Moving Characters: Mind Your Manners
Written by James
May 24, 2008
When you play board games with your family and friends, you manage your own game pieces. You count your own money. You take your own decisions based on the layout of the board. You can’t reach over and move another player’s pieces or take money from their pot – you’d get your hand slapped.
In a collaborative fiction writing environment, the theory is very similar. There are rules of conduct and etiquette involved.
You are responsible for your character and his actions. Just as with family board games, you cannot reach out and “move” another player’s character. You cannot create action or speech for anyone else’s character but your own. You cannot assume reactions. You can only manipulate your character.
Here’s an example:
Your character is angry and ranting at another character. While writing your character’s reaction, you mention that the other character’s reaction to the outburst is shock and fear.
This reaction is an assumption. The other character may be completely blasé about the whole situation. He might find the ranting humorous. It may make him sad.
The player’s character reaction to the actions of your character is not for you to decide. Inserting what you assume to be the reaction can land you in hot water with moderators.
So how do you effectively write your segment without causing offense? Very simply. Write only what is yours to control: your character’s thoughts, actions and speech.
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Good points, but I also think that it’s perfectly acceptable to add in leading questions or actions that indirectly influence how other characters react. Most people who participate in collaborative fiction or PbP/PbE role-playing tend to be very adverse to their character dying, getting injured, or otherwise experiencing negative effects. They need strong stimuli in order to get over that.
With that said, there should never come a point where one player is writing other players’ characters directly without their permission, as you said.
Ben Overmyer’s last blog post..Zen and the Art of Gaming
Character death in creative fiction, to me, is a huge no-no. This should never happen. The best games are the ones where players truly become attuned to a fictional character they create, and death isn’t the way to go.
Plus, players put a lot of themselves, their effort, their creativity and their hard work into a character. Having someone snuff out all that work is truly cruel, in my opinion.
Suicide is another no-no. Working through issues, developing a character further, and digging deeper into the character’s mind has clear benefits.
Injury? Oh yeah. Emotional trauma? Definitely. That stuff rocks. Death? No.