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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jackelope King" data-source="post: 4125047" data-attributes="member: 31454">Not quite, but I might have been unclear. I was describing a point of view another poster (Philotomy Jurament) was actually good enough to explain to me some time ago.A character-as-an-avatar viewpoint means that your character is "your guy", just like the thimble might be "your guy" in Monopoly. If something bad happens to the thimble in a game of Monopoly, it's really a bad thing happening to you. You don't say, "Aw, the thimble went to jail!" You'd instead say, "Aw, I went to jail!" While you might have less concern about the avatar itself (since it doesn't exist much beyond being a vehicle to take you into the adventure), bad things happening to your avatar are tantamount to you "losing". Sure, you might be a little less concerned about it if it'll only take you a few minutes to roll up a new character (as is true in some games where it's six ability scores in order, hit points, game on), you still tend to be unhappy at "losing" when bad things happen to your avatar.A character-as-a-part-of-a-narrative view means that you view the character as further separated from you. Your character isn't just an avatar: he or she is a fictional character with unique traits, personality, and a whole life. And while there is more invested in these sorts of characters, that investment distinguishes between bad things happening to the character and bad things happening to the player. For example, if your favorite character in the original Star Wars was Luke Skywalker, you might not be happy when he gets his hand cut off or when Vader tells Luke that he's his father, but you're excited by the conflict and the way that the events unfold to help Luke as a character develop and travel along the hero's journey. Same with these sorts of characters: I wasn't happy when my poor character got the call from the BBEG to go all Vader on my character, but at the same time, it opened a lot of new doors for the character and explored my character's personality and nature more, which is why I wound up enjoying it so much.</blockquote>

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