That does sound more like an Antagonist to me, I have to admit, as in:

Antagonist: somebody who opposes or is hostile to another person.

In fact though, you can have more than one protagonist since an alternative definition is 'a leader or a notable supporter of a cause'. This would also mean that protagonists can be champions of evil causes, despite the fact that antagonist is a far better word. It would necessitate the person referred to being more than just a bit player though, unless the cause they champion is a truly trivial one.

"Fear the Drainpipe Detective, enemy of all assaulters of noble plumbing and deadly foe of the Bathroom Burgler!"

Interestingly, the word 'Protagonist' comes from the greek Pro meaning 'in favour of' and agonistes meaning 'games', so one could almost argue that the term could be applied to anyone taking an active part in a game of any sort.

Ash

If by "at the moment" you mean since about 1999...

One of the reasons people started using protagonist in RPG-talk was to draw a distinction between "some guy I play who does stuff" and "some guy I play who makes meaningful choices that are the heart of the story".

Once you start talking about that, you can start framing the act of roleplaying around questions like "how do I make these characters protagonists?", "how do I actively facilitate narrative?", "how do we make sure the story revolves around them and isn't just a series of arbitrary events?"

Of course the problem is that people latch onto the word rather than the reason people chose to use it. Then you get people substituting it for player controlled character, which is bollocks, in many games player controlled characters aren't protagonists. In fact lots of games make it impossible for PCs to be protagonists, because they disconnect the character from the story.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

I'm pretty sure that one of the screenwriting manuals I've got around here differentiates between a 'protagonist' -- someone whose actions drive the story forward, and a 'point of view character' -- through whose eyes we see and charge the story.

That book used To Kill a Mockingbird as an example. The father/lawyer character of TKaM is the protagonist, but the story is experienced through the eyes of his children.

Cheers,
Steve

Joe, no offense, but it's a teeny weeny besides the point how AoE tries (and fails) to make protagonists appear, and that they are NOT the player characters. Spione tries that as well - and succeeds. There games are merely questioning the dogma PC=protagonist.

If you play a story game that implicitly or explicitly tries to answer a thematic question or issue ("what will I sacrifice for love?" fx), you need something to do that with. You can of course do it all by yourself and write a novel, but we collaboratively do it. And we use characters, situation, colour etc. etc., all that stuff.

Wikipedia is great, but not always reliable. A protagonist in a story is the "Pivotal Character". Remove him/her and the story (that story) is gone. Puff. Disappeared like Keyser Soze.

The Pivotal Character, the protagonist, is "one who takes the lead in any movement or cause." That's the clue. The clue is action - desire and action. (Think for a moment who is the protagonist in Moby Dick. If you think it's Ismael, you're wrong.)

Let's see what good old Lajos Egri writes about the protagonist:
"A pivotal character must not merely desire something. He must want it so badly that he will destroy or be destroyed in the effort to attain his goal."

But maybe we don't need to use this term? Is that what you are thinking, Joe? That it's somehow become hip to call something protagonist and we really mean "good old PC'?

Shock does something interesting. You play both a pro- and an antagonist, though not opposing each other. And in a way you play them with similar vigour, force, engagement (I do anyway), but the initial force comes from the protagonist - the antagonist opposes, blocks, hinders, with the same power, but reactively. McKee calls it "The Principle of antagonism. A protagonist in a story can only be as intellectual fascinating and emotionally compelling as the forces of antagonism make them."

Beliefs in BW are a direct attempt to 'protagonise' characters - and if they are strong/powerful enough, it works. It literally drives play.

If there is a trend it's this: Games where you don't necessesarily know when you start playing who is going to emerge as protagonists. Maybe we'll chuckle at this in five years time, but I'm willing to give it a go :)

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

I think this may be a slightly confusing definition, as very often, these pivotal characters will suffer a change of heart at some point. The story becomes less about their lust for whatever-it-is and more about how they become a better person. Examples might include Oliver Twist's Fagin, who finally realises that stolen treasures can't make him happy and abandons them all, or even Darth Vader. Yes, a pivotal character must have strong drives and desires, but they need not be nearly so powerfully ingrained on his psyche as this quotation may seem to suggest. There is always room for a change of heart.

Ash

That wasn't a definition, that was a quote from Egri's book The Art of Dramatic Writing. I fail to see what could be confusing about it - it's very straightforward, isn't it?

In classic literature, the protagonist actually changes little, that's often happening to other central characters. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it.

Neither Fagin, nor Darth Vader are protagonists btw., so they are not good examples at all.

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

Whew, people seem to be getting het up about this one!

The term 'protagonist' doesn't bother me, but I think it is a better description of a player than a player character. The players drive the story, and it is all about them, and what they want out of it, rather than always about what their characters are after.

I like 'point of view character' as a concept, though it's an ugly bit of terminology. When you have a set of player characters you are almost always telling the story through them, and their perceptions of the world. Its rare to do what is common in books, and have a scene which is not directly percieved by a PC. Those scenes happen, but usually with some sort of player controlled agent to watch or report them. I know I always feel odd when I have a scene where I say "meanwhile in the castle, unbeknownst to the characters ..." even though it is a mainstay of how films organize things. It makes sense, though, if the player is the protagonist, because that scene is still relevant too, and revolving around, them.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Can you give me an example of such a game?

Simon Rogers
http://www.profantasy.com
Blog - http://sjrlj.notlong.com

I think that the problem is that most RPGs have an ensemble cast, rather than distinct protagonists. Once you accept that, the whole thing makes much more sense.

Shock: for example does actually have protagonists, but only if you consider the game as telling one story per player (which is pretty much what the game sets out to achieve).

That depends on your definition of the word (see above), but in any case the quote I was commenting on didn't mention protagonists per se, it mentioned 'pivotal characters'.

Ash

Did I really express myself this badly? You want the whole quote and nothing but the quote? OK:

"The pivotal character is the protagonist [...] Without a pivotal character there is no play. The pivotal character is the one who creates conflict and makes the play move forward."

Egri calls protagonists "pivotal characters". So, a protagonist = pivotal character, and I agree with him.

I'm not trying to define what "protagonist" means as a word - the whole "that depends on your definition" thingy doesn't go anywhere. I know it's a popular pastime on da intahnets forums, but hey, so what? It's a dead end. I'm not interested.

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

I can understand Joe's annoyance at the use of the term but I think in the context of games design and creation it doesn't matter what the 'person who does stuff' is called. Sorry I just didn't want to use an already mentioned term.

As far as I am concerned you could call your characters 'monkeys' for all I care, it doesn't affect games design one jot. As long as the game rules stick to one definition and properly outline what that definition covers then call them what you like.

The games we deal with, tend towards making sure every player is equally involved in the game and most of the time that does mean there are multiple 'people who shape the story'.

Now there are other ways to go about shaping stories as a group, as has been explored in numerous games, I am just saying that the majority of RPGs will have several 'pivotal characters', 'protagonists', 'monkeys' or whatever else you want to call them.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

I think PC/Player Character is an incredibly valid definition. It is a character played a player (or players, even). Whether that character is a supporting character, a lead character, an opposing character, important or unimportant, or whatever in the fiction or game is not defined. And I think that is a good thing.

PCs need not be the good guys nor need one of them be the protagonist. So, I'm with Joe on the let's not use "protagonists" where they're not protagonists.

But, I agree with Per that the term is a valid definition of a role in a story.

AoE tries to have, perhaps, a single protagonist emerge from play, and currently it is struggling to do that (and maybe it will never do so). That doesn't mean that stories don't have a protagonist at their heart.

Ash, I know you have a dictionary and like to make use of it. I do too. However, it's worth noting that dictionary definitions do not always map well to the terms used in particular fields of science, art or interest. So if you could lay off that stuff in threads that would be good for me.

Just a public service announcement thing, remember folks, these threads are slightly tongue in cheek and subject to hyperbole. Though many a true word...

Yeah. Though this comes with several caveats. Firstly, that not being a protagonist doesn't mean that a character isn't cool or fun to play. And second that people who want protagonists will drift games heavily to get them.

So it's not a judgement on quality of experience of play. It's a statement of whether the character is the heart of the story, or not.

There's a thread of game design where there's a disconnect between character and story. Games where the creation of the characters and the situation into which those characters are inserted are fundamentally not linked. In small groups folks tend to work around it, drift , altering the "adventure" to fit the PCs and so on.

The best observable examples are in large groups like national level LARPs, hundreds of people, all with characters existing in a setting. In these games you can't have a single or small group of protagonists, because the situation can't revolve around them without excluding others or breaking the world.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

If you don't care about the definition of the word, what does it matter how other people use it in the context of their own games? And I'm sorry if definitions upset you Greg, but I thought this thread was supposed to be about the etymology and usage of terms.

Ash

Hey all,

I'm not the originator of this thread so, Joe, if you want to see it continue, then it's your call. However, I think things might be getting a little tetchy and at risk of veering off down Flame Avenue towards Misunderstandingsville. So, perhaps we should all just call it quits here and if there's any stuff that is worthy of further discussion, we can fire up new threads on those topics?

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

OK - what about table-top games with six or fewer players? I'm not trying to be difficult, I really do want to know.

Simon Rogers
http://www.profantasy.com
Blog - http://sjrlj.notlong.com

I played lots of Call of Cthulhu where I don't think there were any protagonists among the PCs. It was often an NPC who would come to realisation about something and then be dispatched by the party or some shubbly creature. The PCs were just these investigators with tommy guns, racks of skills, eldritch books, and a swathe of NPC hirelings.

Over campaigns sometimes a subplot might emerge with a PC as the protagonist within it, but these were few and far between. Generally it was a dungeon bash with disposable characters facing the monster of the week, some characters were less important than other owing to social interactions in the group.

It wasn't so much a story being created as a series of disjointed encounters with scary monsters.

Is that an example?

The interesting thing about this example is that what you describe appears to be a product of dysfunctional roleplaying, rather than something intended by the system designer.

In other words, it's not that protagonist does equal PC but that it ought to. It reminds of my least favourite word deprotaganisation, coined by Paul Czege for MLWN. Horrible word, useful concept. Disempowerment is better - but it's disempowerment of the players' central role in the story rather than disempowerment of the PCs which is an issue.

So I do that protagonist as a useful technical concept in that limited sense.

Simon Rogers
http://www.profantasy.com
Blog - http://sjrlj.notlong.com

...I'm not sure that those games were dysfunctional. Lots of them were fun. But the fun was in being horrified by these eldritch events and monsters and "defeating" the creatures, or surviving to the end. We played through just about every scenario ever published for CoC (Fatal Experiments, etc.) and the GM was very theatrical.

I don't think there was a protagonist PC around which a story in any way turned, if you see what I mean.

Other than Gregor and Simon tend to ignore Malc ;)

A protagonist is:

Other key points -

So we have a working definition of what a protagonist is.

A goal oriented pivotal character whose actions drive the story.

Splendid. Thanks to everyone for participating.

+++
JoE
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Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....