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Alternative Character Interpretation/Tabletop Games: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
* This happened a lot in the ''[[Old World of Darkness (Tabletop Game)|Old World of Darkness]]'':
** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''[[Mage: The Ascension (Tabletop Game)|Mage: The Ascension]]''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.<br /><br />The later sourcebooks (and the old stuff if you look hard enough) make it more and more easy to believe that the Technocracy, even with its flaws, really is doing the right thing by trying to save humanity from all the supernatural things that want to eat them, enslave them, or remake the world in their own image. A world ruled by the Technocracy might be bleak, but imagine a world dominated by the philosophical paradigm of, say, [[The Magocracy|The Order of Hermes]], or the [[
** The central idea of ''[[Demon: The Fallen (Tabletop Game)|Demon: The Fallen]]'' is the alternate interpretation that Lucifer rebelled [[Satan Is Good|in order to save humanity]] from being condemned to ignorance by an uncaring God. But even that interpretation is subject to a decent amount of doubt. Was it for love? Or was Lucifer simply ambitious? Or did he do it because God ''told'' him to?<br /><br />And there's the ever continuing problem of getting the players to not just be [[Always Chaotic Evil]] since they are called demons. Some go for [[Blood Knight]] types, some go for manipulative Al-Pachino-From-Devils-Advocate types, and almost all of them miss the point of the game. The expanded power sets (Lore of Violation anyone?) doesn't really help with this.
* It happens a lot in ''[[Exalted (Tabletop Game)|Exalted]]''.
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** Abyssals: Death-obsessed omnicidal maniacs, or... eh, there's not much room for an alternate interpretation here.
** Everyone ''always'' ignores the Lunars. Most of the world sees them as raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos. This is actually a deliberate ruse to appear less of a threat, so that the Dragonblooded and Sidereals don't try seriously hunting them down like they did the Solars. While many Lunars might fit the stereotypes if you squint real hard (and some even if you don't), for the most part they're a band of misunderstood heroes honestly trying to protect the world from itself and actually fighting to prevent Chaos. There are various factions devoted to protecting the world in the way they think most important, either by preserving (and improving) ancient knowledge, defending nature (and thus the Mother Earth Goddess) from ruination, patrolling the borders of the world to keep Chaos at bay, seeking to reinstate the Solar Exalted as kings of the world (a highly controversial idea among Lunars), or experimenting with isolated human civilizations in an attempt to come up with a viable alternative to the Realm's corrupt brand of civilization. In general, yes, the Lunar Exalted think the current order is corrupt and needs to go -- but they're not so stupid as to do that unless they've got something better to replace it, and they've given a lot of thought about ''how'' to do the replacing without destroying the world in the attempt.<br /><br />In the first edition Lunars book, "raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos" was exactly correct. It wasn't until the second edition that White Wolf fixed that.<br /><br />In ''Exalted 2.0'', the whole Lunar "let's figure out a way to create a better society" thing is executed in practice by having individual Lunars go out and ''create test societies'' -- which frequently fail to produce positive results. Rather than try to fix the problems that they have caused through their social engineering (such as now-ancient grudges, entire societies on the brink of being press-ganged into demonic armies, and other such [[Doomy Dooms of Doom|dooms]]), Lunars often ''abandon'' said projects, for better or worse.
** The [[Our Titans Are Different|Primordials]]: Callous and vindictive psychopaths who treated their minions like dirt and the world and their creations like playthings they would occasionally break for fun? Or the victims of divine usurpers who painted them as far more malicious than they ever were, and now are so angry by this betrayal that they embrace this persona, and arranged it so that history repeats itself?<br /><br />Right now, the answer looks like "It depends on the Primordial." Some were really that awful. Kimbery turns out not to have changed much by becoming a Yozi, and was just as much of a mood-swinging psychotic [[My Beloved Smother]] who alternated between loving the Lintha and her other creations and showering them with her favor and hating them for real or imagined slights against her and tormenting them back when she was a Primordial. The Dragon's Shadow was a treacherous [[Manipulative Bastard]] who is strongly implied to have intentionally orchestrated the Primordial War and whose primary change upon becoming the Ebon Dragon was actually being ''better off than he was as a Primordial'' -- he now embodies the dragon he was once the mere shadow of, and is one of the most powerful and influential of the Yozis. She Who Lives In Her Name destroyed 90% of Creation [[Ret
** The Neverborn: A bunch of sore losers [[Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum|trying to end an ancient war in a draw]]? Or a bunch of [[Woobie|Woobies]] [[And I Must Scream|trying to end their eternal torment]] [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|the only way they know how]]? Or [[Jerkass Woobie|Jerkass Woobies]] combining both?
** Autochthon: Noble champion of the little guy? Or the supergod equivalent of those Columbine kids, murdering his peers because they picked on him?
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