Subject: what do you want changed?
Author:
Posted on: 2014-04-10 06:35:00 UTC
what would make them fit more with the PPC's humorous style?
I could redesign Nagi,but what of Emile?
Nord's idea just makes you angrier,huh.
well then,do I need any more proof that my writing skills are horrible?!
do I need any more proof of the sue curse?!
I have plans for 2 primary agents,both are in the DMS.
Agent #1 is named Emile Mannlicher. Mannlicher is from world one, and is 13 years old. Emile likes to hunt,and his preferred weapons are old pre or post WW2-era selfloading rifles and pistols(SVT-40,ZH-29,mondragon,Bergmann-bayard,etc.).
Personality-wise Emile is caustic,spiteful,and somewhat of a sadist. he is cold to anyone except his partner, Nagi.
he sees hunting mary sues to be somewhat of a game.
Emile has had turbulent middle school years. his best friend died of leukemia, which hurt him hard. he later was arrested for making terroristic threats towards another student who insulted his friend's grave. he was eventually convicted and had to leave the state to live with his grandmother in Montana. here,when his grandmother fell on hard times,Emile saw a job opportunity for the PPC and applied, to help out with his grandmother's financial problems.
After training, Emile was partnered up to Nagisa Kazuhiro,a persona-user, who later became his closest and only friend.
Nagisa "Nagi" Kazuhiro is from the persona video game series. his persona was artificially awakened,as part of the kirijo group's experiments at creating an artificial "wild card"(a wild card is someone who can use multiple personas)
Nagi eventually escaped from the kirijo group and was taken in by the nanjo group. after being adopted by the CEO, Kei Nanjo, who taught Nagi how to control his persona. he then fell through a plothole while on a walk one day.
He agreed to work for the PPC, and, after training, was partnered with Emile, with whom he shares a close bond.
Nagi's persona is known as python(not the snake,actually a dragon from Greek mythology. It manifests as an armored dragon-themed superhero dual wielding laser blades and with smoke trailing off it's extremities. Python uses predominantly wind and darkness magic,with some physical attacks.
Nagi is a kind,caring individual. he doesn't like Emile's depression fits and constantly asks his partner to be more respectful(Emile only respects the flowers).
despite these personality differences, Emile and Nagi are very close,loving friends
So,what do you think? are they cool?
You've now started three new threads in a row. This is discouraged, because it knocks older threads that may still be active down and eventually OFF the front page. We'd much rather that you add onto a thread you already started, or other existing threads on similar topics. If there aren't any, then create a new one, but please don't start multiple new threads in a row.
As for the characters, "coolness" is not really what you should be worrying about when it comes to PPC agents. What you ought to be worrying about is whether they're well conceived, three-dimensional, sympathetic, and entertaining. By that measure, I'm afraid you're missing the mark so far.
I'm gonna tell you straight up that I would never grant Permission for a character designed to be sadistic and having a history of making terroristic threats. I doubt any of the other PGs would, either. That kind of character is not fun to read about in what's supposed to be a humorous adventure through a piece of so-bad-it's-funny fanfic.
The other character doesn't have much of a description beyond his powers—not even what he looks like. (And you didn't describe Agent #1, either.) I don't know enough about the continuum to know whether Agent #2 is overpowered or not, but it concerns me that that's what you focus on rather than who he is as a human being (or whatever species he is). You've given him that he's nice and gets along with his partner, which is fine, but his personality needs a lot more fleshing out before he'll be a solid character.
Also, please work on your capitalization and punctuation. Words at the beginning of new sentences need capitals, and most punctuation requires a space between the punctuation mark and the following word. You seem to particularly struggle with putting a space after each comma. Please study how punctuation is used in the books you read and how others write here on this Board.
~Neshomeh
...yeah, I'm getting massively mixed signals on this.
Okay, so first we have to place this game within the series. Considering that this character's backstory involves the Kirijo Group, this places us squarely in Persona 3, which is worth noting since the summoning of personas differs in each installment of the series. They are technically all in the same universe considering that characters from Persona 2 are mentioned in Persona 3 (and then considering that characters from Persona 3 show up in Persona 4 Arena), but the Persona summoning works differently between each game, and that's kind of important to note when talking about Persona.
Now, Nagi is supposed to be an experiment to be a Wild Card. As Des pointed out, it is indeed an ability only accessible to the protagonist, and it's been outright stated even in the early parts of the game that his case is a very special one. Now, apparently Nagi didn't get the ability considering that 7.65 only gave him one Persona: if Nagi did have the Wild Card, he would be able to switch between Personas any time he wanted instead of just being stuck with one (and trust me: it is virtually impossible to advance through Persona 3 if you don't constantly make the protagonist switch Personas). So on the Wild Card, it's a rather tough call, edging towards the not-Stu side in my opinion.
What's less difficult to call, though, is that he was part of experiments with the Kirijo Group. In this account, I would say he is pretty speshul because, at least from what I have played, he should not have turned out the way he did. See, there is a precedent for that in canon: the protagonist is opposed by a group of three artifical Persona users who call themselves Strega. They were the product of a bunch of Kirijo Group experiments, though their end goal was to just awaken their Persona, rather than to give them the Wild Card ability. Problem is, the three members of Strega have tons of mental issues, depending on the members: most notably is that the only girl in the group, Chidori Yoshino, is shown to have a dependence on her Evoker that functions almost like a drug addiction. Further, the group as a whole seems to function on a rather hedonistic philosophy, considering how they use the Dark Hour for their own monetary benefit. In addition, since their Personas weren't awakened naturally, they need to take a suppressant to keep their Persona from outright killing them. So overall, I feel that being part of experiments of the Kirijo Group would have severely traumatized Nagi. Now, this would all be fine if this was reflected in the character, but from what 7.65 has said, Nagi's personality seems to be "Yukari Takeba, except he takes charge a little more often", indicating that such a potentially traumatic past had very little effect on him. So I would call him speshul just based on this alone, and it's this among other things that sort of reads a bit on the Stu-ish side for me. And that's before we go into how Persona 3 wouldn't have a plot if it weren't for the Kirijo Group.
Then there's the fact that he goes to the Nanjo Group from the Kirijo Group. The Nanjo Group works pretty closely with the Kirijo Group, believe it or not, so I find it tough to believe that the Nanjo Group would just keep him around when it might present a conflict of interest given that they still do work together. Granted, they did used to be part of the same group before the Kirijo Group split from Mr. Nanjo, but they still work together on a lot of things.
So I would say that Nagi is kinda close to being qualified as a Gary Stu in terms of Persona 3. Granted, I haven't played Persona 3 all the way to the end, so take it with a grain of salt: but if I were a PG, I would be extremely hesitant to grant permission to 7.65 based solely on the fact that Nagi is too close to being a Gary Stu for comfort.
And that's before we talk about the problems involved with having a sadistic 13-year-old as an agent. I imagine the psychological issues therein would be through the roof, so...
so,you thought Nagi is speshul.
well then,featuring the new and improved Nagisa Kazuhiro!
Nagi used to have to take the same drugs as strega until he joined the PPC. the flowers saw Nagi's dependence on a lethal drug to be a liability,so the Yuuzahn vong shapers in the employ of DoSAT gave him a biotech parasite that helps him control his persona.
Nagi was quite young when he was experimented on(around 7-8)
so when he escaped,he was pretty much like strega:hedonistic,violent,and tough to handle.
after being adopted by the nanjo group,he went through psychological therapy and was given drugs to help repress his memories. the Nagi you see today is the result of this
Nagi's wild card is severely neutered compared to the protagonists. he can only use 4 personas at a time,and those personas are pretty weak,the most skills one possess are 4.
does this make him more speshul? or does it flesh him out.
if the former,I'll rewrite him.
...but to me, you've basically admitted that you didn't think about any of this stuff before I brought it up, 'cause you basically just regurgitated everything I said and called it "fleshing out the character". Which, fine, that's better than nothing, but I'll get to the new logic issues that this brings up.
See, here's the thing I need to mention that points to a larger problem here: to my mind, you've confirmed that it's not an issue of "I have fleshed out the characters and I just have difficulty writing that", as much as it is a case of "oops, I didn't think that far ahead". See, that right there is the reason why Rule of Cool is such a problem in badfic. Badfic authors constantly think "well, how cool would it be if this character was this or could do these things" without thinking about them from a logical standpoint within the context of the story they're in. As such, things happen that make no damn sense.
My classic example? Parallel Realities, which was a terrible Mass Effect fanfic which involved some stupid AU where Commander Shepard was a not-human alien from another reality with its own set of aliens. Now, Shepard constantly tells us in that fic that his galaxy can't reveal themselves because "dude, the Council would subjugate us 'cause we have all this stuff". Problem is, the author then decided "hm, I should let the Rule of Cool apply to these alien races and make them as badass as possible". So later in the fic, you were seeing their ships do things like take out an entire batarian slaver fleet, and take out four Reapers with one shot. They mention that their numbers are too low, but their technology is way advanced to make up for this. The problem there is that it ruins any credibility Shepard had, because the fact that they can take out four Reapers with one weapon indicates that they would in fact have the technology to not be subjugated by the Council. Because of the Rule of Cool, the author of that fic invalidated his own main character's reasoning for not doing something pretty significant, and as a result a large part of the plot became rather stupid (not to mention that it made it obvious that the only reason they weren't intervening was because there would be less plot regurgitation that way).
That's the kind of thing that unchecked Rule of Cool can do to a fanfic. And from what I'm seeing here, you're currently in that same mindset. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you need to slow down and really think about the characters and their backstories before doing stuff.
Okay. Back to the character.
Now we have new problems that're brought up. So he was given drugs to repress his memories? Um... pardon my vernacular, but you do realize how ...ed up that sounds, right? "Oh, he's a problem, but that's okay: just throw some memory repression drugs at him and it'll be all fine!" I'm pretty sure it doesnt work like that: what if he's resistant to them? What if he goes off his meds for even one second? Wha then? And on top of that, memory repression drugs do not work like that in anything that isn't To The Moon. Granted, Medical probably could come up with something like that, but someone in Persona? Um, no. I doubt it, nor do I think that the suppression of memory would exactly be the right solution to his issues. I would say more, but I'd have to bring in my friend who's currently getting a degree in criminal psychology and I really, really don't want to drag him into any more discussions about badfic psychology than I already have.
Second of all, you've just made Nagi overpowered with the Wild Card. I'm not sure you understand this, but the Wild Card is a protagonist-centered ability, and said protagonists are said to be special by the canon. So you see, even in the canon they know it's unusual. By the very nature of Wild Card as a special ability, you're making your character speshul in a way that few canon characters would be. It doesn't matter how much you neuter his ability, it's still special according to the canon. This wouldn't be as bad if this was the main character of a different group that had nothing to do with anything related to Persona 3 (as well as any of the other Persona installments), but the fact that it's dealing with Persona 3 just makes this worse for me.
And for the record, the only one who has Wild Card is the player character himself (and Aigis in "The Answer", but for her it's an even more special case considering that she loses an ability she had in the main game to get Wild Card). All the other members of SEES get one Persona that evolves as the game goes. Their Persona evolves into another one, but they still only keep one Persona. You may notice that this is NOT the same as being able to summon multiple Personas. Therefore, I have no idea why you said "protagonists", plural.
Third: So if Nagi had never been given meds, he'd be exactly like your other character? I guess that's good to know that we're dealing with two of the same exact character here.
Fourthly, what good would a biotech parasite do to keep a Persona from killing him? Personas function through willpower: they're manifestations of the personality of the characters that unleash them, and it's revealed in "The Answer" that the Personas are tamed Shadows. The reason they went with drugs in the canon is because psychiatric drugs in the real world affect how the brain works. How would something that works on the body help control a matter of the mind?
And lastly, branching off from the above point: the reasoning of the above point is probably the deal breaker for me, and I'm sure it would be a deal breaker for any PG here. To me, this tells me that you don't seem to understand how Personas work. Let me repeat that: this tells me that you don't seem to understand how the Personas--the things that make the entire plot possible, the things that get tons of exposition for, and the things that make up the frickin' name of the frickin' continuum--work in the canon. This right here is the most damning thing to me in terms of everything you've written down. Your character is written in such a way that it disregards how Personas work in the canon, which means that it's a massive canon violation. And frankly, it doesn't matter if you do know how Personas work: it still indicates a lack of thought on your end. If your attempt to "flesh out" the character involves completely breaking the most important part of the canon, why should we trust that you'd have the judgment necessary to be able to give an accurate assessment of the problems of various badfics in any continuum?
Now, I'm not a PG, so someone else may see this differently, but if I were a PG, I'd tell you to take it all back to the drawing board and start over. Frankly, I don't think you're ready to write for the PPC in any capacity.
But you know what? That's okay. Not all of us in the PPC write missions. Most of us are here to learn, as well as to make fun of bad writing. I do think that the character here exhibits some major Gary Stu tendencies, but I can tell that you're passionate about writing nevertheless. That's a good thing: now all that's left is to filter that passion so you can do it right. And that can be done by slowing down and not jumping into things.
The creative process is not something that happens instantaneously. It needs to come at the right pace, and in this case I think the right pace will come from you slowing down and thinking a little more about what you want to write.
Nagi actually has dissociative identity disorder
he has a more violent alternate identity with it's own persona,Keres
the parasite can only help him control python,not Keres
Emile finds this out at the worst possible moment,as Nagi has been hiding this from Emile to make sure people would not be concerned about him.
Nagi actually has dissociative identity disorder
he has a more violent alternate identity with it's own persona,Keres
the parasite can only help him control python,not Keres
Emile finds this out at the worst possible moment,as Nagi has been hiding this from Emile to make sure people would not be concerned about him.
Hiding something in their past is a reasonable thing for agents to do. However, giving an agent an actual, World One, horribly devastating psychological disorder is not funny. I have doubts that you have researched this disorder beyond seeing it in media (where it is often portrayed as something to be laughed at-not with-AT). They GET IT WRONG--very, very wrong. People living with a dissociative disorder are not typically extremely functional people in day to day life, and DID is the most severe of the bunch.
An excerpt from Psych Central
"In fact, persons suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder often seek treatment for a variety of other problems including depression, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, memory lapses, alcohol or drug abuse, temper outbursts, and even hearing voices, or psychotic symptoms. People with dissociation often also seek treatment for a variety of medical problems including headaches, unexplained pains, and memory problems."
I've read a psychology textbook and I know how DID works.
This isn't for comedic purposes,it's serious and causes Nagi a lot of pain.
That's to say, they had an alter-ego who comes out more or less every other chapter, though the alter-egos knew about one another.
It wasn't for the PPC, but it was for something related to the PPC (the Official Fanfiction Universities), but similar premises hold true for the OFUs as they do for the PPC. This character's identity crisis wasn't necessarily played for laughs, but it wasn't played up for drama, either.
why I have a problem with both of your agents.
From the Spirit of the PPC section of the Guide to the PPC:
Let me highlight a paragraph of that.
Put as simply as possible, the PPC is about having fun.
This means that the primary focus of our stories and interactions is comedy, and that we don’t like rainy-day types very much. Anyone taking things Too Seriously or who doesn’t enjoy our particular brand of silliness probably won’t have fun here. This is all done for the laughs; we’re not going to change that. We love the PPC just the way it is – with no logic, no sanity, and above all, no realism. After all, we have miniature fiery demons pop into existence every time a random author misspells a name, and our Headquarters requires a six-dimensional map – this place couldn’t touch “realistic” with a ten mile pole
And from the What NOT to Write section of that guideline:
We don’t want to see any SuperPowered Agents walking around. This place is not about who can be the “coolest” agent, who has the best weapons, or who can handle the most disgusting badfic. This is not a competition. We don’t want dark, aggressive stories – we want humour, and rest assured that the community at large will respond quickly if things start getting out of hand.
I'm not calling you a bad writer (or person) for coming up with dark characters. Personally, I write horribly dark urban fantasy original fiction on occasion. My fanfic tends to be dark as well. The thing to remember is that the PPC is not the place for those kinds of characters and stories, so when you tell me, 'This isn't for comedic purposes,it's serious and causes Nagi a lot of pain.' I have to think that you are missing a large part of the basic principles that make up the PPC.
Also, aside from concerns I have about a 13 year old agent, which are my own since there is ample precedent for agents that young, the weapons you listed Emile as preferring are big, heavy things that will kick like a mule. You didn't mention height, so going by the CDC growth chart for Caucasian males, Emile at average height for 13 would only be about 5'2" or 62 inches and weigh just over 100 pounds. Those rifles range from 43" to 49" long and from 8 lbs to almost 12 lbs in weight. My mom is 5'6" and owns a rifle of similar size. She had to have a custom short stock installed to allow her to properly hold the rifle. Those rifles kick HARD even when held properly. While I don't believe it would be impossible for a 5'2" person to safely shoot those rifles, I doubt it would be much fun for them.
you want them redesigned?
tell me,what would make them less sueish?
you want them redesigned?
tell me,what would make them less sueish?
what would make them fit more with the PPC's humorous style?
I could redesign Nagi,but what of Emile?
Nord's idea just makes you angrier,huh.
well then,do I need any more proof that my writing skills are horrible?!
do I need any more proof of the sue curse?!
Guess I made it worse, somehow. And no, going from the messages, I actually didn't suggest what 7.65x54R did in his rebuttal. I actually suggested that he should tone it down and to remove the Wild Card aspect from his Agent. Apologies for the miscommunication.
And to expand, the Agent's Persona was pretty strong (but not as strong as the protagonists from the games/animes), but to summon it, he has to draw into his memories, which he tried to repress. Hope that helps.
The first thing you need to change is that you need to calm down. Going into "?!" isn't going to help anyone, least of all yourselves.
And now, we need to establish something: if you're thinking of us as angry at it, then... well, I imagine that if your character's "redesign" involves trivializing a very serious mental illness, Miah probably was a little miffed.
So ultimately, the answer to all of your questions is: the best way to deal with the Sue Curse is to slow down and think about the characters you're creating for longer than two seconds. Don't just throw characteristics at your characters: think about how these characteristics could affect the characters first and how that might affect other characters. And most importantly, don't think of the "what", but of the "who"; and yes, there's a pretty big difference between the two. As one of Wil Wheaton's guests on TableTop once said: "who are these people, what do they want, and why should I give a shit?" are the three most important rules of writing.
Thirdly, take your time. Improvement doesn't come immediately. Hell, I used to be a terrible author in my own right (and in fact, I'm currently in the process of MSTing one of my old shames elsewhere on the internet), but I eventually got better. I'm almost certain that you'll get better too.
All in all, it takes time to be able to write stuff pretty well. So don't be afraid of not producing anything immediately. You don't have to.
(And on a side note... You got the DID idea from Nord? That... actually explains a lot about the idea itself, and why it's so damn terrible and ill-fitting with things that are not his own fiction.)
I didn't trivialize DID,I know how it works.
so,try to slow down my thought processes,huh
I have books on how to write,so maybe I should read them.
are you saying I should take my time to write? if so,I will.
(side note:the DID was my Idea,but Nord said it was good)
...is not the important part, I'm afraid. In this case, it's not a question of "do you know how it works" as much as it is a case of "do you know how serious it really is". If you can't grasp just how serious the topic is, then you shouldn't be writing with it in mind, it's simple as that. You can play the topic as something painful for the character and still trivialize it, you know?
...is essentially "write a lot of things, review your work, and find your voice". If you keep writing things (short stories, one-shots, anything at all) while listening to feedback, you'll see your skills improve over time. Patience is key here.
Just a little comment on your spelling, punctuation, and grammar: make sure you capitalize the beginning of all your sentences and put a space after commas. You also don't need to start a new paragraph for every sentence you start. This will make your text appear a whole lot neater.
I have the creative abilities of a 12-year old fangirl
I have this thing known as a "sue curse" that basically makes any non-conceptual character I create horrible
the last time I had creative abilities that were admirable was in the 4th grade.
I fail at literally everything that I like.
so,I'l get to redesigning Nagi.
You're not cursed. What you need to do, as other people said, is to calm down and be patient. Everybody started as a newb - look at me, it took me a year and four tries to get Permission (had problems with, at that order, lack of plot, beigeness, and purpleness) - the trick is to learn from your mistakes. When you redesign Nagi, you should probably take a look at this; it's sound advice.
>"seeing their ships do things like take out an entire batarian slaver fleet, and take out four Reapers with one shot"
Would you care to elaborate? 'Cause the only thing that I can imagine oneshotting a Reaper is a Yamato Cannon blast.
It's a bit more complicated than that anyway, since with some of it you really do need to see their tactics:
With the batarian slaver fleet, it was that there was one parallel galaxy ship against three batarian slavers. First, the batarian slavers open fire, which doesn't do a single thing against the barriers of the parallel galaxy's ship. (Literally, it's described in-story as "shields are still at 100%".) Then, the parallel galaxy's ship pulls off a turn that would logically shear most ME galaxy ships in half. And then, the parallel galaxy has this super-advanced AI that can jump between pieces of hardware at will, and hey have enough of those on board that they're able to take over the computer systems of each ship to keep the batarians from using them. And when the parallel galaxy storms the ships, the batarians' guns don't do a single thing to them. Logically, most of this would be powerful against the ME galaxy, so...
And as for "taking out four Reapers with one shot", they basically just fired a glorified mining laser at one specific Reaper and happened to get four of them at the same time. Granted, the weapon does seem to be cumbersome to aim, but c'mon, four reapers in one hit? That's still overpowered!
sorry
I have difficulty putting pen to paper,so while they are fleshed out,I have difficulty writing that down.
Emile will provide some dark humor,and he's not all serious.But Nagi's the primary source of any humor.
As for the physical descriptions, Emile is 5'1 with a moderately light build. He his skin is lightly tanned and he has brown,spiky hair.
Nagi is also 5'1,but is much more slender,with paler skin and he has blond,bowl-cut hair.
As mentioned, My characters were designed to be fleshed out,but I have difficulty writing those parts down.
This group was founded largely on the expectation that an author should put in the effort to polish their writing before they publish it. You should absolutely write if you want to write, but if you struggle with putting your ideas into written words, it's gonna take a lot more effort for you to get your work up to a presentable level. You might want to consider finding a co-writer—maybe an IRL friend—who understands your ideas and can help with the actual writing part.
Again, though, I want to stress that the PPC is not about dark humor. It's not about killing things for fun and profit. It's also not about cool powers and/or lots of ammo. Building these concepts into your characters will cause you problems, even if your writing is technically perfect.
From the PPC Badfic page of the wiki:
The PPC is about a rag-tag band of normal (if more than a little eccentric) people of all species desperately trying to make the multiverse a better place despite staggering odds and surrealistically bizarre working conditions. No one would do this job without a deep love for the various canons to drive them to it, because they don't have it easy. Nor should they, because that would be boring to read about. However, ninety percent of the time, this difficulty should be a source of humor, not drama. At the end of the day, we're simply here to have a laugh at bad fanfic. Please bear that in mind.
~Neshomeh
I don't have any IRL friends right now.
So,can you help me out?
I have free time and writer's block problems (thanks, army) but I do want to help. Plus, getting more characters to bounce my agents off is always good.
There are many reasons, chiefest among which is that I have way too much on my plate and I'm failing pretty hard at keeping my commitments as it is. *pulls Hat of Shame down over her eyes* So, I just don't have that kind of time or energy to spare. Also, I don't think we have any major fandoms in common, probably because I'm 28 and you're not. (How old are you?)
If it's friends you lack, what I recommend is to table your agent ideas for the time being and just hang out with us and chat about general stuff so you can make some friends here. You should also use the time to work on your typing, read more spin-offs, and learn more about how the PPC works. That way, you'll be better prepared for creating good PPC characters in the future.
And, most of all, I hope you'll have fun! There's a lot more to us than agents and missions, and I think the people who appreciate that have the best time here. {= )
~Neshomeh
This group was founded largely on the expectation that an author should put in the effort to polish their writing before they publish it. You should absolutely write if you want to write, but if you struggle with putting your ideas into written words, it's gonna take a lot more effort for you to get your work up to a presentable level. You might want to consider finding a co-writer—maybe an IRL friend—who understands your ideas and can help with the actual writing part.
Again, though, I want to stress that the PPC is not about dark humor. It's not about killing things for fun and profit. It's also not about cool powers and/or lots of ammo. Building these concepts into your characters will cause you problems, even if your writing is technically perfect.
From the PPC Badfic page of the wiki:
The PPC is about a rag-tag band of normal (if more than a little eccentric) people of all species desperately trying to make the multiverse a better place despite staggering odds and surrealistically bizarre working conditions. No one would do this job without a deep love for the various canons to drive them to it, because they don't have it easy. Nor should they, because that would be boring to read about. However, ninety percent of the time, this difficulty should be a source of humor, not drama. At the end of the day, we're simply here to have a laugh at bad fanfic. Please bear that in mind.
~Neshomeh
I don't know Persona, so I asked a few friends who did play the games. Wild Card is a) incredibly powerful and b) basically a protagonist-only ability.