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09: Character Growth part 1: stagnating
One of the hardest parts of roleplaying is managing character growth. There is a lot of material to cover here, so I'm going to split this topic up into two parts.
When a character is first apped into a game, they are (barring a few game-specific instances) exactly like they are in canon. Because of that, it's pretty easy to see if someone is being IC or not! We have canon to compare it to, so we can give critique about how IC a character is. This is really only true for the first couple months at best, though. After that, you really have to have been following the development of a character to see how they have changed, because they don't quite compare to canon anymore.
The reason for this is simple: all characters grow and change as they are in a game for longer. They learn from their experiences, and they act differently based on what they have seen. When they don't change, they become stagnant.
Ideally, if a character encounters the same situation twice, they should act differently the second time. This is because they have already experienced it, so they should know what to do to get the results they want. For example, in the game I mod, we have a yearly event around Halloween, and the characters who have been around for more than a year should know what to expect by this point. However, many characters do the exact same thing each time, and they get the same results each time. Many even act like it is their first Halloween and don't know what to do! Obviously this is a problem, since the veteran characters should be experienced in this particular event by this point.
The reason characters stagnate is usually because the players are afraid of making changes. If the character isn't 100% true to canon, it's wrong, or so they are told. Indeed, our very concept of critique within RP feeds into this false notion: if a random person comes in and sees a character they are familiar with, they expect that character to be just like they are in canon. If they aren't, then they complain, saying that the character is OOC.
I'm not saying that being OOC isn't a problem. No, there are people who can take their character development too far and turn their character into something unrecognizable (This will be covered more next week). But that fear of being accused of being OOC drives players to disallow all character growth, which is not the right response either.
As a general rule, your character should change, yet remain recognizable. Any development made should be a believable development for that particular character. It's hard to set concrete rules for character development, since every character is different, but there is one rule that helps. Even with all of the changes a character goes through, they should still have their core personality stay mostly the same. Grumpy McDrywall might learn how to be friendly with a few certain people who chip through his frosty exterior, but he should still be cold and unwelcoming to most people. Likewise, the bouncy bubbly energetic team member may become jaded from a zombie apocalypse, and they might start thinking more practically, but at their core they are still that same bubbly happy character, just with better judgement. if Grumpy McDrywall and happy bubblehead stayed exactly the same, it wouldn't be very fun to play with them.
Next week I will talk about the other extreme, where some players take development too far and the character becomes unrecognizable. For this week, though, I want you to take a look back at your characters and how they developed over the course of their games. Look for parts where the development slowed to a crawl, or where no changes were made at all. Try to see how key moments in the game should have changed them, and how those changes would have affected them.
When a character is first apped into a game, they are (barring a few game-specific instances) exactly like they are in canon. Because of that, it's pretty easy to see if someone is being IC or not! We have canon to compare it to, so we can give critique about how IC a character is. This is really only true for the first couple months at best, though. After that, you really have to have been following the development of a character to see how they have changed, because they don't quite compare to canon anymore.
The reason for this is simple: all characters grow and change as they are in a game for longer. They learn from their experiences, and they act differently based on what they have seen. When they don't change, they become stagnant.
Ideally, if a character encounters the same situation twice, they should act differently the second time. This is because they have already experienced it, so they should know what to do to get the results they want. For example, in the game I mod, we have a yearly event around Halloween, and the characters who have been around for more than a year should know what to expect by this point. However, many characters do the exact same thing each time, and they get the same results each time. Many even act like it is their first Halloween and don't know what to do! Obviously this is a problem, since the veteran characters should be experienced in this particular event by this point.
The reason characters stagnate is usually because the players are afraid of making changes. If the character isn't 100% true to canon, it's wrong, or so they are told. Indeed, our very concept of critique within RP feeds into this false notion: if a random person comes in and sees a character they are familiar with, they expect that character to be just like they are in canon. If they aren't, then they complain, saying that the character is OOC.
I'm not saying that being OOC isn't a problem. No, there are people who can take their character development too far and turn their character into something unrecognizable (This will be covered more next week). But that fear of being accused of being OOC drives players to disallow all character growth, which is not the right response either.
As a general rule, your character should change, yet remain recognizable. Any development made should be a believable development for that particular character. It's hard to set concrete rules for character development, since every character is different, but there is one rule that helps. Even with all of the changes a character goes through, they should still have their core personality stay mostly the same. Grumpy McDrywall might learn how to be friendly with a few certain people who chip through his frosty exterior, but he should still be cold and unwelcoming to most people. Likewise, the bouncy bubbly energetic team member may become jaded from a zombie apocalypse, and they might start thinking more practically, but at their core they are still that same bubbly happy character, just with better judgement. if Grumpy McDrywall and happy bubblehead stayed exactly the same, it wouldn't be very fun to play with them.
Next week I will talk about the other extreme, where some players take development too far and the character becomes unrecognizable. For this week, though, I want you to take a look back at your characters and how they developed over the course of their games. Look for parts where the development slowed to a crawl, or where no changes were made at all. Try to see how key moments in the game should have changed them, and how those changes would have affected them.