The Blog of Roon

I recently joined a free-form play-by-email RPG called Galactic Renaissance. GalRen is actually several RPGs in one, as it is set in a multi-planetary Imperium such that several planets host their own separate threads. So we’ve got an Amberesque intrigue-fest (into which I inserted my character), a rather generic fantasy, a bit of cyber-noir, and some pretty well-written sci-fi.

“Ruth is about to do something pointlessly stubborn,” I said to David as I began another GalRen post. (And she did. Having been instrumental in saving the infant Duke of Aquila from kidnapping, she refused reward on the basis of her service to the nation, because she didn’t give a flying flip about the nation—she just wasn’t going to not help a child. This is pointless stubbornness because at some point she is going to accept the proffered post in the ducal court, because that’s how she’s joining the game.)

David rolled his eyes. “Do you ever play characters who aren’t stubborn?” he asked.

“Sure I do!” was my immediate response. Then I thought about it. “Er, I think.”

I give in. They’re all stubborn, in the right circumstances. They aren’t all equally stubborn, and some of them are stubborn about better things than others, but I do have to admit that they have a strong ethical sense, every single one of them, and when their ethical buttons get pushed, they don’t give.

Which isn’t to say they know it all. Poor little Renate’s major problem is that she hasn’t got an internal anchor to protect her from the blows her life is handing her. So she is overliteral in gauging her own behavior and its effects. Even so—put a goal in front of her, or threaten the external anchors in her life (her friends, her family), and watch her stubborn streak expand to fill your vision.

Nor are they exactly bullheaded or confrontational. Lots of ways to get where they’re going, usually, and they’ll take any of them. But they are, every single one of them, $DEITY bless them all, stubborn.

This is a lefthanded answer to this week’s WISH, which asks how our work insinuates itself into our games. Someday, I know, I’m going to play a heroic librarian (if Ashcroftian power grabs don’t force me into dead-earnest heroism). Until that day, what has snuck into my characters from the way I do my work is a vital and essential stubbornness about matters ethical.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2003 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.