This is a very good observation. The responsibility for a character should quite naturally push awareness of that character such that everything that happens in play will be intrepeted, to greater or lesser extent, in light of that character.

So I think that’s a strong understanding of why people become invested in characters for which they are responsible. But that raises a related question: why do people feel primarily responsible for a single character, or even feel primary responsible for any given character (rather than all characters being held by the group communally)?

What is it that drives the play paradigm in which each character is, in some sense, primarily under the authority of a single player? Tradition? Or is something more interesting at work here?

Thomas

This means that whenever play is about another character, you will be primarily concerned with how this impacts your character; what will she think of it, how will she react to it? What does it mean for her story?

Because of the responsibility you have for your own character, you tend to look at everything through your character. Therefore, you generally identify much stronger with her than with the other characters, and stronger than with the characters in a book or movie, for whom you are not responsible.

I do think that character generation probably plays a part in it. That said, I don’t think it’s the primary motivator. I think the primary motivation is about control. Think about how invested you can get in a character in regular fiction.

I think it’s not so much about who creates the character, but who gets to shape their story. It’s about risk. The risks of getting invested in a character are not so high if you feel that you can guarantee, to some degree, that the story will go in a way you care about.

So, yeah, character generation probably plays a role, but I don’t think it’s actually that big a deal. I’m betting that I could swap generated characters with most of my play groups and have a great time playing.

Thomas

Players want to focus on the characters they have generated. They want to see their stories unfold as they originally envisioned it during character generation before all the “other stuff” happened during play. With this interpretation, it would be only natural to want to see that one character develop, despite the “other stuff” that may happen.

We should test this. Have some players generate characters and then play each other’s characters. I’m fairly certain there would be a great deal of disatisfaction.

That’s a pretty good point, actually. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the tendency not to listen/pay sufficient attention to other players was a huge contributor to the tendency to care less about other peoples’ stuff than your own stuff. I mean, you’re always listening to what you say, after all.

However, I wonder if there isn’t something more at work here as well. It seems plausible to me, at least at first glance, that one reason we are so invested in our own characters is that we are their primary authors, and as such they are telling precisely (or at least something close to) the story we want to tell. Having greater control means having greater security in the idea that the character won’t go in directions we don’t like.

Consider the problem in long-running series of fiction (serial TV, comics, long novel cycles), or even in long novels, where when things get started you get all invested in a character because they have so much potential to tell a specific story that is important to you. But they’re also able to tell other stories. And after all that investment, you find out that the story the author wants to tell isn’t the one that you’re most interested in having told.

I think that may play some role in the phenomenon, I’m just not sure how much of a role it plays. Because you’re right: other players have awesome characters too, if we would only pay attention and see it.

Thomas

In general, I think roleplayers’ main difficulties with this come from the de-emphasis of LISTENING to you fellow players as a crucial roleplaying skill. This is something that’s emphasized A LOT in acting and improv, but not in roleplaying.

Because while a lot of games (Universalis, Capes, etc.) make it possible to kill character ownership, it doesn’t seem like actual play is following through with it. While it is possible that we only identify as we do with characters because it’s a bad ol’ gamer habit, I suspect that we have very good and important reasons for it. I want to figure out what those are…

Thomas

Why do you feel that there is more to discuss?