Post originally by Zoran Bekric at 2004-06-16 18:47:24
Converted from Phorums BB System


Tarleon wrote:
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<i>Were I in the shoes of the GM in question, I would have contrived a reason that getting rich forces them into the arms of the Rebels, rather then assuming a meta-game predisposition to join them. Perhaps they are on a trading run, and are interdicted for contraband, only to be rescued by some Rebel X-wings. Or for some reason (because he has ripped off an influencial crime boss?) the merchant player now finds himself on the Imperial Most wanted list, and he can only survive making small runs in the backwaters of space; only to be approached by the rebels to help them out.</i>
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Which is exactly what the GM in question did. She introduced a number of possible inducements for the character to join the Rebel Alliance. All were rejected. The player just wasn't interested in playing that. All they wanted to do was trade and develop a romance with a NPC. And before you mention that the NPC could also be used as a way of getting the character involved with the Rebels, I'll just point out that was tried and didn't work either.

The reason I brought up that particular game was because it presented the clearest example of what I think is wrong with player-centred games.

In my experience, most players don't think in terms of the group. They just don't. What players want will usually make for a dramatically satisfying game -- there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a game that covers the adventures and romantic entanglements of a trader in the <i>Star Wars</i> universe; done well it could be quite interesting -- it's just that there isn't room for the other player characters in such a conception. The other player characters are either ignored or treated as the supporting cast.

Some players I know could have made the trader character work. They could have refused to join the Rebel Alliance, maintained that doing so is dangerous and that you always end up getting shot at and yet, somehow, they would always end up getting involved in the adventure. Begrudgingly, complaining all the way, refusing to acknowledge any other motivation than simple greed, real cynics and curmudgeons, but still part of the group and part of the drama.

The player in question couldn't pull it off. There were no layers to the character. All they wanted to do was exactly what they said they wanted to do: trade, get rich, develop a romance. What made the example interesting was not the attitude of the player, but the fact that *all* the other participants wanted to do something different. As far as I'm aware, no-one else was opposed to running what this player wanted as an on-going sub-plot or series of sub-plots, they just didn't want it dominating play. Since a quirk of the character creation process ended up giving that character the only starship in the group, the player had an effective veto on what the group would do. "Well, it's my ship, so..."

I've seen the same thing in other games. A character has a ship or a tavern or whatever and their player uses it as a club to force the game to go their way. They're not malicious or arrogant about it -- usually it's quite innocent. They honestly think that what they want to do will be interesting. And it often is -- to them! They just don't think of what it would be like for the other participants. They see roleplaying games as something in which they get to indulge their wish-fulfilment fantasies, not as yet another area of life in which they get to make compromises and go along with the crowd.

Spiritual attributes give such players just another club they can use and, since such players constitute the majority of players in my experience, I think you can see why I'm not as enchanted with them as some others appear to be.

Regards,

Zoran