TTRPGs and Anti-Hero Fail.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This really applies to any bit of writing, but it's especially galling in this medium.

How in the name of fuck do you have anti-heroes or even out-and-out villain protagonists in your setting -- let alone as PC characters -- without the fans creepily whitewashing the bastards or having to beat people over the head with the fact that these aren't by any stretch of the imagination nice people?

[Chamomile]

You avoid playing with pretentious, self-righteous assholes who don't understand escapism.

/thread

[Lago PARANOIA]

You avoid playing with pretentious, self-righteous assholes who don't understand escapism.

Because if you personally see that Jack Bauer or Tony Soprano aren't actually supposed to be admired or emulated despite making torture and murder look really cool, everyone else who takes the accidental propaganda seriously has a personal problem. It's certainly not a problem with the writing or presentation.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Pretty much what Chamomile said if it's really a problem.

My guess would be that a lot of players (or fans of whatever character) don't want to see their characters as totally loathsome, even if they are.

And characters who have no qualms running around killing people (even those who deserve it, and their underlings) is already a pretty bad start for making a character sympathetic, so a lot of the cognitive dissonance is going to be firmly set in there unless you want to be bludgeoning the players/audience about how fucked up what they are doing really is, or having them start and end every fight with "I don't want to kill you," which gets boring fast, whereas stoic silence or tension-breaking one-liners don't.

And RPGs tend to have a lot of running around and killing people, often just to get power and treasure.

Honestly, though, I haven't seen any kind of that justification among my gaming group, so admittedly this problem isn't personal to me.

Worst I've done is give a somewhat sympathetic backstory to the only really Evil character I played (driven mad on his quest for revenge for the genocide of his tribe, although he mellowed out somewhat after he discovered a way to possibly bring them back, or at least end the suffering of their souls.)

Then again, our parties tend to lean towards evil (the Murder Hobo angle doesn't seem so bad if you can justify it for RP reasons) so it's not really that odd that we don't try to make them seem good, as it's assumed that at the very least our characters don't mind associating with murderers and torturers.

(Ironically, I'm listening to Magus' theme while I write this.)

[Chamomile]

You avoid playing with pretentious, self-righteous assholes who don't understand escapism.

Because if you personally see that Jack Bauer or Tony Soprano aren't actually supposed to be admired or emulated despite making torture and murder look really cool, everyone else who takes the accidental propaganda seriously has a personal problem. It's certainly not a problem with the writing or presentation.

See, you're being sarcastic, but that's actually completely accurate. Lago, you are not a supergenius whose intelligence is beyond the ken of mortal men. People don't think torture is cool because they like Jack Bauer. Some people like Jack Bauer because they think torture is cool, and some people just think it's cathartic to pretend torturing the bad guy actually works, but nobody is actually being brainwashed by Twenty Four, and if you weren't so busy masturbating about how you are inconceivably smarter than all the sheeple, this would have been obvious to you.

[DSMatticus]

Lago is actually a fucking soccer mom. It is inconcievable to him that you can expose people (even mature adults) to a certain type of story without them emulating or internalizing it, and that is why we have to keep bad influences away from children everyone ever. It is generally best to not pay him any attention anytime he starts talking about how such-and-such is a bad message. Let's start doing that right now, because this thread is really just totally useless.

[John Magnum]

It's not just stuff like "Torture is good, you should go torture". It's stuff like "Torture is effective at extracting accurate, actionable intelligence" and "When the stakes are Really High, even Good People have to do Terrible Things like torture foreigners". You never hear people spouting off about how sure maybe torture's bad, but if we DON'T torture then the terrorists win. Or, if you do, you conclude that every such person was fucking born with pro-torture opinions lodged in their skulls, or were indoctrinated with pro-torture opinions by whatever subset of the media you think actually is capable of changing minds.

[Chamomile]

People have their opinions influenced by friends, family members, upbringing, news organizations, talk shows, Reddit, blogs. People even have their opinions swayed by cultural trends that are prevalent across multiple works of fiction. But the fact is, Jack Thompson is not right about video games. Grand Theft Auto does not train you to murder cops, because it is a drop in an ocean of culture telling you not to do that. So when people murder cops in GTA, they understand that it is only okay because it is a fantasy, and people actually do understand the difference between fantasy and reality. And when people see Jack Bauer torturing ambiguously Muslim terrorists, some of them think it is okay because the concept of torture being effective is already present in our culture. It was not a concept single-handedly introduced or made mainstream by 24.

[Lago PARANOIA]

People don't think torture is cool because they like Jack Bauer. Some people like Jack Bauer because they think torture is cool, and some people just think it's cathartic to pretend torturing the bad guy actually works, but nobody is actually being brainwashed by Twenty Four, and if you weren't so busy masturbating about how you are inconceivably smarter than all the sheeple, this would have been obvious to you.

See, the thing is that while 24 and Brannon Braga -- or even the entirety of entertainment media -- aren't personally responsible for peoples' fascination/advocation with torture, they still adding to the culture. I mean, even USSC Justice Antonin Scalia used a hypothetical example from that show, scary as that fucking sounds, to justify pro-torture views. The writers for that show are under no obligation to clean up their views, but if they or purveyors of similar fiction care how their story is being seen or deconstructed outside of the confines of the original presentation they should really care how it's coming off.

Lago is actually a fucking soccer mom. It is inconcievable to him that you can expose people (even mature adults) to a certain type of story without them emulating or internalizing it, and that is why we have to keep bad influences away from children everyone ever. It is generally best to not pay him any attention anytime he starts talking about how such-and-such is a bad message. Let's start doing that right now, because this thread is really just totally useless.

Bolded mine.

Wow, that's such an incredible fucking strawman that I don't know what to say.

I didn't say that such works should be banned. What I said was:

How in the name of fuck do you have anti-heroes or even out-and-out villain protagonists in your setting -- let alone as PC characters -- without the fans creepily whitewashing the bastards or having to beat people over the head with the fact that these aren't by any stretch of the imagination nice people?

Do you see any advocation for censorship or coddling in there? I'm talking about from the perspective of a writer. The writer! The writer the writer the writer!

That's some grade-A fucking Psychic Robot shit there, DSMatticus. Cut that shit out, it's embarrassing.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Some people like Jack Bauer because they think torture is cool, and some people just think it's cathartic to pretend torturing the bad guy actually works, but nobody is actually being brainwashed by Twenty Four, and if you weren't so busy masturbating about how you are inconceivably smarter than all the sheeple, this would have been obvious to you.

I'm just going to leave this here.

[deaddmwalking]

How in the name of fuck do you have anti-heroes or even out-and-out villain protagonists in your setting -- let alone as PC characters -- without the fans creepily whitewashing the bastards or having to beat people over the head with the fact that these aren't by any stretch of the imagination nice people?

In a TTRPG, the PCs usually don't have fans.

If you are an artist and have created a story, you don't get a say about how the fans enjoy it. And if that means they have to pretend that Dexter's a nice guy so they can enjoy it, there's nothing you can do about it. What's more - there's nothing you need to do about it.

If you're making complex characters with more motivation than 'I kick puppies because I like kicking puppies', there are some well-meaning people that will make justifications for their actions, even if they don't think it excuses the behavior. "Little Johnny was abused as a kid, so that's why he's a sociopathic serial killer".

But if they're supposed to enjoy the anti-heroes exploits, they pretty much have to believe that there is something redeeming about him that makes him 'winning' a better option than 'losing'. Because if he's the BBEG and he's slaughtering virtuous heroes, it gets old after a while, and not very many people will enjoy that kind of story. There's a reason that in popular media, 'the good guys always win'. And good can just mean 'less bad'.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you are an artist and have created a story, you don't get a say about how the fans enjoy it.

You're right, of course. But even under the most generous viewpoint of Death of the Author even the most strawman academics aren't saying that the Old Man and the Sea is actually about Queen Elizabeth's struggle to maintain Tudor legitimacy despite having her sex as an obstacle. The writer always has the lion's share of control over how the audience at large will view their work.

I thus totally sympathize with Seuss's consternation that the Operation Rescue use Horton Hears a Who as their propaganda. I am less sympathetic (but still on his side) at Tolkein not liking how neo-nazis use the LotR trilogy as indoctrination literature. But Griffith upset that the KKK used Birth of a Nation as their signature movie? Dude, I totally believe that you didn't mean to write propaganda -- especially since you released Intolerance not that long after -- but I'm still calling Grey's Law here.

[Chamomile]

Some people like Jack Bauer because they think torture is cool, and some people just think it's cathartic to pretend torturing the bad guy actually works, but nobody is actually being brainwashed by Twenty Four, and if you weren't so busy masturbating about how you are inconceivably smarter than all the sheeple, this would have been obvious to you.

I'm just going to leave this here.

And, of course, the Protect America act was not repealed and the GOP won a landslide victory in the presidential election that almost immediately followed.

Just because something is attempted does not make it effective.

Claiming that people are too stupid to tell fantasy from reality and therefore writers should censor themselves is less malicious but just as stupid as saying that people are too stupid to tell fantasy from reality and therefore the government should censor writers. The underlying assumption, that people will see clearly evil acts perpetrated on the TV by sympathetic characters and will then decide that those things are okay to do in real life despite being condemned by practically all the rest of our culture and probably against the law, is still wrong.

[Omegonthesane]

But if they're supposed to enjoy the anti-heroes exploits, they pretty much have to believe that there is something redeeming about him that makes him 'winning' a better option than 'losing'. Because if he's the BBEG and he's slaughtering virtuous heroes, it gets old after a while, and not very many people will enjoy that kind of story. There's a reason that in popular media, 'the good guys always win'. And good can just mean 'less bad'.

Theoretically, "there is something not utterly terrible about X when compared to his main adversaries Y" need not lead to Draco In Leather Pants (warning: TVTropes link). However, I'm about as in the dark as Lago about ways to avoid that when outright villains get this sort of treatment, let alone merely dodgy antiheroes.

[hogarth]

I thought the guy who wrote the "Knot of Thorns" adventure path (a Pathfinder RPG campaign for evil characters) had some interesting comments on evil gaming.

Way of the Wicked—Book One: Knot of Thorns—Preview (free)

[Darth Rabbitt]

Random thought: Another reason that players might seem to justify their evil character's actions is simply a roleplaying thing.

Evil characters might believe what they're doing is right, or least justifiable.

Generally this is difficult in D&D, where people just usually openly declare they're Evil since there are evil gods and archfiends and other shit that will reward them for villainy, but that also depends on the setting and DM.

So to get in the character's mindset better would require coming up with reasons why the character might think what they are doing is OK.

Now, you can also just have puppy kicking motherfuckers who hold no illusions about what they do or conflicted anti-heroes who are unsure if they have done the right thing and might be motivated in part by guilt, or fear that their hands are too stained in blood to turn back now.

But too much of that might make the characters hog a lot of game time and generally that sucks for the other players.

[DSMatticus]

I didn't say that such works should be banned.

Wow, because neither did I. Your post: it's fucking nothing.

Whether you're arguing that we as a social collective should engage in enforcing through intellectual or moral disdain your particular form of taste or just flat out censor it, it's all terrible. Because your concern is based on the almost hilariously exaggerated pretentious assumption that the rest of the world isn't mature enough to handle mature themes without being horribly corrupted, and that we need to childproof fiction with big red warning signs for who the bad guys are and what exactly about everything they do is bad. But in reality, this is not actually a significant problem worth any time or any censorship (self-imposed or otherwise). Even when people like anti-heroes or villains, they aren't walking away and adopting moral stances identical to their's. The fandom around Sephiroth is huge, and nobody gets confused and thinks maybe summoning the planet-cracking meteor was a good guy idea.

P.S. Scalia? Seriously? You and I both know if 24 had never existed, Scalia's opinion would still be the same. Because he is a 76-year-old shitstain and nothing he's seen in the past forty years, let alone the past ten, has he even bothered to process, let alone let influence his decisions. Torture in general is a bad example, because while you can complain about how 24 sends an ambiguous message about torture, I can just point to dozens of conservative media outlets who flat out say "torture = awesome!" Which of those do you think has had the more pervasive influence on getting people to accept torture? How much influence do you really think 24 had, if any, or do you think maybe it's more likely that people with preformed opinions about torture were looking to 24 as the ideal embodiment of their preexisting beliefs?

[Lago PARANOIA]

The underlying assumption, that people will see clearly evil acts perpetrated on the TV by sympathetic characters and will then decide that those things are okay to do in real life despite being condemned by practically all the rest of our culture and probably against the law, is still wrong.

I hate to tell you this,
but
that's
just
simply
wrong.

Did Frederick Douglass intend to write an essay that buttressed the U.S.'s 'blame the victim' mentality towards poverty? I don't even think the most cynical person in the world could say so. Does he retain sole, or even primary responsibility for it? Hell no. But the fact remained that his Self-Made Men essay is pretty much indistinguishable from social darwinist boilerplate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Because your concern is based on the almost hilariously exaggerated pretentious assumption that the rest of the world isn't mature enough to handle mature themes without being horribly corrupted,

The fact that propaganda like the Lost Cause of the South exists and influences public policy at all even though it's extremely fanciful wish fulfillment should show that as much as you'd like to deny it it does happen.

Which of those do you think has had the more pervasive influence on getting people to accept torture? How much influence do you really think 24 had, if any, or do you think maybe it's more likely that people with preformed opinions about torture were looking to 24 as the ideal embodiment of their preexisting beliefs?

Considering humanity's history of violence? Very little. But the fact that Scalia and the Republican Party in general ripped its memes wholesale? It's very certainly not zero. That should certainly give you pause for thought.

24 does not by itself cause people to torture. What it does do, however, is sanitize and sensationalize a worldview that makes torture okay. And like all pieces of the confirmation bias puzzle, having enough of it is enough to create a culture where torture is okay. You'd better believe that it and media like it reinforces a 'torture is okay' worldview.

[deaddmwalking]

Presuming that you believe something is wrong or bad, and further presuming that other people believe that thing is right or good (even though we know they're wrong) we have a situation where you can't change their belief without engaging them. Thus, speech should be free.

A show like 24 that may seem to speak in defense of something wrong or bad should not worry about how some people will take that - it's not TRYING to shape the debate, but it may still provide a place to BEGIN the debate.

While it is possible seeing bad things will seem to serve as a justification for perpetuating those bad things, most people are not so easily influenced. And even if they were to be influenced, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Many of the things that we consider 'good and right' today, were once considered 'wrong and bad'. If people couldn't advance their position because these 'bad things' were censored, that itself would have been the greater tragedy.

[Stubbazubba]

...what does this have to do with RPGs? RPG characters are not created for public consumption. BBEGs and NPCs might be published in a sourcebook, I suppose, but remember, RPGs don't tell stories; they're a toolbox to tell your own. So what stories people will tell is almost completely beyond the ability of the writers to influence, let alone dictate. Even the most rigidly ethical campaign setting, when played at a table of discontent Confederates, will offend you. If you want to influence culture, this is not the place to start.

But to respond to your question in terms of other media;

This is a chicken and egg question; will my audience be affected by my portrayal of morally ambiguous characters, or will my morally ambiguous characters attract a morally ambiguous audience? Either way, I don't think it's worth agonizing about the impact your work will have; just focus on how the characters feel about and react to what happens, and let people interpret it as they will. Only in China does art have to serve some kind of societal purpose.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Presuming that you believe something is wrong or bad, and further presuming that other people believe that thing is right or good (even though we know they're wrong) we have a situation where you can't change their belief without engaging them. Thus, speech should be free.

I agree.

Many of the things that we consider 'good and right' today, were once considered 'wrong and bad'. If people couldn't advance their position because these 'bad things' were censored, that itself would have been the greater tragedy.

Oh, definitely, but there's a huge difference in re-examinating or advocating policy that comes across as archaic or evil and doing such in a way that sugarcoats it. I think that The Punisher is an excellent source of debate on the merits of vigilantism without -- for the most part -- glorifying or sugarcoating it. I think that Exalted: Dragonblooded is a great book even though the protagonists are both bastards and sympathetic. By contrast, I think that Boondock Saints, despite being largely similar in content and less internally repulsive than The Punisher, really fell down on the job because of its presentation.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you want to influence culture, this is not the place to start.

I strenuously disagree. Few writers or artists know ahead of time whether their work will catch fire or not and even fewer will know how they will influence the terms of debate. I especially disagree with this viewpoint when talking about Dungeons and Dragons, because the influence that it had on popular culture -- especially video games -- is immense. It's really hard to believe because the current state of TTRPGs, including this edition, is so moribund, but D&D changed the way we present and view video and traditional games drastically.

Either way, I don't think it's worth agonizing about the impact your work will have; just focus on how the characters feel about and react to what happens, and let people interpret it as they will.

It might be better to worry about it ahead of time. I bet Griffith wished more than anything a chance to go back in time and redo Birth of a Nation. Coppola flat-out said that he wishes that he didn't portray the Mafia as so cuddly -- and reflected this wish in Godfather Part II. And you know what? I bet that the creators of 24 wished that they did their presentation of torture different, too, because in later seasons it's toned down and less glorified.

[Mask_De_H]

Removing their ability to think in ways other than you do.

Seriously man, what the fuck? Every thread you've made for months now is some "bawwww how come people don't play the way I play" bullshit. You're like some lucid social justice shadzar. This thread is pointless.

[Stubbazubba]

If you want to influence culture, this is not the place to start.

I strenuously disagree. Few writers or artists know ahead of time whether their work will catch fire or not and even fewer will know how they will influence the terms of debate. I especially disagree with this viewpoint when talking about Dungeons and Dragons, because the influence that it had on popular culture -- especially video games -- is immense. It's really hard to believe because the current state of TTRPGs, including this edition, is so moribund, but D&D changed the way we present and view video and traditional games drastically.

Mechanically, absolutely. And while its true that the mechanics of the game reinforce the culture of killing uglies and take their stuff, which is morally questionable at best, that wasn't a D&D original; that's a fantasy trope that predated D&D by a long shot and will continue to exist long after it's gone. D&D reinforced it by bringing it along into the new medium it created, but it didn't introduce it: Yes, D&D changed the way we present and view games, but it did not change what happened in fantasy stories.

Either way, I don't think it's worth agonizing about the impact your work will have; just focus on how the characters feel about and react to what happens, and let people interpret it as they will.

It might be better to worry about it ahead of time. I bet Griffith wished more than anything a chance to go back in time and redo Birth of a Nation. Coppola flat-out said that he wishes that he didn't portray the Mafia as so cuddly -- and reflected this wish in Godfather Part II. And you know what? I bet that the creators of 24 wished that they did their presentation of torture different, too, because in later seasons it's toned down and less glorified.

No matter what "meta-fiction" choice you make about how you want to present X, there'll always be something wrong with it, which fringe-dwelling weirdos will point at to justify their bizarre worldviews, and you can't predict just what that will be. Sure, put some thought into it, be aware of how things might be taken, but then expect someone to take it some other way anyway.

Besides, as per the OP, you simultaneously want to not handwave away how evil characters are and also not depict them as how evil they are. You can't really do both; you either need to depict them as evil and let your readers try and relate in spite of this (likely because his evil seems rational, warranted, or at least mitigated in his mind or the prose or whatever), or you try to imply how evil they are without ever making them evil, which no one will remember and you'll be left with just another angsty, but largely heroic, character.