My PJ Lifestyle article on useless RPG characters.

Found here. Short version: note I said useless character, not useless player.  Sometimes a RPG player brings a character to a game that’s ill-suited for it and it’s not the player’s fault (it’s very well may be your fault for not communicating the scope of your campaign). I offer some thoughts on how to finesse that.

8 thoughts on “My PJ Lifestyle article on useless RPG characters.”

  1. I would like to humbly suggest an idea for an article. If you once loved RPGs, and played them all the time, then you went to USMC basic training, and discovered afterward that you couldn’t take it seriously anymore, and every game you tried to run turned into a colossal joke, what would you do?

    (That is what happened to me. I haven’t played in almost 20 years.)

    2. I haven’t played in much longer than that (not pencil and paper) but it still sits there in my hear6t as part of who I am.
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      The best way I have heard it described is as a “collaborative story” and if you look at any game module you can say it is an outline for the story.
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      If you are the one that is Dungeon/Game Master I would advise not to get too taken up with rules – suspend them when needed (do not say that) – in order to keep the story rolling onward.
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      Example: Skyrim. Okay, I want the game to be more than “How to Pick Locks!” which I would yell when my character was in the early part of the game.
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      If a live pencil-and-paper game just give the character enough grief and move on.
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      People can disagree with me, but I want a balance between tough and the within easy reach.
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      And just reminding “it is a story, a collaborative story” is the best way of doing that.

      1. Never played it, but I saw the advertisements in Dragon back in the day.
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        I went from D&D to Europa pretty quick and liked it, though some of those games needed a month-and-a-half and the basement to get through them all.

      2. Second the suggestion of Paranoia.
        The time exposed to the Big Green Weenie is good training for the game.

  2. I’m just saying that if you are being the one to run the campaign you have to balance things so you have a place where *your friends* want to go on an evening they could really use for something else.
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    No, I am NOT kidding.

  3. Compared to the rest of the Avengers, the Wasp is a useless character.
    She’s also the heart and soul of the team.
    There’s more to a character than mechanics.
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    My experience with worthless characters runs more along the lines of the face character who won’t talk to anybody, or the sneaky character who lives by his wits (but is terrified of being alone, and has no initiative).
    Mechanically, the characters were sound. They just weren’t played the way they were drawn up.

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