Inactivity?
(via The 20′ By 20′ Room)
Robin Laws talks in his livejournal about ‘inactive’ players. Not players who fall asleep during games, which is a whole other irritation, but players whose backgrounds are so subtle and ‘deep’ and understated that you can’t draw them out into expressing their characters at all.
I’ve been there as a player, and been frustrated with it as a GM. My take is this: If you can’t come up with something for your character to say in a given situation, you have a two-dimensional character.
You may have a deep, profound backstory that informs your every action, but if you can’t think of a way for your character to interact with the clerk at the 7-11 while buying a pack of gum, your character lacks the complexity of the average high school kid.
Look, not everything can be about your mysterious past. Not every interaction can involve your hatred of elves. Not every conversation must inevitably turn to your obsessive weapon fetish. It’s great to have those things, and when they come into play, it’s great to make something of them. But characters are just people, for the most part, doing what people do. Don’t try so hard to make sure that your fellow players and the GM are aware of, and impressed with, your background and roleplaying ability. Use it when it’s relevant, and fall back on some more broad characteristics when it’s not. Otherwise, in looking for that perfect moment to express your character’s Big Idea, you’ll spend most of your time waiting and watching the game pass you by.
Additionally, this isn’t arthouse theater, folks. If your character idea is so subtle that you can’t actually convey the in-character reaction adequately in the context of a bunch of people sitting around a table with some dice and some potato chips, reconsider your idea. The best characters are the ones that have some obvious ways to interact with the world while simultaneously demonstrating who they are.
Two examples:
A character I enjoyed was my Shadowrun mage, who practiced vodun, and was a follower of Baron Samedi. He was easy, fun, his reactions were obvious to my fellow players, and no-one had any questions about his motivations. I consider him an ideal character; I had some general fallback in the form of his religion and his sensualist attitude towards life (yes, I will make a pass a the NPC while plummeting from the top of a skyscraper). I also had some strong specific reactions defined for him, ready in case they came up. The GM could use the specifics, or rely on my ability to generally react to any situation.
A character I hated was the mage I played in the distant past of my involvement with the IFGS. In an already kind of tacky live-combat game, an understated character was not a good idea. When you’re in a group of people who are having an argument about the relative merits of their various elven homelands, playing a character who’s insular and introspective is a recipe for lots of sitting quietly alone. IFGS is a far, far end of the spectrum of storytelling vs. action, and only the flamboyant were ever going to get any notice, but the principle is the same: I was being so subtle and understated that no-one noticed, and then I’d rant to friends about how they didn’t bother digging down to find the burning passions and hatreds below the surface. To which the only proper answer is: ‘Why the hell should they? Why is that a problem for the other players to solve, rather than a problem for you to solve?’
Now, GMs certainly have to seize responsibility for making characters relevant. Nobody wants to play spectators in a GM’s exciting world. Assuming the GM has a basic level of competence, however, and is actively working to involve the players, the rest is in their hands. PCs need to be built with two questions in mind: ‘How do I make sure others learn about the things that really motivate me?’ and ‘How do I deal with ordinary, everyday reality in an interesting way?’ Once you can answer those two questions, you’ll be fine.