Nethys’s tenets of neutrality, balance and magic. Biggest humiliation may be an abject failure of his chosen field (magic/wizardry) or incorrect assumption.
Kobold Gunslinger: Go into a petty state of spite, go out of his way to correct the humiliation or make themselves look badass. Accept the humiliation with gritted teeth and growling if it’s the wisest course of action. Shoot/kill someone to blow off steam.
Vanara Investigator: Silly by intent, they WANT to be seen as a joke or to be otherwise underestimated. It makes their intellect/skills all that more impressive as their mannerisms and appearance are offset by their mental faculties and abilities.
Dwarven Cleric (a flatly serious character): Depends on mood. In a deathly serious situation, he might appreciate a laugh (as he needs one), or he might turn sour. Being a family man, bound by a deity and strict Dwarven honor to protect and embody good and protect his friends and others whilst wading into the depths of evil ain’t easy.
Tiefling Bard: Laugh it off, but take it personally/feel his ego and pride sink a little. He’s the one making the jokes, usually, not the other way around! He has a devious reputation to maintain, too!
My TRPG characters tend to be the straight man to the party’s antics, so most of their reactions would be some variation of “Sigh in exasperation and scold whoever’s responsible”. But in a way that the player recognizes as good-natured. (…it’s probably easier to do that once you’ve had a few years practicing and establishing that as your “standard character”.)
But I’ve also played the odd silly character, and the silly odd character. The ones I can think of (the little girl raised by bears and definitely-not-Megumin) fall into the “barely even notices they’re being embarrassed” category, though.
The Malcolm Reynolds type of character, as well as the general advice from this comic, can translate to videogames as well. Take the Final Fantasy series protagonists, for example.
Cloud (FF9): A brooding, dark character with a tragic backstory. Get shunted into several silly situations (and/or dresses). Isn’t happy about it, but it works.
Squall (FF9): Another brooding character. This time, there’s no real humiliation they fall into, no comedy. They’re just a bland, edgy, generic protagonist.
Zidane (FF9): A personal favorite. A skirt-chasing monkey-tailed thief who frequently gets into situations where the previous two would just cease to function, whether due to the absurdity of the situation, brooding where it’s pointless to do so, or lacking the genuine heart / emotional spectrum of a silly character. Has a defining moment where he’s stuck in a emotional rut – one that was forced onto them by a BBEG, turning them into an edgy loner. Breaking out of this sequence becomes his most badass scene in the game (and has some fancy music to come with it).
Tidus (FF10): What I feel is a situation where the previous two were mixed incorrectly. His comedic bits come off… Wrong, offputting or simply as idiocy (which isn’t helped by his isekai’d introduction to the world), and his serious/badass moments are hampered by more serious/badass other characters or him having the impression of a fool.
It can apply to most media. But it’s most important in interactive media (e.g. TRPGs, video games), because the author* has less control over the situations those characters get involved in.
*Though “author” is a fuzzy term in collaborative media (e.g. anything requiring a big team), fuzzier still in video games (where the player takes an authorial role), and almost meaningless in TRPGs (where game designer, adventure writer, GM, and players all take elements of the authorial role, without any “project heads” unifying their contributions into one cohesive whole).
Can’t really agree. I think Cloud’s brooding edginess is tacked on in later material; in the original, he’s an almost completely characterless blank slate. I do like what the remake has done with him in this regard, but it’s the writers catching up with the fan interpretation, rather than the original character. In his first incarnation, Cloud has a very flat personality – and in my first play of FF7, I actually assumed that was intentional, in line with his unique backstory as the psychologically damaged imposter of an actual hero.
Squall meanwhile did lack comedy but he was much less bland than Cloud. The thong about FF8 though, it’s a straightup romantic drama, and anyone who hasn’t a taste for that naturally finds it hard to like a straight up romantic drama protagonist like Squall.
Tidus meanwnile is one of my faves among male leads in the “series”. He’s exactly the kind of slightly clumsy but likable and still heroic character that can take the punches and roll with them, and his ultimately tragic hero’s journey (before the ghastly sequels) felt compelling to me.
This was something I really enjoyed with Han Solo from his first appearances in New Hope. Guy comes across as the brooding mercenary who has his act together, and somehow the character is made stronger by running screaming from an entire hangar full of stormtroopers.
Back in the days of my youth, there was a Justice League cartoon, and one episode focused on Batman and Zatana, who were trying to free Wonder Woman from a spell. Well in the end, they couldnt break it, so eventually they just asked the sorceress what she wanted as her price. The request: to hear Batman sing a romantic song in front of a live audience.
And he darn well did it. Really well too, even Zatana didnt want him to stop once he got going.
Zatana: “We should try this kind of thing first next time.”
Batman: “No, we should not.”
What about villains? While the most obvious path for a villain is to be always deadly serious or a faceless, emotionless and soulless threat, there is some merits to making a human, flawed character who is capable of withstanding the sillyness/stupidity/nonsense of your average PC (or in the case of Bards, inevitable attempts at romance).
Nathan Fillion’s acting counterpart/opposite/partner, Neil Patrick Harris, also embodies this aspect of ‘serious, but can survive a silly situation’, when they play the villain role. Or at least ‘silly, but can excel in a serious situation’.
Best examples: Dr. Horrible, Count Olaf. Both are villains (one more genuinely vile than the other), both frequently get into comedic situations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tup-5yOcJuM
There are limits to how much character a typical D&D villain can have. They have limited screentime, since in most aren’t encountered before or after the boss fight. (In my experience, players hate to let a bad guy get away to menace them in the future.) It’s certainly possible to imbue them with personality, but complex inner lives or full character arcs just can’t fit into those constraints.
Can you design an adventure around making use of such a complex villain? Sure. But you have to design the adventure differently than most are designed.
Careful, Snowflake. Unlike your average Summon Monster spell, you don’t have a arbitrary clause in your description text that makes you functionally immortal/immune to permanent harm. The princess ordering a special batch ‘good-aligned glue’ might be in your future, and Paladin merely has to contend with a month of grieving (or a level) to get over you and find a replacement.
Heh, there’s a comic script in this – when the Handbook’s Paladin inevitably tries to use Snowflake in the manner you use a Summon Monster spell (most likely because they skimmed the description)…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/evil-summons
In 5e, the summon steed spell can restore a slain steed to its physical form and full hit points with ten minutes and a second-level spell slot. So it does work in that edition!
Things get morally tricky when you can skip paying a vet bill (or loads of cure potions and curing spells) by killing your sentient horse and returning it to life 10 minutes later. Especially when said horse remembers said shenanigans.
Is just me or the contest is a little biased about captian mal being the best? 😛
By the way what movie is that? Didn’t know you liked western 🙂
Serenity – 2005. Based on the old Firefly series.
For my own offering, I would like to nominate:
CORBIN DALLAS!!!!!!!!! (Chris Tucker)
From the movie Fifth Element. If you have never seen it, it is probably one of the best Sci-Fi movies that I have seen. It allowed Bruce Willis to really get away from the Die Hard movies of the 90’s and show some range. I will not spoil any of the scenes in case someone wants to look for it to watch.
I thought his name was Corbin Dallas Multipass.
Corbin Dallas and Leeloo Dallas Multipass XD
Firefly, that is why didn’t saw it 🙂
And yes Corbin Dallas is a good, and better, example. The Fifth Element is so good 😀
NO, WAIT, it’s Korben Dallas, not Corbin. It has been a while since i saw that movie 😀
Now i think of it, does the HBoH comments got some sort of edit thing for the comments? o_O
Yeah, I noticed the spelling error but could not edit. By the way, Zorg in the same movie also fits but as a villain.
When I think of “favorite protagonists,” by first thought is Wildbow’s protagonists. (Depending on how you count, he’s written at least seven across his five published/in-progress web serials.) But I’m not sure they’re a great fit to the question, because they aren’t very power-fantasy-ey…and it would be hard to answer, because they all change so much. Still, if they encountered an embarrassing situation at the start of the story they are a protagonist for…
Taylor Hebert would crumple, trying not to react and shoving that down inside her.
Blake Thorburn would handle it more maturely (because he’s five years older); he might even laugh along, depending on who’s laughing around him and the circumstances of the embarrassment.
Sylvester Lamb would turn it into a joke, at the expense of whoever embarrassed him if possible.
Victoria Dallon would instinctively figure out how to minimize the embarrassment and try to move past it. Unless her sister is involved. (Vicky benefits from both being raised in a superhero family and an arc in Worm, when she was a secondary character for about half the book.)
Now for the Pale protagonists:
* Lucy Ellington would retaliate if it came from Verona, and otherwise probably just take it.
* Verona Hayward would retaliate if it came from Lucy. Otherwise…hm. Again, it depends a lot on the circumstances; something coming from her dad she’d have to roll with, but she probably wouldn’t if it came from a classmate.
* Avery Kelly would retaliate if it came from one of her siblings, but otherwise would just kind of crumple. Like Taylor, come to think of it, except with less maturity and less prior trauma.
I notice that “unless it comes from family” is a common qualifier. Which I guess makes sense; everyone treats their siblings differently than their friends.
That face Elf Princess is making says “Off with everyone’s head!”
The most edgy edge lords of edge city. MEGA edge city to be exact.
Judge Dread.
Whether we are talking comics or movies (either the Stalone one or the Urban one), he is a character that is hard as hard can be, and that makes it so much the better when a scene calls for taking the piss out of him as a character.
And depending on the writer, it can be handled wonderfully. A light joke, some sarcastic smarm, or a downright full blown comedy moment can be achieved with him, and the very next moment, he can be blowing someone’s head off and judging them as worthy of death (because what crime isn’t worthy of death in that setting?).
Personally, I liked both movie versions and all the various comic versions and imagine some kind of perfect amalgamation of them all when I think of the character.
I also think it helps that the comic as a whole was meant to be a farce of the extreme violent and ultra dark tendencies of the mid to late 80’s comics made manifest that gives the tone the juice to survive comedic situations as well.
Dread!
Mulder and Scully, of X-Files game. They can hunt an alien, completely fail to catch it or find any proof it ever existed, and still be back next episode trying again. And they’re not above cracking jokes while trying to catch killers.
*Fame, not game.
Okay, so my dive might go a little deeper into pop-culture, but bear with me, my nickname isn’t “Professor” for nothing. I nominate Isis–no, not the terrorist group, and not the DC Comics 2006 version, but the one from the 1975 Filmation TV series and its tie-in comic. Y’see, in both issue #3 of The Mighty Isis (March 1977) and in issue #330 of The Mighty Thor (over at Marvel, April 1983), our mythic-powered superhero and title character faces an evenly-matched (possibly more powerful) super-antagonist who is angered by what they perceive as the hero’s worshippers. In Thor’s comic, a vague hippie cult has formed, and the solution is a two-issue slugfest vs. The Crusader in the streets of Chicago, followed by talking (as a free action). Isis, however, finally convinces Set (after some punishing defeats) that she isn’t really doing the whole ‘worship me’ routine anymore by having her fan club pelt her and the villain with cream pies in public and accepting it in good humor. Sure, she can transmute elements and fly with the wind, but self-mockery is arguably a stronger superpower.
That being said, I’d suggest that the MCU Thor ranks higher than his comic counterpart, since self-deprecating humor has been a part of his cinematic badassery from the start (with the possible exception of The Dark World –we shall not speak of it).
To be fair: Since when have Elves ever minded being dirty. Bathing once a decade is not enough! Prestidigitation does not clean creatures, and is therefore not an acceptable substitute for personal hygiene. (Despite what Elves tell you “Personal hygiene” is not a personal decision.)
Sun Wukong, The Monkey King! He rampages through heaven and beats up gods, he puts down demons like they’re made of glass, and he generally terrifies everyone so badly that they trip over themselves getting out of his way! Then he gets slapped around with a mountain by the Buddha, tricked into wearing a cursed headband by Guan Yin, and routinely ignored by the rest of his travelling companions when he offers them advice.
Any character who can go from a Godzilla-sized city-destroying war form to pulling the old ‘look behind you’ trick is a grade-A gem in my book.
I think Obi-wan Kenobi in the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy and particularly The Clone Wars animated series is a good example. He’s composed, posh and endlessly witty, but not above mocking himself when the situation calls for it. He’d probably react to an inconvenient nat 1 with something like “Well that didn’t work” or “I was hoping that would hit you” or “That could have gone better.”
For many examples (as well as some from Anakin Skywalker, who tends to shrug off embarrassment with mild irritation), see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBxKv70hKbU
The rise of prequel memes has certainly given sassy Obi Wan more prominence. And yeah, I think that sort of wise cracking and one-liner slinging is a good model for PCs to shoot for.
This topic does remind me of the time my expert doctor Rogue in 2e had the opportunity to impress a pair of elf rulers with his medical knowledge (everyone got to use a skill check of some sort to show off). Real inconvenient time for the guy who can fix lethal axe wounds with 10 minutes of work to roll a 2. I guess he’s terrible at public speaking.
That was a character-defining moment for my pf2e cleric. Botched her very first heal check. I decided on the spot that she only knew magical healing, and had faked her way through the mundane portion of her exams.
Oh, I KO’d a partymate with a failed Medicine check RIGHT before I leveled up to the point where I could use the Assurance feat to always take 10. Official explanation is that half-orc goblins’ bits are not QUITE where my Rogue thought they were. End result was my guy sat around for 10 minutes reading a newspaper next to the unconscious PC until I could heal him again.
In general, I quite like the idea of fail / crit fail and success / crit success in Pf2e. I’m not sure this is a spot where it works great.
What, no mention of Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden?
From the Dresden Files, he’s a private eye/wizard who wears a leather trench coat, and is feared and awed by many in the community. Monsters steer clear of the city of Chicago, for they know there is far better hunting grounds than the home of the mad wizard.
Of course, anyone who actually knows him (we the audience) knows just how much of a goof he actually is, who more often than not scraps through the super dangerous events in his life through luck, pop culture references, and bullheaded stubbornness.
Trying to pick a good example is tricky, but I think one of the best is when he was dealing with a princess of the fey court (winter fae). She offers a deal, she’ll give him the information in exchange for his firstborn. She then offers him a beauty to impregnate, all the while throwing at him powerful charm magic. Struggling, he pours himself a glass of ice cold water, unzips his pants, and dumps the whole pitcher down them.
I was about to start typing my nomination for him, before I thought to myself, “Wait… SURELY one of my fellow respectable nerds thought of that already. Lemme do a quick Ctrl+F.”
I think my favorite aspect about Dresden is the discrepancy between how people see him. Like you said, monsters are wary of him, because his reputation has absolutely gone out of his control, mostly because he’s pulled some very visible stunts that happened because circumstance allowed the opportunity.
I love this idea for my characters in D&D, and have tried to make mine to play with the idea. I got lucky enough to remake a character in a reboot of a campaign, and the first attempt with him was supposed to be a Face character, who could Charisma his way through anything. He had the stats to back it up. The dice made his failed deception attempts REALLY lame. He was supposed to be able to talk his way out of murder. He was a joke before the first small arc was over.
So when I remade him, he is STILL charismatic, but much more laid back, and has a touch of ridiculousness built into him. The crowning moment was, three arcs into our new campaign, the captain of his crew realizing for the first time that he DOES NOT HAVE A WEAPON. And no, not a martial artist of any skill. He just kept bumbling his way into wrestling matches (which he was pretty bad at), throwing half-cooked taffy via his techniques to blind or pin people, and generally filling his role as a chef and face character.
The giant moose we came up against was rather unimpressed by that set of skills. The table was in stitches. The character just kinda grinned and shrugged.
This worked so much better than my first version, for exactly the reasons listed in today’s commentary.
Oddly the first thing to come to mind is for this question is…. another webcomic.
A good number of the main cast of Unsounded work to some degree. There’s an almost omnipresent amount of sass going on there. Plenty of people getting themselves into absurd situations. And a lot of being serious/badass when the moment calls for it.
I still contend that shame damage should be hardcoded into the rules.
Back to the love triangle that I’m certain won’t be settled in Patreon-only content. It makes me wonder if Lumberjack Explosion is so into Elf Princess because he can sense a remarkable virgin purity in her, or a remarkable lack thereof. Or maybe he didn’t peek out of courtesy.
While I love for my character to be serious in combat situations, it’s always fun to be the goofball and a punchline outside of it. While it’s important that your character be accurate to what you intend them to be, it is equally important to keep in mind that the dice don’t give a damn what you think your character should be and to just roll with it when they don’t go your way.
Malcom Reynolds is damn near perfect for that switch between comedy and deadly serious and vice versa. In the right situation, he’s a Big Damn Hero, in the wrong one he’s an idiot who manages to put both feet in his mouth.
Terry Pratchett was almost supernaturally gifted in writing protagonists that would toe the line between comedy and drama. Whether it be Vimes, Carrot, Rincewind, Ridcully, Tiffany Aching, Granny Weatherwax, or any of his other protagonists, he could make it feel completely natural for them to go from pure comedy to deadly serious in a drop of a hat.
Geralt of Rivia
“Mmmm … Fuck!”
Flipping through the comments real quick and I am actually surprised no one has mentioned Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China or Ash from Evil Dead.
I suppose it’s because the practical effects and things that were in style at the time just seem cheesy today, like they were intentionally trying to make B movies, but it’s important to note that both Evil Dead and Big Trouble in Little China were completely serious films outside of the Comedy genre. Army of Darkness I’m less sure about (even though it’s Evil Dead 3).
Jack Burton though. Professional trucker, delivers to and has numerous friends in Chinatown. Drives the Porkchop Express, has no lack of confidence, is constantly saying how it’s ‘all in the reflexes,’ has not one moment of triumph until the end. He is a serious character being played for laughs for the entire adventure.
It’s tempting to think of him as a buffoon who got lucky, but his confidence in his ability, his actions, and in particular his success show, to me, someone who’s having a day just full of natural 1’s.
Ash is more of a clown, however he strikes me as a very authentic Wal-Mart employee in his off hours, and I’m pretty sure working Black Friday is the same as surviving a zombie apocalypse, so it’s certainly more serious than we give it credit.
As has been noted by webcomic artist David Willis, it is specifically BECAUSE Batman is broody and edgy and serious, and so much of his character revolves around being constantly in control, that he becomes such a perfect target for pratfall comedy.
The dichotomy and schadenfreude are simply too great.
Building a character that depends on being “perfect” only paints a cosmic “KickMe” sign that, even if your fellow players are respectful and mature enough to allow dignity, your Dice will invariably not, as dignity means nothing to RNGesus.
You must build in the ability for your character to roll with failure in some manner, if only for your own sake and sanity.