HMD - How's My Driving?

[chiroptophobic]

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[dirtyword]

So I hope you don't mind this--because I know it's a little out of the left-field, but I was talking to some friends and we all agreed that you play Bruce very, very well.

Bruce is a tricky character to play--and I'd argue he's even harder to play from the Nolanverse, in my opinion. I really regret dropping Crane because it means I didn't get a chance to play with you.

Basically, please keep up the good work. Especially since Bruce is so difficult. You manage just the right about of charm and paranoia and balance it out with his need to do what's right.

Stay awesome!

Response to hmd 18/09/15

[chiroptophobic]

Link to HMD

Hello. First of all thank you for your well structured and considered concrit, I appreciate the time and detail you went into with it, and I'll try to respond with the same courtesy by both sorting through my motivations ICly and OOCly (as both are important), and hopefully explaining them so as they make sense. In advance: this may get long, and leave out detail I'm willing to extrapolate on, if asked, because, if I may point out, Bruce is a complex character. In my opinion, his existence in Nolanverse isn't standalone, but itself built from decades of comics verse, and sometimes a single scene asks us to observe it not only in its own context but as it is in regard to its accompanying mythos. I realize that in saying this I may be directly contradicting any suggestion that I play Nolan's version, but I do believe, and have to admit, that in terms of his film depiction, without strong adoption from the mythos he wouldn't exist as he is at all.

That said, I come to the character, personally, without a strong background in comic books myself. I didn't pick up a comic at all until four years after the release of Begins, and at once - in the space of about three weeks - read the Batman stories from #1 to #240 or something, before learning my lesson. I jumped forward to Year One, A Death in the Family and the Cataclysm arc, and have read nothing since then until recently, where I've taken pause to read A Long Halloween and TDKR and TDKSA, which I bought for the purpose. I'm explicit in the details here because I want you to know exactly which comics I've read and consequently where flavours, if there are any, could have seeped in from.

I'll be the first to admit that it's been twelve months or so since I last sat down to watch the movies, and the first to happily agree to watching them again. It's also been twelve very quiet, almost backburnerish months for Bruce in game. Up until recently, I've avoided conflict, and there have been months or two where I wasn't even remotely as active as a character like him should be. That also means that the game, too, hasn't been exposed to him, and I haven't sat down and scripted out in large detail why he's doing what he's doing, or thinking what he's thinking--that's on me. The intensity of playing him the last two months has exposed, even to me, that there are some flaws in both my characterisation and my ooc communication, as you can see in the comments above this one.

Before I go into the points you've raised explicitly, I'd like to say how playing him isn't just about playing the character as ICly as possible. There is a lot of juggling and logistics that go into it OOCly that will occasionally force me to make a jump and then entangle IC reasons around it. For example, regarding Crane being in the game in general, and Bruce not immediately doing something about it, required a work around which it could be arguably said isn't in character. He knew what Crane would do, what he was doing, and he let people die. That is so wrong, so utterly incorrect of a character like him who is prepared for everything, who can predict people's personality, motivations and actions as he does to a T, but likewise crucial that it be worked around because if not, I would have stunted Crane's playability in game to an impossible degree. It's just one of the logistical problems that have to be considered before I even think about his motivations and as illustrated above it does and must color his characterisation.

Another problem I often face when asking 'Shall I do this?' is what I call legacy playability. In a long and continuing game like this one, where many itterations of Bruce Wayne have existed, and where all have protected his identity, am I going to be the one who blows it out of the water? Adaptions have to be made in order to ensure that I don't screw up and leave a nasty mess in the future, should I at any point drop Batman and another app in his place. I am constantly aware of this responsibility, and it is an OOC, charging element of my choices regarding his need to reassert himself to Crane, for example.

So every action has a consequence: my biggest choice early in the game was for Bruce to make believe that he is DC's version of Batman. That was a choice he made ICly in order to differentiate between Nolanverse's Bruce Wayne being in game and the reappearence of the Batman, and was a choice made not only to protect his myth, Bruce Wayne's family, Alfred etc, both ICly and OOCly, but also to ensure that no Batman villain joins the game, meets a Batman who doesn't know him, and consequently starts killing people left, right and center. Remember this is a Batman who has already fought the Joker, and faced straight on the effects of 'Reveal yourself/don't reveal yourself' and how much his secret identity holds sway. So he pretends in public that Batman belongs to the other world, and as I've played with often that means he's skating on thin ice when it comes to interactions, and I think adds another dimension to what is a truly Nolanverse inspired choice.

Hand in hand with that, I think, came his "creation" of the Justice League, made in discussion with Clark who along with Alfred and Robin knew his secret early. Largely offscreen, and in a few very old tags, Bruce is very aware that he is working on forming a society that he knows absolutely nothing about, with people he's never met and may have to actually outright lie to to protect his identity. He deceives Hal, for example, which leads down its own path and to its own consequences, and he has used a great deal of his own energy on something he isn't essentially a part of because a) it's expected that Batman + Superman + Green Lantern = JL, and b) he can, in regard to the world of MoM and the anti-Russian, anti-American, continuing global crisis, see a use for a group that doesn't subscribe itself to a government, and can act above it. He is aware, as anyone who grew up in that timeframe is aware, of the shadow that Cold War threw on America, and has an instinctive aversion to this world based on its inability to let go of that power struggle. I could go into more detail of my thoughts on this, but it's irrelevant except tangentially in regard to "special" police forces and his mistrust of military officers in civil positions. His travels in Asia during a time frame of war and civil uprising would no doubt come up, but it is all extrapolated motive and has no explicit canon evidence.

Moving on to the very different topic of your first example. It's actually the one I had to most think about, honestly, since it's the one most affected by his journey mentally since coming to the game, and because I believe he is on a knife edge. Maybe it's something that came across in the reading of the comment, but I never meant it to be hopeless, otherwise the Bruce Wayne that is Nolan's depiction would be emotionally a hell of a lot more down on the topic than he is. We see a Batman that has given up on ever returning his city to its former glory in TDKR, briefly, and we see him literally thrown down as far as he can go. Moreover we see that he can fall that far, emotionally, that he's human. Also we see that his rising again is not about strength but spirit. The fact is that the version of Bruce that Nolan created is one that is Batman transiently, he sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and the Bruce that I brought here, unfortunately for him, comes right at the tipping point of his understanding of that. I drew him from the point where he and Harvey land, knowing that Dent is dead, and that the Dent act will die with it. Batman knows - because he thought up the solution in seconds after Dent's death canonically, and has had much longer in game to consider it - that the way to ensure the Dent act follows through is to take responsibility for those murders. This act is one part of the basis I used in my IC choice for him to defend Crane the way he has over this recent plot, but that's a whole other matter entirely and I'll get to it.

He also knows since coming to the game that there are a myriad of different versions of his universe, all of which contain a Bruce Wayne whose parents were murdered, and who became Batman, some of which where he has a family, all of which where he has continued to fight as Batman long after he - Nolan Bruce - would ever have considered signing on to play that role. He has been encumbered with the delivery that not only is being Batman something that he will never escape, if multiverse precedent is to be taken into account, but it's also something that will kill him before his time, and bring tragedy to the people around him. He's dealt with people in game who have lost him, and the effect that has on them - right from his first meetings with Alfred and Clark respectively.

So what am I saying? Bruce is depressed? I don't know, maybe not. He has a great system of internalization and dealing with emotional stresses, but Nolan's Bruce is human, and they get to him too. He compromises himself repeatedly for Rachel, and the scenes where his emotional detachment makes him snap or lose face with Rachel and Alfred and Lucius are crucial in regard to his character. He does not want to do this forever. Here he is in this situation, now without even Alfred as a sounding board - his feeling of inability to do the job anywhere near with the same skill as DC Bats HAS come up with Alfred before - and Bruce has no one to talk to even if he could. He is internalizing a lot of doubt and grief and loneliness, surrounded by people who know him but don't know him, and playing through this farce regardless. I don't linger on all of this in my tags, I admit that, and I've strayed off topic, but I just wanted to show you a window into the mindset I'm playing with at the point of this response.

But it's more subtle than that. This specific tag I was actually believe it or not really proud of. It's not hopeless. Despite everything I mention above, as I say, Bruce is still fighting, still resisting, even though it may cost him everything. He hasn't swallowed down into a pit of despair, closed all the doors and windows of the manor and decided to feel sorry for himself for the rest of eternity. It's talking about the resilience of the people of Gotham, not their hopelessness or inability to cope, just their better ability to cope, but mostly the entire tag isn't talking about "the people of Gotham" so much as it is talking about him, personally. Dick knows his backstory and about his loss, and his ability to come back fighting from it, and he knows Dick's backstory - thanks to Alfred - and that his resilience has held him through it. It's talking right to him on that level, but also since it's in public it's saying another thing entirely: Gotham's people may have been through shit, but they're stronger than you. He's saying that Crane too, as a product of Gotham, is consequently more dangerous for people who didn't grow up in such despair as Bruce himself and many others did, because he's been polished harder by his life in the city, and is consequently a sharper weapon, and that isn't him being arrogant, because the response to Crane as a villain, in game, has vindicated that justification. He is trying, essentially, to bring up his own unspoken points with Robin "the rich and poor alike" while also say to anyone who is also listening that he understands their agony, and their humiliation, but urge them to be stronger and less kneejerk in their response to it than they're being. He's not saying "Gotham will never change", because frankly he's bet his life and happiness on it - this version of Bruce has - because he doesn't want to be Batman forever. So all in all, I don't think it was hopelessness. I think hopelessness, if Bruce were really being affected by it in game, would take him down a much different path, but I do see how it can read like that and hope my explanation above gives view to a deeper insight.

When it comes to Gordon and Olivier, I have to approach it fresh. That one reply does not well encompass all of the concerns he has about Olivier, or the government, or the unjust way that RISE was forced on imPort society without any sense of choice. It comes from deep seated mistrust of secret police, military leaders in civil positions, and people whose authority is only subjected to scrutiny by a higher up, equally corrupt authority, which already largely manipulates its people, and has sensationalised imPort cooperation or lack of it before. He disagrees with her taking the position as head of the organization because it is unchecked, and wasn't established democratically, and when he brought up these concerns to her, they were largely dismissed.