“[W]e are never more (and sometimes less) than the co-authors of our own narratives.”1
This famous line from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue has been interpreted in many ways since it was written in 1981, and this essay will do so in terms of its applicability to tabletop roleplay. Ironically, the next sentence is “Only in fantasy do we live what story we please.”2 But the goal of this essay is to determine if this is not necessarily the case, if McIntyre's aims and those of fantasy roleplaying games are actually compatible, and if there is a way to play our games enjoyably and meaningfully within the same constraints of narrative that MacIntyre propounds.
In After Virtue, MacIntyre argues against the postmodern fragmentation of life into unrelated instances, espousing a unified narrative that “links birth to life to death as narrative beginning to middle to end,”3 and regards this notion of selfhood as intertwined with his Aristotelian conception of virtue. This outlook has detractors of all stripes, not only postmodernists, but also ethics professors and psychoanalysts. This essay will not address the relation between ontology and virtue per se, but will be limited to how a narrative approach toward selfhood, in particular the selfhood of our player characters, can inform our roleplaying decisions, our characters’ alignment, and the development of our characters’ stories.
“The true genre of the life is neither hagiography nor saga, but tragedy.”4
MacIntyre makes this claim because, simply, we all die. Our personal narratives have a definitive end. And while our player characters may or may not die during an adventure, their existence begins during character creation and ends when the character dies, when the adventure ends, or in some other fashion. Even if our characters achieve godhood, their story ends and they become a fixed subject for remembrance, reflection, even eulogy.This eventuality, in MacIntyre’s view, should and does inform our decisions in life. It can also do so in roleplaying. Some roleplaying games are more deadly than others, and death can seem more or less imminent, but if we bear in mind at all times that our character’s story will end in some way, it lends a sense of urgency and depth to the decisions that we make. In addition, we also assign what MacIntyre
calls “intelligibility” to our characters, a way of viewing an ever-changing persona as the same person from birth until death. Whether this is a fitting way to view our actual lives or not, it is certainly a way to give our player characters a certain consistency that makes them more believable, more fun to roleplay, and easier for a GM to set the narrative table for.
Further, the style of one’s death and their desire to be remembered should guide our decisions. Does the player character want to die on the battlefield or in a harem? Do they wish to be remembered as a hero, a saint, or a genius? Do they care if they are remembered at all? Our character’s attitude toward their eventual undoing, even if it is a desire to avoid that undoing as long as possible, will necessarily color the way they lead their life.
“I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'”5
Character alignment in general is too large a topic for this essay, but will be discussed strictly in terms of a narrative approach toward character. Our character’s morality (that is their views of right and wrong, not necessarily how strictly they adhere to them) will be dictated to some extent by the narrative into which they were born. This helps us make sense of the old axiom “we are the hero of our own story” and all its variations.
When we create an origin story for our characters, we are...deciding...the moral world which is available to our characters.
The setting in which we come into existence, or in which our player characters are created, has a profound impact on how me make sense of the world. The world becomes “intelligible” in relation to that which we learn when we are young and what we experience (or don’t) in our everyday lives. This setting isn’t just a physical place, but also a society, a family, an era, and all the secondary traits associated with these things: political climate, religiosity, economic standing, and countless others. When we create an origin story for our characters, we are not merely deciding these traits, but the moral world which is available to our characters. A character born into royalty is more likely to view themselves as fit to lead; a poor character is more likely to justify stealing from the rich; an abused character is less likely to trust others. The Fremen in Dune could not possibly see wasting water as anything but a grave sin or a profound sacrifice.
And so, the traditional D&D alignment grid, or whatever gauge of morality is used by your system, becomes easier to contend with. We are no longer judging our characters’ ethics in a vacuum or on a vague notion of Judeo-Christian or Buddhist morality. Virtue and vice are judged according to the narrative into which characters are born. This method expands the possibilities of moral exploration by allowing the DM, via their game world, and the players, via their origin story, to partially define right and wrong. At the same time, these definitions constrain character behavior by providing some structure to the alignment grid, since the world/player narrative will necessarily dictate where some kinds of actions fall.
The end goal of this style of play is to lend meaning to our actions in the game. As MacIntyre puts it: “We cannot … characterize behavior independently of intentions, and we cannot characterize intentions independently of the settings which make those intentions intelligible both to agents themselves and to others.”6 When we view our morality as, at least partially, derived from our narrative setting, then how we choose to “write” our portion of that narrative becomes more profound. That portion of the story which flows from our own intentions becomes more meaningful.
“[W]ithout the setting and its changes through time the history of the individual agent and his changes through time will be unintelligible.”7
In the context of roleplaying games, we might well substitute the word “consistent” for “intelligible.” For, consistency is often what gives our games a narrative satisfaction that is not always easy to achieve when the characters in our story have agency. The opportunity for the BBEG to get their comeuppance is made possible, and all the sweeter, by the fact that they and the characters have been acting with some narrative consistency throughout the adventure. My character will only view them as the “bad” guy if they have acted badly according to my character’s narrative context.
Conversely, surprise twists, such as betrayal of a companion or mercy shown toward an enemy, are made more poignant because they run counter to the narrative of which my character is a part. The queen abdicating the throne in the name of love, the greedy thief making the ultimate sacrifice to save the party, or the heroic halfling refusing to destroy the malevolent relic: these dramatic moments are all the more dramatic because they run counter to the narrative in which our players have been created and have been co-authoring as the game progresses.
In addition, much of the humor in our games plays off of the narrative expectations we have of our player characters. Getting the ascetic cleric drunk, helplessly watching the brutish barbarian try to disarm a trap, attempting to seduce the barkeep with our stoic ranger: the fun in these situations is set up by the narrative of our characters which we have established early and often.8
“We live out our lives, both individually and in our relationships with each other, in the light of certain conceptions of a possible shared future, a future in which certain possibilities beckon us forward and others repel us.”9
The final result of the narrative approach toward the selfhood of our player characters is that it can help us determine what their goals are. In the short term, the telos of our characters is often dictated by the task at hand. This is especially true in a one-shot or railroad type of adventure. That is not to say that our characters’ particular narrative won’t color the ways in which they respond to the current challenges, but the end goal of the adventure is largely understood from the beginning.
The more open-ended an adventure is, whether it is sandbox style or one in a series of single adventures with common player characters, the more a character’s long-term goals may come into play. And while the common sentiment “you can be anything you want to be” is inspiring, in MacIntyre’s view, it is simply untrue. In real life, this should not be a discouraging thought, but rather one that focuses on maximizing every possibility that is available to us. In roleplaying, this idea can serve a different purpose.
A narrative approach toward our player characters’ selfhood precludes MacIntrye’s notion that “in fantasy…we live what story we please.” If our characters are created and act in the context of a narrative, then it will follow that “certain possibilities beckon us forward and others repel us.” In other words, as opposed to our characters being unable to achieve certain goals, there are certain ends which they simply can’t conceive of, or which they would deem unworthy of pursuit. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo was unable to destroy the Ring, but Sauron, to his detriment, was unable even to conceive of someone trying to destroy it. This fatal flaw of Sauron’s is a direct result of his narrative, of the constraints which his world-view placed on his imagination.
Humor, irony, injustice, triumph, horror: these motifs all flow from an adherence to or subversion of a well-established narrative.
While the goals of our character will be influenced and changed by the actions of the rest of the party and the NPCs, and by changes in the world around them, they will also be circumscribed by their own evolving story. These constraints will add to the narrative consistency which, it has been argued in this essay, will enhance the fun and meaning of our play. Humor, irony, injustice, triumph, horror: these motifs all flow from an adherence to or subversion of a well-established narrative, one that is established partially by the DM in their creation of a game world, and largely by the players, whose characters and their contemporaneous stories flesh out the adventure.
Coda
One more thought from MacIntyre, for those tabletop gamers who have ever been asked how they can have so much fun just sitting around talking with their friends:
“For conversation, understood widely enough, is the form of human transactions in general. Conversational behavior is not a special sort or aspect of human behavior, even though the forms of language-using and of human life are such that the deeds of others speak for them as much as do their words. For that is possible only because they are the deeds of those who have words.”10
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition. 3rd ed., University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, 213.
MacIntyre, 213.
MacIntyre, 205.
MacIntyre, 213.
MacIntyre, 216.
MacIntyre, 206.
MacIntyre, 206-207.
Carlisle, D. Tabletop Roleplaying can never be a movie, but can it be an opera? (2021)
MacIntyre, 215
MacIntyre, 211.
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Eco's Chamber
