Players: Do your characters need to be kewl?

[Victim]

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

I must know more vets than folks here do. I know lots of people who have done extraordinary things, but they aren't strange and unusual as a result of it. But when it comes to D&D, it seems like fewer and fewer people who are a recognizably normal person (even if they might have pointy ears or hairy feet) are picking up swords or studying magic.

What you do does not change who you are, IMO. Sure, there are Vietnam vets who come back to America with catlike reflexes and a deadly growl for a voice. There are also others who come back -- having done the same stuff and been through the same things -- and are essentially Joe Average.

Most Everyman need to be prodded into adventuring. Something needs to be keeping them from having the normal life they want. There's a difference between someone having an adventure, and an "adventurer." Why jump through continous motivational hoops? It's not like most adventurers are being drafted.

And I'd make a huge distinction between being able destroy a city with by launching a missile and the same intrinisic capacity. Sure, a guy has some powerful weapon. Did he design it, build it, and does have have unrestricted access and authority over it? No. One ability is personal, the other is granted by society's infrastructure. It's the difference between a tank or helicopter crew and Iron Man.

A typical high level adventurer will have chosen to increase his abilities by killing people/monsters and taking their stuff as a lifestyle choice. In real life, that's more the provence of psycho killers. Simply choosing to be an adventurer is unusual enough.

One interesting issue is the transition of characters from one group to another. An Everyman might develop some special skills during his initial adventures, or come to embrace the action that had previously been forced upon him. A Kewl character or badass could try to retire eventually to a normal life. Unforgiven is basically about a badass who became an everyman, and who then reverts to a badass during the movie.

[hong]

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

why must what a person can do mean they have to be something unusual as what they are?

Exactly. This is why the distinction assumed in your poll is nonsensical.

[hong]

Originally Posted by Jdvn1

This is the way I took it:

Do my characters need to be cool? No.

They don't need to be, but sometimes they are. So, vote the first if some of your characters are not cool. Vote the second if none of your characters are not cool. By his definition of cool, since he defined one.

Actually, Bangwhiz never said anything about "cool". He said "kewl", which is a word with the convenient property that it can mean exactly what he wants it to mean.

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Originally Posted by hong

Actually, Bangwhiz never said anything about "cool". He said "kewl", which is a word with the convenient property that it can mean exactly what he wants it to mean.

Well, there's 6,150,000 hits for "kewl" in Google. There's a lot of agreement as to what it means.

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Originally Posted by hong

Exactly. This is why the distinction assumed in your poll is nonsensical.

Or, alternately, it's why my question as written in the post is more valuable than the small amount afforded in the poll window.

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Originally Posted by Victim

Most Everyman need to be prodded into adventuring. Something needs to be keeping them from having the normal life they want. There's a difference between someone having an adventure, and an "adventurer." Why jump through continous motivational hoops? It's not like most adventurers are being drafted.

Hmmm, that may be part of the difference between the two groups of respondents. I've played in a lot of games where the characters were drafted. And yeah, good point that different sorts of chracters would adventure all on their own.

One interesting issue is the transition of characters from one group to another. An Everyman might develop some special skills during his initial adventures, or come to embrace the action that had previously been forced upon him. A Kewl character or badass could try to retire eventually to a normal life. Unforgiven is basically about a badass who became an everyman, and who then reverts to a badass during the movie.

Good point. That movie makes a heck of a good springboard for a D&D game, IMO. Just file off the guns and the trains (or not, depending on the setting), and off you go.

[Jdvn1]

Originally Posted by hong

Actually, Bangwhiz never said anything about "cool". He said "kewl", which is a word with the convenient property that it can mean exactly what he wants it to mean.

Sorry, I couldn't bring myself to type that word.

[Aus_Snow]

A PC, in most RPGs I've come across, cannot be an 'everyman'. Even if they tried.

So, I'm with 'kewl'. Or whatever.

[Sound of Azure]

Most of my characters tend to have a very "Everyman" attitude. They might have "kewl" powers, and they may even have a higher station in life (especially at high levels) than many others in the setting, but in the end... they have hopes, dreams, and other motivations... just like everyone else. They tend to be very humble, too.
My most recent PC, whose name is my Avatar was offered Godhood (and the other PCs -except one- thought he deserved it the most) and the position of custodian of the world. He turned it down, because throughout the campaign he'd felt homesick, sick of all the strange things he lived through. He just wanted to go home, help rebuild his village, and grow vegetables with his wife.

...he did kind of regret it later, though. Especially after the PC who did become God started sending Knights in a crusade to conquer all the land! Ah well....

[Jedi_Solo]

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

I know lots of people who have done extraordinary things, but they aren't strange and unusual as a result of it. But when it comes to D&D, it seems like fewer and fewer people who are a recognizably normal person (even if they might have pointy ears or hairy feet) are picking up swords or studying magic.

Then perhaps your definition of 'kewl' is different than my definition of 'kewl'. Would you classify a rogue who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw a murder he shouldn't have seen as 'kewl' or 'everyman'? What about after he learned that he had professional bounty-hunters sent after him because the guy who commited the murder learned who the PC was? What about after the rogue learned magic and started being able to pull spells from a Fearunian Spellpool? Is he still an everyman then? In my mind, no. He's gone from being an everyman even though he started as one.

What you do does not change who you are, IMO.

I'd say it doesn't change your past or how you started out as - but it can change who you are. Luke Skywalker was (arguably) an everyman at the start of A New Hope. He was no longer an everyman at the end of Return of the Jedi. Doesn't mean he didn't start out as a farmboy but he no longer was a farmboy - or at least no longer JUST a farmboy.

Are they, in other words, Peter Parker or are they Wolverine? One of those two wears underwear with holes in it, the other does not.

Actually I'd say they both do - at least after Wolvie uses his claws. (But I do know what you're saying). And please don't tell Logan what I compared his old blue and gold spandex outfit to.

Both have fought big cosmic baddies and saved the world (and even the universe).

And in my mind neither are everymen even if they started that way. One was an everyman man on page 1 - the other was born with a genetic disposition for fast healing and wierd bone growths. Both have gone far, far beyond everyman status however.

If you are asking if my characters tend to be everymen on page 1, then while I have played both types, the vast majority are everymen on page 1; even if they moved well beyond that status by the time they actually show up in the story.

[Jack of Shadows]

I can't vote on this,

I don't make characterters that are everyman or "kewl". I make characters that are interesting. If that happens to be a reluctant farm boy who'd really rather be tending crops than hunting down the goblins that burned down his barn, great! If that happens to be the last scion of a race wiped out by the mad high priest upon who he's sworn vengance and trained as a deadly assassin to thwart, just as good!

So, to put it simply, every everyman is "kewl" to the player playing them. 'Cause if they weren't they wouldn't.

Jack

[IcyCool]

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

Does the ability to teleport automatically transform them into kewl guys who would scoff at Neo for being too boring?

By your definition of kewl, if I understand it correctly, yes.

Because he has kewl powers. That makes him kewl. Hell, a level 1 wizard is kewl by your definition.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by kewl? Could you elaborate?

[Michael Silverbane]

I think he means (and feel free to curbstomp me if I'm wrong on this) special, one of a kind, destined for greatness, chosen, a beautiful snowflake, extraordinary, unique, or otherwise better than everyone else.

That is to say, are your characters more likely to be Kalel, the last of the Kryptonians or Fred Whippleman, employee number 45652?

Later
silver

Edit: And there's a HUGE range of variety in between those two extremes. William Munney (from Inforgiven), for instance, is a real badass, sure, but he's really no more so than anyone else in the world. It just so happens that he's a mean drunk. John McClane (from Die Hard) is another example of that. He's a New York cop, who just appens to be in LA. So... He's sort of special and out of place, but he's also just a guy who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Batman is a bit more on the special side, as he's privaleged, being the heir to an immense fortune, but still not superhuman, or with any sort of special powers.

Luke Skywalker and Rand Al'Thor, on the other hand *look* like average, everyday people when we first meet them, but as it turns out, they are predestined to be bad-asses. They've been selected by fate, or destiny, or the Wheel of Time or The Force to do what needs to be done.

So... It is somewhat difficult to drop some (a lot?) of characters into one of these two categories when there is so much grey area in between...

[IcyCool]

Originally Posted by Michael Silverbane

I think he means (and feel free to curbstomp me if I'm wrong on this) special, one of a kind, destined for greatness, chosen, a beautiful snowflake, extraordinary, unique, or otherwise better than everyone else.

Well now there's the rub. He put Peter Parker up as an example of an everyman. How is a man bitten by a radioactive spider and given freakish strength, agility and preternatural combat sense not special, one of a kind, etc.?

Is it just because Peter Parker can pass as an ordinary joe? So can Logan, as long as he doesn't walk through any metal detectors. He's a normal, ordinary joe. But he's also got the incredible, unique things happening to him. So what's the difference?

Originally Posted by Michael Silverbane

That is to say, are your characters more likely to be Kalel, the last of the Kryptonians or Fred Whippleman, employee number 45652?

Does Fred moonlight as the masked avenger? Or is he just some guy, with no real ability or powers?

[The Shaman]

Originally Posted by Victim

Most Everyman need to be prodded into adventuring. Something needs to be keeping them from having the normal life they want. There's a difference between someone having an adventure, and an "adventurer."

I disagree.

Look again at what defines 'kewl' in the start of the thread...

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

And then you have the Kewl Guy. He might be the chosen of the gods (or a god), the last surviving practicioner of an amazingly potent form of magic/combat, a member of an insanely rare race that happens to be just like everyone else but better or the bearer of some awesome weapon. Nothing about these folks is regular, from their awesome skills to their wardrobe and appearance to even how they move.

'Kewl' in this context, at least as I understand it, goes beyond simply being an adventurer. If we're talking about most fantasy games, "adventurer" is an accepted profession, with its own guilds in many worlds.

The difference that I think Whizbang Dustyboots (ha! chuckled as I wrote that - never realized how funny that sounded!) is looking for is between, say, a fighter who served as a man-at-arms for a time and decides to take up adventuring to better his station in life, and a fighter who is of good alignment from a race that is normally ineffably evil, fights with an unusual combination of weapons, and is tormented by social and personal angst over his place in the cosmos. The former is an Everyman character - the latter is kewl...at least as defined here.

[Mycanid]

I usually prefer to be the "everyman" sort, but if the character image I have suggests itself to being "kewl" sure. I usually find that such characters as the latter often get boring quicker, as there is not as much to develop, though. Not always, just % wise moreso....

[amazingshafeman]

I had to go with kewl as defined here based on my last three characters. SR4 has an everyman former go-ganger troll, but the last two D&D campaigns included a jump-fu thri-kreen and a gnome geomancer that couldn't cast an illusion to save his life, was covered in leopard fur, was photosynthetic and had a 2 headed raven familiar from a spell gone awry.

[The_Gneech]

So the correct answer to this poll, then, is "No."

-The Gneech

[ThirdWizard]

Originally Posted by The Shaman

The difference that I think Whizbang Dustyboots (ha! chuckled as I wrote that - never realized how funny that sounded!) is looking for is between, say, a fighter who served as a man-at-arms for a time and decides to take up adventuring to better his station in life, and a fighter who is of good alignment from a race that is normally ineffably evil, fights with an unusual combination of weapons, and is tormented by social and personal angst over his place in the cosmos. The former is an Everyman character - the latter is kewl...at least as defined here.

The problem is the great amount of granularity between the two.

He defines "kewl" as so far out there that it leads me to believe that he considers to err on the side of Everyman even when pushing the envelope toward Kewl. His Kewl examples are all audaciously amazing. But, on the other side he also keeps bringing up things like holes in underwear, misbehaving children, and the like, indicating that Everymen are poor and/or flawed in some way and that that is an important aspect of the Everyman status.

Perhaps he's looking at a more internal conflict, though. If you can have phenominal cosmic powers capable of destroying universes and still be an Everyman, there's gotta be something else defining your status as such. Perhaps a willingness to ignore your powers and just live life as a humble normal guy? So, if you go out during the day and fight Zeus, destroying continents, but come home to wife and the kids to complain about work, you're an Everyman?

But, that conflicts with the initial setup. Drizzt wouldn't be an Everyman if he came home from slaughtering orc armies to his wife and kids and complained about work if Kewl is defined as uniqueness (the origional definition), becuase that doesn't take away from the whole angsty Good member of an Evil race thing.

Particularly this stands out:

Originally Posted by Whizbang Dustyboots

I've seen entire groups of kewl characters, where every character seems to be vying to be the star of the campaign.

Which makes me think that he considers Kewl characters as a bad thing. Indeed, the very world "kewl" is somewhat a loaded word. It's a word that l33t internet kiddies made up like pwned and w00t. A better word would be simply "Unique" as an opposite for Everyman, without the possible negative connotations.

So I'm really left back where I started, not really knowing where the line is being drawn here, or which parallel to draw the line on, even.

[Mallus]

I voted 'yes', though I don't really understand this poll either.

D&D characters, if they survive to mid/high level, become defacto superheroes. Best in the world in their given mayhem-dealing profession. As far as I can see, the default mechanical assumption the game system makes is for 'kewl'.

I like big, larger-than-life characters, playing 'shy and bookish' isn't any fun for me. I derive no pleasure from subtle roleplaying. I enjoy playing characters from relatively mundane backgrounds, but they all have uranium-enriched Hawaiin shirt loud personalities.

Like Plun Corso, the son of a minor tribal chieftain who went on to become Plundar the Airship-Pirate Barbarian, who strides into battle wearing a loincloth and a tricorne hat, with his switchblade-wielding, cigarette-smoking monkey companion, Matey. That's my defination of 'kewl', such as it is.

I'm not playing 'Accountants and Actuaries', for God's sake...

Or my M&M character, the Egyptian God of Mexican Wrestlers, Oh Mighty Joseirus. Now I try and underplay him, as the 14-year, in-over-his-head Latino boy that his is. But I can't bring syself to call him an 'Everyman'. He flies around Freedom City in a flaming chariot and hurled a 2nd-string Cthulhoid god into low-earth orbit during his first adventue.

I realize that some people find certain stereotypes, well, odious. So do I. Like the 'Everyman'...