Author: Ian Sokoliwski (---.mts.net)
Date: 01-18-2005 16:03
As I've been playing with different methods of having players create their PC's, I've even used the rather odd method of having them run through the entire vengeance-storyline in their prelude - effectively playing the entire plot through before the game has even begun :)
It is a different way of looking at the use of vengeance as a tool/story in RPG's, and probably has more in common with certain comic book characters rather than RPG's or other fiction.
For example, the character of the Punisher. To recap (for the 3 people in the world who don't know this), his family was gunned down by mobsters, so he hunts them down and kills them all. For most types of fiction, the story would have ended there, but that is generally where Punisher stories start, and the rest of the story is how he continues his hunt against all forms of crime, equipped with the 'tools' and motivation learned and earned from that earlier storyline.
The current Mr Terrific (from the current JSA series) is similar - a world-class scientist and Olympic athlete hunts down those who killed his wife - now, he fights crime (again equipped with the skills and experience gained from that first storyline).
The Vengeance storyline itself is a fantastic one for RPG's, but this is just a way of looking a bit beyond it (because, for any vengeance tale to really have any point, there has to be a time when the tale is concluded. Quite often, however, the players will still want to play in that game, even after that initial motivation is resolved, and this is one way of interpreting how to do that).
Sure, quite often at the conclusion of the 'traditional' vengeance plot, it is discovered that the people that the hero was fighting against were themselves only tools and agents of someone 'higher up'. Thus, even though he wasn't there and didn't kill his fiancee, Erik Draven (the Crow) has to kill Top Dollar because T-Birds gang all worked for him and were under his orders. A simple example of how the vengeance storyline can continue almost forever (because, really, everything could happen because of the actions of another person, who took certain actions because of the actions of still another person, who took certain actions because...you get the idea :) ).
Great article, by the way :)
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