rpanons | Trapped in the city of one loo

Trapped in the city of one loo

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i will never understand why some people app characters from canon points where they have no more conflict or growth opportunities left. can someone explain to me the appeal of that? what's the fun of playing a character who has tied up all their loose ends and solved all of the issues they had in canon? i honestly don't understand.

sometimes there are things in a story in-progress that are prohibitive to rp (character is insufferably bratty because they haven't had their defining arc, is dying from some disease that would cause problems in play, doesn't have a certain key skill or didn't meet a key person yet, etc.). most of the time i find people do this because their castmates also took post-series canon points and they want everyone to be on the same page.

personally i support taking characters from earlier canon points, but from an organizational perspective it's often easiest to slap "post-canon" on so there's no need to retread canon ground and a character can develop elsewhere. development and growth IS still possible from such canon points if the player is creative.

see, that i can understand, because i have a character who has some issues that make them hard to play before a certain canon point, but there's still plenty of canon after that point where you can take them from and have lots of room for growth and development. if you took them from post-canon, they'd just be boring because all of their major conflicts that make them interesting are solved. i suppose you could still find ways to develop them, but it would be much more subtle development, nothing major.

wtf

what characters are you even playing

what makes someone interesting is their personality. if the plot is done and they become boring guess what: they have always been boring and you've been distracted by the story

While I agree that personality is what makes a character interesting, I also understand where OP is coming from. I once played a character in the same game for five years, and by that point, I felt like I had run out of things to do with him. I still loved his personality, but he had grown stagnant and all of his threads were starting to feel the same because he was no longer really changing. The things that used to upset him didn't do so anymore, he wasn't all that rattled by events, and overall he'd just fallen into a routine that nothing seemed to be able to shake him out of.

Now, some people are perfectly happy to play out "The Continuing Adventures of X in Jamjarland" with no real characterization goal in mind. Other people need to feel like their character is actively undergoing development as a result of their experiences. It's why different people prefer different types of games - neither one is right or wrong. I know people who played happily in Holly Heights for years and others who dropped out of boredom in less than a month. It's just differing preferences in what they want out of RP. But characters can reach a point where significant growth is no longer happening, much the way most real people eventually settle into a "them" that doesn't really change all that much over the rest of their lives. Some people are okay with RPing past that point, some aren't.

Personally, my character stopped being fun for me to play when he hit that point. I ended up dropping him and reapping him fresh in another game and that made him fun again by opening up a lot of doors that had been closed in his last game since he'd already dealt with those particular issues there.

but that's not really the point being brought here. you took a char and in a game, played them to their potential. that's just being bored with a char in general with what they can do in any given setting. five years would be more than most of dw plays in any games lately. op is talking about taking a char to any fresh game and them being 'unfun to play' because in their canon, they've 'achieved their goals' and that makes them unplayable. most people here seem to be arguing against that.

like, not trying to offend or anything, but the two scenarios are wildly different. you played one char for five years until it got boring to play them in that setting. you took the same char, reset them, and played them brand new in a different game. you still liked the char and wanted to play them, but in that setting you'd already explored to its potential, that was a nope. op is basically saying any char that's reached their end goal is unappable to them because they wouldn't be fun to play at all, regardless of the setting or how long they were played.

not the same at all, man. and i still disagree with op. if you took a char that had ended their storyline in their canon, you are by virtue of tossing them into a game, writing them a new chapter. that in itself is what makes it fun to play. like, why play any char anywhere, by op's standard. why memes? why games? why play any resolved char?

because it's fun and you can fuck around with them and take them out of their canon norm. that's why.

ayrt

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 05:04 (UTC) - Expand

sa

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 05:08 (UTC) - Expand

i used to feel this way too. i often apped characters from very early canon points just for this specific reason. recently though i started playing a character that is so preoccupied with their canon that its actually hindering my ability to grow and play them in their game. i'm thinking about updating them to the end of canon (in which they are dead) just because i think it would be possible to get more out of it even though their story is effectively over. tl;dr apparently canon can sometimes cause too much conflict?

to give them unraveled ends and new things to keep the canon/character going? like, sure, char a had a great time in canon, was all exciting and fighty, then it ended and all was well. maybe i want char a to keep going and doing new things. tossing them in a game or giving them something new breeds new possibilities. might as well ask why app a char that died or why app at all. you're taking a char out of their canon and dumping them somewhere new, with or without a cast. that's going to present new scenarios all on its own.

not everyone needs OMG CONFLICT!!!! COMPLEXITY!!! to have fun

uh, what? just because a plot ended doesn't mean there aren't growth opportunities or conflict left. new shit happens, that's why we rp in the first place, for the new not-canon situations.

for me it's exactly the opposite: i can't play characters that aren't post-canon. i WANT their shit tied up at home so they can concentrate on the game.

i usually respect people with other preferences because to each their own, but the fact that there can ony be canon-related conflicts makes me side-eye you right now.

*the fact you said

i accidentaly a word

i guess i didn't explain myself that well. i'm talking about characters like... let's use edward elric from fma as an example. his entire canon motivation is getting his brother's body back, and canon sets him up on a very specific character development arc with specific lessons to be learned from it. by the time he gets to the end of canon, he's learned a lot of important things and matured into an adult, and his main driving force no longer exists. his opportunities for growth have greatly diminished because he's already done so much growing and maturing in canon.

there are some characters who still have a lot of room for growth post-canon, yes. but there are also some where they've pretty much done their growing in canon and there aren't many places left for them to go from there. those are the ones i can't understand why people would want to play post-canon.

>his opportunities for growth have greatly diminished
>but there are also some where they've pretty much done their growing in canon

you really don't have much imagination, do you?

i'm going to disagree because imo, as long as a character is still existing, still living and breathing and able to carry on, there's always potential for character 'growth', and i use that term loosely because i don't know wtf you're looking for here beyond a character redemption arc. all characters can grow. or, conversely, fall and become twisted and fucked up. a game setting gives them that potential.

let's take maleficent from the movie. post movie, she's grown a bit and has learned a few lessons, but in terms of the world and other people/creatures/scenarios, there's so much for her to still learn. and i don't know fma, but i would assume that just because a character reaches a plateau in their growth doesn't mean they can't slide backwards. we're not static creatures. we change and evolve and we can make characters change and evolve. that's the beauty of rp.

I can understand what you're getting at, but agree with the above anons that there are always places to go. Also, personally, I love "what happens next?" type stories. There's so much to explore in how characters who've been through a lot already adapt to the next part of their futures. How does someone like Ed deal with his main driving force no longer existing? How do you keep moving forward when you've already met your goal and need to recalibrate your entire life to aim for a new one? That's all just another stage of growth, and stories like that can be just as interesting to tell.

post-canon ftw

Just because a character has resolved their major plots and matured in some way doesn't mean they're perfect, and it doesn't mean they won't have new conflicts or grow more in a game setting. Sometimes it's just more fun to play a character with experience and see how that experience allows them to continue to grow in face of new conflicts.

because especially in a game setting, you can easily create new issues and conflicts, and also explore ones never addressed in canon.

plus by choosing a point where all the loose ends are tied up from canon, you don't have to try and recreate the events in canon to make their development path similar.

I'm your opposite on this, OP, because there is nothing I find more boring and annoying than having to recapitulate the same "growing up and dealing with important conflicts" arc that a character went through in canon in RP. I'd much rather explore further aspects of their personality or have them find new goals, instead of having them hung up on a storyline that already has a canon resolution.

see, i enjoy playing out that arc in rp to see what goes differently when compared to their canon development. i had one character end up going on almost a completely opposite path development-wise to their canon self due to in-game events and that was some of the most fun i've ever had in an rp.

and that's alright! some people prefere mid canon, others post canon. i don't think anyone here has anything against preferences for canon points. we just think op's reasoning is really, really stupid and lacks imagination.

+1

(Anonymous) - 2016-03-23 21:10 (UTC) - Expand

that can also be a lot of fun! honestly, i usually don't feel much drive to replay things and change them up in rp unless i'm unsatisfied with the canon resolution, because many characters have enough of their setup built in that the changes you can make would be cosmetic (like, "they had this important revelation for different reasons in a different situation!")

when you have a character with whom you can go in radically different directions it can be very interesting.

i only do this with certain characters, but for me, the fun is in having that character figure out what to do next with their lives, after saving the world/their family/whatever. characters finding out who they are outside of their main canon goal is a growth opportunity.

1. As people mentioned, because finishing the canon arc doesn't mean a character is flawless and boring and lacking in potential growth. If a character at the end of canon is a perfect being with no room to improve, they're badly written. Also, game events can create new reasons to grow and issues to resolve. And as one person mentioned, pressure to be IC often means that playing from an early canon point means just playing out the same arc as in canon, which is frankly tedious IMO.

2. I don't want to have to keep track of what canon information my character should know at their canon point vs what I know as a reader who has read the whole canon. I know what information is ICly known vs OOCly known but it's another level of annoying to remember exactly when small details were dropped, and sometimes it's just inconvenient to be without those details. It's easier on me as a player to match my character's base up with mine where it's reasonable, not because I want to show anyone up, but because I want to have less discrepancies to worry about when avoiding accidental infomodding or other awkward slips.

after being horribly wanked on for playing a character from an earlier canonpoint, i always take them from either the most recent one or the end of the source material

force of habit i guess

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