Still, I’m thinking of the Luke Skywalker case–as a player, I *know* all sorts of things he is capable of doing, of the relationships he possesses with other members of the story. I can draw on the mythos to ‘tug’ at the other players who have characters with ‘mythos’ ties to mine. If we play first episode Luke, I can play up Luke’s innocence in order to get the player of Han to respond in a helpful but ‘you dumb kid’ way. I can also push against type in some interesting ways, which encourages other people at the table to do the same–very much as an ‘interpretive’ context move. Imagine the what-ifs–if Vader and not Kanobi met Luke first? Those are re-interpretations which mythos helps me to negotiate.

Now, those surely won’t *replace* ties formed by the players over time, but those ties aren’t just context, either, at least not in the way that you are using it in reference to the story-level events. Those ties also involve my knowledge about those players as people, with preferences of their own which I can appeal to *regardless* of the context we have built up in game. (Like Rahvin’s observation that his friend would probably play the Punisher in an un-Punisher like fashion)

There’s a couple reasons. As is my habit, I’ll list a few:

1) You’re not playing Luke Skywalker in this example, are you? You’re playing Luke Skywalker up to a certain point or, more accurately, “It’s Luke Skywalker BUT…” with the “but” largely unknown and unestablished. Thus, not only do you still have a hidden or unestablished context, but the context which you provide to others is actually a deception. Everyone knows it is, but isn’t sure by what degree or method. Am I making sense? You’re not going to make all the same choices that Luke did, be in the same situation, or have the same perspective. You have your context (in the form of Luke), in this case, but taken out of context (in the form of his story and movie).

2) As you’ve noted, playing is a process of editing. You’re going to START OUT as Luke, but you don’t yet know what you’re going to become. Normally in this process, that editing CREATES context. In this case, it RESISTS context. You’ve given a context that allows people to have a clear, concise, and appropriate way of thinking about your character and when you decide to edit that image, the other players may not necessarily make that jump with you. In a way, by taking this modelled (stolen?) character you’ve given all players a stake in your character by accepting it — they’re, in effect, going to be judging how Luke your Luke is, whether they realise it or not. Eventually you’re going to want to take ownership of this context you’ve stolen, and surprisingly, you’re going to meet resistance when you do. My last roleplaying game was a superhero game and there seem to be a lot of problems on those message boards with people having different visions of their favorite comic book characters within the game.

3) This context you’ve stolen is much weaker than you credit it. It is TOLD context, not SHOWN. Other people may have done great things about showing us a context with this character, but at the moment the game starts, we have no idea what you’re going to do with it. Yes, Luke just blew up the death star. But is knowing that from a movie any different from you just telling us that Goremeir the Godling just destroyed the nation of Darkfang? Either way, you have a lot of possibility… but we have no idea what you’re going to do with it because there’s still no context. There’s background, and there is interest, and there is familiarity, and there is a strong image, and these are all great, powerful things. But it is not context. We don’t know you’re story, we don’t know what you’ve got in your head as a player, we don’t know where this whole story is going to go… we’re TOLD a lot of cool stuff and the story seems to have potential but nothing has been concretely established and nothing SHOWN.

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*) Side note: There is an issue of context I’m trying to sort out in my own games, and that’s the player history context. In this case, I’m trying to find ways of ELIMINATING or reducing player history context. That is, despite what has been TOLD about Punisher, I know he’ll probably forgive me because I’ve played with Punisher’s player, Tom, before and I know he doesn’t like to shoot other players and prefers to focus all of his attention on completing mission goals.

Good point, but I’m not entirely sure how well this works. See my post for today for some possible thoughts as to why mythos doesn’t do the same thing.

But honestly I’m not sure. I mean, there’s definitely value to be found in shared mythos. I just think that it’s value along the lines of shared genre ideas and conventions. It helps to center color and theme. Of course it also lets you make thematic statements by playing with expectations, but I think that’s something that’s at least slightly different from what I’m getting at with appropriating context in the sense I’m talking about right now.

What do you think? Is there really a difference, or is it all in my head?

Thomas

Yeah, it’s an interesting thing to play with. Especially since there is this odd resistance to doing this in tabletop play. I can point you to discussions of online freeform stuff that argues back and forth between using canonical characters from other works vs. using ‘OCs’ (Original Characters).

But as far as I know, no one is talking about doing this sort of thing in tabletop play, and I’m not sure why.

Thomas

So you don’t just need to think of context in terms of a past, but a mythos, a set of pasts which allow players a good deal of opportunity to make their own choices even as they use a shared context.

Major cultural phenomenon, with the right fans, really do start to develop more mythos–fanfic, alternative imaginings, and so on. Something which rpg’s seem poised to further…