Reply With QuoteYeah, definitely a mix of both....but character is always more important individually for each RPer, but plot is the whole point of having the character.
Never compromise character, not even in the face of RP death
Character is much more important
Marginally character
Sitting on the fence
Marginally plot
Plot is much more important
My characters are puppets dancing on the strings of the plot. Mwahahaha!
It's nice to see a group of people with a fairly common view of balance - plot and character. In the extreme, I'll always choose character (even to the point of removal from the story) and others I have seen choose plot. Still, in order for things to remain amusing and fun to do, I sounds like most would enjoy a nice mix of both.
‘What will my death be like?’ he thought- and knew at once
with abrupt certainty, that it would be just like his life:
... the same balance of bearables.
~Amis in "Denton's Death"
Yeah, definitely a mix of both....but character is always more important individually for each RPer, but plot is the whole point of having the character.
If there was no Bloodshed in this broken world there would be no need for revolution; for Vendetta.
I'm pretty much on the fence. I think both are important although most of my writing tends to be very character driven. Frankly I'm usually shit at coming up with good non-cliche plots.
In my opinion, Character > Plot. If you can make a believable character i like, and can relate to, i'll read it. Even if it's a story about eating cereal and poptarts.
In the end, taking the importance of plot over character results in railroading: a complete loss in the relevance of the character, and the relevance of the character's actions and the roleplayers' ideas. If the character's personality (motivations, beliefs, etc.) have to switch whenever the plot demands it, the character has no real personality (none that's consistent or independent of the GM's approval). If one has no say in what happens in the RP and or how the characters act in any way, one removes all choice and, really, consequence, as well as killing potentially awesome ideas because it doesn't quite fit with a pre-planned storyline. Whoever made the story may as well just write it up on their own, as the players aren't actually in the roleplay in any meaningful way.
I've seen RPs that didn't immediately die when it was mainly railroaded, so it's technically possible to accomplish, but they defeat the main point of RPing and many of its greatest advantages. Such as interaction, if it stifles it because its inconvenient to the plot, and choice/consequence. They are the worst way to do an RP.
It's not a crime to work with or for the sake of the plot to an extent, there have been multiple times where I either tailored my character slightly in favor of an RP's basic premise and goal, and times where I made a character take an action that wasn't as likely as another or stretched their characterization for the sake of more interesting writing, interaction, etc. But utterly breaking character for the convenience of plot shows the RP isn't functioning as it should. If the GM (or anyone else) can't figure a way to believably capture a roleplayer's character in a battle alive, the player shouldn't be forced to play their character as incompetent when they're not, or willing to surrender when they're not.
So, I take plot's side over character slightly in the right circumstances, and it's all largely dependent on the situation, but as a whole, character matters over plot.
I choose never compromise character, I would rather have an RPG die than to not have an internally consistent character, that is why it is important to consider before one start whatever or not the character one is making actually fit the RPG and it's plot.
Hmmm... This thread poses
Okay. When you say "Jeopardize the plot," I pause, mateys. I pause because a roleplay is built around multiple characters. I suppose it depends on whether staying true to my character actually will negatively impact the roleplay experience of the rest of the players.
Let me put it this way: I tend to play minor characters in roleplays, and so, I'm usually free to stay true to character as much as I darned well please. So, I do; I stay true to the character, no matter the consequences they may have. It's led to premature character deaths in some games, led to my characters losing huge amounts of wealth in video game persistent worlds (where that wealth really DOES matter), led to... a lot of things. I stay true to the character so long as it doesn't hurt the roleplay.
If, however, the roleplay as a whole would suffer by my character's actions - that is, if by acting true to their beliefs, my character would make the roleplay experience less fun for everyone else -, then I don't do it. After all, the goal of the roleplay is for folks to have fun. I want to keep it fun.
~An administrator from a NWN2 Persistent WorldRoleplay is a cooperative effort. We're all working together to craft a story here and it's important people remember this even when you are in heated combat with another player.
Current roleplays I'm in (this is more a note to myself than to you, but feel free to take a peek):
Spoiler
Bad plots can ruin good characters, and good characters can save bad plots. However a good plot isn't worth a damn if the characters are all cardboard cutouts. Characters and how they relate tell the deeper story in an RP. Plots move the story along, but characters make the story what it is in the end. Even the stuff I choose to read is more character driven than plot. It's why I quit reading a lot of the more mainstream comics when each event led into another event, and we barely saw heroes out of costume.
~KL~
"Jamaican? I thought you were some kinda outer space potato man....” --Fry from Futurama
True
I feel that without characters, there really is no plot. After all, characters are the *point* of the plot- you know, how the events and environment of their situation affects them.
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