Post originally by Zoran Bekric at 2004-06-16 18:50:04
Converted from Phorums BB System



Ralph Mazza wrote:
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<i>In my experience that sort of behavior comes from 2 sources. 1) players who are used to the game being about the players figuring out and overcoming the GMs obstacles in a somewhat confrontational (even if friendly confrontation) manner. Such players are well trained to use any and every trick they can to gain an edge and using "story" as a weapon is just one more tool to try. I've had pretty good luck deprogramming this sort of behavior but it takes time and being committed to not springing some surprise on the players that leave them thinking "aha I knew it was all a trick and you were just setting me up for a gotcha..." 2) control issues at the social level. No game or game mechanics can fix these or prevent these. Its something that needs to be addressed outside of game play. If it can't be resolved then just not playing with that player or group is often the best option.</i>
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Actually, I think there are more than two sources for such behaviour. Others would include:

3) Some players are just jerks. They behave like jerks in pretty much all other aspects of their lives and roleplaying games are no different. While it probably does you credit that you give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they only behave that way because of bad gaming experiences in the past, but that's not always the case.

4) Not thinking things through. By this I mean that sometimes people don't realise all the implications of the ideas they are advocating.

The most common example of this is players who come up with story seeds that would make great adventures for their character, but who don't think any further and ask themselves how the adventure would involve the other player characters. Such players end up quoting ideas of story in all honesty and good faith. They're not playing any form of calvinball, they're just not thinking things through. Often the examples and story principles they cite are perfectly valid, but they're all drawn from works that feature a single lead character. This is easy enough to do since the vast majority of stories feature a single protagonist and, as a consequence, the vast majority of story theory and literary analysis deals with such stories. The problem is that most roleplaying games feature a group of characters, so ideas drawn from how things work in stories built around a main protagonist and a supporting cast are not necessarily applicable.

To return to super-heroes as an example (it's a genre I've run a lot of), the comics that most roleplaying games would resemble would be the team books: <i>the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Doom Patrol, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Avengers, the Justice League,<i> and so on. But lots of players will reference comics featuring solo heroes -- <i>Batman, Spider-Man</i> and the like -- not realising that these have a different dynamic to the team books. That's the case even when dealing with characters like Wolverine, who appears both in a team book and has had his own solo comic. Examples and principles drawn from how things work in a solo-hero comic are perfectly valid, but they contain the hidden assumption that the game should function as a solo-hero game, not a team-hero game.

5) Storytelling. Since the early 1990s storytelling has been a big part of how roleplaying game texts describe the hobby. Players who first learn to roleplay by reading such texts think that "storytelling" is what the hobby is all about.

The problem with that is that most of the roleplaying texts discuss storytelling in very vague and fuzzy terms. It's all theme, mood, atmosphere and pretentious invocations of "role-playing vs. roll-playing". There's almost no discussion of the nitty-gritty of storytelling -- how one character can serve as a window into the personality and motivations of other characters, how to build tension, how an effective reversal works, what a reversal is, and so on. It's all abstract theory with no practical technique.

As a craft, storytelling is a process of directed daydreaming. Players who have absorbed the gaming version of storytelling generally get the daydreaming part, but have no way of knowing how to effectively direct it. As a consequence, they end up with Mary Sue characters and wish-fulfilment fantasies -- all very satisfying for them on a daydreaming level, but very poor storytelling. When they use "story" to justify their character choices and in-game decisions, they're valid in terms of what they know about roleplaying games, it's just what they know is a confused mess.


Ralph Mazza wrote:
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<i>With your example of the disaffected Ewok Noble: IMO that should have immediately opened up a round of commentary, suggestions, and shared idea riffing from all of the other players. If 1 player feels that that character violates his sense of vision for the game than character creation is the time for that to come out...not during actual play as you experienced with the trader. Either the character has to change or the other player's vision has to change.</i>
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Actually the Arrogant Ewok Noble was a great character. Worked amazingly well in the game. So I think you misunderstood that part of my post.

That said, I don't think it's the method of character creation. It's more the attitude players bring to the game.

In my experience, some players always have characters who fit the game, interact interestingly with other characters, and contribute to the group narrative of the game. Other players always have characters who exist in their own private bubbles. And there's more of the later sort of player than the former. The question isn't how the character's were created (I've seen the same pattern emerge from a range of different approaches), but how the characters are actually played.


Ralph Mazza wrote:
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<i>And ultimately, this isn't a bad thing. Once you have players who are really into each others characters than Player A can be absolutely thoroughly enjoying observing (with whatever level of kibbitzing the group permits) a scene involving Players B and C. You only get situations where Player A starts reading a novel or wanders off to play the Xbox, when Player A doesn't care about B and Cs character.

In fact, aggressively cutting between scenes involving different characters is a really powerful technique. I've played games over the course of several sessions where the PCs were rarely together, barely new each other and were all engaged in their own stories (which only occassionally overlapped). Yet no one at the table was bored and everyone was riveted to each others stories...because we were all committed to each others characters.<i>
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This pretty much describes the way the first on-going game I was involved in went. It was back in the early 1980s when I was at university studying Drama and all my fellow participants were also fellow students. As writers, actors, directors, etc. in training, they all created riveting characters and engaged in a friendly can-you-top-this style competition in making contributions to play.

Since finishing my degree, I've played with people from a cross-section of occupations, most of whom tend to be into a more self-absorbed style of play. The drama students were generally interested in entertaining their fellow participants, while most of the later players were primarily interested in immersing themselves in their characters and experiencing the world of the game inside their own heads.

Both seem valid approaches to me, but I've found that only the first is really suitable to the sort of mutual entertainment you're describing. The second pretty much inevitably leads to the situation I described of separate solo games with players patiently waiting their turns for the GM's attention. And the problem with that is that since the GM is on all the time while players take turns, the GM is left completely knackered at the end of each session. Like I said: been there, done that, not fun.

Since I'm not interacting exclusively with drama students anymore, I'm interested in techniques that will make the games I am involved in work better rather than seeking to transform my current players into something they're not and never really wanted to be.


Ralph Mazza wrote:
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<i>When all players (including the GM) sit around the table and begin to riff on what the central conflict of the upcoming campaign is going to look like...who the various NPC players are...what the current situation is...and how each PC fits into that puzzle...you simply don't have issues of players going 15 different directions or many of the other commonly expressed concerns.</i>
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This sounds a lot more like a story conference than a roleplaying game to me. As I've said, I have nothing against story conferences -- I actually rather enjoy them and look forward to them -- but they are not roleplaying games. Or, at least, they are not roleplaying games as played around here.

And they're not what I'm especially interested in when I play either. I do story conferences as part of my job; when pursuing a hobby, I look for something different.

If the only way that <i>The Riddle of Steel</i> can be played is as something other than a roleplaying game, I think you'll understand why those who are interested in roleplaying games may not be as enthusiastic about it as you are.

Regards,

Zoran