Character Attachment in Games

Ah. But you see a mystic entirely as a inflexible character concept. I saw it as:

"Magic Missile. Magic Missile. I can't kill this goblin." Retreat to the Fortress. "Here lass, let me show you how to deal with Goblins" "Hello Mister Goblin. Remember me." SCHING! SCHING! "By Sigmar's Balls, I'll peel you like an onion!!"

This actually is close to the character I'm playing in Sacred II at the moment. Apparently their definition of High Elf includes an airhead wizardess armed with a halberd who wades into battle wearing a tiara and a battle thong. Riding a tiger. (Oddly enough, the battle thong has quite good armor protection....)

(Oddly enough, the battle thong has quite good armor protection....)

Depends on where they're aiming.

For my part, I'm tired of generic fantasy settings. I've been playing games in generic fantasy settings for 25 years. No more, please.

It's one of the reasons I really liked WAR FOR EDADH, it was something really fresh...but it didn't really have any kind of character attachment like we're talking about here.

I do like the created narratives like what Frank is talking about, I think that's really important to drawing a player-character connection. ARKHAM HORROR is one of the best games I've ever seen in that regard, and I think it's largely because you get so many kind of vague, out-of-context snippets of story text that the game and your imagination sort of work together to build out a complete narrative.

But what Jason wants is more of a comprehensive context- WotR would be a perfect example of that. The connection with characters drawn there is more based on familiarity. I think that's OK too, as long as you can still tell your own story through the game.

I am of a thought that character attachment lays very heavily upon motivation. If your "char" has options to do what you would do if you were in a similar situation, assuming you have the same training etc... Then character attachment becomes _much_ more of a natural extension during gameplay. Hell, even if it isn't what you would do, but if you saw someone doing it you would say: "Coooool!" then that works too.

If on the other hand the only options you are given are ones that you would not do, then it becomes hard to put yourself in the game because the game is evolving in a manner that is the antithesis of what you would/could picture yourself involved in.


Kinda pulled the above outta my ass without too much thought, but it seemed right to me at first glance...

ubarose wrote:

So when I play I'm Priscilla Gould bulding up my family's power base in Essex.

That's weird... Me too.

Lots of interesting comments here. I don't have much to add, except that I like to be someone in games. I like to know who/what I represent and stuff. Whether I'm a generic leader/dictator/president in a DOAM game, or some character in an adventure game. StarCraft is nice because it says basically who you represent at the top of your faction sheet (The Overmind, Tassader, Jim Raynor, etc). Adventure games feature this kind of "role-playing" prominently (probably one reason I like them as much as I do).

At Euro-ish game nights, I've asked questions like "so... who am I supposed to be? A builder dude trying to build more stuff than the other builder dudes?" and people give me weird looks, like "why does it matter?"

moofrank wrote:

Ah. But you see a mystic entirely as a inflexible character concept. I saw it as:

"Magic Missile. Magic Missile. I can't kill this goblin." Retreat to the Fortress. "Here lass, let me show you how to deal with Goblins" "Hello Mister Goblin. Remember me." SCHING! SCHING! "By Sigmar's Balls, I'll peel you like an onion!!"

This actually is close to the character I'm playing in Sacred II at the moment. Apparently their definition of High Elf includes an airhead wizardess armed with a halberd who wades into battle wearing a tiara and a battle thong. Riding a tiger. (Oddly enough, the battle thong has quite good armor protection....)

Not to derail entirely, but

Hey Frank (or anyone else), what speed up varients do you use for Prophecy? How many players?

Thanks!

Yell, "Fraken move already, you flippin' banana-head!" to the person who takes FOREVER figuring out every possible place he can move and examining friggin' card on the board.

Behold the magic that is a limited decision set.

Sag.