Favoured Souls

[You can read today's post on the Higher Path here]

I've written about this several times, historically here, that being my most unpopular post for quite a while until I topped it with less popular posts.  12 years later, being older, moving slower, I'd like to address it as if I've learned something.  Are your PCs "favoured souls"?

I prefer that moniker to "heroes," but for most people it amounts to the same thing.  Right off, I'll say, okay, yeah, the PCs are favoured souls.  If that isn't a departure from my rant many years ago, I don't know what is.

But keep the cork in your champagne bottle, because I'm not done.

The worst sort of plot armour is one in which the character knows they're not expendable.  The very funny and yet obsequiously fan service character Deadpool is the epitome of the trope, in that not only is it impossible for him to die (even when he does, his girlfriend kicks him back), but he's free to break the fourth wall and gab about it at will.  I like the new Ryan Reynolds and I own copies of both Deadpools, so this is not a hate-piece about the character, but there is room in the lexicon of creative writing for just one of these guys ~ and not hundreds of thousands, as I suspect we can find around gaming tables world wide.  Any one of which would have to be an insufferable prick if He (and it won't be a "she") sat at my gaming table.

Here's the thing.  The player characters are favoured; I play a 4d6 drop the lowest dice to roll their stats (1s ignored is a bridge too far), so I'm definitely in favour of giving them a higher average than the hoi polloi.  I give them maximum hit points to start.  When they level, I do keep a no 1s rolled policy with regards to their hit dice, if not their ability stats.  And they do seem to find themselves favoured where it comes to someone stepping out from the bushes to give them highly irregular detail about something tremendously secretive happening which no one else knows about ... really, really often.  Like, irrationally often.

So I get it.  The player characters are special.  But apart from a few benefits, bonuses and unusual kicks at the can where it comes to getting ahead in life, I don't want the players to know it.  I want the players to feel tenuously uncertain about their roles in the next confrontation, in that anyone can die and that a brutal tone shift is always waiting in the wings.  At best, the characters are given a bit of a head start; this means they still have to run, and run hard, because the competition is made of a bunch of mean motherfuckers who aren't going to hold up if the characters fall behind.  This is a case of saying to the characters, "Okay, you've been allowed inside the door; what you do on this side of it, that's up to you."

Therefore, fundamentally, while the party are free to see themselves as heroes, no one else in the game world will; unless the players do something very specific that will make the locals think so.  I like it when the party does something dangerous and they get treated like heroes in front of an adoring crowd; usually, I find, this makes them feel very self-conscious, particularly if they feel this is now something they have to live up to.  The sort of "heroes" I hate are the ones who come into the game feeling entitled to get that treatment, just because.  Deadpool's cockiness is cheerfully counterbalanced by making the character really goddamn suffer for his "gift," so that he makes joy out of it but the joy has a taint of ruefulness.

When some player tries to adopt the Deadpool cockiness, this suffering, sacrifice, misery and so on is Never part of the mix.  We get Deadpool the immortal shithead, not the Deadpool who knows bitterly that he's a freak, or feels bitter about the loss of his true love, or bitter that he's not really in control of his destiny.  The cocky player doesn't want the baggage; they're satisfied with the snark and the immortality, and that is it.  Seriously.  It cries for a good kick in the non-regenerating peacockish nuts.

I suppose that's pretty clear.