What are some traumas, hardships, and challenges to put a protagonist through?

Yup, that was what I want to happen when the protag goes to jail.

Or if not, then they have to deal with prejudice, or bigotry people who still think the protag is guilty and how hard it is for the protag to find job, friends, etc.

I think that counts for hardships or challenges. Not sure about the trauma thing thou.

That’s less of a trauma and more of a story plot.

Another more accurate way of saying would be, “what if your character was sent to prison for 10+ years for a crime they didn’t commit and had to deal with the issues of prison.” That way it would be the start of the story afterwards as opposed to what the story is about

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Losing their ability (through injury, age or consequences) to pursue their chosen career, especially if that career always was their dream. A doctor gets hit by a false malpractice suit, an athlete gets hurt badly enough to end their career or an engineer might suffer from dyscalculia due to say, brain damage.

Stood by friends or loved ones only to be betrayed by them. Refused to testify against a parent only for siblings to pin the crime on the MC with the parent keeping silent, refusing to exonerate them.

Committed an atrocity due to necessity, killing many to save even more. For example, having rigorously enforced a quarantine due to a deadly, contagious disease. As the residents try to storm the barricades, allowing the new plague into the general population, the order to sanitize the entire population is given… the MC might either be the person on the ground or the one giving orders.

Losing the sense of touch, less obvious of a disability than other senses but similarly alienating.

Forced to choose between children, there is only enough money to raise one of the three children; the other two must be put up for adoption.

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May have been offered already? But trauma’s do not need to be directed at the MC, but at those around them.

-A MC with dependent (a sickly sister, etc) has much pressure to do what they need to do.

-Maybe a terrible event happened around them, an attack, or just misfortune, but somehow they were were not harmed… survivors guilt?

-Maybe others have thrusts expectations and hopes upon them, parents wanting them to become a DR, they just want to be an artist… etc. The conflict with living up to the desires of those around you, or betraying them for your own needs.

-Injustice and prejudice are also good general tramas. Be the MC having them for others, or their directed at the MC, no ones perfect and most people have something they judge without reason.

-Frustration itself can be a trauma. Maybe your MC is an over archive, understands the world better then most, always see’s the same mistakes happen… no one listens to their protests. Inability to change the things that need to change.

-The best crimes are not the most violent but the deeply personal. Betrayed by a close friend or lover who used your fall as a platform to rise above you. Rumor mongering to ruin you and elevate them, character assassination painting you the wrong doer, and them the victim.

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Depending how much you’re looking to branch out, I can recommend the challenge of creating a sympathetic character without any serious traumas in their past.

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Just remembered something else good- give the protagonist a small hardship on top of the big one. John Mclane is trapped in a building full of terrorists- and he’s barefoot. People really remember him because of the last bit.

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A protagonist who is their own worst enemy, their insecurities and fears causing them to miss opportunities, refuse to act at an important time, or outright break down in times of stress. A good story point would be either confronting their dysfunctions, or possibly even embracing and coming to terms with the fact that they are messed up, and that’s okay. Maybe it pushes them to channel their anxiety and emotion in more constructive ways, or gives them an outlet to deal with their hangups. Or maybe they simply learn how to choke down their personal crises until after the far less personal crisis is over.

Not enough protagonists toe the line between “reluctant hero” and “nervous wreck” in my opinion.

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It could be the mc was born with something. Something powerful…yet dangerous and instead of maybe thinking that the mc could harness their power to do good, everyone immediately despises it because its something “new” and “never before seen”. So the mc has to deal with people hating them for who they are. They have to find themselves, and decide what they really want to do with this power. Get revenge? Show people that it can be used for good and so on…

Pretty much anything and everything or nothing, it’s fiction, sky is the limit, it just depend on the story you want to tell

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Apart from the attraction of the virtual experience of being something powerful, some of us as cyoa players are also attracted to games where we (or rather, the mc) are the victim of a tragic event. The reason behind it is probably similar, just in the other side of the spectrum.

Lets face it, a lot of us like virtual trauma, where the MC suffers in a myriad of ways. Oppression, torture, tragic past, abuse… That’s what makes works such as Fallen Hero so appetising. I’d wager most players are more masochistic than sadistic in this sense.

Do you have such inclinations when it comes to cyoas, and if you do, what sort of traumatic experience draws you the most?

I wouldn’t say masochist per se . Having lived hell personally, seeing traumat in a story . You…relate . And above all, you get choices how to react-do something about such a pain . Where in real life, most often when shit happen and you are hurt…you are in hell . There are no choices, there is no narrator to clear the fog and explain to you what’s happening, if you are one of the unlucky you are alone in hell .

So you just drown innit until the pain fade away slowly and you can see again .

But it change you and nothing is the same .

Games give you options, and you can replay said pain in a controlled setting . One in which you can close the game down if it become too much .

There are some traumas I can’t handle personally : rape for exemple is one .

But other then that, depression is often used in most story . PTSD as well .

Alcoholism-drug uses are often a subject that’s not brushed much .

for exemple fallen Hero serie , the mc isn’t just depressed . They are clearly suffering from more then that . PTSD is one and they may have more .

I would say that story is my cup of tea . On one hand you get to play as someone who is traumitized beyond belief and on the other hand, the narrator make sure to make you feel like shit for the choices you pick .

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People who like virtual trauma are usually those who have never experienced trauma in real life. Choice of Rebels reminds me of my oppression. Fallen Hero reminds me of my crippling gender dysphoria. I live this. There’s no reason to have it in my escapism. It’s no fun for me.

I’m not drawn in by trauma unless I can make characters suffer the exact same I did.

If they’re not abused by family, self-harming, starving themselves, terribly gender dysphoric, dissociating so much they can’t remember over half of the day, get flashbacks, PTSD, and hallucinations, plus being physically crooked, disabled, neurodivergent… they’re not me. We’re not heroes. Not all of that at once especially so. But they’re all linked, for me. If I hadn’t been disabled I wouldn’t have experienced the trauma needed to give me flashbacks. If I wasn’t trans I wouldn’t have self-harmed.

But then again, very few fictional characters are going to be the triple minority threat of trans-disabled-trauma-survivor. So, no. If there’s anything sadistic I get out of it, I’ve quoted it in the games thread: fictional characters have to suffer the same things in media that I did or it makes me feel as if my real-life suffering was worth nothing more than to make me into damaged goods.

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Which tends to be the one thing those characters don’t get (a lot of). Particularly in ruler games making that saying “it’s lonely at the top” come true.

For some people, yes, depends how much you, or rather your putative mc likes their life right now.
Personally I’ve always had a few family member, even at my lowest lows who made not want to do that. I do think that for many if not most mc’s it would quickly become more changeling trauma than a changeling fantasy. Having to find out everything you thought you knew about yourself or the world is more often devastating and traumatising then anything else, imho.

Unsurprisingly many of the magical mc or ruler mc games tend to lean heavily into this. On the magical side the Keeper series and @ParrotWatcher’s new game do this, the latter one with a big twist to boot.
For the ruler games both Zemia and New Atlantis do this recently in both I think it is very traumatising to the mc but your mileage may vary on this and Zemia in particular does have its bright spots too.

So basically being the first super-powered human or something? Basically real world governments won’t react well to having to suddenly deal with the first mage or superhero and realistically there’s a very high chance you’d end up being vivisected at some black ops site.

I’m not speaking to anyone specifically here, but I feel it’s important to point out that there’s a very real and significant difference between writing about trauma as a way to really look at the way it can affect a person, and just using it as a throw-away plot point to punch up a story.

If you’re going to include a major trauma that you, yourself, haven’t experienced, you need to do the research. Talk to survivors where possible, read essays, visit online communities, look into applicable psychology, etc.

If you write it well and make it feel authentic, people who’ve experienced that trauma should feel represented or at least respected. If you don’t, they could very well feel that you’ve exploited their pain for personal profit, which is a really shitty space to inhabit for everyone involved.

There’s the potential here to do something great, but the possibility also exists that you could end up harming vulnerable people, trigger warnings or not. Be careful.

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Addressing the actual title/question of this thread, this is what I have to say:

You don’t need to have “trauma” in your story. What you have to have is character growth, but growth doesn’t require trauma.

If a protagonist’s fatal flaw is their temper/impulse behavior, you can create character growth by exploiting that flaw.

The key is to make sure you don’t go to the worst possible scenario even single given time, otherwise you’ll induce audience apathy by having all of these characters with “tragic” backstories to the point where the word tragedy looses its meaning.

You could easily exercise the protagonist’s struggle with impulsivity by having them go through something mundane, but in their own mind it’s perceived as exaggerated.

For instance, the protagonist could be a stock broker (again. really mundane here) that’s impulsive and reacts too hastily to a market plummet and then later ends up regretting their decision. The protagonist doesn’t need to hit rock bottom - lose everything - to create effective character growth, but there’s this notion that people can only grow if the worst thing possible happens to them - which isn’t true.

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Different sorts of hardships will have different effects on different people. Consider what type of character you’re trying to write, and the lasting effect you want any given struggle to have on them.

For example, gaslighting could leave a character timid, lacking confidence, and having trouble trusting their own perception.

An extremely physically dangerous hardship like surviving an attempted murder, or that sort of thing, would have a much different effect on that character, and is a broad enough category to have very different lasting impacts on different sorts of people depending on the specific circumstances.

I think that what hardships you decide to put your characters through should be driven by the type of character you want to write. If your focus is more plot driven and you have specific struggles in mind, consider the character’s innate and acquired traits and how their struggles would mix with those traits to affect them, their actions, and the story in the long run.

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I, as well as most people, use cyoa games as a form of escapism. I try to veer clear away from trauma similar to mine, and I never ever choose the trans option ever. I’m drawn to different pains and trauma, or at least in a different enough form that it doesn’t trigger my own, so I’m surprised that anyone would be willing to go through the hells of reality in virtual enviornments again.

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Figure out what they love to do and/or what they’re good at and/or what their most defining trait is, then take it away from them. GRRM’s examples: Ned Stark is honourable, so he dies a perceived traitor. Bran loves to climb, so he gets crippled. Jaime lives for fighting, loses his sword hand. Theon likes to bang chicks, gets his dick sliced off. Tywin is a proud lion, dies taking a shit with a whore in his bed. Stuff like that.

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How about being a person who is a Chūnibyō and dealing with high school bullying and their family trying to get them out of it

What came to mind is a bit complicated… and at the risk of mixing plot and trauma here, I’ll give it a go…

What is the traumatic event if integrated in the story? An example would be a closed time-loop scenario. Say the character starts from a predetermined reset point in time (in fantasy through a spell, in sci-fi time machine etc.), before he/she meets the romantic interest. The MC is aware of a chain of events that results in tragedy for the RO and has failed to alter the outcome x number of times. This time is the last time that the spell/ time machine/ whatever can be used.

You have the trauma that has been experienced already x number of times that you have failed, and also dealing with already having feelings about a person you have yet to meet.

If this sounds at all creative and not totally silly, I don’t deserve credit, because I love Terminator and The Magicians is a HUGE guilty pleasure. :wink: There, disclaimers and setting the record straight, considering the number of creative people on this site. :smile_cat:

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