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Old 04-29-2008, 09:12 AM   #108
Disillusionist
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 83
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Re: How many muds have permadeath?

I admit the comment that each character is a canvas, a work of art, struck me as a bit overstated, although I do get the gist of the idea. I could easily point to the series of art pieces I've been doing for the last month as an example. Some pieces, you really get into, and some, you do simply to feed the family (or the artistic compulsion), and I'm not egotistical enough to present each and every one of them as a masterpiece, especially when I know the one I'm doing now absolutely has to be finished at some point.
In that regard, perma-death is kind of like the high school art teacher that yanks the brush out of your hand and barks, "Time's up!"

While I can't completely agree with the second sentence, the first is a simple matter of human nature. Genuine depth and complexity usually only comes over time, in the vast majority of cases. It would take a powerfully persuasive person to convince me that a huge amount of emotional investment is spent on each and every character that gets rolled for a perma. Far more credible is that the emotional investment is to the world itself, the stream of characters, the larger canvas, likening the series much more to the Sistine chapel. I've no doubt at all that Michelangelo invested some time and affection into each vignette or element of the fresco, but he moved on, and one might even argue that he spent perhaps a little less of his creative currency, since the entire piece was derivative of a pre-published work.

I'll admit, decades ago, that was very true of me, although the character generation process was much more time-consuming, and the dealer of death was a DM that also happened to be a friend who had to stick around after the game (or needed a ride home from me), and was far less likely to inflict a meaningless death on one of my characters. Since then, I've refined my detachment skills, because the last thing I would want to be again is that guy who goes to work or to his family all depressed or angry over something that happened in a game. By 'refinement' now, I mean that I no more bring my RP to work than I would talk about my job in an RPG, so perhaps a companion term would be 'separation', but there is also the element of detachment. As an actor on a stage, I can empathize with my character, but unless I'm doing improv at Second City, that character's fate is scripted, and no John Wilkes Booth (death) is going to "Sic Semper Tyrannis!" all over my craft.
I'm not obtuse to the notion that such surprises and turns of fate can make a roleplaying event more dramatic, intense or otherwise precious. I would be hard pressed to believe that over time, repeating that same process didn't form some callouses on even the most emotionally invested players' empathic synapses. People become jaded to the commonplace.

To belabor the point, neither feature set delineates superior roleplayers into camps of 'good RPER's and 'inferior RPers', and no credible person is saying that. Some people paint frescoes, and some paint portraits. Arguing that one skillset or feature set is better than the other is rather like arguing that the Sistine Chapel ceiling is better than the Mona Lisa. Inevitably, what the viewer of such artworks brings to the table is just as important as what the artist put on the canvas, and criticizing or belittling that synergy is an exercise in elitism. Attempting to make someone feel inferior while they're staring at (or in this case, painting) a Mona Lisa, simply because one has painted (or viewed) the Sistine Chapel might explain the real-life rivalry between Leonardo and Michelangelo, but it does nothing for 'proving the case of why one is better than the other'.
I thank those who haven't stooped to it.
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