So you’re creating a new character to join us in Azeroth. Wonderful! Welcome. Do mind the impending doom, and beware the living.
But wait. Did you say your name was Mary Sue? Or didn’t you know that was your name, dear? Hmm…
A Mary Sue is a roleplay character that isn’t really a character at all. She (or he, in which case it’s called a Gary Stu) is actually a form of wish fulfillment shrouded in epic gear. When you’re creating a character to roleplay, while it can be great fun to pretend to “be” someone you aren’t and never will be, there’s a fine line between being heroic in game and trotting out the stereotypes of very bad fiction. So we try to create characters that aren’t going to be boring or predictable or impossible to roleplay. In making characters to roleplay in World of Warcraft, we try for original beings that have their own thoughts, origins and ambitions. It’s not always easy to do.
In other parts of the fan fiction and roleplaying worlds there are “tests” you can put a character through to discover if (s)he is potentially a Mary Sue. These tests can be used for World of Warcraft characters, though they require adjustment. To help us out for our purposes, I’ve taken two of the best of these original tests (that is, the Original Mary Sue Litmus Test and the Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test, compared them to our framework, and created a test just for WoW Mary Sues. (Many, many thanks to these two tests for the concept and idea.)
Answer the questions for your characters if you dare!
Continue on to Agi’s WoW Mary Sue Test….
Continue reading →