Player Types

The Tragedian
This Player likes literary tragedy and wants to play out something similar with his Characters. The GM must be prepared to give this Player what he wants: the Tragedian’s characters must be betrayed, lose loved ones, make mistakes which result in catastrophe, and alienate those he cares about. This should not take place all at once, of course – the tragedy must be sustained throughout the campaign. While he’s somewhat masochistic, the Tragedian does create interesting characters and backgrounds and is a sure outlet for a GM’s more cruel impulses. Of course he must have contrasting periods of happiness in which he acquires the friends and loved ones he will lose later on….

The Winner aka Mr “Win-at-all-costs”
Someone who is obsessed with success in the Game World to the exclusion of anything else -ignoring role-playing, story development, character development, or anything at all that will distract them from their goals. This Player type seeks out the best equipment, best spells, and the best everything that it’s possible to get in the game. Driven towards these goals, they often sacrifices things that other people hold dear – such as friendships and relationships — if it can benefit their personal goals to do so. Sometimes, in the worst cases, they abuse game rules to get what they want, squeezing the most efficient skill or power into their character regardless of whether or not it makes sense in the Game World for their character to do so.

This concludes (for the moment) the Player Types thread.

Aknowledgement :
All credit for this section goes to Aaron Allston and his seminal Strikeforce supplement for the Champions RPG that contained the initial version at the base of this section. It is, alas, no longer in print yet still lives on due to the fond memories of many Champions players past and present (myself included!). These pearls of wisdom have been reconstructed from memory and some of the versions available on the Internet.