Special Snowflake

It's Friday night and you're running a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign. You've inv ited four friends to play and they're submitting character concepts for your app roval. Let's see, Johnny wants to be a human rogue: check. Alice wants to be an elven druid with a pet snake: Check. Bob wants to be a gnome bard: Check. Steve wants to be a wakyambi shaman. Che wait, what? He eagerly pulls out a sourcebook y ou've never heard of and explains how Wakyambi are like African elves but with p rehensile feet, and shaman are like clerics. Then why don't you just be an elven cleric? "Because Alice is already an elf!" he whines. You begrudgingly check th e race and class's abilities. Nothing too gamebreaking. So now you're faced with the decision of allowing the character, though he'll probably hog the spotlight as no one has any idea what the hell he is and there's some reason why he's so far from home, or disallow him and deal with an irate player. Well, our mothers always told us we were special. We can be anything we want to be, right? So maybe it's for this reason that when people create a character, they often ch oose the unusual. This can manifest in something as simple as being a member of a rare race and/or class. Or it can be a good-aligned character of an Always Cha otic Evil Race, or vice versa. Players may even go so far as to make up a race/c lass altogether, so as to be truly unique. This can also show up in fiction when an author writes a character with aspects of themselves in it. It is especially common in Mary Sues. But but this is not always a bad thing, for many compellin g and interesting protagonists have these kinds of traits. There's something com pelling about a character who is bucking the social norms or defying his entire race. If nothing else, a great deal of angst can be milked from it. Of course, some people may want to play as something weird solely for the mechan ical benefits, mixing traits and templates with no concern for how such a being would fit into the setting (or is physically possible, for that matter). The wis e gamemaster is advised not to allow such a monstrosity unless the powergamer ca n explain exactly how half-vampire, half-dragon came into being. Others will do it just to be disruptive or to refuse to play along with the campaign's genre be cause it doesn't interest them. Some gamemasters will forbid this kind of behavior, rolling their eyes at the gu y who absolutely must play a dragon thief, Chaotic Good Drow ranger or an Avarie l wereshark Elemental Archon of Fire. Whether a character is interesting has not hing to do with how esoteric his background is and everything to do with how wel l he's played. However, some will roll with it, letting people make up stat bonu ses for the most ridiculous of races or classes.

Mary Sue

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), is a character with overly idealized and hackne yed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fu lfillment fantasy for the author or reader. It is generally accepted as a charac ter whose positive aspects overwhelm their other traits until they become one-di mensional. While the label "Mary Sue" itself originates from a parody of this ty pe of character, most characters labelled "Mary Sues" by readers are not intende d by authors as such. Male Mary Sues are often dubbed "Gary Stu", "Larry Stu", " Marty Stu", or similar names. While the term is generally limited to fan-created characters, and its most comm on usage today occurs within the fan fiction community or in reference to fan fi ction, original characters in roleplaying games or literary canon are also somet imes criticized as being "Mary Sues" or "canon Sues" if they dominate the spotli

ght or are too unrealistic or unlikely in other ways. One example of this critic ism is Wesely Crusher from Star Trek : The Next Generation