RESPECT

This section of the website is for me to sound off, ostensibly about Live and  table top role-playing, and the many bugbears (owlbears?) that infest it, but possibly devolving into a general soap box 'AND ANOTHER THING' Caps lock bashing session. I make no apologies, it's not like anyone is going to read it anyway....

...and no, I'm not putting a feedback section. Like I want anyone arguing with  me... On with the ranting...

R.E.S.P.E.C.T (and other unfamiliar sensations with dice in your hand).

...So I've recently been involved in an occasional game in which I played a gunslinger.  A professional killer, a cold eyed, deadly and dangerous man with exceedingly flexible morals. So far, so unremarkable, I guess you're saying. Its the kind of character that turns up a lot in the hands of male role-players (and hell, some female ones as well....probably using a character picture of either Angelina Jolie or that French one from Resident Evil...). The ultimate bad-ass, captain all the points go in guns, combat and looking mean,  the mix of Leon, Lone-wolf and le..Riddick. A by-product of too many action movies and a gun fetish. We've all seen it before, and watched as the GM took them apart for the hubris of trying to be intimidating.

 In my defense, I don't normally play this kind of character, simply because i prefer to play nice guys. Nice guys who can pwn you in a fight, true, but not normally the hardcore combat nuts.  I like the sound of my own voice waaayyy to much to be all laconic and moody in the corner...besides, everyone knows no-one talks to the lone assassin in black, and i hate to break it to you guys, but it's NOT because they're all intimidated.

To be fair, the guy wasn't purely a walking gun, but it could easily have gone that way. And, like all  potential walking guns, no doubt the ref had a million ways to take me down. Ref's have all been there, the guy who's character always shoots first, kills most of your NPC's before you've even rolled initiative, shoots your major bad guy in the face halfway through his monologue (in some cases causing him to gain sudden magical powers so he could dodge the bullet - first thing my players learnt - DO NOT INTERRUPT THE COOL BAD GUY!!!!). The guy is a nightmare, and there are dozens of roleplaying books and articles giving a ref ways of getting a handle on characters like this. It normally involves taking away their guns, crippling them or something 'social' which penalizes them for not being a rounded character. Then, when they're halfway through proving how cool they are by one-shotting a dozen bad guys with their eyes closed, you drop the bomb shell and presto, embarrassment as the bad-ass  becomes just an ass and looks like a clown, humble pie all round, everyone goes home chuckling.

In honesty, I'd do the same, if the guy is being a dick-piston and wrecking the place up just for the hell of it. Again, I wasn't but was fully  prepared to take my inevitable lumps for being the kind of character that pisses refs off because they are actually GOOD at clearing up large numbers of bad guys and looking cool doing it.

Then something amazing happened. One of the NPC's recognized me by reputation.  A couple of guards looked nervous as I walked in to a room. Other merc's and killers started to watch me and treated me as a priority target. The major NPC criminal types talked to me like a worthwhile person, someone they wanted to stay on the right side of....I....I was COOL!! (ok, not me, the character, but that's not the point). I didn't need to be a total cock and kill everything in sight to prove how dangerous the character was  - people already knew. it was, to be frank, a revelation.

It didn't give me any unfair advantages. Whilst people were a little more hesitant to fight, they'd still have a go if I pushed, so I was still in danger. But I could talk the talk without the fear of being humiliated by the background and system 'proving a point' . The same was happening to the other characters - relative experts in their own fields. instead of being treated like mere trifles (or some other pudding) , we got respect for being damn good. Perhaps not the best, but we weren't to be taken lightly. No one dismissed us, except the really stupid bad guys, and we enjoyed proving them wrong. When things went south because of bad roles, we still failed, but we didn't face palm fail. The shot went wide, the punch didn't connect, the vehicle didn't quite make the turn, but we didn't screw up and have the ref make the characters look bad, things just didn't go the way we had wanted.

it was a cracking set of games, our characters being treated like the professionals they were, able to pull off cool stuff without fear of being slapped down, and without slapping each other down - because we were all getting the respect our characters were due, we weren't busy trying to pull the limelight off each other when it came our turn to shine. And the game was better for it. We took risks and did cool shit, because the ref wasn't going to make us look stupid for trying our cinematic stuff, and so heroic cinematic stuff we tried.

So refs, show your characters a little respect. I'm not saying treat them with kid gloves, or let them get away with being ass-hats just because. But treating the characters as being actual heroes, rather than calling them out on being sadly mistaken wannabe's, makes a whole lot of difference.

Moose Out....