Story or characters?

[Joker]

Hi, my name is Joker and I'm an Enworlaholic.
I was wondering what people put first in their campaigns: story or characters. I thought of this as I was finding differences in American and European movies. Generally speaking American movies focus more on the story whereas European movies put the story in the background and focus more on the characters. Generally speaking, of course. It does not apply to all European and American movies.
So I was wondering if this trend was to be seen in RPG's aswel.

Click away and tell me why you voted what you voted for so this thread lives longer than two hours .

Tata.

 

[Joker]

Come to think of it I should have put two more options in there:

6.) I'm European and I try to find a balance between both story and characters.

7.) I'm American and I try to find a balance between both story and characters.


Oh well, no-body's perfect. (How much you wanna bet someone is gonna come here and say they are perfect. Those sick megalomaniac Rpg'ers .)

 

[Chronosome]

I'll go with seven. It's all about the balance.

 

[Umbran]

I think it's a false dichotomy. The whole point of having characters is to tell a story with them. The point of story is to explore character. Orobouros.

 

[Mark]

"Joker, you Western lovin' bastard. What about the other five continents?"

I'm Antartican and I p-p-p-pay the heating bill f-f-f-first...

Yup, get the mods to add the additional choices and I'll wait to vote. I may even move to Europe!

 

[Knightfall]

Don't forget Canada. We aren't simply north-dwelling Americans, even though we're on the same continent. (Of course, there is Mexico as well.)

Sometimes I think people forget Canada is totally separate country from the US. *sniff*

KF72

p.s. Story first, BTW.

 

[Goodsport]

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Definitely #7.


-G

 

[Mark]

Don't forget Canada. We aren't simply north-dwelling Americans, even though we're on the same continent. (Of course, there is Mexico as well.)

Sometimes I think people forget Canada is totally separate country from the US. *sniff*

KF72

p.s. Story first, BTW.

I think the focus of the thread is primarily on visual media (and perhaps literary) influences, though, so it might be better to base it on the languages spoken than on where one lives. Even when something is translated it can be perceived quite differently since idiomatic expressions have a way of gaining or losing some of their native oomph.

 

[Joker]

I thought Canada was the 51th and Mexico the 52nd state. Shows how much I know .

Note to self: Stop sniffing insane amounts of glue.

 

[fba827]

I have to say that this question is difficult to answer because I believe, as previously stated by others, that there is a balance here.

There is a story and the characters will affect the story. At the same time, the story affects the characters (mechanically they are going up in level because they are affecting things! mentally because the players grow (presumably) from each experience).

However, for the sake of answering the question, I just asked myself this quick test question (from a DM standpoint):

When starting a campaign, do you have a plot/story already in mind? Or do you wait to find out what characters and background everyone has and develop the story that way?


As a collary to the above, if you're always (mostly) using premade adventures (downloaded or purchased, etc.) then it's all about the story, not the characters.