Hello Mary Sue, Goodbye Flawed RPG Characters

Thanks to Skotos.net for its article discussing the problems of perfect 'Mary Sue' characters in online MUD/MUSH environments. The author starts by explaining: "Mary Sue is what, in writing, is called an author avatar, wherein the writer creates an idealized version of him/herself and sticks the resulting character into the story." But as this is part of playing games, what's the big deal? It's argued: "The herd of people trampling over each other to be the most at something, be it beauty, wealth, or grotesqueness, is going to affect everyone else's characters. For starters, if the standard for beauty has been raised so high that pretty people are average, the average characters are now ugly. If the standard for wealth goes from a million dollars to a trillion, the millionaires are the new middle class. It messes with the game's dynamic, and that's bound to make people who are trying to create reasonable and balanced characters cranky."

Comments

Wanna know what I think?

[Brutus (moo)]

No you don't, but I'll say it anyway :) First of all, since I am not too familiar with non-graphical (and thus, non-commercial) multi-player dungeons (such as EQ, UO, and Asheron's call on the commercial side) I cannot safely say something along the lines of "but how can they even create perfect characters when there are limitations?", but what I can say is this; if there are no limitations, there should be! This may not be completely relevant but I've played Diablo II back when it was...normal, and I've seen some characters (specifically barbarians, amazons and paladins) that each was unbeatable by anything that you attack it with other than the above three, kind of like rock paper scissors, barbarians would beat amazons who would beat paladins who would beat barbarians, and so the cycle went on. When little old level 87 amazon me tried to intefere, I got as they say...my ass wooped, so I understand what this article is talking about, and sometihng has to be done. On the extreme side a solution might be to just completely erase everything in such games every few months, but that would simply annoy everyone, including mary sues. On the less extreme side, people could be appointed to watch for such perfect characters when being created in various games and to make them a bit less perfect as needed. I wonder if this will even get read.

Re:Wanna know what I think?

[Derkec]

One solution is in fact to wipe everything out. The mud I used to play did this every couple of years. There were other approaches in place as well, such as progressively slower levelling and pretty much requiring groups to work together to level. It helps, but isn't perfect. More importantly is developing a culture within the game where having the best ___ isn't the most important thing to most of the players. Encouraging people to do creative and interesting things was key. People don't want to be the best, they want to be important. In a game that isn't very interesting, be it gameplay or culturally, the only way to be important is to be super-high level, or really ugly or rich. If a game has more ways to express yourself, there will be more ways to be important. That and MUDs often have the advantage of having a smaller player base than something like EQ. It's easier to stand out among fewer people.

Re:Wanna know what I think?

[Hamshrew]

I think that's a little harsh. He saw something about Roleplaying, has some experience in a similar vein, and chipped in his opinion in a way he thought was helpful. Insightful? No, not really. But Interesting. Outside viewpoints don't exactly hurt, and it definitely wasn't off-topic.

real life

[h0mer]

I'm not seeing a problem with anything. If you make your character within the permissible rules of the game, you've done nothing wrong.

There are a lot of people better than you in a certain area in real life, MMOs are no different. Some people want to roleplay and some want to wreck shop, each group pays their $9.95 per month.

Re:real life

[SoVeryWrong]

I agree with this statement to a point, but it's not so much that people are better than you. They just have more disposable time than you do, or they're playing off a template posted on warcry for the express purpose of being all powerful. This wouldn't be a huge problem if the majority of MMORPG players were roleplayers, because each character would be put in context. That isn't the case, however, so it ends up with you ass up in a field somewhere with a 14yo kid in global chat exclaiming how he just 'pwned' a 'n00b.'

This opens up a whole different can of worms. How would you make a MMORPG signifigant for 'casual' players, yet not boring or too easy for the 'hardcore?'

Re:real life

[Reapy]

There is no answer to that question. What you are really asking is, why can't a person who playes 5 hours a week be just as good as someone who plays 40 hours a week? The answer is they wont, ever. This is a simple fact of life. If I play volleyball once a week for 5 years, I am probably going to be decent. But joe powergamer plays 5 times a week for 5 years. He's going to kick my ass at it, because he puts more time in it.

Here is the difference though, with a game like EQ, where time is almost the only factor in strength. You can limit the ability to gain power or level/skill up to such a small degree that the casual guy would hit the ceiling in a month or so. But that means it'll take the powergamer about a week.

This questoin just frustates me. It's like, I want to be as strong as the powergamer!!!111 I'm going to put in 40 hours and I want to not die to the power gamer!!! It is going to take me a month to put in 40 hours!

Ok, so the designers make a game that takes 40 hours to max out. Uber gamer puts 40 hours in one weeek and is maxed. "casual" players bitch.

You can limit the amount of time in real life hours. That would suck. "Sorry, you played too much, come back next week." Or they log in and cant make any gains at all, guess what, they'll move on to the next game.

You can have everyone come into the game max skill and power and let them configure their guys before the game starts. This is like rpg quake though, no skill or stat gains isnt what people want, and anyway, causual players would still get owned BECAUSE THEY DONT PUT THE TIME IN!

God damn people, thats how life works, you want to be social, learn to be social, you want to be good at a sport, play the god damn sport, you want to lose weight, fucking exercise, you want to be good at a game, put the time in.

Who is the what now?

[Walkiry]

I find this rant to be very close to the endless bashing of "munchkins" and "power gamers" you see in every RPG discussion (be it on the internet or somewhere else). Frankly, I don't see the point.

I don't play games to be the star in someone else's eyes, or to try and make people glare at me in disbelief due to my near-god status. When I play a game, I do so because it's fun, and the challenges/rewards it presents keep my interest on it.

This includes multiplayer games. I'm there to play my game, and possibly play it with people I get along with. The power-gamers don't bother me in the slightest, I don't do power-gaming myself, but if someone else likes then who the hell am I to say that's the wrong way to go? Fun is where you find it. My fun is playing the game my way and making my own challenges within the system, and playing along people with similar goals.

The original article strikes me as someone whinning that they want everyone to pay attention to them but they can't because someone else is better at doing that, and then goes on a long tirade about how bad these cookie-cutters are. Perhaps they should stop worrying so much about the others (be it the Mary Sues or the "faceless masses that see them shine") and pay attention to actually playing the game.

Re:Who is the what now?

[Ayaress]

You're not making the right distinction between MMORPGs and MUDs/MUSHs.

MMORPGs make you do all the work with character development - you're actions determine your experience gain and income, your reputation and "background" doesn't extend before you clicked "Continue" on the character creation screen.

That's one cup of tea.

MUDs/MUSHs tend to work more like table-top pen-and-paper RPGs. How would you like it if you were playing D&D, and you're friend insisted on being Lotar - the rich, dashing, heroic Warrior/Wizard/Fighter/Cleric/Archer/Shaman/Priest /Barbarian/Healer/Paladin/Thief, son of three or more assorted Gods and their unholy union with the Queen of someplace-or-other who seems to suddenly know the exact skills he needs suddenly every time he gets into a new situation?

It's annoying in MMORPGs, but they're mostly marketed to that kind of player, and they usually make you spend years making a functional Warrior/Wizard/Fighter/Cleric/Archer/Shaman/Priest /Barbarian/Healer/Paladin/Thief, whereas specialists who accept weaknesses (by not leveling every skill in the book) will have a functional character in a fraction of the play-time, and can then go on to master other skills as well.

In MUDs, where interaction between players and continuing storylines are the top priorities, one or two characters like this can really fsck up the game as a whole. Also, those characters who take weaknesses initially often can't diversify later, or are limited in their ability to do so. There the main reason I quit playing those games.

Some of them even give players the power to *create* characters already on the road to the aforementioned ludicrous state of being, and lets them do whatever bizzare thing the player can type (like, to continue the example used in the article, having quintadecituplets, only to have somebody else have twins without the help of a wife just to outdo you), and leave the "rules" to be enforced by GMs or even the players as a whole.

It's a sign of immaturity, of course...

[Crash Culligan]

Some people haven't thought through this "roleplaying" thing enough to realize that it's not just about them. People who try to play the absolute bestest of the bestest need to realize that what they're doing is not just aggrandizing themselves, but putting great effort into upstaging others with their wishfully wondrous accomplishments.

On the Bartle scale, I'd have to qualify someone like that either as a KS- or a SK-. They couldn't care less about the world, all they want to deal with is the people, and the preferred form of dealing-with is "oohing and ahhing."

These people need a dose of balance, and not necessarily administered orally either. There are no shortage of point-based systems (like Hero or GURPS) which will enforce power level restrictions through scarcity. They will try to build their ubercharacter, fail, and then say that this is a stupid game, of course. (Sour grapes make the best whine.) Coerce them however you can to build something that fits in with everyone else, and then remind them repeatedly that it's an ensamble game, and that everyone else has a part in it too.

Yes, I know, those aren't MU* systems. But there are places that run them. As I run one of them, I won't publish any links; I don't want to slashdot myself!

Re:Not just MUDs

[TwistedGreen]

"Sadly"? Come on. It's a game; it's supposed to be fun. What's wrong with being able to kill mighty dragons with his or her lefy pinkie finger? Sounds like a great idea to me.

Your way is one way of playing the game. There are others. And I wouldn't call the resulting conflict a 'problem;' it is simply a game design issue that needs to be addressed, in order to provide the environment needed for foster many different playing styles. Remember, every person has a different idea of what's "fun."

About role-play, not stats

[th3walrus]

I think some of you have it confused. Mary Sues aren't about using the game mechanics to build the perfect character. People skilled at tweaking out the rules to max their character are fully in the right to do so. Lame in my opinion, but in the right.

Mary Sues have standard character stats (or no character stats in games that don't use them), but role-play as if they're perfect. Every girl is a hot, catsuit wearing, sexy but independantly strong woman. Every guy is a bad ass trench coat sporting, dual pistol weilding, mysterious assassin. Blah, blah, blah. What Mary Sues don't realize is that by playing that sort of character they're wearing out the things they love most about the character. Now, whenever my characters meet the seductive temptress or the mysterious assassin I get to go "That's nice. I think there's a booth for you guys over there. Go sit with them" because they're played out.

In games that use character stats, Mary Sues are really about people saying to hell with those stats and not role-playing appropriately. They need to be reprimanded by whoever is in charge of the game. Games without stats and poor leadership are just asking for Mary Sues so I'd say they deserve what they get for not laying down the law.

I agree with the arguments of people who whine about them. Whining doesn't get you anywhere though. Good role-players will use them to their advantage. The real world has Mary Sues; kids who think they know everything, who think that they're invincible. Fantasy worlds should have them too. They're fun to proove wrong.

Google "Mary Sue Litmus Test"

[Anonymous Coward]

How irritating is it when writers on the Web tell people to Google for a set of specific terms and then don't bother to provide a link to click on?

Writers: please learn something about the medium you're using! Hyperlinks have proven to be quite useful!

Anyway... Google "Mary Sue Litmus Test"

Re:Not just MUDs

[theghost]

The problem arises in interaction between two or more different playing styles. The person who creates a balanced, moderate character isn't likely to ruin the fun of everyone else, but the Mary-Sue that comes in and slays all the dragons with a wave of their pinky has just ended that story for all the other players.

If a game was designed to be free-form and one of the players abuses that freedom then it's not the game's fault - it's not a design issue. A game that doesn't cater to all playing styles isn't flawed, it's just not meant for all players.

Mary-Sues are players who are in the wrong game, but the open nature of the games they are in only makes that fact obvious to the other players, not to the Mary-Sue.