Author: Shard (---.hsacorp.net)
Date: 10-07-2001 23:08
Over my years of gaming I have noticed a marked tendency both among those I DMed for and those I played alongside as a gamer to create characters with screwed-up pasts the like of which ordinary people rarely experience. I have always been curious, what drives players to create characters whose backgrounds are full of terrible experiences?
Aside from the increased dramam, is the tendency to create tragic pasts a commentary on role-playing or gamers in general?
For ex. One of my first characters was an orphaned sorceress who had run away from an arranged marriage and joined up with an wandering elven paladin. Her background woes were mild compared to my Shadowrun character however:
My Shadowrun character was kidnapped as a child from his parents and trained to be an assassin. His idealism was shattered by the murder of his best friend by the mentor who had raised him. Worst of all, by a cruel machination of fate, he was selected as part of a shadowrunning team sent on a mission which resulted in the death of his cryogenically frozen parents at his own hand. This guy had so much angst you wouldn't believe. He enventually became involved in a drawn out angsty romance with a teammate.
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