Author:
Maine Coon
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Date Posted: 07:06:17 05/15/03 Thu
I think there is a need to part types of (wrong and right) roleplaying - even in playing other clans. In my optinion the most important thing in a character's characteristics is the Reason. Why is he/she like that?
Even a Brujah's deeds need explaining. Why is he a fanatic, why he became a fight-oriented, unsesitive guy with the Nature 'Bravo'? Noone borns to be a sadist, madman, unsensitive Elder, etc.
I think there is even place for Gnawed player characters, if they are rare, played well and have reason of becoming a Gnawed, and through it staying alive.
It is hard to define Gnawed, but I have an alternative definiction: A (usually quite thin blooded and young) Malkavian, who is so cracked by the curse of Malkav, that she is incapable fog (un)life.
This is, partly, why there is not much of them (in my imagination of WoD). Because they can't stay in existance without a spacial state of being or someone else's help. I sometimes intentionally play a Gnawed. It may soun odd, but I enjoy it. Especially when I'm the ST and I (rarely, really) use them as NPCs. They give an enigmatic atmosphere to the story.
But there is a type of playing I don't like; it is without reasons. The players just imagine it's fun to play a totally wakcy Gnawed (yes, the type who thinks he is a big purple elephant), for example, and treat all the thing as it is fun. Vampire is a horror RPG, so if there is fun in it, it is rarely findable and surely another kind. (I played only once a "funny" character and she was Tremere. An ex-writer with really bothering sence of humour. All the sensitive souls feared her cynism; not her acting was funny, but her speech to those who like really hard English humour.)
I think the good tipe of playing a Gnawed, is, first: considering if you can do it. It is hard to play a "normal" Malkavian, but it is a million times harder to play a Gnawed right. Second, to write a Really logical lifestory of her fate before the happenings of the cronicle. It needs explaining, how an originally normal (or just a bit odd) person becomes a completely faded madman. And, you also have to explain how she stayed (and still stays) alive. And, for the last step: concider that you play someone, who is incapable for normal life and communication. It will be boring indeed. You will fall out of many actions. You will do far less things than the others do, because you play someone who partly can't do such things. And, to make it worse: probably everyone around you knows that you (your character) are untrustable, instabile, maybe a rawing lunatic, because it is visible. Why do you think they will theat you normal? No, no... You may be tied up in a basement of an old psychiatry all while the other characters are in action! Thet's yhy it's sometimes boring to play someting like that. Because other vampires are afraid of the Gnawed and they try to keep them as far form themselves as they can. And they're right.
Once again, if someone is so... hmmm... odd in real life, that he wants to play Gnawed, I think it is possible, but just in certain condictons. Like, a Gnawed is still not a childish, cute, stupid thing with a pink stuffed teddy bear. It is a totally insane thing with the supernatural power and bloodlust of a vampire. It is dangerous, ununderstandable and falls really far from reality!
I write an example of a "well-played Gnawed", if you don't mind. She was my character, I played her in several cronicles, but I could only play her when my friend (M-ber) played her sire in the cronicle, because she's incapable for life alone. Her name was Agnes, and spent most of her life in a psychyatry. She went mentally ill really young, in the age of 15, because of parentel mistreat. Her parents were rich, but work-maniacs. She was always instabile, but she went totally ill because noone took real care of her; she was lonely. Then, her parents, instead of treting her right, took her to the psychiatry, wehere her state got only worse. Later, because it got to her mind that she can never escape from here and she will always be trappad and lonely, she even got more worse. Her derangement was socyophoby, and a special kind of catatonical state. She simply ignored people around. She spoke very little, in the and, nothing. It vas visibly hard to draw her attention, and for human beings, impossible. Only some simple object seem to interast her. Like if she was bored of never doing anything and started to study the simplest objects around: a brick, a pencil... Her face was always resigned, never showed feelings or thoughts. She, at the end, acted like a zombie. Walked, when someone took her hand and led her, ate, when she was really, really hungry and the food was in front of her (she ate with her hands - she ignored the human advices to cutlery). Inside, she had thoughts and feelings indeed. But she created a had wall between herself and this cruel reality, so nothing went in or came out. The difference between her and a lobotonic was hat she had thoughts, but kept them hidden. In this state, a Malkavian, Dr. Iwo Kramer met her is the psychiatry and realised that there are a few ways to make a contact with her: really strong feelings seemed to lower that wall between Agnes and reality. It is hard to create these, in fact, the natural way, impossible. But he just have to create a bloodbond; or, before that he used Presence 3 and Dementetion 1. This way, she talked to him! He also gained knowledge about her unusually good perceptions and habit of periodically (of course, in an unrealisable way, from outside) listening to her enviornment. So she was someone who knew what they talk about in the next room, when noone had a slight idea of she even knows what they tell fer in the eyes. She kenew; only she didn't react. And if she did things, thy ere reactions of things - she did not see or hear, becaure in these periods, she ignored the world. Dr. Kramer realised, if he takes this... "thing" to the Elysium, ar any other meeting, the vampires' reactions are: Hm... Malkavians are able tto do anything... What is This good for? Whad does Kramer do with This?" ...but they think "this zombie" can't hear nor see! And noone knows it's far from true. So Kramer ghouled her, tought her Auspex 1 (to make her perceptions even better) and used her as a spy. Later, in a strange moodswing, he Embraced Agnes. (Her feeding as a vampire was another story... But it was explained, too.) So Agnes depended on Kramer, se would die without him, but he never left her, so she stayed alive.
Guess what! It was really Hard to play such a character, and, yes, sometimes boring. I enjoyed it, through, and that's because my own... eccentricity. And I have many other stories like that...
I think it is still a better idea to play a "normal" Malkavian, but is someone, as they say, is a "Real Life Malkavian...
I should stop now, right? :)
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