Characters Sharing Archetype

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Characters Sharing Archetype

Postby Chris Huntley » May 30, 2008 10:25 am

saket74 -- Characters Sharing Archetype

Is it possible for two different characters to share the same archetype role? Please explain with examples


Chris Huntley Re: Characters Sharing Archetype #1

Yes. There are two different ways to have multiple characters respresent a single Overall Story (Objective) Character--e.g. protagonist, sidekick, complex character, etc. The same is true for Subjective Characters (e.g. Main Character and Impact Character).

The first way is to have the character represented by a group of players instead of a single player. For example, R2D2 and C3P0 collectively represent the sidekick archetype in Star Wars (A New Hope). In the same film, the Empire is the antagonist reprented by the Gran Mof Tarkin and his minions.

The second way to use multiple players to represent a single character is to use a "hand-off." A hand-off is when one player exits the story (temporarily or permanenty) and another player takes on that character function. In this style of usage, you don't want these players in the same room at the same time (it's redundant and can be confusing to the audience). A nice example of this are the ghosts in A Christmas Carol. We start off with Marley's Ghost, then the ghost of Christmas Past, then Christams Present, then Christmas Future. Each serves the same character function but is only present for part of the story. The character function is "handed-off" from one to the next, and so on.

Chris Huntley
Write Brothers



bgriffvml Re: Characters Sharing Archetype #2

Is the hand-off a function in Dramatica, If so how do you use it?


Chris Huntley Re: Characters Sharing Archetype #3

It is a part of the Dramatica theory, but not supported in the Dramatica software short of creating a character named something like: "R2D2 & C3P0," "The robots," "The Ghosts," or "Bob/Fred." In other words, let the character name indicate the multiple players.

Chris Huntley
Write Brothers
Chris Huntley
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