>From: Tony Davis <gallows_brother_at_...>
>I think you guys are too hard on your tricksters. I think that there must
>be many tricksters who just aren't powerful enough to be that dangerous.
>Consider the proscribed roles... you couldn't even make a trickster do that
>if they were powerful enough to really be a danger to the community.
???
I think I disagree with your example, but agree with the point.
Characters in HQ are, to me, very human in that they can almost always be defeated. Unlike other game systems, resolution can take so many forms that nobody is immune from defeat, no matter what their level of power. Yes, if a character has "Kick Asses 10W4" you aren't going to beat him even with the whole village going up against him if you try to physically remove the character. But this is a trickster for goodness sake! Prey on his Dumb 10W flaw, and get him to go away on some wild goose-chase if you want him to leave. Or trick him into a cage and cart him away. Or...whatever.
For James Bond it's his "Weakness for Women 10W3" that's usually his downfall. The point being that no matter how rounded, everybody has somewhere that you can come at them from. Tricksters seem so easy to handle that I doubt anyone would worry about them.
Tricksters ability to kill seems to me to be less about psychopathy than sociopathy. Maybe a bit of both. But that doesn't mean that they do kill people all the time. In fact, perhaps they never kill anyone. Just because one is theoretically capable of killing somebody doesn't mean that they will. And how do you know that somebody can until they have?
Reading all of this, I'm remided of the movie "The Village" and the town idiot character from that film.
SPOILER
In that movie, the idiot kills somebody, and though it seems tragic, it
actually saves the village. Perfect example. They're not there to "thin the
herd" or something, or kill at random - everyone knows that such a person is
there as a social release mechanism (scapegoat) and, in Glorantha, because
they will be there to do the important thing when it needs to be done. No
less neccessary than sending off men to hunt, from which they may not
return.
Can a Trickster kill somebody? Sure, legends tell everybody that it's possible. But it's one of those neccessary evils that people put up with because to do otherwise would make the community worse off. And you don't know that you'll be the one he's after.
>From what I've read here, Eurmali are more than plausible. I wouldn't do
without them.
I agree with everyone that Tricksters are problematic for "party" play, however. So what I'd advocate is don't do "party" play. I could run a Trickster in any of my games, and they'd be an excellent addition to the game. In fact I think that I'll suggest this to the next person who makes a character.
In theory there's another problem with the Trickster character, but it's the same problem with the "thief" character. Namely that some players see such characters as an excuse to bug other players. No, not other characters - that should be expected. Some players use such characters to mess with other players by having the characters in question make other characters look bad, etc, in ways that the owning player doesn't want to see. Yeah, this does end up with dead tricksters.
But it's a social contract issue. That is, players playing these sorts of characters have to realize that they are not a liscense to bug other players, but just like any other character, should be used to help the other players tell their characters stories. Played co-operatively between players, a trickster could be easily be the favorite character of all the players in a group. But, like any character, played with bad intentions, characters can be abused.
Mike
Powered by hypermail