Character cliches

Does anyone have problems with cliched characters.

The worst one I had was when one of the PCs wanted to play a JAG officer who was also a hotshot pilot - arrgh!!!!

Had a player who wanted a Bond-style Starfleet Intel officer, but fortunately it would've taken him many, many adventures to earn enough skills to be that good...

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"Spatial anomalies, energy beings, telepathic echoes. You know, sometimes I really miss the Dominion War. At least then all we had to worry about was where the next polaron beam was coming from...": Capt.Hunter, USS Tempest

Only one in Trek (and there I am not GM'ing).

Bayoran Star Fleet (now: Ground Forces) Officer that played the stereotipical Bajoran: Religious conservative with a near-pathological hatred for Cardassians and no interests beyond Bajor liberated (TNG era)

But my NSC tend to be a bit stereotypes:

Aggessiv Andorians (First to volunteer for the boarding party)

Viking-style Klingons (First to volunteer for a party or a brawl)

Michael

If your players want to play cliche characters, my advice is to let them. Depending on how cliche they want to be, you as Narrator should respond in kind, and then some.

One important factor in playing "cliche" characters, though, is that "serious" role-playing is then pretty much out of the question. You got a TOS-era hotshot cowboy captain who always saves the universe and gets the girl? Then by all means, ham it up! Give experience for overacting and negative renown for their bad hairpiece. Put them in situations where they have to say and do certain stereotypical things just because they're the stereotypical thing to do. In short, if they want cliche, you take it over the top.

Again, I want to emphasize that this should be played exclusively for laughs or a lighter-hearted game. In fact, in such a game I would say that half the rules are completely optional. If you have players who are sticklers for the rules and who take their Trek too seriously (i.e. who know every episode by heart and call you on every minor discrepancy) then forget about it.

I had one of those in the group that I GM ... half-Klingon character being captured by pirats who had few Jem'Haddar in their ranks.

The character in question decided to pick the fight with Jem'Haddars and paid for it by getting killed in unarmed combat.

Some say it was a bad roll and the player knew it was fair and square, so now they try to remain quiet and not provoke mad enemy when they are unsure of their supperiority ...


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Commander A.Polanski

>The worst one I had was when one of the PCs wanted to play a JAG officer who was also a hotshot pilot - arrgh!!!!


What a nice idea! Cliches aren't too once a player gives his own twist to it. I can give you examples of when this doesn't happen my first sessions of ad&d were among a bunch of evil, pyromaniac thief-mages. And I was a Chaotic Good fighter!

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Robbert Raets, winner of the annual 2001 StyroFoam pig Latin/babbling
Crossover Festival Tournament, designer of the Parsley-class captain's yacht, director of And-you-thought-Q-was-all-powerful Law Firms United and Keeper of the Crazy Unicorn (hey, if you're a virgin, at least use it!)

'The Farce is my ally, and a powerful ally it is....'
'I sense much beer in you. Beer is the path to the Dim side.'

The 'Cliched Character' isn't alwas bad...but the badly played one are.
Example:
A PC in my game wanted to play "the first Klingon Captian in Starfleet" (that's cliche #1: 'the first'...anything really http://www.trekrpg.net/Board/ubb/smile.gif)
Now, secondly he wanted the character to be "dynamic, a leader, a 'go-getter'..." (Traslation; cliche #2: 'a Hot-Shot', or [to barrow for Champions] an 'Old Pro form Dover')
What happened?
Well cliche went right out the airlock when said PC froze during the Kobayashi Maru test (well, a variant thereof).
And his Captaincy was gone within five games (after three 'test', he almost botched an undercover intelligence mission, and in the last story he had to distroy the ship. Besides these things, he was also compleatelt indesisive, relying on the 'Starfleet Observer' to make decisions, even ones of "life or death". That's not good for a Captain.)

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...and that's about the time it hit the fan...

For me it becomes a debate between Archtype & Sterotype. If the player takes a abse Sterotype and then puts an idividualistic spin on it, it can make an itneresting character...but if the character simply comes off as a carbon copy of ten other characters, then you have a problem.

I find if you help them make their characters and gently and enthusiastically guide them in new directions, even a sterotype can wind up being an excellent and entertaining character.

Certianly as narrators, our duties include helping make sure the characters are the ones we want to help tell stories about.

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Captain Zymmer
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