Players: Do your characters need to be kewl?

[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]

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]

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?

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]

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...

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]

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:

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'...