Monday, September 12, 2011

[RPG][WOD] Getting Frustrated

I'm feeling more than a little frustrated right now. Things have changed enough, or timing is different enough, or my life is settled enough that I finally feel I can take on being in the WOD game again. I've talked to the ST about it, and he has said "ok" to the idea of my coming back as well.

So I'm working on a character idea for the game.

I have actually come up with an idea that is perfect, intellectually. He's got tons of good plot material, has a good reason to be in Austin, has enough abilities to make him interesting- the whole package is pretty awesome.

So what's the problem?


I am not excited about the idea. Not even a little. There's no joy; no promise; no thrill. This character, while ideal on paper, would merely be an intellectual exercise; but not FUN.

Everyone else in this game loves their character. Gets pumped, excited and flush with the thrill of playing their respective imaginary personas when game time comes. And I really want that.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that this particular idea is a Vampire; and I'm fairly well known for Vampires; and I generally love them. But this guy is making me pretty aggravated, so maybe I need to go back to the drawing board. Or something.

How do you handle this? Cause it's really annoying.

10 comments:

  1. Put the character down.

    People immersed in the gaming don't see the player who won't enjoy their character, just an awesome new character.

    You need to find one that you're excited to go and play.

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  2. Wow, hard question to answer. Ideal on paper but no fun to play. It sounds to me like you might need to tweak, but I'm not sure how or where. This may be one of those deals where you just have to go with what you have on paper and hope that something happens in game to help you find the fun. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but there it is.

    Tom

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  3. No idea but if you find a solution to this dilemma let me know please. I'm currently in the same boat with my 'Scum' character in our DH campaign.

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  4. I have to agree with going a different route if you really feel the character won't be fun to play. Fun is the primary reason we choose to play games; don't ignore it!

    I'd suggest looking at a couple more options and seeing how fun they feel to you. If you go through this process a couple of times and still can't find something fun, maybe you aren't ready to tread back into WOD, and truthfully, there would be nothing wrong with that.

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  5. Whenever I made a character, I always thought of who he was first. Clan, Abilities, Attributes, Disciplines - all came after I had a concept of something I wanted to play.

    If you build something cool on paper and bring it to game, all you're doing is acting out a script.

    When you're roleplaying, you actually get to write the script! (to an extent) So why not take the opportunity to create something you're going to enjoy?

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  6. Just make a Mage and get it over with. Then I'll have someone else to control. :) Seriously, I'm not really sure how to handle that since I've never really been in that situation. All my characters I've played I've wanted to play from inception save for one and that one made me want to play him after I saw what he could become. So, maybe that's it. Look further ahead at the potential and see if he'll become more fun in the future.

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  7. I've run into that a bunch of times with characters that I wrote up. Generally my problem with the characters was that they had nowhere to go or I had already planned exactly how they were going to develop to a T. Since there was no exploration beyond "ooo let's see how my preprogrammed tactics deal with this situation!" they just ended up not being fun.

    What I've learned to do is make my characters less than perfect, and/or give the GM/ST/DM/what have you plenty of leeway to manipulate my character.

    For example, probably my fav character was in a Changeling game a year ago called HUGO. HUGO couldn't remember much about who he was and had severe limitations in the social dept. because he had been turned into a robot by his keeper. My goal with him was to reclaim his humanity, but I also gave the GM the ability to make him "remember" skills (i.e. spend my xp) from his past, which often led to very dramatic swings in character.

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  8. Make them a vampire rabbit! That should do it!

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  9. @sonsoftaurus: I made a vampire scorpion once... Gangrel + beast traits from the clanbook. Rabbit it totally doable... bonus' to jump and all.

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