Triste-chan
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- Posted: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:44:01 +0000
Please try to read the whole post, guys. I'll try to keep it entertaining.
I'm sure some of you have played Dynasty Warriors at some point. In case you haven't, it's a game set in ancient China and the wars between three kingdoms (Wu, Wei, and Shu) to conquer all of the land, restore the glory of the Han, what the ******** ever.
So in the game, you choose one of many characters, and they stick you on the battlefield and ask you to kill as many peons and generals as you can. Around the end of a level I usually end up killing anywhere from 300 to 600 characters. Depending on the level, you'll end up with around five to 20 generals, 20 being really rare and only in levels with those weak-a** generals all over the place. And those levels where the generals keep coming back like that ******** Nanman level with Meng Huo. I was playing that last night in Chaos with Jiang Wei who is barely maxed and the armor troops ******** raped me. It was awful.
Anyway. So 300-600 peons, 5-20 generals. Some of you may be thinking, Gee Triste, I don't think that sort of thing happens in real life. Despite what my brother would tell you ("Lu Bu is based off a real guy who killed thousands of people in battle!" "Uh..." wink it is probably a little unlikely that one guy with a sword will kill 600 people and five generals in one battle in real life.
But whatever. Dynasty Warriors is a game, and it's a really, raelly awesome game. But then I started thinking about it, and I realized how many fantasy authors fall into that same trap. You know, their character will slaughter enemy peons like there's no tomorrow, cut through them like they're cheese.
And then I realized that they make their characters such insane killing machines because they're unable to think of any other way to get them to have an impact on the world. They want their charcter to be important. They see what Tolkein did with Frodo and Aragorn and the Fellowship where he made a few people heroes like the world had never seen before. And they're going about it all wrong.
So here we have a rant, in the way limyaael does them, on how to avoid overpowering your characters, and how to make characters important without remaking Lu Bu.*
How to Avoid Overpowering Characters
1. Make a median, and don't stray too far from it. The idea of keeping your character from being overpowered is not necessarily to make that character realistic in terms of power. This is fantasy, after all. People can have magic on their sides, or other supernatural forces, and they might not be human. If it doesn't follow the same patterns as it does in the real world, however, it becomes very hard for us to believe.
Think for a moment about the hypothetical Average Soldier. He is average height and weight. He has an average amount of muscle mass for a soldier and can lift an average amount of weight for a soldier. He has an average amount of skill with a sword.
Now think about the hypothetical Really, Really Good Soldier. He is large and tall. He is muscular. He is fast. He is very skilled with a sword.
Now, ask yourself a couple of questions.
1. How many AS will RRGS be able to kill at once?
2. How much more of a beating will RRGS be able to take than AS?
I'm not an expert on this, so I might be wrong on details. But I'm not that far off. In a fight, one good fighter versus two average fighters will be hard on the good fighter. Three fighters versus one good fighter will be very hard, and the good fighter will almost certainly takes some hits. Once you get to four or five fighters, you start getting into borderline impossible territory. The chances that one very good fighter will be able to take out ten average fighters all attacking him at once is almost astronomical, and I'm talking about a fist fight here, where the fists have to wear the person down. In a sword fight, each hit does significantly more damaged. If the good fighter is going to get hit, it's probably going to cause some serious damage.
A lot of people figure, well, this is fantasy, so my character will be stronger than the average soldier is on earth. And maybe he will be. But he shouldn't be that much stronger than the average soldier on his planet, or the pattern breaks and the reader thinks, well ******** this. He's overpowered.
Think of it as a proportion. If you make the hypothetical RRGSD stronger, you have to also adjust the strength of the AS for it to make sense.
2. There doesn't have to be just one median. This is just a side note on the last point. Your character can be significantly more powerful that the average joe. In this case, though, you merely need to create another median.
So basically, you would take the average fighter/awesome fighter model and make it more specific, which would make a number of models. You could have the average male fighter versus the awesome male fighter, and the average female fighter versus the awesome female fighter. The average female is going to be physically weaker than the average man, and thus, the awesome female is almost certainly going to be weaker than the awesome man. Don't b***h at me - this is proven. The best male athletes do things better than the best female athletes.
In this case, you just move the median for your character. So maybe your character is in a group that is far above peons, but don't let him or her go about without being threatened by others who are at his level.
How to Make Your Character Important Without Making Him a Killing Maching.
1. Add a bit of randomness. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which sparked a conflict that lead Austria to declare war against Serbia, which started WWI, which lead to the Treaty of Versailles, which wrecked Germany, which made the people desperate enough to elect Adolph Hitler their leader, which lead to the wholesale slaughter of 12 million people and WWII.
All because of Gavrilo Princip.
Follow the ripples of your character's actions. See where they lead. The consequences of a person's actions are not always the ones you would expect.
2. Give him a brain. This is fairly obvious. If your character can't just swing his sword wildly and kill everyone, he'd better have a good instinct at the very least.
This involves having an actual battle strategy, of course. But it also is about knowing when it's better to sneak past the guards then to run up and fight them. It's also about knowing that sometimes the fortress you're trying to break into is just too big, just too much for you. It's about having a wall that you simply cannot climb, and knowing that you can't climb it. People see to have this strange idea that this is cowardice, though. rolleyes
3. Give him ideas. Ideas are the most powerful thing in our world. People die for them and kill for them. They have destroyed nations. They have created empires.
Visionaries are some of the most dangerous and powerful people on the planet. Take advantage of this.
They don't just have to be philosophical ideas either. What about people who have scientific ideas? What about a person who has a revolutionary new medicine? A revolutionary sterilization technique that makes for better surgery and medical care? What about a person with ideas about sanitation, a person who realizes that plagues can be slowed with things like sewage systems and not leaving s**t lying in the street? What about a person working on a new, more powerful kind of bow, or a better technique for making armor or steel? What about the person who invents guns?
The people who invented the atom bomb would probably get their asses kicked by a big guy with a sword, but nobody will remember him anyway.
4. Give them power, or put them behind people with power. I'm talking political power here. Sure, maybe you don't want you make your character the king or the lord. But you can put him at the king's side, if you want. People often think of advisors as evil. Advisors tend to be villains who tell their kings all the wrong things. But it doesn't have to be so.
This can also work in combination with the third point. A person with ideas can be much more effective if he is also a person in power, or if he has the ear of a person in power.
The thing about this point is that rebellious teens aren't going to do well with it. Anti-establishment types won't fit here. You have to be a bit of a politician even if you aren't, and again, people tend to think of this as a bad thing. You don't have to, people.
Anyway. I'm getting rather sick of writing at this point, and sick of thinking as well. If you disagree with anything or have any additional ideas, feel free to add them.
This rant stuff is harder than it looks. sweatdrop
* Do NOT pursue Lu Bu.
I'm sure some of you have played Dynasty Warriors at some point. In case you haven't, it's a game set in ancient China and the wars between three kingdoms (Wu, Wei, and Shu) to conquer all of the land, restore the glory of the Han, what the ******** ever.
So in the game, you choose one of many characters, and they stick you on the battlefield and ask you to kill as many peons and generals as you can. Around the end of a level I usually end up killing anywhere from 300 to 600 characters. Depending on the level, you'll end up with around five to 20 generals, 20 being really rare and only in levels with those weak-a** generals all over the place. And those levels where the generals keep coming back like that ******** Nanman level with Meng Huo. I was playing that last night in Chaos with Jiang Wei who is barely maxed and the armor troops ******** raped me. It was awful.
Anyway. So 300-600 peons, 5-20 generals. Some of you may be thinking, Gee Triste, I don't think that sort of thing happens in real life. Despite what my brother would tell you ("Lu Bu is based off a real guy who killed thousands of people in battle!" "Uh..." wink it is probably a little unlikely that one guy with a sword will kill 600 people and five generals in one battle in real life.
But whatever. Dynasty Warriors is a game, and it's a really, raelly awesome game. But then I started thinking about it, and I realized how many fantasy authors fall into that same trap. You know, their character will slaughter enemy peons like there's no tomorrow, cut through them like they're cheese.
And then I realized that they make their characters such insane killing machines because they're unable to think of any other way to get them to have an impact on the world. They want their charcter to be important. They see what Tolkein did with Frodo and Aragorn and the Fellowship where he made a few people heroes like the world had never seen before. And they're going about it all wrong.
So here we have a rant, in the way limyaael does them, on how to avoid overpowering your characters, and how to make characters important without remaking Lu Bu.*
How to Avoid Overpowering Characters
1. Make a median, and don't stray too far from it. The idea of keeping your character from being overpowered is not necessarily to make that character realistic in terms of power. This is fantasy, after all. People can have magic on their sides, or other supernatural forces, and they might not be human. If it doesn't follow the same patterns as it does in the real world, however, it becomes very hard for us to believe.
Think for a moment about the hypothetical Average Soldier. He is average height and weight. He has an average amount of muscle mass for a soldier and can lift an average amount of weight for a soldier. He has an average amount of skill with a sword.
Now think about the hypothetical Really, Really Good Soldier. He is large and tall. He is muscular. He is fast. He is very skilled with a sword.
Now, ask yourself a couple of questions.
1. How many AS will RRGS be able to kill at once?
2. How much more of a beating will RRGS be able to take than AS?
I'm not an expert on this, so I might be wrong on details. But I'm not that far off. In a fight, one good fighter versus two average fighters will be hard on the good fighter. Three fighters versus one good fighter will be very hard, and the good fighter will almost certainly takes some hits. Once you get to four or five fighters, you start getting into borderline impossible territory. The chances that one very good fighter will be able to take out ten average fighters all attacking him at once is almost astronomical, and I'm talking about a fist fight here, where the fists have to wear the person down. In a sword fight, each hit does significantly more damaged. If the good fighter is going to get hit, it's probably going to cause some serious damage.
A lot of people figure, well, this is fantasy, so my character will be stronger than the average soldier is on earth. And maybe he will be. But he shouldn't be that much stronger than the average soldier on his planet, or the pattern breaks and the reader thinks, well ******** this. He's overpowered.
Think of it as a proportion. If you make the hypothetical RRGSD stronger, you have to also adjust the strength of the AS for it to make sense.
2. There doesn't have to be just one median. This is just a side note on the last point. Your character can be significantly more powerful that the average joe. In this case, though, you merely need to create another median.
So basically, you would take the average fighter/awesome fighter model and make it more specific, which would make a number of models. You could have the average male fighter versus the awesome male fighter, and the average female fighter versus the awesome female fighter. The average female is going to be physically weaker than the average man, and thus, the awesome female is almost certainly going to be weaker than the awesome man. Don't b***h at me - this is proven. The best male athletes do things better than the best female athletes.
In this case, you just move the median for your character. So maybe your character is in a group that is far above peons, but don't let him or her go about without being threatened by others who are at his level.
How to Make Your Character Important Without Making Him a Killing Maching.
1. Add a bit of randomness. Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which sparked a conflict that lead Austria to declare war against Serbia, which started WWI, which lead to the Treaty of Versailles, which wrecked Germany, which made the people desperate enough to elect Adolph Hitler their leader, which lead to the wholesale slaughter of 12 million people and WWII.
All because of Gavrilo Princip.
Follow the ripples of your character's actions. See where they lead. The consequences of a person's actions are not always the ones you would expect.
2. Give him a brain. This is fairly obvious. If your character can't just swing his sword wildly and kill everyone, he'd better have a good instinct at the very least.
This involves having an actual battle strategy, of course. But it also is about knowing when it's better to sneak past the guards then to run up and fight them. It's also about knowing that sometimes the fortress you're trying to break into is just too big, just too much for you. It's about having a wall that you simply cannot climb, and knowing that you can't climb it. People see to have this strange idea that this is cowardice, though. rolleyes
3. Give him ideas. Ideas are the most powerful thing in our world. People die for them and kill for them. They have destroyed nations. They have created empires.
Visionaries are some of the most dangerous and powerful people on the planet. Take advantage of this.
They don't just have to be philosophical ideas either. What about people who have scientific ideas? What about a person who has a revolutionary new medicine? A revolutionary sterilization technique that makes for better surgery and medical care? What about a person with ideas about sanitation, a person who realizes that plagues can be slowed with things like sewage systems and not leaving s**t lying in the street? What about a person working on a new, more powerful kind of bow, or a better technique for making armor or steel? What about the person who invents guns?
The people who invented the atom bomb would probably get their asses kicked by a big guy with a sword, but nobody will remember him anyway.
4. Give them power, or put them behind people with power. I'm talking political power here. Sure, maybe you don't want you make your character the king or the lord. But you can put him at the king's side, if you want. People often think of advisors as evil. Advisors tend to be villains who tell their kings all the wrong things. But it doesn't have to be so.
This can also work in combination with the third point. A person with ideas can be much more effective if he is also a person in power, or if he has the ear of a person in power.
The thing about this point is that rebellious teens aren't going to do well with it. Anti-establishment types won't fit here. You have to be a bit of a politician even if you aren't, and again, people tend to think of this as a bad thing. You don't have to, people.
Anyway. I'm getting rather sick of writing at this point, and sick of thinking as well. If you disagree with anything or have any additional ideas, feel free to add them.
This rant stuff is harder than it looks. sweatdrop
* Do NOT pursue Lu Bu.
