Freedom of Speech

[Lost Cub]

Hi all,

I'd appreciate some comments on my random thoughts that have been buzzing inside my head for a while. I was thinking about Jared's Sandbox Paradigm and this came to me:

To have a truly successful game, you must, among other, allow your players a sort of gaming "freedom of speech", which means:

1) make it possible, if just theoretically, for the players to take any possible stand - religious, moral, ethical and so on. If villains are unplayable in your game, you have a problem with your villains.

2) let players assume any archetypal social role, consciously or not. These role need not coincide with character classes, professions or whatever.

Note that commercialy successful games do just that. V:tM gives you different natures, demeanors and paths; W:tA different auspices. In D&D, you can play 9 alignments and, although the evil ones are not recommended, you can play them just fine should you wish. SR lets you play very different characters, from those who hold their body sacred to those you mercilessly butcher themselves to make room for new cyberware. Basically, your game satisfies this criteria if you can make a PC with opposite stands and beliefs to any other PC (even though those two PCs might not work together, they should work fine on their own).

Why? Think of children in a sandbox: while they play, they assume social roles that best suit their abilities and personalities. I child who is strong, might became a bully. An extroverted, likeable child might become a leader. An introvert might become an outcast, and so on.

The same thing happens at your workplace, in your gaming group, and just about anywhere. It's what roleplay (social roleplay, not role-playing games) is all about.

Which means, don't limit players by disallowing behaviour that's "not appropriate for the genre." I've seen players doing great job of portraying Sith lords, lawful evil warriors, kind and gentle Assamites and so on. If you wouldn't play it, doesn't mean that no one else would. Give players a freedom of speech.

Well, what do you think?

LC

[kabael]

I think that creating a successful game has less to do with providing a huge range of opposing stances (whether philosophical, moral or whatever) than it does with providing clearly identifiable stances. That's what the splats in White Wolf games do - they provide very quick, very clear, very simple hooks with which to catch the reader's attention so they say "That's neat, I could play that..."

It's a handle for the setting in some ways, at least if you're just flipping through the book.

Unfortunately that same handle often ends up being a binding on the game possibilites. White Wolf is, again, a perfect example of both being constrained by a stereotype and going beyond it (depending on which books you read and who you're (un)lucky enough to game with).

I think that the "freedom of speech" aspect you are talking about is more a hallmark of successful gaming more than it is of successulf games, if you know what I mean :)

[NPC Belac]

I think it has more to do with the Gamemaster than game, though.

For one thing, alignments tend to restrict character personality, not give more options. D&D is a horrible offender. It's impossible to play a group of evil people working together for a common goal that they believe is good without bending the rules of the game.

I think what a game should have is not rules for conduct, but rather suggestions for character views that lend themselves to interesting characters.

-Belac the Spectral Rambler

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Originally posted by NPC Belac
For one thing, alignments tend to restrict character personality, not give more options. D&D is a horrible offender. It's impossible to play a group of evil people working together for a common goal that they believe is good without bending the rules of the game.

Except that the D&D alignment system isn't a means to restrict the character's personality -- it's an intregral part of the system.

Being LAWFUL means...
You're affected by magical spells that affect Lawful creatures.
You can't be a barbarian or a bard.
You can't be a cleric of Neyrthul (er, the God of Slaughter)

Being EVIL means...
You can wield certain magical weapons without suffering a penalty.
You cannot be a Paladin.
You can be detected by a Sense Evil spell.

etc. etc.

Alignment as a guide for characterization is a gimmee. But really, it's a game mechanic. Like a Strength rating or a Class or a Race. It sets your character along a certain path. It has more to do with the system than with morality (which means that yes, as a characterization tool, it's "broken").

As for playing evil characters, well that's neither a topic for this thread or this forum -- suffice it to say that evil is the easier path than Good, the difference being that a Good character is limited in their actions by their own conscience. An Evil character is only limited by their own abilities -- which is an interesting distinction.

And going back to the original message, I don't see it as a freedom of speech issue. If someone is playing SCHISM (one of the games I wrote), then they are limited by what kind of character they may play. All SCHISM characters are infected by a kind of mental/physical/emotional/spiritual illness. All SCHISM will die. All SCHISM characters are told in the rules that they cannot play doctors, lawyers, FBI agents and people who are competent in their professions. It focuses the game is a very specifc direction, which is exactly what I wanted it to do. In terms of my intent, the game is a laser beam...I'm very happy with it there.

But if someone were to play it without understanding that intent, then mis-communication and bad feelings could arise. "What do you mean?" says the player. "My character has a Cover of 8 (basically high skill in that game) and I can't be an FBI agent? Why not?" They don't understand...and their freedom of speech (ie: play the character they want to play) conflicts with the design of the game (ie: play a certain kind of character facing a certain kind of conflict). SCHISM is not a game about heroism...attempting to play a "white knight" hero is impossible (and ridiculous, considering the scope of the game).

So no, I don't agree.

[Ian Absentia]

Originally posted by Lost Cub
To have a truly successful game, you must, among other, allow your players a sort of gaming "freedom of speech", which means:

1) make it possible, if just theoretically, for the players to take any possible stand - religious, moral, ethical and so on. If villains are unplayable in your game, you have a problem with your villains.

2) let players assume any archetypal social role, consciously or not. These role need not coincide with character classes, professions or whatever.Theoretically, yeah, sure. However, you are aware, of course, that possessing freedom of speech doesn't guarantee that everyone is going to enjoy what you have to say. So, in practice, you may have a game where either the GM or the players may present a situation or a role that is so dissonant with the rest of the participants that it isn't enjoyable. The assumed way of getting around that problem is to encourage frank and open discussion among all of the players as to what sort of material to which they're all amenable. Another method, though, is to create a game with a defined premise that purposefully explores a particular theme. To a very strange extent, Robin Laws' Rune is such a game (ah, but is it "truly successful"?).

I dunno. I remember back when the first Sabbat books came out for Vampire: the Masquerade, and I very enthusiastically admitted to my gaming group at the time that I'd love to play a Sabbat chronicle. They all looked at me like I was some kind of freak and told me the idea was totally repellant. After all, at the time even White Wolf was still recommending the Sabbat books as background for NPCs. I personally felt that it would have been interesting to explore a more honest and forthright approach to being a vampire. The upshot of it all, though, was that the game really wasn't entirely accommodating of all approaches to characterisation -- theoretically, yes, but not practically.

I'm reminded at this moment of one of my favorite Twain-isms:

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

I think that says a lot about what you might want your game to feature in theory, but to never actually occur in practice.

~Ian

[Tyrethali]

I have to disagree also. I like games with premises, games with focus. One of the best superhero games I've run, I just told the players that they all worked for shadowy government agency X. In most stories, be they TV shows or epic novels or whatnot, all the characters have something in common that binds them together. If the game allows anything, then there's a good chance for you to end up with a bunch of unrelated characters that have no real reason to work together. Good players or GMs will usually realize this, but novice ones might need the help.

Free speech is nice, but it helps it what you are saying has a topic, instead of rambling everywhere or saying nothing at all. Being faced with the command: "Omniludos is the game about Anything! Build a character! Any character at all! Anything and Everything is possible!" is a lot more daunting than "Racket is the game of Organized Crime, in which the players play characters working for one of Gritty City's many criminal cartels" or something like that.

[NPC Belac]

Thanks Jared, you just finally made me realize what I couldn't figure out I was saying about running campaigns with evil characters all these years (well, maybe a year or two).

Now that I have it figured out, here is my statement about evil characters:

---Evil characters CAN have a conscience---

That's the key to a plausible evil group. Sociopaths just don't make for good PCs, not in the long run, unless you have some REALLY good role-players or enjoy lots of betrayals.

Some people are devoted to very evil goals but still have morals; these morals just aren't enough to make them good. For example, you could have a very evil brotherhood of slavers who enjoy torturing people to death and other such random acts of cruelty, but feel that doing anything evil to each other, even minor things like petty theft or lying, is wrong and would never do it.

Evil people can have a conscience, it just doesn't always apply to everyone and it doesn't always work like a good person's conscience, and that's where the evil comes in.

-Belac the Rambler

[Mobius]

---Evil characters CAN have a conscience---

I agree completely. I personally can't tolarate games that don't allow for a bit of moral relativism. Other than sociopaths, there really aren't any 'evil' people, just people with mistaken assumptions, horrible prejudices, a mean streak, or a nasty case of greed for money or power. Almost every person alive has something or someone they love and respect.

Hitler treated Eva and his dogs royally. Pol Pot loved his grandchildren.

A game should allow for this type of behaviour.

[Lost Cub]

Let me rephrase a bit.

My opinion is that, for a game to be accepted by a large audience of gamers (read: sell), the mechanics should not rule out any player character who has any ethical or moral attitudes normaly reserved for NPCs. Of course, the game may make characters with some attitudes more difficult to play (Sith in WEG's Star Wars is difficult to play, for example, as are, supposedly, evil characters in D&D) but the ultimate choice on what morality is acceptable should be made by the GM and the gaming group, not game designer.

LC

[Ian Absentia]

Originally posted by Lost Cub
Let me rephrase a bit.

My opinion is that, for a game to be accepted by a large audience of gamers (read: sell), the mechanics should not rule out any player character who has any ethical or moral attitudes normaly reserved for NPCs.Okay, this is a reasonable distinction, particularly since most responses focussed on the difficulties in actually playing ethically or morally dissonant characters, as opposed to the game actually allowing them or not. However, I believe that the issue still stands that it's perfectly valid for the mechanics of a game to carry a particular premise -- with regard to this discussion, the focus of that premise would be on a specific moral or ethical outlook. Pendragon leaps to mind as an example of a very well done and considerably successful game where the mechanics promote the restrictive morals and ethics of being a chivalrous (and typically very religious) knight. Attempts have been made to broaden the perspective of the game, usually with rather diluted results. You may argue, though -- and perhaps correctly -- that these very same mechanics prevent Pendragon from being "truly successful" and "accepted by a large audience", or at least as successful and accepted as it could be. Perhaps that's an acceptable trade-off, though, akin to the difference between checkers and chess.

(If you're wondering what that remark means, try asking a number of people if they'd prefer to play a quick game of checkers versus a quick game of chess. Bets are on that the latter, with its more restrictive and complex rules set, will have fewer takers, even though it may be thought of more highly. Those who do take you up on the offer to play chess probably do so precisely because of the specifics of the rules that may not appeal to most casual players.)

In brief, I'll agree with you that one possible element of a good game is one that doesn't limit your imagination, particularly with regard to characterisation. However, another possible mark of a good game is one that features mechanics that intentionally promote characterisation and theme. The fact of the matter is that you may have two very good, very successful games sitting side-by-side, but a comparison between the two may reveal that they share very few of the elements that make them good.

Cheers,
~Ian