In which MetalJim plums the hidden depths of the role-playing mind…

Consider this article an outgrowth of Smite’s post from Monday.  In his article, Smite was imagining some scenarios for gritty, memorable, role-playing, even if that went against the grain of the “power curve” that D&D players expect from their characters.  His prime example was of a sorcerer who loses an arm, and has to make do for a couple of levels without his normal complement of spell casting. 

Now, I can imagine running a gothic dark fantasy type campaign in which a sorcerer has to sacrifice his arm as part of a ritual to close a demonic gate.  However, I would not then encourage the player to dump his character sheet into the waste bin.  Instead, I would start off the next game by giving the player a choice – the party can journey to the city of the gnomes, where the sorcerer can try to solicit gnomish tinkers to build him a mechanical arm.  The other choice is to go the the swamp and make a deal with an evil necromancer for a “cadaver” arm.  Both arms have plenty of role-playing possibilities.  Both arms have their possible advantages and drawbacks.  In either case, the person playing the sorcerer gets to go back to playing the character that he has been developing, though now the character has been shaped by the events of the campaign into something unique, something that the player did not anticipate at the start of the campaign.  Out of the sacrifice, the player gets to make new and interesting choices, and can still be something of a badass.  That’s what a fun RPG should be.

No one wants to play a useless “schlep”.  Given a choice, 95% or role-players will choose the “badass” over the under-powered, comic character.  Notice that no one has ever written an RPG around TV sitcoms like Sex in the City or Seinfeld.  Those kinds of situations don’t fit into our expectations of “heroic” role-playing.

So, why do we enjoy RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons?  Is it because we like to exercise our imaginations?  Sure.  Do we like to take part in an interactive and compelling story?  Sure.  Do we enjoy the challenge of beating a “difficult” dungeon adventure?  Yeah, that’s part of it, too.  Maybe we just like to hang out with our friends on a Friday night, and this seems like a good way to pass the time.  These are the kinds of things that gamers like to tell themselves as to the reasons WHY we role-play.  People are slower to admit that a lot of it has to do with a little something called the ego trip.

Do you remember a sci-fi movie called Total Recall? In the film, Ah-nold plays a bored construction worker who goes to a high-tech virtual vacation clinic so that he can get himself implanted with some exciting memories.  Something apparently goes wrong with the memory implant, leading to a whole slew of adventures.  Or does it?  Actually, the package that Ah-nold’s character signs up for is called the “Ego Trip Vacation to Mars.”  It’s possible that he will wake up seconds after the credits roll, back in the original shop, having just received the exact ego trip vacation that he ordered.  The James Bond movies are another fine example of what a masculine ego trip fantasy is all about.  Bond is confident, unflappable, smooth with the ladies, and a major badass.  He gets all the cool toys to play with, he’s good at poker, and he has a license to kill.

Now, not everyone gets off on the exact same ego trip.  We all have different parts of the “fantasy” that we invest a little more of ourselves into.  In the interest of making this a scientific study, I will try to break down various aspects of the ego trip.  Just because you spot yourself somewhere in this discussion doesn’t make you a dweeb or a loser.  In fact, it’s perfectly normal that we want to imagine ourselves as somehow a little more effective or powerful than we have a chance to be in real life.  Of course, there’s always that line where we invest a little TOO much of ourselves into these fantasies, and that might suggest some slightly more disturbing real life issues. 

• The Competency Power Trip – Simple, and not surprising.  We want to imagine ourselves as having powers of action and effectiveness that are greater than what we can achieve on a regular basis in our real lives.  This is part of why a high-level character is somehow more “fun” than a low-level character – the high-level character has better skills, better spells, better feats, and better gear.
• The Security Trip – It is part of the human condition to know something of fear - fear of failure, fear of death.  A character who laughs in the face of death allows us to come to terms with our own fears of the unknown.
• The Freedom Trip – We like characters who are free to go where they want and make their own rules.  Nobody wants to role-play a forty hour work week.  Non-linear adventures are better than linear adventures, precisely because of the freedom that goes with not having to follow a set script.
• The Popularity Trip – For those people who are more interested in their character’s contacts and connections than in the actual “bad-assness” of the character himself.  Because, um, we’re not as popular in real life as we would like to be.
• The Manipulation Trip – Here, the satisfaction comes from outmaneuvering and outsmarting an enemy.  This is the player who enjoys talking to the bad guy’s henchman and getting that henchman to turn against his master.
• The Evil Trip – It’s not always fun to follow the rules that we know we must follow in order to exist in civilized society.  Sometimes it’s fun to imagine that you have the freedom to engage in various levels of criminality.  Looking closer, we see that this is interconnected with ideas about freedom and about facing our fears, above.
• The Will-to-Power Trip – This is a kind of vampiric fantasy, the sense that we make ourselves powerful by destroying something else.  It’s part of the glee that comes from killing a bunch of bad guys and “stealing” their life force as experience points.  It’s a subconscious thing, from deep down in the id somewhere.
• The Competitive Power Trip – This an aspect of the will towards “bad-assness”.  Here, the desire is to have a character who is simply “better” than anyone else in the party.  If you’ve ever said, “My character could kick your character’s butt”, well, you might be guilty of this one.
• The “Alternative Lifestyle” Trip – You know that slightly overweight guy who always plays a six foot tall blonde lesbian chick, and makes a point of describing his character in terms of her breast size?  Sometimes, the whole point is to invest yourself in a character who is something that you are not.  Sometimes this is just for fun, and other times it represents a deeper psychological desire.

Have you ever seen a white dude, twenty-something, with a beer belly, wearing a tee-shirt that professes his “ninja” skills?  At first glance, of course, the whole thing is absurd.  This guy can’t possibly have any REAL martial arts skills, you say to yourself, as if a real ninja would ever even want to advertise the fact.  So, what makes ninjas so darn cool, anyway?  It’s because the “ninja” archetype encompasses so many of the ego trips that I outlined above.  The ninja is a badass.  He is highly skilled, and a keeper of hidden knowledge.  He is “free” to disappear into the night with his flash bombs and his wall-climbing skills.  He adheres to a different code of morality, one that allows him to kill his appointed enemies.  The ninja is smart, and he laughs in the face of death.  Really, there isn’t much more that you could want from an “ego trip” archetype.  That archetype has, of course, evolved through movies, and literature, and fantasy into something much more elaborate than anything that any “real” ninjas ever managed to achieve. 

So, what changes once we come to terms with the concepts that I am outlining here?  A little self-consciousness can be a dangerous thing.  There’s a risk that we might suddenly want to label the whole RPG enterprise as somehow immature and stop ourselves from playing.  On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of an escape.  That’s precisely the reason why we play these games. 

For the GM, it helps to understand what really fuels your players and keeps them coming back.  Yes, it’s a little troublesome when there’s that one guy who always insists on playing an evil PC, or that one guy who’s more interested in flirting with bar maids than actually heading off to the dungeon.  Still, with a little coaxing, the GM can motivate just about any player to become involved in the story, so long as the possibility is there for the right kind of reward.  In some cases, it’s nothing more complicated than telling the players that there’s this dungeon, see, full of monsters that need killing.  Other times, the dungeon is simply a means to an end, such as giving a rogue a chance to prove that he belongs in the thieves’ guild.

Imagine, then, an adventure in which a party of D&D characters is approached by a really hot chick in tight, black, form-fitting leather armor.  She’s obviously a rogue, and might not exactly be lawful good.  She explains that she’s a spy working for the king, and that she needs some accomplices to help her to infiltrate an enemy city.  There’s a lot of role-playing to be done here, and a lot of different rewards to be had.  Oh, sure, the GIRL in your gaming group might roll her eyes and look disinterested, but, the guys now have an interesting and powerful female NPC to compete over.  The players who thrive on popularity and influence will see a chance to make important contacts.  The players who take satisfaction in over-coming challenges will welcome an interesting mission.  Dangle some cash in front of the players who are motivated by greed.  Before long, the whole party is on board, working towards the goal of navigating the story that the GM sets forth.  Good role-playing ensues.  Hopefully, at the end of the day, we will, collectively, remember the story more than whichever subconscious desires we needed to scratch that day.

Comments are welcome.  Feel free to add to my list of suppressed subconscious desires, or to admit to your own particular vice.