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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6402615" data-attributes="member: 177">I'll put some thoughts, but they may not be in the order of your initial presentation...The first thing I'll challenge is the idea that the perfect, unflawed character is the "real" hero.  Ultimately, heroism isn't about your flaws, or lack thereof, but in the willingness to sacrifice and risk for sake of others.  But I note the logical inconsistency - you note that people with flaws are ordinary, and therefore real.  Truly unflawed people are not ordinary, rare to the point of nigh-unreality.  How is this unflawed person more a "real" hero than one with flaws?  Are they, by definition, more unreal?And this is where we get to an issue, the difference between a comic or dramatic presentation, and a role playing game.In the comics, or dramatic presentation, we have the author/actors and an audience, as separate entities.  One creates content for the other to consume.  This means the author can put the grey areas, emotional depth and complexity anywhere he or she likes, so long as it shows up somewhere.The roles in an RPG are quite different.  Everyone produces content for everyone else. Shoving the moral greys, and emotional or psychological complexities onto the NPCs and antagonists puts the burden for producing all that content on one participant - the GM.  But, have you noted that typically each player has one character to worry about, while the GM has... everyone else?  The GM's ability to concentrate and do a good job depicting the complexity is thus dwarfed by that of the players.  If you want a *good* job of depicting those aspects of the world, the more of it you lump on one person, the lower the quality of the presentation is apt to be.Moreover, maybe your players are different, but mine are not at the table to watch me wax rhapsodic in soliloquies by the NPCs to show their issues and suffering.  Broadly, they are there to get *their* spotlights.  As a GM, I should be taking only enough spotlight to set up the players for their turns, and no more.  Nuance, greys, and complexity take screen time to depict.  I want the players to have as much of that as possible.   Hold on a second.  Here's a problem.  "Flawed person" does not equate to "anti-hero".An anti-hero is a character that lacks specifically heroic qualities, like bravery, morality, or idealism.  But there are a whole range of flaws a person can have that do not impinge upon those - you can be moral, brave, idealistic, and a sanctimonious boor all at the same time, for example.More importantly, morality, idealism, and bravery and the other heroic traits are things demonstrated by testing - the anti-hero fails the moral tests, the hero succeeds.  Having a flaw does not mean you have failed the test - it means that you have to work harder to pass!  For the unflawed character, the perfect person, questions of their bravery, or the correctness of their choices are pretty much a done deal.  The only remaining questions are whether they are physically adept and smart enough. This character thus represents the bare minimum of work required to pass a given challenge. *shrug*  Anecdotal.  In a recent Star Wars game I played in, all the characters had significant flaws.  All young Jedi - one was a barely reformed Sith that had to be restrained from excessive violence, one was cloistered, naive and oversimplified moral questions to the point of error, another arrogant, yet another bore the psychological scars of slavery, and the last was weak in the Force and thus feared inadequacy.  But there was never a question of who were the good guys, and who were the bad guys, who you would root for in the movie of their adventures.  For all our flaws and difficulties and internal strife, we weren't the ones trying to subjugate the galaxy!Thus, I have to question whether the situation you describe is because the players in your game have created flawed characters, so much as maybe that while they want to be the main characters, they just don't want to be as heroic as you think.  Non sequitur.  Does not follow.While I am not advocating for every PC to be a tortured soul best represented by taking the game system's upper limit of flaws in emotional or psychological disadvantages, absolutely nothing in your discussion above suggests that making a character without flaws will be terribly difficult for the player.  You go on at length about how you feel it might be superior, but you show not a single instance of how it is any extra effort, or requires superior skill on the player's part to do so.  What you do say implies that it puts more work for the whole experience on the GM.</blockquote>

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