Fishmalks, Kender, and douchebags: where does the blame lie?

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 8:49 pm

Some concepts in RPGs just seem to draw jerks like a magnet. Kender PCs that steal from the party, Chaotic Neutral serial rapists, and "comic relief" fishmalks in Vampire games are some of the most well-known examples of dumbass character concepts that try to use the "but this is supported in the rulebook!" excuse.

One side insists that jerks will be jerks and find any excuse to disrupt games and ruin people's fun. The other side insists that some concepts (like the "free spirit" Chaotic Neutral or Kender "borrowing") legitimize certain behaviors and concepts because it was described in a rulebook.

I think that the fishmalk is a good example of the former argument: the concept arose out of a picture of a Malkavian vampire making out with a dead fish, and jerkass gamers thought that it was the funniest thing ever. From what I got out of reading Vampire, the setting is fucking depressing and life sucks. Malkavians are really tragic because they have vampire weaknesses AND are insane. There was no advice to gamers to go around on roller skates and smack people with frozen fish: it was a terrible joke that one too many fools picked up.

In regards to the latter, I can see how something like an uncompromising Paladin or a "free spirit" character can bring out the worst in some gamers. The existence of a rule or concept in a book legitimizes it due to its "official status," and thus one can come to the conclusion that the rules and structure of the game has built-in plans to support said concept. The implications of a "free spirit" come off as a "do whatever you want" excuse that won't have an effect on your alignment. The problem is that this is not clearly spelled out in such a way to discourage behavior that is just plain morally black.

Thoughts?

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:07 pm

Any character concept that encourages "lol random dumb" is unsalvageable period.

So Malks, Chaotic Neutral characters and Kenders are better off deleted.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:15 pm

But there is, sadly, a large group of people who WANT to play there concepts. How do we stop people from wanting something stupid like that?

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:23 pm

A lot of people also wants to do skill checks and roll dice while doing ERP.

You just have tell them "no".

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:30 pm

On the subject of Fishmalks, (and probably the other concepts to other people), the thing is that it's fun.

I have a good concept for how to play a malk (a malk who was schizophrenic in life, aware of his schizophrenia, and got so used to it, that, while it catches his attention, it doesn't faze him, and who thinks his oracular visions are schizophrenic hallucinations, so he doesn't bother mentioning them). However, I also think it'd be fun to play him selling something that doesn't exist, and then using The Haunting, and eventually, Chimerstry, to make people think the things actually do.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:33 pm

GX, why do you hate fun?

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 10:39 pm

I put the fun of everybody else on the table over the fun of the one guy that wants to play "lol random dumb".

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 11:07 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:On the subject of Fishmalks, (and probably the other concepts to other people), the thing is that it's fun.

I have a good concept for how to play a malk (a malk who was schizophrenic in life, aware of his schizophrenia, and got so used to it, that, while it catches his attention, it doesn't faze him, and who thinks his oracular visions are schizophrenic hallucinations, so he doesn't bother mentioning them). However, I also think it'd be fun to play him selling something that doesn't exist, and then using The Haunting, and eventually, Chimerstry, to make people think the things actually do.

The problem is, Malks don't embrace crazy people per se (although they can), it's just that *every* Malk is crazy. So it made sense to me that a little spoken secret about the Malk clan is that a *lot* of them... well... don't work. The madness is debilitating to the point where they can't hunt, which makes the beast take over, or their so effed up that their humanity drops like a rock and the beast takes over. Sooner or later they have to be put down.

Meeting a malk that can have a even a fractured conversation with you means that vampire beat the odds.

Fishmalks have a place though surprisingly: They remind people who take the game way too seriously not to take the game way too seriously because it is, after all, a game. I don't mind them if they're rare. One in a LARP of about 50 is fine. It takes a lot of effort to stay in that kind of character constantly all night long, and if they can more power too them, that's more than I can say about most players period. However, if they're turning it on occasionally to just be annoying, then that's an underlying problem that has nothing to do with fishmalk.

Almaz · Post by **Almaz** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 11:25 pm

You have it quite right. Fishmalks very much are a dysfunctional side effect of Vampire attempting to introduce a "mad seer" bloodline. Likewise "psychotic genius/sociopathic lord of the night." Arguably the Requiem Ventrue are closer to half the original concept of the Malkavians (the other half was embodied in the Revised Masquerade "all of them have Dementation now, giving them a power that lets them have strange insights that even Tremere don't get"). They were never intended to be exceptionally play-disruptive, except insofar as every vampire was disruptive to play due to having a Beast, y'dig? Lots of parties can stand having a Creepy Guy (see: Nosferatu) and Malkavians were just another intended flavor of Creepy Guy (broken on the inside instead of the outside).

Fuck kenders though. They were written to be awful through and through. There is a line between "well-meaning concept through a tragic series of events leads to an unintended audience reaction" (Malkavians) and "lol they are so cute and innocent what with their totemo kawaii randumb antics" (FUUUUUUUUCK KENDERRRRRRRR).

The serial rapists and psycho bastards who won't get along with the party because they're "Chaotic Neutral" are generally just insecure trolls who want to make the group uncomfortable and flaunt their enormous troll-penis at people. The problem with those almost always started with the player, entirely. I have seen a LOT of gamers in the hobby who can't perform basic social functions like "not be a bigoted asshat" or "avoid being a total creeper who cannot respect boundaries - like talking about that shit people have asked you not to thank you very much". For some reason we do not collectively shun them, possibly because it takes a while to distinguish a creeper from a genuinely merely confused nerd, and bigoted viewpoints don't come up or don't seem "bad" if all the people at the table are not immediately subject to the bigotry. Until, of course, the guy decides to attempt to convert the game to That Other Game.

There are of course more minor variations - I've seen a lot of people who play "the chaotic neutral rogue!" who merely act irresponsibly - but it's still annoying shit... that was mostly motivated by a player impulse. I have personally never really seen people interpret Alignment as the same mandate they have used for being a Kender (or, yes, someone who thinks a Malkavian should Fishmalk it up using that as a mandate). Possibly because Alignment is still pretty obviously supposed to be a strongly internal force even in the D&D world, or possibly because Alignment is just so often discarded or mostly ignored in games I play in.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:03 am

I'm not familiar with any of the examples possibly because groups I play shun players who are being disrupting or we just talk with them and tell them we don't like to deal with certain things.
But stupid behaviour can be kind of fun and lead to unexpected things happening.

Post by **fbmf** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:50 am

Gx1080 wrote:I put the fun of everybody else on the table over the fun of the one guy that wants to play "lol random dumb".

100% agreed.

Game On,
fbmf

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:55 am

You can't stop a player from choosing disruptive character concept as a cheap grab for attention, but you don't have to make it easy for him.

Kender, fishmalks, and so on enshrine the player's retarded behavior in the rules. They're a way for disruptive players to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. The book says kender steal from everyone (not steal borrow lol!) so the player *had* to roll fifteen Pick Pocket attempts against the rest of the party.

Fishmalks probably caught on extra hard because of players who didn't want to engage with Vampire's themes. It's no excuse but I can kinda sympathize. I don't mind wangst or "political intrigue" high school drama bullshit as features of the setting, but I don't want to play them out personally. My friends played MET Vampire a bit during sophomore year high school. We played a lot of really irritating characters because otherwise we would have been sidelined by adults who didn't want us there. (In retrospect I can't blame them and I wouldn't want to play Vampire with a bunch of minors either.)

Swordslinger · Post by **Swordslinger** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 1:02 am

Malks are more a case of people being poor roleplayers. It's tough for a lot of people to understand insanity, and instead of portraying out some kind of mental disorder, portray their guy as some funny man who just does random things for no reason.

Actual mental illnesses can be scary and dark, and that's generally what they were going for with Malks, it's just most PCs aren't sophisticated enough roleplayers to handle that challenge.

Kender are a fucking abomination.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 2:13 am

http://i.imgur.com/9hC7N.jpg

Oh my God, the 3rd Edition Dragonlance description of Kender is horrible!

Hell, if I gamed with strangers, I'd allow a succubus lesbian cleric of Loviator as a character concept over a Kender PC!

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 2:23 am

This is rumour mill and not researched at all but:

My understanding about Kender is that Weis and Hickman were too fucking hungup about the dictates of the crazy bloodcult they belong to to accept that a "thief" could in any way be heroic because they never heard of Robin Hood or the gospel of [http://www.biblebb.com/files/ryle/chris ... hieves.htm]Luke[/url] or any such thing. But back in those days, D&D was full of Gygaxian Death-No-Save traps, so a D&D setting that had no thieves would be full of arbitrary no-way-to-beat, DNS traps that would kill the entire party frequently. Nevermind that this was exactly how all 1e games evar! always worked even with thieves and finding traps -- Wies and Hickman had to *do something* to reconcile this for their Thy Dragonlance setting and thus they invented a race with a culture which just did not have any concept of personal property. They coulda and shoulda just changed the class name to "rogue" or "tomb raider" or "archaeologist" or something --but no, that was way too advanced and forward looking for them. Instead they created a race all but guaranteed to swipe the gear and loot from other PCs and set it loose in an RPG where gear and loot was not just victory points, but often essential to character survival.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 2:33 am

Kender are probably a worse cliche than drow rangers...the latter weren't outright disruptive to a party, but every freakin' Kender is perpetually stealing from the other party members.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 2:47 am

Josh_Kablack wrote:This is rumour mill and not researched at all but:

My understanding about Kender is that Weis and Hickman were too fucking hungup about the dictates of the crazy bloodcult they belong to to accept that a "thief" could in any way be heroic because they never heard of Robin Hood or the gospel of [http://www.biblebb.com/files/ryle/chris ... hieves.htm]Luke[/url] or any such thing. But back in those days, D&D was full of Gygaxian Death-No-Save traps, so a D&D setting that had no thieves would be full of arbitrary no-way-to-beat, DNS traps that would kill the entire party frequently. Nevermind that this was exactly how all 1e games evar! always worked even with thieves and finding traps -- Wies and Hickman had to *do something* to reconcile this for their Thy Dragonlance setting and thus they invented a race with a culture which just did not have any concept of personal property. They coulda and shoulda just changed the class name to "rogue" or "tomb raider" or "archaeologist" or something --but no, that was way too advanced and forward looking for them. Instead they created a race all but guaranteed to swipe the gear and loot from other PCs and set it loose in an RPG where gear and loot was not just victory points, but often essential to character survival.

I see what Frank means by Kender being racist caricatures. The idea that you genetically were programmed to not understand the concept of personal property is kind of insulting. So is the whole "you can't blame them they're innocent no matter what they do!" is Calvinist bullshit waiting to be abused.

If there was ever an argument for the genocide of a race, that description of Kender is right up there.

Edit: The only experience I ever had with Kender were two girls obsessed with Kender back in high school, to the point that they'd steal anything out of your backpack that they could because kender were so cool. Which pissed all of us off.

One of those looked me up about a year ago on facebook, and we had a conversation that proved that most people never change and ended with me saying "I understand why your ex husband left you. I'd have dumped your ass if I had to deal with this shit on a daily basis too."

Oh, and to this day she insists the graphing calculator that she stole out of my backpack she was only "borrowing", and just ended up losing it/selling it (depending on who tells the story) accidentally after 5 years.

Err... the moral of the story? Don't be friends with anyone who idolizes kender.

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:33 am

The fact the the entire kender race is based on one single character doesn't lend them a lot of credit either. Even if Tasselhoff weren't a miserable waste of life who Flint or Raistlin should have curbstomped before he finished his character introduction, one single character can't provide enough material for a whole culture and Weis/Hickman should have known better.

Speaking of Weis/Hickman should have known better:

Josh_Kablack wrote: My understanding about Kender is that Weis and Hickman were too fucking hungup about the dictates of the crazy bloodcult

Is the blood cult the Mormon church, or something even sadder and funnier that I don't know about?

E: I fail at the English language, fixing it

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:36 am

Swordslinger wrote:Malks are more a case of people being poor roleplayers. It's tough for a lot of people to understand insanity, and instead of portraying out some kind of mental disorder, portray their guy as some funny man who just does random things for no reason.

Actual mental illnesses can be scary and dark, and that's generally what they were going for with Malks, it's just most PCs aren't sophisticated enough roleplayers to handle that challenge.

Well, it actually doesn't help that WW basically says "Mental illness is serious business. These aren't just wacky hijinks prone vampires, these are people with a fractured view of reality."

One of the reasons is that by that definition, I am insane, or at least most people who know me would say that I qualify under said definition, since I notoriously have a very pragmatic, skewed and somewhat draconian view of reality (such as my belief that people should follow their religion to the letter or find a different religion).

It also doesn't help that the two biggest "Mental Illness" poster boys in pop culture of the last fifty years are the Joker and Deadpool.

TheFlatline wrote:
Josh_Kablack wrote:This is rumour mill and not researched at all but:

My understanding about Kender is that Weis and Hickman were too fucking hungup about the dictates of the crazy bloodcult they belong to to accept that a "thief" could in any way be heroic because they never heard of Robin Hood or the gospel of [http://www.biblebb.com/files/ryle/chris ... hieves.htm]Luke[/url] or any such thing. But back in those days, D&D was full of Gygaxian Death-No-Save traps, so a D&D setting that had no thieves would be full of arbitrary no-way-to-beat, DNS traps that would kill the entire party frequently. Nevermind that this was exactly how all 1e games evar! always worked even with thieves and finding traps -- Wies and Hickman had to *do something* to reconcile this for their Thy Dragonlance setting and thus they invented a race with a culture which just did not have any concept of personal property. They coulda and shoulda just changed the class name to "rogue" or "tomb raider" or "archaeologist" or something --but no, that was way too advanced and forward looking for them. Instead they created a race all but guaranteed to swipe the gear and loot from other PCs and set it loose in an RPG where gear and loot was not just victory points, but often essential to character survival.
I see what Frank means by Kender being racist caricatures. The idea that you genetically were programmed to not understand the concept of personal property is kind of insulting. So is the whole "you can't blame them they're innocent no matter what they do!" is Calvinist bullshit waiting to be abused.

That actually makes me think of this comic, and it's diagram of the goblin brain, which I actually really like as a model for playing a goblin (basically, "Act on instinct, not necessarily morals"). But Kender sound much, much worse...

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:53 am

We had a kender once in a campaign... lasted 2-3 sessions, then the player realized that no, the other PCs would not tolerate his stealing, and would kill him next time he "borrowed" something.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:01 am

That's a pretty damned good way to learn about personal property.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:10 am

Prak_Anima wrote: That actually makes me think of this comic, and it's diagram of the goblin brain, which I actually really like as a model for playing a goblin (basically, "Act on instinct, not necessarily morals"). But Kender sound much, much worse...

It's just a pile of fail that kind of flies in the face of established D&D morality/ethics.

I refuse to believe that anyone can stab someone in the face to loot their corpse and still be considered "an innocent". Which makes everything else a kender does bullshit.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:19 am

...what are the Kender a racist caricature of? I'm seriously not sure what traits I'm supposed to be looking at and associating with real people.

Libertad wrote:http://i.imgur.com/9hC7N.jpgHell, if I gamed with strangers, I'd allow a succubus lesbian cleric of Loviator as a character concept over a Kender PC!

Aside from the Succubus part, been there, done that. It didn't disrupt the game in the slightest. Probably because the Cleric part meant "pursuing our goals and Getting Shit Done" rated higher than "finding new people to hurt".

Never even seen someone play a Kender. There's just an unspoken agreement that nobody will do so, it seems. If someone wanted to, we'd make it a spoken agreement.

As for Fishmalks, the first Vampire game I played was Dark Ages. I played a Malkavian from the church. The madness was basically believing that shit (well, convinced she could hear the voices of angels telling her what to do, and that following the Faith was 100% mandatory). So, more or less serious, and being required to do terrible things sometimes because it was God's will. The MC upped it over time to "having visions" (actual in-game benefit), and to seeing angels, which would just be standing there, giving advice and stuff, and chastising her for not Dementating every single person we ever met.

...I think he kind of wanted the character to be a sort of comic relief fishmalk. I ended up leaving the game.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:23 am

I think what they mean is that kender're generally racist, not racist against anything specific, just that it's horribly nonsensical and atrocious to see any race that way.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 8:27 am

Koumei wrote:...what are the Kender a racist caricature of? I'm seriously not sure what traits I'm supposed to be looking at and associating with real people.

It's not so much that they're a caricature of any existing race or races, it's saying that societal "norms" are actually genetically inbred that's a very, very racist concept.