Troping playable characters

Following up on an offsite mod conversation —
For both video games and tabletop games, we have a lot of Characters page entries for the player character / playable protagonist.

In some of these games they're named and predefined (e.g. Final Fantasy VIII). Others either give you a lot of freedom to decide their skills and background but add elements of destiny and arc (e.g. Skyrim) or give you an almost entirely blank slate (e.g. Fallen London and most Tabletop RPG games).

We also have character entries for character classes/ playbooks / jobs as a whole (e.g. Monster of the Week).

This sometimes leads to tropers adding things like The Ace "if you level grind enough" or other tropes that aren't directly within the work and depend on certain player choices.

Sometimes these are things acknowledged by the narrative and rules, but sometimes they're simply ignored - e.g. you can be a vile necromancer and a heroic paladin because the two factions are independent and don't interact in-game.

How to Create a Character Page doesn't currently have any guidance on this (or on many other scenarios).

The aim of this thread is to gather some views on what we should or shouldn't trope, ensure that's the consistent with wider wiki policy, and then get it documented to aid page creation and cleanup — via the existing Character cleanup threads, the Administrivia pages or both.

I recall this conversation happening before regarding troping User-Generated Content, and the common idea was that "if the game doesn't acknowledge it, it's not a tropeable work's content".

If the game has some sort of commentary of player's specific choices, we can trope it as "in certain paths", but otherwise "player's actions" shouldn't belong outside of Video Game Caring Potential and Video Game Cruelty Potential.

Kill It with Fire example can be worded as as optional skill set, but not as if the player character has affinity to fire. Meanwhile, a player character can't be a Nice Guy or Devious Daggers only becuase the player makes them be one.

This discussion would go better if specific examples with the problem are provided.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 8th 2024 at 5:59:49 PM

Let's take Characters.Fallen London as a starting point. Just looking at the start of the list:

• The Ace: Especially when you have all four core stats high/maxed out. But even with only one stat high, you are still one of the best people in that field/profession.
• Affably Evil: You can play as such if you have high Heartless and Steadfast at once (being cruel and self-serving even against people who haven't hurt you, but staying honourable to those who have helped you) or have high Ruthless and Magnanimous at once (being cold-hearted whenever it brings you benefits, but often going out of your way to show kindness to strangers).
• Benevolent Boss: You can play as this once you own your Railway Company, taking every opportunity to improve working condition for your tracklayers and choosing paths that are less taxing on them. Possibly deconstructed however, as if the player expresses surprise at Furnace Ancona's workers' strike even after they have been so nice to their workers, Ancona retorts that your generosity means little if you offer "candies and trinkets while denying their rights", until you allow all workers a share of ownership in the company and a stake in its success.
• Bio-Augmentation: Shapeling Arts represents your skill in using the Rubbery Men's abilities to genetically modify others, including dead body parts.

"You can play as" feels like it has some of the same issues.

You can choose to pick up Bio-Augmentation skills, but that's by no means mandatory.

• The Ace: Not ackowledged by the game. Having maxed out skills is a convention of the game mechanics, the character isn't treated as The Ace in-game as far as I'll know.
• Affably Evil: Doesn't have enough context for me, but leaning on that it's a playstyle intented on game's part given the traits a character can get.
• Benevolent Boss: Looks like an acknowledged story option. The second half would be best to a different trope.
• Bio-Augmentation: feels like a game mechanic (belongs to the work page) rather than a character trait.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 8th 2024 at 6:13:15 PM

Devious Daggers is a subtrope of Weapon-Based Characterization, and I'd say that a player character can't have characterization, but it'd valid to be a general game trope, how the game nudges towards certain options, like Developers' Desired Date / Game-Favored Gender but for weapons.

...

@ Fallen London: Agreed. Bio-Augmentation would be a general game trope.

For The Ace, there might be the seed of a trope in "RPG character able to do everything."

And those dialogue and relationship stuff like Benevolent Boss and Affably Evil. Only trope-worthy if pointed out by the game via specific dialogue options and stuff.

Edited by Malady on Apr 8th 2024 at 8:14:06 AM

For examples not acknowledged by the game, I'd consider those ZCE misuse, depending on how well I know the contents. That's kind of the hard part of any kind of cleanup on happenstance game character tropes, especially for playable characters.

(I did do a cleanup of the Fallen London character page before, and the remaining were the "probably ok" or "I don't have enough brain space to consider these" examples)

• The Ace - ZCE. Certain very late-game bits reference "player character done everything is good at everything" and there's even a title granted for doing a certain thing, but the entry fails to mention those
• Affably Evil - probably misuse since I don't recall in-game acknowledgment
• Benevolent Boss - sounds about right ?
• Bio-Augmentation - this one seems to be an example of the main question of this thread. This is a thing, and it's certainly acknowledged when used by the player. It might be more appropriate as a trope for the main work page than the character page, where other uses and lore can be described as well.

I feel it can be summarized as "opportunities through game mechanics can be described on the work page, but those don't count as protagonist's traits" and "case by case".

I definitely remember discussing this before, so I'll be going through my comment history later to see if I can find it, but vaguely I think I brought up how appearance tropes should be treated on playable characters that can be fully customized. Should they be considered "off limits" (for lack of better word right now) if it is something completely up to the player in CC and only count of it's something that the player cannot change (for example, the PC in GreedFall always has their birthmark on their jaw) or somewhere in between.

Yes, someone is not a Red Is Violent or Green Means Natural just because there is Character Customization.

Okay I found this post I brought up about half a year ago but never really went anywhere.

Would love to finally get this hashed out and written down somewhere.

Pretty much, a player character being able to learn necromancy doesn't make them a necromancer character, but it does mean the game has them as a concept. Being able to change character's appearance only means neither apeparance matters aside being a possibility.

This is an extreme version of Schrödinger's Player Character. Unless some aspects are canonized in any form, they may as well be a Featureless Protagonist.

Edited by Amonimus on Apr 9th 2024 at 3:36:42 PM

This line of discussion has certainly come up before, and from what I've seen the consensus has always been that player choices are not tropeable unless the game specifically addresses them. On those grounds I removed this from Jade Empire:

• Kick Chick: If you play female and use Legendary Strike, you will be one.

I'm going to echo the general direction here and say that a trope is not a trope if it's not acknowledged as happening in the work. Things like player choices should only be tropable if they explicitly affect the storyline (i.e., characters commenting on your unusual prowess or power if you level grind a lot) or have other meta effects, like in Undertale where player choices have a directly visible and acknowledged effect on the story.

Yeah. Sometimes you'll see games where your choices influence the narrative or the way your character is portrayed, and those are fair game. But anything that boils down solely to the variety of choices that a player can make? Well, the individual choices may be tropeworthy as "things you can do", but they wouldn't apply to the character.

I remember something similar on Genshin Impact, where for a long time the Traveler was listed on the Ho Yay page. Someone fixed it when I wasn't looking, because "characters flirt with the PC regardless of gender" is not exactly Ho Yay, and certainly not worth writing an example for every instance of it.

I feel like we actually have a separate trope for that anyway.

I don't think we have a specific trope for that. It would probably fall under Purely Aesthetic Gender (in the sense that NPCs treat your character the same regardless of gender), but it's probably a subtrope that we don't yet have.

Edited by CompletelyNormalGuy on Apr 10th 2024 at 9:29:43 AM

That may have actually been the one I was thinking of, lol. Either way though, it's definitely not Ho Yay.

Is it still in TLP? Something about video game romance.

Huh. Found a query from 2021 - then I had already decided that such examples are not appropriate and can be cut without question.

I think even if we couldn't name the exact policy "Kick Chick: You can play a female character and also choose kicking moves" violates, if we recall that tropes are about elements of narrative and design used for a reason, without the work's acknowledgment that "kick + chick" was intentional and not solely player generated, the Kick Chick description doesn't actually describe a trope, and it won't be able to.

"female option + kicking option = Kick Chick" would be a misrepresentation of the work's content, because the combination itself is not present by design. If such combination provided some stat bonus, then it would mean the creator did have the trope in mind.

So what it soounds like the potential stance is on this, roughly speaking, is as follows:

• If it's not aknowledged in the work, we can't trope it. (EX:Character cannot become The Ace just because you level grind/max out skills/etc. Character cannot be Red Is Violent just because they were designed with a red motif in the CC and the player chooses aggressive dialogue options)

• If the work aknowledges it, it's fair game (EX: A character being Affably Evil if they choose dialogues or make choices that have consequences to this personality type)

• Things that are only game mechanics are shaky ground (EX:Character that is mage does not necessarily qualify as a Magic Knight if they only do so by leveling up a specialization.) May be better suited for the work's main page if they are strictly game mechanics.

Edited by Hello83433 on Apr 14th 2024 at 11:21:40 AM

Yeah, that seems like a reasonable taxonomy.

- Agreed!

I concur with this summary. For ages we've maintained that "things players do in games" cannot be assigned to story or characterization tropes unless those are directly acknowledged within the game. For this reason, "the Player Character" is not a tropeworthy entity unless the game uses characterization tropes within its story.

It's the same logic for why Let's Plays are not tropable unless there is original narrative content outside the scope of what can be done within the game itself.

Edited by Fighteer on May 4th 2024 at 3:17:32 PM