cowboy times in space

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Comments

dda

[(Anonymous)]

driveby first-time commenter from flatview but this is the kind of stuff that makes me sad honestly.

and i say this as someone who has near zero interest in playing the malleable protags myself, but would love to play with them if they were played by normal people who are just treating them like any other character and who know how to stick to... for lack of a better term, the pre-made "mold" of the role. basically, those players who can be creative but still remember malleable protags have a canon base to reference too, they're not quite full OC.

oh, what i wouldn't give to get to play with somebody's vanilla WoL who actually does follow the default "heroic do-gooder with wanderlust who just kind of has this inspiring aura about them" base we're given and doesn't deviate too dissonantly from it. but i feel as if the people who could pull it off... don't, because they're scared of being judged for it.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

this is actually my favorite way of playing malleable protags, which is why i tend to gravitate towards protags who have a stronger pre-made "mold"

games like bg3 and ffxiv are on the other end the spectrum. both allow you to fully customize your character, there's no set background or personality. sure, you can pick character backgrounds in bg3 so you're a street urchin or a career soldier and in ffxiv you can pick out what city-state you start out in, but other than that they're a blank slate with no canonical events in their past or character traits in the present. hard to stick to a pre-made "mold" because the mold is loosey goosey like jello

compare them to the classic bioware protag with solid personality types (shepard's paragon/renegade system, hawke's blue/purple/red), backgrounds and last names, or cyberpunk 2077 which follows this formula with the canon background, personality and first name. ymmv but i've had an easier time getting cr with this type of malleable protag over the loosey goosey type because people know what to expect more or less

the stigma doesn't help either. it takes someone who's well adjusted to persist despite the backlash or someone who's un-self-aware and doesn't care they're being cringe. best malleable protags i've rped with are actually a blend of both. all rp requires not taking yourself too serious (the whimsy factor), being firm but polite while also not taking shit, and internalizing the fact you'll have to work twice as hard to get the same amount of interest other people get with canon characters

a lot to ask of for a hobby none of us are getting paid for

i don't blame people for going the path of least resistance

Re: +1

[(Anonymous)]

other than the barest of prompts on who they used to be before the events of the main quest, the LaCroix of character backgrounds, they're a blank slate with no canonical events*

[(Anonymous)]

for bg3, I'd argue the dark urge is more along the lines of what you're talking about. then again, I've noticed some people pick and choose the lore they want to follow or sometimes disregard it entirely... but for someone who takes that lore into account, the dark urge is certainly not a blank slate

[(Anonymous)]

i don't know how to tell you this but people pick and choose the lore they want to follow or disregard it entirely for canon characters too

[(Anonymous)]

not arguing against that. I was just noting that even though the dark urge is a malleable protag, they're not the blank slate a tav is

(and there is nothing wrong with playing a tav. if I played a bg3 character, I'd have no problem tagging with them. just highlighting the difference.)

[(Anonymous)]

take it they're taking about tav and the wol since bg3 and ffxiv are mentioned

[(Anonymous)]

you have to. some canon stuff will never come up, some canon stuff doesn't apply to panfandom rp, some canon stuff is done and dusted, not everyone remembers every single canon thing ever, especially in gigantic collaborative canons like forgotten realms

so many reasons and most of them are not 'this person is purposely being ooc'

[(Anonymous)]

and sometimes canon info that contradicts your choices in rp comes out after you've already been playing a character for a while.

[(Anonymous)]

dark urge gets a bad rap because of tavs and wols. dark urge is the same percentage of malleable as geralt in witcher 3. guy with amnesia but a whole canon backstory figures out how he wants the game to end.

[(Anonymous)]

it's also the edgelord nature of dark urge. very much a holdover of early mid 2000s rpgs. bhaal as a whole is the god of murder hobos and his kids are no different

[(Anonymous)]

+1

i just don't find edgelord murder hobos very interesting. they remind me of the power fantasy characters i used to encounter back when i did supernatural monster rp in a now-dead mmo. like oh, your guy's a psychopath and a cannibal and a cult leader? AND he has a cool monster transformation power because his daddy's a god? groundbreaking...

[(Anonymous)]

good for you, but i love dark urges and a few i really liked don't come around anymore because of people being mean about malleable protags

da

[(Anonymous)]

Have you encountered many people playing durge as a murder hobo? Not saying it doesn't happen, just haven't come across it myself.

ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

for the most part yes, though not to the extent that's possible in the game obv because you can't murder every character you encounter in a collaborative writing hobby. most of the durges i've come across have been portrayed as barely resisting the urge or trying to resist but failing. several have had the slayer form, which iirc is only obtainable in a non-resisting playthrough. i haven't ever come across anyone playing from the opposite extreme, i.e. full on redeemed goody two shoes durge. not saying that take on the character is any "better" (actually i could see it being very obnoxious if done poorly), but it does not seem to be the norm in my experience.

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

new da -

you can get the slayer form if you're resisting. the two ways to get the slayer form are to kill isobel in act 2, and accept being bhaal's chosen in act 3. there is no evil prerequisite for getting it in act 2, you can have been good the entire time, and it's a viable good path choice if durge decides isobel's death is worth it to spare one of their companions, because durge gets told that it's either her or a companion (highest approval or your romance partner if you have one). you can then go on to continue to make good/resisting choices, and lose the slayer form when you reject bhaal. if you want to *keep* the slayer form you do have to accept bhaal in act 3 and be explicitly evil though yes.

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

you can also get it by accidentally letting isobel die

not like i did that or anything :(

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

rip isobel :(

i usually skip that fight to be honest, it's not required and it doesn't give much xp...

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

not to split hairs but the choice isn't between (potentially) killing your companion vs killing isobel, it's between potentially killing your companion vs killing isobel *and everyone else at the inn by extension.* even if durge isn't fully embracing the whole murder scion thing it's still a selfish/evil choice, and by making it they're capitulating to bhaal's plans for them, even they decide to resist later.

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

nope, you can kill her after most of the npcs have moved to moonrise and isobel is mostly alone at the inn. it's not an exploit either, if you've ignored isobel then the butler shows up at the bridge to moonrise to tell durge to go back and kill her now while she's alone.

Re: ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

i threaded on bakerstreet with a durge who is fully resisting and relies on his paladin oath, so your experience is definitely not universal.

[(Anonymous)]

dark urge can have a totally different personality based on your choices. they have a somewhat defined backstory but can be anything between goody two shoes redeemer durge and murder hobo durge. nothing wrong with that, but i would argue geralt is much more defined.

[(Anonymous)]

i mean. maybe not a whole different personality (debatable with certain choices for shadowheart and astarion), but the companions themselves are somewhat malleable based on the choices you as a player make. and if you're playing them as an origin, they're just as malleable as the dark urge. they have dialogue that's unique to them and their base personalities, but so does the dark urge.

[(Anonymous)]

i see where you're coming from but every single playable bg3 character, tav and origin companions alike, can choose to save or enslave the world at the end. even wyll. geralt can choose to sell his daughter to her biodad (who wants to impregnate her) and doom the north by making certain political choices. he can choose to leave yennefer and ruthlessly crush her heart and then live happily ever after with triss, a woman who once roofied him in the books and is arguably so out of character it shouldn't even be an option. and yet he's a malleable protagonist so he can do all that.

it's all just perspective stuff.

ayrt

[(Anonymous)]

so like... 👀 which malleable protags do you play, anon? asking for a friend.