The Character and Story Tropes Thread

[michaelpaciocco]

Alright, so here's a new idea.

It occurs to me that while some of us do complain about overused/terrible tropes in fiction through our various blogs/LJs/what have you, we all each have venues for ideas on characters and how to subvert those tropes. Kirk has his writing at the Parodyverse. I have my RPG superhero games. Jens has his writing. Let's make this the thread where we compare notes, give some positive feedback, and see how else we can contribute to making each other better.

I'll start with my game, the GUARD. It's an international superteam that works with the UN (that's how they get international authorization) without being entirely under their thumb. I've worked on a couple versions of this group, but I'll talk primarily about the current incarnation.

I'll start with the team leader - the Chinese Supersoldier Red Dragon*. One thing that bothers me is the default assumption that any major global superteam will by default have a blue eyed white guy as the leader. Well, that's...nice, and while it's hard not to do because American Superhero comics are writen by Americans and because American Superhero comics have their oldest legacy characters, it's something that I wanted to play with.

Yahn Chen** has a few cliche elements from him (son of a poor fishing family) with a convoluted backstory. He's how I imagine Steve Rogers might be if he grew up in Communist China - he's still the inherently good man, the leader and inspirer, but his politics are different. And despite the players being initially leary, Yahn worked hard to EARN their respect and friendship. Because he's the first man in the trenches, the man who stands up for what he knows is right, the guy who puts himself in front of shots meant to kill others. Despite political disagreements, he's their leader, their exemplar, and their friend.

Of course, it really came to a head when the players went behind his back to save him from a blackmail scheme that the Taiwanese government was plotting against him. As the players themselves pointed out, in any other game, they would be on the side of the pro-democracy guys, but that after so many Adventures, they wouldn't go against their friend, who is an NPC.

More to come....


*Yes, I know it's a cliche, and I know about the Red Dragon character from Zenith, thank you - this was before I read that story. On the other hand, I don't care.

**Yes, I realize Yahn is not actually a Chinese name. It still stuck and I can't imagine calling him anything else.

[jensaltmann]

Aug 12, 2011 21:03:44 GMT -8 michaelpaciocco said:

Jens has his writing.

Had. The new job reduces me to one half hour of free time a day, so even if I still had the inclination...

Aug 12, 2011 21:03:44 GMT -8 michaelpaciocco said:

It's an international superteam that works with the UN (that's how they get international authorization) without being entirely under their thumb. I've worked on a couple versions of this group, but I'll talk primarily about the current incarnation.

I'll start with the team leader - the Chinese Supersoldier Red Dragon*. One thing that bothers me is the default assumption that any major global superteam will by default have a blue eyed white guy as the leader. Well, that's...nice, and while it's hard not to do because American Superhero comics are writen by Americans and because American Superhero comics have their oldest legacy characters, it's something that I wanted to play with.

That reminds me of the SMaRT Force concept I pitched around in the late 1980s. I also had an international superteam working for the UN, simply because that gave me the chance to play in international waters. And while I did have the American as the team leader (by default - I tried to sell it in the US markets, so...), I had a long-range plan to reflect on actual politics in the series.

As in, the UN Security Council. You know what I mean: the biggest dogs in the playground, almost each of whom has veto power (meaning that by saying "screw you," they can permanently block every decision -- which is what usually happens. I can't imagine the UNSC would approve a Chinese leader for an international UN Task Force. Not on a permanent basis. In SMaRT Force, once of the ways around that was setting up multiple teams (focusing on one single one) with different mixes of nationalities, so while my team (I forget if it was Team Delta or Gamma) had an American as the leader, another one had a Russian, a third one a Chinese ... but the leaders were always from UNSC member states.

If your GUARD is just one team, you could reflect the UNSC squabbles by introducing a rotating leadership, which is what would likely happen in the real world. And of course have the international team reflect the squabbles of their home countries. In SMaRT Force, for example, the team leader was an African-American -- and another member was a white South African. Remember, this was in the 1980s, when Apartheid was still going strong.

[Anders]

Yeah, you'd have rotating leaders or compromise candidates from smaller countries.

Another aspect is which supers a nation would send to a group like this. A smaller nation might send their most powerful hero to gain publicity, while a bigger one probably wouldn't want their A-listers under UN command. That's assuming the governments would have any say in the matter, of course - it could be run on a volunteer basis, like many other UN missions.

[michaelpaciocco]

Ah, and so a discussion begins...excellent .

First, I think you both underestimate how bureaucratic and deeply, DEEPLY dysfunctional the UN is. I remember reading "Shake Hands with the Devil", a biography about the Canadian commander of the UN mission in Rwanda, and I came away the fact that the UN is pretty easily paralyzed by stupidity.

The important thing to consider is that while the GUARD works with the UN, they aren't necessarily under UNSC command, so they don't have to abide by their rules. It's mostly a marriage of convienence; the UN gets free publicity for a team of heroes and a cut of their merchandising profits, and the GUARD gets the international authorization they need.

Also, in my world history, this isn't the first GUARD team - just the latest. The first team (actually called the First Freedom Battalion) was an Invaders-style group from WWII that operated until HUAC, when the team (with the exception of its most prominent American government member) joined up with the UN. That team operated from the 60s until 1990 when the team was disbanded after most of the membership was slaughtered by their archenemy. This modern team started up about 3-4 years ago.

This actually gets me a little cover for why the UNSC does not quite take a heavy handed approach. First is that they don't really care and expect the team to get themselves killed, particularly because they are underfunded (as I often say "We save the world on a community college budget!") and take steps to undermine them. The other factor is, as you mention, that many of the UNSC member nations have their own, more covert or nationalistic heroes for their own needs.

The membership is a combination of volunteers that get security checks from their home nations, and a few "national heroes" who are volunteered by their governments. More on this with future entries.

[jensaltmann]

Aug 13, 2011 6:17:35 GMT -8 michaelpaciocco said:

First, I think you both underestimate how bureaucratic and deeply, DEEPLY dysfunctional the UN is. I remember reading "Shake Hands with the Devil", a biography about the Canadian commander of the UN mission in Rwanda, and I came away the fact that the UN is pretty easily paralyzed by stupidity.

Not really, no. My thought behind the "rotating commanders" was based on how the UNSC members always paralyze each other into nonaction, on every single issue. So if one nation provided the commander for what I understood to be an elite superteam, the other SC member states would want to get that leader removed the moment it turned out that he was effective, or the assignment looked to be prestigious. The former to make the team look bad, the second to secure the prestige for themselves. And to make sure the team follows the agenda of the nation providing the team leader. Because they would surely assume that the leader would act in the best interests of his nation, instead of the world's. Because that's how they would do it.

I don't think I underestimate the stupidity of the UN, but I also don't think I overestimate it.

[michaelpaciocco]

Most of the other permenant SC members have their own national superteams (US, UK and France), so they'd rather use their own native teams instead of a UN one to avoid this same hassle.

And again, there's a difference between UN-affiliated and under UN command.