After much thought, and a six-week hiatus which did nothing to change my mind about what I'd thought; I came to the somewhat disappointing conclusion (at least from Kevin's point of view) that I was not capable of running two games at once, that this was completely unfair to my players, and that I was much more interested in my 7th Sea PBeM game than I was in the Shadowrun game. So, the discussion came up last night: what now?

The discussion covered several possibilities: Kevin would take over the Shadowrun game as the GM, I would make a new character and we'd keep playing SR. We could all roll up new Shadowrun characters. Or we could play something else entirely. It was sort of a flip suggestion of mine that pretty much everyone pounced on and now Kevin feels mildly railroaded into running a White Wolf game - a system he doesn't actually know very well. But, much like he was my Shadowrun expert on hand, I do know White Wolf fairly well and I'm right here to help him out. Turn about's fair play and all.

Where the problem came up is one of our gamers. Whenever I play with him, I'm constantly reminded of a line in 7th Sea which makes a little dig at White Wolf: "When you create a Hero in other games, you are often presented with the opportunity to take disadvantages or flaws in order to get a few more points for that advantage you want. The difference between a Hubris and a disadvantage is that a hubris is a heroic flaw. 7th Sea is designed with the intent that the players play Heroes, no matter how roguish they may be. Thus, while your Hero may be lecherous or cowardly, it's a bit unreasonable to expect the rest of the players to adventure with an albino megalomaniac who kills all little children on sight."

This player's characters are usually so flawed that they're emotionally crippled, socially annoying, and physically incapable. Now, taking a small moment aside for reality's sake: I understand that a real drug addict is often so wrapped up in their drug or obtaining their drug that they have the same exact problems; non-functionality. That they have sad and frightening lives with no friends that often end in overdose or violence. That being said - what fun is that? And if a real drug-user has few if any friends (who aren't also drug users and there for selfish reasons of their own like getting free drugs) why should a gaming drug-user have friends?

The problem with this type of character comes down to a simple question of fairness. In order for the tragically soul-sick to play his character concept correctly, everyone else in the game has to bend. And sometimes bend hard. For example: I do not have any drug-addict friends of which I'm aware. And even when I did, I didn't remain in touch with the ones who were so out-of-control in their addiction that they weren't any fun to be around.

What it boils down to is: why would my character hang out with this character? My character doesn't like this character. My character doesn't respect this character. And they're more bloody likely to get us killed rather than assist us in our goals, so tell me why the hell we put up with them, except that they're a PC and by the play-nice-people rules, we sort of have to? But we end up sacrificing our own character concepts on the altar of the tragically flawed's concept. And that's not fair. Storytelling - or gaming or roleplaying or whatever you want to call it - is supposed to be a team effort.

Now, admittedly, there are some circumstances under which a flawed or unlikeable character can work. In my 7th Sea game, for instance, Kevin is playing the Dona Melina - a prudish, class-conscious scholar. She's a snob. She's uptight. She's difficult to be friends with - however, she's also very good at what she does, which is explore Syrneth ruins and examine their artifacts. She's useful and because she's useful, people put up with her less than cuddly personality. Or, in another instance, back when I was running Heroes Unlimited, we had a character who had several mental problems and often got distracted or had flashbacks that made it hard to hold combat with him because you'd never know when he'd spot a water hose, think it was a snake, and go completely around the bend. And yet, when he was not having a psychotic episode, he was so damn nice that people forgave him for being a whack-job.

Now, we all have friends who are now functionally useless. They're so depressed that they can't function, or they've screwed their lives up irrepairably and we continue to help them as much as possible. This is because we have history with these individuals. We are helpful and kind, not because of what is, but because of what was. So, the tragically-flawed soul sick character can work, they just have to be handled gracefully and with the understanding that everyone else has a character concept that they'd also like to be somewhat faithful to.

And Kevin, who likes the tragically-flawed soul-sick concepts even less than the rest of us - my husband is, at his very core, a pragmatic "suck up and deal, I got over it, so can you" sort of asshole (and believe me that I say that with utmost respect for his determination to salvage his life after he made a complete hash of it) - gave this player an ultimatum: No tragically flawed characters. Particularly in Werewolf, where the concept is pack-unity, pack-mentality, a functionally useless maniac is just not going to work.

You'd have thought Kevin had asked this player to cut his arm off (his real arm, not his gaming arm!) with the way he reacted. What struck me, in the fairly long, intense discussion that followed, as particularly sad was this: I asked him "What's wrong with playing someone who has the potential to be happy?" His response, "Everyone is fucked up and miserable."

And I find that deeply, wrenchingly sad. As well, of course, as being patently untrue. Yes, I'm not always deliriously happy. But most of the time, I'm reasonably content. Yes, I'd like more money - who wouldn't? - or slightly less minor annoyances. But I don't consider myself to be fucked up and miserable. I don't consider most of my friends to be fucked up and miserable. Well, ok, so a few of them are, but those people aren't part of my life anymore. I got tired of trying to fix someone who didn't want to be fixed, someone who didn't want to be helped, someone to whom the goal of happiness is unreachable, and what's more, they don't want to reach it.

To some degree, I miss the 80's when we were all going to grow up to be rock-stars. This 90's hanging on goth tragically hip, being gloomy and depressed for the sake of life noir is getting old. It's been four years since the decade turned. Can we have a new theme for the Aughts?