Schrödinger's Player Character: Difference between revisions

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Congratulations! You just bought a new RPG! The game offers three characters to play as: [[Fighter, Mage, Thief|Alice the Mage, Bob the Fighter, and Charles the Thief!]] Each character comes with a complete biography [[All There in the Manual|in the manual]], and the character selection screen, on top of explaining their stats, gives each character his unique motivations answering [[The Call]]. Alice wants to [[Acceptable Feminine Goals|save her son]]. Bob wants [[To Be a Master]], and Charles seeks to avenge his [[Doomed Hometown]].

So you decide to pick Bob. And as you play the game, you begin wondering... What happened to Alice and Charles? You keep playing the game, reaching [[100% Completion]], and you never see either. Looks like Alice, Bob and Charles are ~~Schrodinger~~'s Player ~~Characters~~. In more generalized explanation: You are given a choice of characters, and once chosen, the game seems to go based on the assumption the selected character is the only one who exists. This trope is ''very'' common in games that give you a choice of pre-generated Player Characters, so much that it may come as a surprise when it is averted and the PCs you did not choose turn up as [[NPC]]s. This can also be confusing when each character is given a different backstory. Did those events even occur?

So you decide to pick Bob. And as you play the game, you begin wondering... What happened to Alice and Charles? You keep playing the game, reaching [[100% Completion]], and you never see either. Looks like Alice, Bob and Charles are [[Schrödinger's Player Character]]s. In more generalized explanation: You are given a choice of characters, and once chosen, the game seems to go based on the assumption the selected character is the only one who exists. This trope is ''very'' common in games that give you a choice of pre-generated Player Characters, so much that it may come as a surprise when it is averted and the PCs you did not choose turn up as [[NPC]]s. This can also be confusing when each character is given a different backstory. Did those events even occur?

The question is then: do the other characters exist? [[Cutting Off the Branches|If not, then why not?]] If so, then are they the [[Hero of Another Story|Heroes Of Another Story]]?