Keeping the straight man fun

We just started a new tabletop game a few weeks ago. I have been trying to get my head around my character. Some characters just click, they have a hook that makes them interesting and easy to play.  My last rpg character, Bracket, was an easy one. He was an exchange student from Brazil, and also a semi pro star craft player and steamer. I instantly had a lot of hooks to make the character fun to play and memorable.

My new character captain Slocum, is a different story. He is an industrial star ship captain, who was riding out his career as a cruise ship captain when an evil AI started a war and space faring civilization blasted itself back to the industrial era.

Now he is in his sixties working as a smuggler when our game begins. The party consists of a drug dealer, a permastoned space hippy, and an idealistic naive doctor. This puts me in the position of being the level headed one, the practical planner, the wet blanket straight man. This kind of party dynamic is common in rpgs. What fun is it to play the brash rogue without a palladin around to vex? But how can the lawful good pally still have fun role-playing without falling into the wet blanket party dad role?

I think it's important to not make the conflict between your level headed character and the more rebellious trouble making characters your defining character trait. It can be fun sometimes, but can grow tedious quickly, and you have to leave room for the other players to do their thing. If all you do is try to enforce your characters rules on other characters, a few things might happen. One everyone does what they want anyway, and your character becomes ineffective and unfun for you to play, or you impose your will on everyone else and their characters become less fun. Or the other characters start cutting you out of the plans and have to do everything behind your back. Find some other angle, personality trait or motivation to take center stage for you.

If you do find yourself in a situation where your moral character is getting marginalized, bypassed, and isn't very fun to play, it is probably time for some out of game conversations with the other players. Talk to them about what you want out of the character, and how you don't think things are going well. Find something to bring the characters together. Make your character less judgey, hopefully they can make their characters less evil. Embrace the power of compromise and communication.

With Slocum I'm thinking he is one of those guys that thinks everything was better when he was younger. In this case he is probably right. He feels that honor and trust has been destroyed, leaving people to revert to their selfish motives. So he has a nostalgic side. Even though he works with criminals as a smuggler, he holds himself and those he works with to a higher moral standard. Having come up in the civilian sector, he doesn't have the beatings will be administered until morale improves mentality. His management style is softer. So I'm going to play him as even tempered, perhaps a bit frustrated, but not one to get angry. Still boring, but at least a motivated boring. As a humor gimmick I'm going to call back to his cruise ship captain days and make terrifying announcements over the ships coms in a soothing captains voice. It's already happened once, "if you look out the side Windows now you will see the asteroid about to crush us into oblivion".

He possess important skills that nobody else has, and similarly has contacts everywhere. So I think he will garner his share of game spotlight naturally, without the need to force the matter awkwardly. I can keep his personality subdued and still have fun with him. My goal is to let the other players indulge in their crazy with mild disdain and simmering frustration rather than anger. I plan on keeping him from being the alpha character by deferring the big choices to the naive doctor who in theory will own the ship we fly. I will give options, and take options, avoid the "my way or the airlock" style.

I still think he still needs a little something more to make him a standout character, but those kind of things often emerge during game play. I like to think I have my basics covered. I know my main role is to keep the ship and the plot moving forward. Secondarily I serve as a foil to the other characters. My goal is to have a good time enabling the other characters as much as possible.