The Player Character vs The Self - Strangers of Tabletop

So I finally beat Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins and it may be one of my all-time favorite games? The loot system is the only thing keeping me from screaming to the heavens that every game developer should be taking notes.

Part of my mission statement with this blog is that I'd talk a lot about video games (a medium that is constantly innovating and improving) and how I'm using what I learn from them to run and design tabletop games (a medium as wide as it is arguably stagnant [*1]). Yesterday I talked about Tinder, and how it is a game that simultaneously highlights and alienates the self. Shortly prior to that I was mulling over how games like Let It Die offer a meta narrative as a means for the player to truly be a character in the story (albeit as a puppeteer of the main performers). But today we're going for the throat and talking about the Self in games, and why I feel most games don't make enough room for it. [[Which isn't necessarily bad, but it feels like something worth exploring.]]

I've played a handful of (local homebrew) tabletop games where I'm playing not as a character, but myself, interacting with the world on my terms using my morals. These experiences were not only electric personally, but deeply fascinating in getting to interact with my friends, as my friends, in a totally alien playground. While I've adored these more Calvin-Ball-esc experiences, I yearn for a tabletop game of adventure that codifies the Self as important player both narratively and mechanically, instead of deferring all power to ostensibly disconnected avatars. [If your reaction is either "what's the difference" or "this sounds like some heady bullshit" you're starting to get it!]]

Alright, alright, now before you get upset I should clarify some stuff. I love crafting intentional and emergent narratives in games. I love story games (and definitely have written stuff that takes cues from them). I adore stepping into the shoes of someone who isn't me and living life through their eyes for a bit, making decisions as them instead of through them. In fact most media actively asks this of you and it's a ball! I'm a big proponent that there is No One True Way when it comes to Tabletop Games, and this is mostly just some pondering on possibilities. But (and this is a very big but) it feels like an opportunity that I rarely see get taken advantage of (and ironically video games, a media which arguably should have more trouble doing this, seems to be doing it more often and better). But first an example:

STRANGE COMPANY

Lethal Company is a game that's gotten much (well deserved) love over the past year, and one I've greatly enjoyed! Its parallels to Oldschool Dungeon Crawling make it especially ripe for comparison, as you can appreciate in this blog post by Silver Arm Press that says it better than I ever could. However something the post only touches upon is how it leverages the human element; specifically the fact that it's a deeply immersive game while not being one where you're playing as anyone but yourself and interacting with your friends as your friends.

Sure your role is that of an employee of The Company, but past that any character development is done by you, yourself, and not a character you're playing. This is something I found to be remarkably fresh. It was a game where me and my friends could be ourselves, learning as ourselves and making honest choices as ourselves, while never for a second breaking the illusion of the game world. In fact by being ourselves, the game felt more immersive. Every antic rang truer, every death hit harder, every choice felt more personal. And yet we were totally in this world.

We were perfect Strangers to this world. No backstory, few connections, little in the way of recognition. Only given a singular burning objective (in this case make it to quota) and a fantastic tool box to play with. In this way we truly were getting to meet the world of Lethal Company on its terms. For those who want to (as a Player) let go of the narrative wheel and truly see the world from the role of one who acts upon the world as opposed to one who writes it, it's kind of perfect. The ideal conduit of Blorb.

Each facet of the world can be discovered organically as you, the Stranger, gains familiarity with it. All story become innately as emergent and immersive as your day-to-day life, except this life is in a Paradise of your GM's making. Pretty much getting isekaied straight in.

"Well," I hear you say, "Plenty of Retro'/Retro-Inspired Tabletop RPGs are already doing that! They favor player skill over character skill, and the Blorb principles themselves seem built for the kind of Player vs World, emergent game you're talking about!" Well...

STRANGEST DUNGEONS

This is probably going to sound as navel-gazy as Kojima talking about Strand-Type games, but just bear with me. In nearly every single roleplaying and tabletop game I've read you're playing a character. Well duh. But this is the important part. To me the ideal opposite of an Anti-Canon / collaboratively written game is not just a game with a firm blorbed pre-written world, but a game that is firmly Anti-Character. Not Anti-Character as in "against all characterization" (much like how "Anti-Canon" is largely about a Canon that's written as you go) but rather Anti-Character as in "prioritizes making room for the Self over the Character in the narrative of the world." And it should be doubly noted that Anti-Character certainly does not mean Anti-Role. Sounds weird and we'll get into that in a bit, but first let me discuss why I think even the most tournament minded RPG never truly hits something Anti-Character.

First (and most obviously) in most every TTRPG you're using a character sheet. A character sheet. Hah, checkmate. (That was a joke) Firstly these characters you play on these sheets are strongly implied to be people who at some point lived somewhere in the world before you the player got there and started commanding their neurons. Where there is the chaotic void of unanswered questions (oh I rolled up an half-elf fighter who now joins the party since my orc got bisected by The Device), humans are apt to myth-make to fill in the gaps (oh he probably knew the orc because they once served in the same battalion). This stuff absolutely rocks and is almost (almost) unavoidable.

It's the reason that if you're playing a game like Darkest Dungeon or Eterian Odyssey or XCOM you come up with little stories for your funny little guys and the banter they may have. [[See the "Using Your Imagination" section from EO's director diary - Thanks to Marcia for making me aware of this!]] It's one of the purest and most wonderful creative experiences you can have in a game, and I don't for a second want you to think that it's bad or that I don't enjoy it. But I do want you to know I think it's deeply Characterful and doesn't necessarily leave room for the Self. [*5] 

The recently dropped (and expertly penned) "Portray OSR Characters, You Cowards" is as good a dissection as any that these games simply aren't built to be Anti-Character. I've had the pleasure of watching Weird Writer chat with others about how Dungeons & Dragons' original Appendix N is full of titles laden with iconic, impassioned characters that the game's systems clearly try to evoke to some degree. Characters who you play as, but who you are not.

Even the most clinically minded player is fooling themselves if they don't believe their character is a character. Because here's the thing; in all these games there's no you. Your Character can be a focus. Your playing with the world through that character can be a focus. Your player skill as executed through your character can be a focus. And even if you regress to the most zero-immersion play where you're literally just solving optimization problems and puzzle boxes divorcing yourself as much as you can from the character that you accidentally wrote the moment you named it (which like it or not, is still a character), the game still isn't Anti-Character. 

You still rolled their stats, you still rolled their race, you still gave them a name. And yet there is no you to contextualize all of this, just your character. And by rejecting the characters and somehow fully turning off your imagination, there's little emergent story to be had or arguably role to be played, just pieces you're shuffling on a board in a world you're not engaging with except as a problem and it's still not Anti-Character. Because Anti-Character is not defined by the lack of characters or roles, but rather by you yourself explicitly being the one to play that role within the world of the game.[*6]

The goal is to make room to insert and contextualize YOU the Player. For as long as there are only Characters in the world that you can play, you must make room in your actions that are apart from the Self. And I don't just mean the bad faith "oh your character would never do that" or people spinning their wheels on how to act by alignment. I mean for as long as there is a name on that character sheet of yours that isn't you, that isn't just an alias, you at the table have made room for someone else who isn't you. A character. [[Which, by the way, is a deeply cool and profound act.]]

You stop being "Sandro as the Lethal Company employee" and you instead become "Sandro as Gex the Lethal Company Employee" - Inhabiting not just the role, but also the character. Your speech gets filtered and you start looking through the world via someone else's eyes instead of your own. You're not necessarily on rails, but in many ways you are on the path of writing and acting as a character, rather than pure reactive play as yourself. Again this isn't wrong or bad, and in many instances is the whole damn point and where the fun is.

But as Lethal Company proves there's also fun to be had in just being authentically you put in alien situations with your friends that you have to solve. If you've ever played an escape room or experience one of the few freeform tabletop games where you do play yourself, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's different, not bad or better, but different. And these experiences are great fun too!

But wouldn't Anti-Character be incompatible with the Dungeon Crawl? In a heroic fantasy it might be an easy self-insert, but part of the whole point of a dungeon crawler is having disposable characters, so clearly we can't do an Anti-Character game in a genre about playing the role of disposable adventurers, as we ourselves are not hyper disposable nor have enough connections in the world to ever be able to play meaningful angles in most conversations.[*2]

On the one hand we could just Lethal Company it. Perma-death abound, resurrection being that much more important and the world resetting if everyone dies or fails. Could be pretty fun honestly! Were we to play ourselves in the traditional dungeon crawl, we'd be perfect Strangers to the setting, which comes with both great potential and great risk. 

But maybe there's a way to cheat this a little bit and get the shield that is the Player Character back...

THE BUREAU : STRANGER DECLASSSIFIED 

Back in 2013 a game called The Bureau: XCOM Declassified released. Much like Stranger of Paradise, it played with and recontextualized its plot-light source material to tell a story all its own. Much like Stranger of Paradise it got mixed reviews, and generally flew under the radar. And let me tell you, much like Stranger of Paradise, I absolutely ate this game up! I'm also about to spoil the absolute shit out of its major twist and (unlike Stranger of Paradise) I honestly remember the gameplay being kind of mid and the story being a bit shaky in its execution. Honestly I'd advise either looking up a playthrough or just letting yourself get spoiled on this twist. (It's also been a while so I may get some plot beats wrong!)

To the best of my memory we open in the alt-timeline Cold War era where your character (William Carter) gets flash-banged by a spooky McGuffin briefcase before all hell breaks loose in a military base and you have to fight your way out. Cue alien invasion, 3rd person shooter gameplay, base building, dialogue options, squad tactics, etc. As we play the game we get to know Carter and his memories a little better. I'm pretty sure he suffers from minor amnesia as a result of the spooky flash-bang, so all his questions and searches are quite diegetic. Likewise we (as William) make decisions that effect the Bureau and other characters etc etc. We learn that the Alien's spooky death network is powered by extra-dimensional energy beings known as Ethereals, who also have the ability to posses / bond with living creatures, and plot twist, you've been playing as one the whole time. You're not William Carter, you're the energy that's pupetting William Carter who has forgotten that it's not William Carter. I absolutely loved this shit, it simultaneously breaks the fourth wall to bring me (the Player) in as a character, while not at all destroying the immersion of the setting.

In fact, post-reveal the game felt way more interesting. I was a Stranger and treated as such and certain characters trusted or distrusted me for it (especially Carter, for uhhh, obvious reasons). You might be able to see where this is going. We can actually contextualize the Players themselves as entities in the world without ruining immersion (and I've actually sneakily done this now and then). And in so doing contextualize any character actions not as the Character's Actions, but as the Player's actions and will as manifested through a character being pupetted.

Does this have drastic implications for your world and its lore? Hell yeah! And that's part of the fun and challenge as designers if you take this route to Anti-Charactering your game! [[Originally I gave an example I'm working on but decided to put this in the *4 footnote to make the article a bit shorter... erm... technically.]]

STRANGER OF PARADISE

OK but I want to ask again why bother doing this at all? I play plenty of tabletop games without this and have a blast as do most people. Besides, I know Anne and Clarke and Jackson are all playing characters, why does the game world have to know too? I can just as easily play an old-school dungeon crawler and just call my friends by their name instead of their characters' names. But that neither feels immersive nor does it allow those players to truly make interesting decisions as themselves, nor for the world to remember those Players as themselves. The goal of the Anti-Character game is not just to turn the world into an immersive game interface, but also to make the problems and narrative of the world that much more personal to the players.

Much like how the Miis of Miitopia add a certain je ne sais quois by you getting to care about those characters as real people who are IRL people, or like how the Miis of Miitomo offer us a window through which to reflect on ourselves and learn more about our friends,[*3] so too can playing as ourselves in tabletop games be equally enriching!

I'm enchanted by the idea of Players playing a game where they make the choices they themselves would make, always, while still maintaining a strong sense of immersion and emergent narrative. It's even beginner friendly as players don't have to worry about if they're "playing their character right." [*8] By canonically cementing them as Strangers in this Paradise, we give them the opportunity to grow, learn, love and connect not as some surrogate character who's always lived here, but as a Stranger discovering what in this world is worth fighting for.

Speaking of, I haven't actually talked about Stranger of Paradise much! This post is already long, and I don't want to spoil too much. But something that needs to be said is how many saw the game's protagonist as a kind of impatient player surrogate (it's kind of what inspired this article as I wrote most of it before playing the game's incredible 3rd act) and that felt really fresh. He was the penultimate player who skipped through dialogue and just single-mindedly wanted to get to the next boss. No memories, no bonds, no motives besides a singular goal: kill Chaos. And through his journey we get to see this Stranger become something more to the world, and and the world become something more to the Stranger. [[Minor spoiler below for the kind of hijinks that feel even more juicy in an Anti-Character set-up]]

WILD (my current main project) will not be a strongly Anti-Character game for what it's worth. Too much of its roots have to do with character building and life paths for me to fully divorce the player character, its writing and its creation from being the it thing in the world. There'll definitely be a touch of Anti-Character in the meta-currencies and narratives of you the Player making a Deal to play the game, but it's not what I'd consider a whole-heart Anti-Character game. And I think that's how I like it! Anti-Character is a bit like pepper, too much and it just overpowers the whole thing. As stated I am tinkering with a bit of a hack of it per say (that Rail thing) that embraces that taste and is firmly Anti-Character, but I'll save more on that for another time.

Hopefully this has gotten your brain churning on how your setting or system might be able to make room for not only the Player Characters, but also the Players themselves, and what new opportunity that brings! 

[[[ BONUS - Did you know I edited Jack into every picture in this post? See if you can find him! ]]]

[*1 : So I want to emphasize arguably here. I can see both sides on this one TBH, particularly as it pertains to the nebulous "Tabletop RPG". However I think it's telling that there's an argument to had at all, while video games are constantly pushing the boundaries of what their medium can do, both through improving technologies and improved ludic design! While games like This Discord Has Ghosts In It and Alice is Missing are pushing boundaries, a lot of folks might get pissy on what exactly those games qualify as. Meanwhile something like Return of the Obra Dinn could've absolutely happened on tabletop, but because it doesn't fulfill certain expectations of main character-iness, (to my awareness) nothing like it really exists in the form of a freeform tabletop experience. Maybe it's that obsession with players being a certain level of important and catered to that holds the medium back... hmmmm...]

[*2 : So actually you totally could in a variety of ways - Including doing a Soulslike thing where you keep getting reincarnated etc. ]

[*3 : Another day, another mobile game to explain! The game was essentially a Mii-afied social network, where you'd get points by answering questions and asking questions to others. It was actually a really compelling core gameplay loop that functioned to vulnerably show off your most earnest sides to others in a way that most social medias try at, but never quite achieve. Likewise it probably collected your data and knows more about you than any other app on your phone so yknow...]

[*4 : For example, in something I'm cooking up the whole idea is that you, the Players, are isekaied into a post-apocalyptic underground railway dungeon vibe thing and given a station that (potentially) lies beyond mortal reality. Here you can safely accrue resources, host merchants and are generally immortal. There's a catch though, you yourself cannot leave the confines of the station, for that you'll need a Vessel. Ones that can be randomly generated or custom grown.

These empty avatars bear no soul, merely flesh waiting to be lived in, a disposable armor to be dawned before entering the Rails. As you travel the rails you can collect Amrita, the life blood of all things, to make or better your vessels. Each Vessel is unique, with unique stats and even unique innate understandings of things like sciences and languages (you are stepping into a new brain after all, there might be info even you don't have in there). Through collections of Amrita and DNA Samples you can even forge new vessels with new languages, or unique traits like being an Ironborn automata or the ferocious Beastfolk. Maybe even resurrect dead NPCs as vessels if we're getting really dark.

Through your creation and transference between vessels you as the player, as you, become something truly transhuman that can be readily identified by those looking for it. Also there's the innate dilemma of the whole thing being a bit adjacent to eugenics, as well as what Players choose to do with the Rails as their oyster. Is this a Paradise they'll choose to exploit or attempt to uplift? And why were they brought here to begin with? It's up to the whims of your players' own moral compass. The only goal the GM gives them is that Amrita is the key to additional agency in this world. ]

[*5 : Unless you're like me and always have one character that is you, who has fun little banter with all your silly little guys.]

[*6 : Oh lordy, all I did was fancifully name some ideas for how to codify your players having self-inserts into your games didn't I? Welp...]

[*8 : Every time I hear a tabletop beginner agonize on if they're playing their character right it breaks my heart. This hobby is one that should be focused on relaxing, having fun and above all play! Anxiety over whether or not you're "playing right" should be reserved for when you actually hurt someone's feelings or you yourself aren't having fun.]