How much is too much?

I created Drakis as a composite of previous characters I had played. And I made him weak on purpose, for the sake of experiencing the world of warcraft as someone ''normal'' would, as he was freshly made alive.

I don't think there's such a thing as limitations on someone's psychee when you live in a world where you can be brough back from life, where you live horrors no living and unliving psychiatrists of 'our' world could understand.

I think for me, staying within the primary parameter I set myself when I started wow again, is the most important rule to follow and all the rest is essentially there for the conveninence of others.

So long as you have fun with it, the game remains a game.

The moment the game stops being fun, it fails it's primary function.

I try to keep my characters somewhat grounded.  In a world where what should be considered acts of legendary heroism are trite to the point of being as mundane as a grocery store visit, I make a concerted effort to keep my characters mostly away from any outlandish heroics or actual in-game events.  I think that gives me greater freedom with them in the long run.  Since the things we are required to do during the course of an average evening spent in Azeroth are so substantial (slaying gods and dragons and generally saving the world on a nightly basis), it kills me to live in that world where the epic is the everyday.  

That means that the hundreds of people all roleplaying on our server and posting stories here are all heroes.  But if everyone is a hero, then who the hell is sweeping the streets in Stormwind and taking out the trash?  But we aren't given those parts to play by the game itself.  There's no quests that involve you changing the urinal cakes in Nethergarde's john.  So while every single one of us is forced to basically play the same heroic parts, we are free to go off-script and create our own stories and plots within that framework.  In a Metropolis where everyone is technically either Superman or Lex Luthor, and the average simple folks are reduced to MacGuffins at best or bank alts at worst, the very conflicts and adventures that are supposed to make us heroic in the first place simply make us just like everyone else.  That's why, while I may give my characters some grand adventures that save the day for somebody, I try hard to keep them toned down or scaled back and definitely avoid in-game events.  That way their stories are meaningful to them (and more importantly, ME) and the other characters they roleplay with, but if nobody else on the face of Azeroth or Earth gives a shit about me or my characters, then my world is completely unaffected.

This means I can change them mostly in any way I see fit as a roleplayer or a writer, and I'm not necessarily obligated to alter them in the slightest, nor retire them if they've outlived their usefulness, become unimportant or uninteresting, or if I've RP'd them into a corner.  I'm limited only by my desire to roleplay or write, or even my desire NOT to do those things, nor do they necessarily need to "end."  I just keep playing and make it up as I go along and nobody has to care but me.

For Flamefist it will be too much when I don't want to play WoW anymore. I started him with the idea of playing the game and shaping the character to what the game gave me, and that's what I've continued to do. So, since the basis of the character is "what the game gives me," and thus I'm rationalizing what I want to do into his character. I can't remember anything I had to do that was required but so odd that I couldn't rationalize it in character somehow. Even the silly holiday stuff isn't something I can't figure, "well, this random silliness helps him unwind after killing scourge and jousting and other activities which constitute his adventuring day-job."

Thus, if what I want is to stop playing, the rationalization will probably be that it's time for Flame to retire from the adventuring business. Ooor that he's dead for good, depending on what's going on at the time. I'd consult with anybody I was involved with in RP, and come to a decision, based on what we all wanted.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm just awful to my characters. One of them has lost two sets of kids, been beaten by her mate, and generally harassed by everyone she's ever loved. I throw them through so much emotional pain that it's difficult for them to rationalize where one event ends and another starts. But one thing I don't do (anymore) is give them heroic, godlike qualities of power that actual characters in WoW tend to possess. She won't shoot at boss-level mobs because she's not one of the brave, altruistic few who go out and do the really heroic shit. She's the chick who hunts in Ashenvale and builds relationships with people.

But that's just one example. The only truly grand project I've worked with would be Kalidormi, but it ended quickly because, let's face it, if you're spending your life fighting Old Gods and Dragon Aspects, something is going to kill you. And so it did.

I only really draw the line at making my characters too perfect. I go out of my way to give them 'fatal flaws' to keep them growing and developing as individuals. Ally's would be that she continues to surround herself with people that might hurt her. Kali was too blinded by her 'duty' to realize she didn't -have- to die. Aji here is too trusting. If that happens to cause them oodles of pain, well, it happens.

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Silence is Golden.

You can probably guess my position on this:

If you can make a believable story, and enjoy playing it, then it's all good.  Now there are lots of factors in those two things, and they kind of intermingle.  There's also the fact that what you consider a believable story someone else might not.  Hey, someone gave Tavlo a bow so now she's raiding ICC.  It's believable to me because she's a diligent soldier who would learn to shoot well enough to do it if it killed her.  The only thing that really matters is that she gets a shot at Arthas and I have a great time watching her do so. 

Does it matter how far we go, as long as we're having fun?

Several times now I've made characters who step into other classes.  I've killed off a favorite character.  I've recustomized a character.  I've done so every time because I wanted to enjoy the game.  I cross my fingers and hope my RP and my storytelling is good enough to pull it off.  At the same time, I don't give a shit and enjoy counting Tavvy's somersaults as we wait to pull the next boss. =P

It is Warcraft, so yes, a hellovalot just *goes*.  There's leaky lore and all kinds of opportunities for creative fun.  If you've got a character you love, you can find a way to play them.  Even if it means killing them for a while.  Even if it means a rename or recustomization or a reroll.  What's most important?  Enjoying the game.

I will continue to rename, reroll, recustomize, etc. my characters in order to continue enjoying the game!

And part of that enjoyment comes from the freshness change brings.  It's challenging and fun to have to deal with these things.  It keeps it interesting.  I loved Elrin the warrior, as much as I knew him.  I've enjoyed Elrinn the DK.  Elrinnn becomes a worgen?  Cool beans, I'd love to read about how it feels to *actually* become a beast and have longer canines to rip his enemies apart with.  I loved being Lorith.  I loved being Neesy.  I love being Tavlo and I love being Artie.  I hope others have enjoyed them a fraction of how I have, but in the end they're my dolls that I play out stories with, lucky enough to interact with so many dolls other people play with here.  If I want a new doll or if I want to cut all the hair off one of my other dolls or whatever, that really shouldn't make much difference to anyone else, as long as we're all still having fun.  And keeping everything fun just comes down to the usual communication and consideration for your fellow RPer's.  Like, when you killed Elrin off to make him a DK, you put everything in place for the Ghost Scions ICly.  In fact, it was pretty epic for all of us.  Lorith's death was horrible, I know (I'm so sorry, still, Veri ;_;) but it also gave us all a lot to play with.  We get pretty emotional and dramatic with our dolls. That's what makes it fun.

I bet you want to hit me for talking about dolls.  WHERE'S THAT ELRIN PLUSHIE NOW, EH?

The thing is, everything that we're doing here is simply creative FUN.  It's a big sandbox. It demands nothing more than play.  Play your heart out, do what you want to do, express what you want to express.  I look forward to it.

Just so long as there's some kind of Elrin to glare at and tease. =P 

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Just call me Artie, dear.

I killed Graysen off once because I felt trapped into an RP situation that I couldn't get out of without disappointing or hurting a few people.  And you know what happened?  I disappointed or hurt a few people - or at least I feel like I did.  It was a bad call, but I guess I was just too inexperienced to realize that I could have and should have just talked to them OOC about it.  I've always been sorry about that.  I do regret it, but at the same time, it has led to more opportunities and more things, so I both regret it and am glad for it.

Other than that . . . I dunno.  I like Graysen.  I wish I could be more like him.  Even the worst things I can imagine for him (like, for example, if Lillashandra's player decided to stop playing, and to kill Lilly off instead of just sending her under the Cloak of Unimportance) would still be interesting, even if painful, to play out.

One of my guiding principles for Graysen has always been that he's a pretty normal guy - if there's one thing that is abnormal about him, it is his willpower.  Over time, he's slowly changed, slowly realized that with the things he's seen and fought, maybe he is something more than, or at least different from, the norm.  But sometimes normal is boring.  I've definitely, somewhat idly, kicked around the idea of also racechanging him to Worgen also (we should totally be Wolfbrothers or something).  But at the same time, I feel that would take something away from him.  He's found a sword that he believes is Lothar's . . . but it might not be.  Or at least it might not be the one he's famous for.  He's seen and fought incredible things, and in so doing, been torn nearly to pieces uncounted times. 

So when is too much, when should the character's active time end?  When he says so and how, even if unconsciously.  I guess that's the TL;DR.

Kind of a rambling post, sorry.  But maybe there's something in there that would make someone think.

Dum Spiro, Spero

I've done The Bad End to so many characters that I really ought to be taken out back and beaten. Mind you, that was years ago, when I first started Role Playing and didn't understand that, yes, it is perfectly okay to have a dramaless character. (LOLZ, this coming from the person playing the teenaged gossiphound.)

I've ended some of my most favorite characters with their 'big bang' many times, in much sadness. But all of them, I feel, had the best 'end' that I could give them. My hacker went to jail, but is taking on 'private contracts' in his retirement, quietly lurking until he dies. My super had the best retirement, though. He's living his dream, married to a great little lady, and will likely try to create tiny pitter-patters of tiny little feet as much as he possibly can. My tiefling redeemed himself with an honorable death, protecting his friends.

For any of my toons, here, on World of Warcraft... I've never retired any of them, mostly because they never really had much of a life to retire from. Well, there's one that I'm sure I'll never fully kill off, because he's too much of my brainchild. He's been reincarnated so many times.

I can't do things too dramatic to them, too. Daddy-issues, sure. But something as huge as the nasty R word or even a big FML that would likely cause them to snap and immediately go wreck shit is completely out of the question. It's big events like that that usually come with the added bonus of a brick wall in the character's personality and/or lifespan. I -hate- that. Putting a toon aside for a while to make room for other things is perfectly okay, putting them on some whacky ass adventure until you have the time for them to be social and all that. But wrecking their sanity with something like the previously mentioned drama has never turned out well for me. Others can do it and roll with it like they're pros at it, but I just can't.

Teal Deer later:

I'm really hoping this one will last longer than her brother did in my last RPG.

((

The only question that came to MY mind when reading "...point is, I was thinking of having Elrin bitten by a Worgen come Cata....." was "Yeah?  And how many times did he bite it back?"

Elrin will always be Elrin, after all  ;)

))

As long as you do it right, it's not jumping the shark, hehe. WoW's universe is so over-the-top and borders on breaking the 4th wall so frequently that I think you could do pretty much anything to a character and have it be legitimate. Which is to say, I'd say you really can't do too much, unless you cross a line where your RP becomes harassment or something like that. A character's course never truly runs out until you quit, unless you decide for some reason to forcibly prevent their return... and even then the potential exist for them to make a return if you feel like re-leveling them, perhaps as a different class after some sort of life-changing event.

Mind you, the original character inspiration for Turrin was a screwed-up mix of The Tick, Minuteman from Freedom Force, Obi-Wan Kenobi... and Inspector Gadget; so perhaps this is mostly me selfishly trying to defend a character who's intro film probably featured him jumping over a pool of nazi sharks with lasers on a flaming motorcycle while swinging a lightsaber. Mileage has varied somewhat in that, since he's typically far more serious of a character when dealing with civic stuff. The character has morphed considerably on something that probably looks like a sin wave on the scale of serious character to ridiculous character. I've literally RP'd everything from last stands and investigating murder mysteries as an impassive hand of justice to literally re-enacting Flintstone plots that involved bowling balls to the head (or some equivalent trauma) causing alternate personalities to appears. That said, If they had a Ghost Rider hog mount, I would never, ever use a different land mount. Ever.

Characters constantly change and evolve, even in popular mass media, so I don't really see a problem with this though. Take Aquaman, for instance. His image has been re-invented bazillions of times (most of which haven't done all that much to save his reputation, unfortunately for him...) The most recent incarnation I've seen in Batman: Brave and the Bold, is a boisterous old sea captain guy that runs around tormenting his opponents with irritatingly cliched combat one-liners and regailing his latest adventers, aptly named in the trend of "The Adventure in Which I Wear an Eyepatch and Infiltrate a Gang of Pirates!" (That one isn't a joke, by the way... he literally said that). Compare this to his prior iteration as a hooked sea-king badass type, and his hilariously anemic early incarnation as a spandex'd blond guy that has the personality of a cold ham and talks to fish. Depending on the mood of the author(s), he's changed quite a bit and gone all over the place. No one in the comic world really seems to have escaped that. Perhaps that's actually a good parallel to look at in a literary sense as well, since it's one of the few media sources I can think of in which the same characters have recurring adventures for a truly extended period of time, wheras in most literature a character's journey is much more finite. Given that a character can legitimately exist so long as WoW itself does, I'd say following the comic model of character evolution over time  is pretty appropriate, and that you really, really have to stretch to do "too much" to a given character.

Now I suppose this might get slightly tricky, as characters are also often rebooted (in the Aquaman example, for instance, I've pretty sure this was the case too). Frankly, I don't have a problem at all with people doing a total retcon if they feel like it, but it does poes a unique problem in the RP realm simply because there may be other characters that have a dependency on your character's existant backstory. So I suppose you do have to take that into account when deciding what to do with one, as a matter of common courtesy, if nothing else.

Then again, it is 3AM, so perhaps I'm just tired and rambling craziness. I feel like I had a coherent thought when writing all this up, but I also feel like I muddled it up all over the place and that there are many missing logical connections, so take from this what you will. =p

I know after Serrat "left" Neun, I've kind of allowed her to slip quietly into her work and semi-seclusion.  I think that Cata will change that and have her more active again.  I think the limit comes with the player.  When they feel a certain personality or character has run it's course, they know.  I've re-rolled Timory twice now (and she's gearing up for a 3rd after a spirit healer mishap puts her in Gilneas).  I keep trying to do something new with her because I can't give up, I love her, and I like playing a sociopath. 

Q:  How much is too much?  When does a character run its course and do you have limits to what you'll "do" to a character? 

A:  When you have said everything you want to say through the character or the character is no longer fun.  I recently confronted this very issue with my paladin, Raealle.  Looking over her story, I said to myself "Well... what else is there to say?"  After long and hard thinking my conclusion was 'Nothing.'  So I invested  $15 into the character recreation feature and made a new paladin with a fresh slate.

Q: And how do you end it?  Do they retire, die, etc?

A:  For Rae, I did nothing.  She just faded into the shadows.  Why?  Who knows, I might decide to bring her back later and make another $15 investment.  I thought about doing"wrap up" stories for my characters when I left WoW over a year ago for Warhammer.  Needless to say, I am glad I didn't.

"I aim to misbehave"

Heidel had had too much for a good while after Andrade left the game. I still haven't thought of a way to reboot his RP, even though I leveled him to 80. I might end up retiring the character and recustomizing the avatar, but I haven't quite decided to do that yet, despite having switched him back and forth from alliance side while I was leveling him so I could just send him stuff from Flamefist directly to help the process. So in his case, I don't know. Maybe it has been too much, and the character should retire along with his wife to raise kids in Silvermoon. Or maybe I'll figure out a reboot and go kick ass in the name of "I've got a wife and kids to protect!" Who knows?

I definitely take characters on a case by case basis. I've got no base assumptions about what's "too much." I would probably feel that credibility is stretched if a sudden, drastic change took place, if it was not revealed to have an appropriately drastic cause which makes sense in the light of what's gone before, but that leaves a lot of leeway. That caveat is just a nod to the way I couldn't accept Darth Vader turning good... unless it was for the sake of his estranged son who put his life at risk and trusted in him despite his lifetime of evil and what he'd become because of it, against the man who turned him to that path in the first place. It is, as Turrin said, a matter of doing it right.

Q:  How much is too much?  When does a character run its course and do you have limits to what you'll "do" to a character?

A: With regards to limits, I didn't used to think so (that I had them). As I've grown as a writer though, I've learned a little something and that is that the character can make its own decisions. Oh yes as an author I can put anything I want down on the page. I can force the character to be a puppet and force its mouth open and closed, making it do whatever I want. That will kill its reality though. I've written my best when the character was alive in my imagination and I was recording as much as creating. So to return to the concept of limits then, when the character smacks into the wall or comes to the end of their rope, it's when they as a realized personality have reached their limits, not whatever arbitrary point I've set for them.

Q: And how do you end it?  Do they retire, die, etc?

A: How to end it. Well there's no one way. I'm generally more interested in the story. The character may go on to whatever but my time with the character is what will come to an end. Vohlash comes to mind as a character who I've been with to the end of their existence. I tried to resurrect her for Lich King, but I just didn't feel her. Her story had been told. I guess that's what it comes down to; when their story is told that's where I leave the character.

I have difficultly taking seriously a character who is liable to be madeover entirely at the whims of their player.

That's not a bad point though--if every couple of weeks some character undergoes yet another massive about-face and changes their entire personality, that's much too much and seldom if ever original.

Conversely, when a character doesn't change enough or at all--when everything they do and say becomes predictable not only to the author but to the audience--that I can't help but find boring.  For older characters that have been sustained for years through RP, that can become an issue and often leads to fresh starts with alts (not a bad thing, that).  For me personally, I've had that off and on with Olaff--that ever elusive "where is this going?" question that seems to get semi-answered every so often with a change in the characters' circumstances.

There's also the idea that gets toyed with a lot to kill a character off but the problem there is that it's completely insignificant if you bring them back, or bring them back again and again and again.  Securing indefinately a character you've invested countless hours in never quite seems to work out like it should for the sake of RP, knowwhatimean?

But then again, it's been a while since I've had the opportunity to write, much less RP.  Trying to remedy that but goddamn do they keep us busy here!  Last week was hard, this week was a little harder, next week will be even harder than that, etc. etc.  I digress--to sum up, "too much" is when your character reaches the point where they get so boring that the only way to make them interesting again is to either kill them or do some whacky bizarre shit that no one sees coming way out of left field.