Players: Do your characters need to be kewl?

[Aust Diamondew]

I don't think my characters are every man people.
Nor are they demigods, chosen ones or the last of their race.

Most of my characters tend to see themselves as having a guiding star.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

The Kewlest!

I don't play RPGs to pretend I'm a swineherd.

-Samir

 

[hong]

Maybe. I have two low level wizards in my Midwood campaign. One of them is a bookkeeper for the town's bailiff, the other is the not-right-in-the-head son of the local apothecary. Both have access to (a few) kewl powrz, but for the most part, they're just ordinary folks in a very ordinary town. Now, they have a pretty big destiny before them, but I doubt the bookkeeper especially will ever be anything other than the annoying weasel that he was even before he could cast his first spell.

Noone who can cast teleport is ordinary.

 

[WayneLigon]

Is it just my personal experience, or is there a trend towards kewlness and away from the Everyman? If this is a trend, what's behind it?

I'd say it was personal experience as far as fantasy games go; the more modern the game gets, the more likely the PC is going to be 'just this guy'. To most of the players I've known, the Everyman existed to hold the torch and maybe catch some arrows. I've known a few to be 'just this guy', but only seldom.

 

[Terwox]

I think I tend to create Everyman characters when I'm playing.

 

[Numion]

Well, give me Boba Fett before Han Solo or Darth Maul before Kenobi

But my D&D characters are more of the everyman kind - as much as clerics can be, anyway.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Noone who can cast teleport is ordinary.

How about someone who knows how to launch a missile? Can an ordinary man be part of the military and have the capability to destroy a city?

Can they have reflexes not at all like a cat's, have a voice that's perfectly ordinary and that doesn't cause a room to stop talking when they say a single word and have eyes that totally fail to frighten others when their gaze is turned upon a person?

And if we can have ordinary people who can destroy a city in the real world, why must what a person can do mean they have to be something unusual as what they are?

Are there not fat wizards with bad breath, no chins and a set of really poorly behaved children? Does the ability to teleport automatically transform them into kewl guys who would scoff at Neo for being too boring?

 

[ThirdWizard]

Are there not fat wizards with bad breath, no chins and a set of really poorly behaved children? Does the ability to teleport automatically transform them into kewl guys who would scoff at Neo for being too boring?

Eh? So Everyman has to have ugly flaws? What's with the bad breath and poorly behaved children and all that? What definition are we running off here? I'm going with the definition "ordinary person." So, yeah, an adventurer by their very nature is not an Everyman. Most people in a campaign aren't going to be fighting dragons, ridding the world of demons, all the while becoming rich in the process.

I was assuming we were just dealing with starting characters myself. So, when you create your 1st level character, is he an Everyman coming from humble beginnings, or is he a guy with an uncommon backstory. I was kinda assuming that the Everyman status is lost somewhere along the way during the campaign. You can pretend to be just a normal Joe, but that doesn't mean you are.

And, you don't have to scoff at Neo to be a non-Everyman. You're going way too far with it that way. Power doesn't come into it. My Rogue/Paladin Spiker Harmonium worshipper of Shamash of the Babylonian Pantheon from Acheron who started with a cursed artifact isn't an Everyman, but he's actually mechanically fairly weak.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was kinda assuming that the Everyman status is lost somewhere along the way during the campaign. You can pretend to be just a normal Joe, but that doesn't mean you are.

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.

The question isn't "do you make characters who can do interesting stuff" -- that's sort of assumed -- it's whether or not, independent of that stuff, they're more of an Everyman or more kewl than that. 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. Both have fought big cosmic baddies and saved the world (and even the universe).

 

[Jdvn1]

While I'm normally okay with polls requiring one extreme or the other, this one really needs an "It depends" option.

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.