Re: Hang the Eurmali!

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 12:39:26 +0100 (BST)


Greg wrote:
> I find them to be useless as player characters.
Eurmal ain't the guy who loves to give a hotfoot at a wedding. It's a guy who is fated to betray and destroy his friends DESPITE HIMSELF.<

Bruce Ferrie played a trickster in our campaign for a while. While it was fun for a period I think we were all glad when Bruce decided to switch to something else. The difficulty with a trickster is that, if played right, they are disruptive. To other players, to the story the narrator is trying to tell, in the end to everything.

At times the interplay between the characters and the trickster created some great laughs, and beating the trickster became as much part of the end of an episode as gagging the bard at the end of Asterix comic. But after a while constant attempts to make even the best laid plans 'go aft awry' become tiring. The trickster inevitably becomes a focus hog, always wanting to steer events in their direction, always willing to sacrifice the other players for a good trick.

No offence to Bruce. I think this reaction is a testament to the fact that the trickster was being played right. But I wold agree with Greg and always think twice about trickster PCs now. In fact I would go further and suggest that membership of some cults is best handled as a one-off, or guest-slot for a few sessions because, when played right, they are anti-social and so will always be disruptive to 'party-dynamics'.

IMO, it is a trade-off between what you, as an individual think might be fun to play, and between what the group, as a whole has agreed they want to play. IMO anti-social characters need apply for interesting change of pace only. YMMV.  



Ian Cooper
0208-672-0717(H)07970-411892 (M)0207-337-6217 (W)

"Give the kids tools, so they can go build their own houses; not the blueprint of what the houses should be." Tori Amos



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