Referee, Protagonist, Antagonist

[Albert the Absentminded]

Okay, in traditional rpgs the guy who runs the antagonists is also the rules referee.

How about making the antagonist another type of PC?

Biggest problem I can see is making sure the ref has fun.

-Albert

[Eric J.]

How about making the antagonist another type of PC?

The easiest answer, methinks, would be that were that possible, they wouldn't be a PC unless they only had one player character.  If that's the case, either the Referee has to create a stagnant universe (not an antagonist or protagonist) or he would be extranious and your answer would be that there are already many RPGs without a GM.

I can see a style of play like that.  The Referee would still be the GM (and would be called whatever respective) and everyone would frolick in the flowers.  The problems I can immediateley think of would be:

A) GM favortism
B) Conflicts have to have a winner and looser.  This involved vested interest.  You'd have to have a fair conflict.
C) You'd have to have mechanics that would support this.
D) It might be bent towards competition instead of coorpative.
E) Who wants to be the 'antagonist'?

Oh, and with cap. lock on accidently: WELCOME TO THE FORGE!

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[Callan S.]

A post of mine, Good cop, bad cop goes into this idea in some detail with other posters.

[SlurpeeMoney]

A couple of days ago, I tried something that made the game run something paralell (not quite what you're thinking) to your idea. I had the players come up with their own complications to the game. I'd seen the idea done with kickers (a player introduces the initial conflict to the game, the Game Master then takes it away), but in this, I was basically looking at my players and saying "Ok. What happens next to make your life more miserable?" And they came up with some of the most gawd-awful things I could have ever done to them as a Game Master. I'm never, EVER that mean to my players.

Another option is cut-scenes. Have all of your players play bad guys as well, in scenes that depict the Evil Plans of the Overlords. For instance, let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that your game currently involves a small group of evil people working towards the same goal, through vastly different channels. One person has taken over a small country with a surprisingly strong militia, another has been gathering large magical impliments, yet another has been toying with political alignments, etc. Your player characters have been hunting down one in particular, against which they have some sort of grudge (he killed someone's brother's wife's second cousin), only to discover that he was not working alone.

Boom! Cut scene. The players are now the evil bad guys having a clandestine meeting in which they discuss their nefarious plans and deeds with one another, hoping to gain support or to show off their Mad Skillz to their peers. It is at this point that the players get to deterimine the bad guys' personalities, mannerisms, likes, dislikes, alliances, nemeses, etc, all while their whole group is hale and hearty at the local tavern.

When final showdowns occur, it is possible to take the player whose Evil Twin is being played out of the action in-group and pit his or her skills agains those of former fellows, and if the baddie dies, there's no hard feelings. It was a bad guy all along. If your baddie-player kills a player character, it's ok; sometimes that happens when you're facing a Big Bad. Or, you could just take control of the character and allow the player to speak for his or her Alter Ego.

A few suggestions,
SlurpeeMoney
"Best cut scene ever: RPGWorld."

[Doctor Xero]

Okay, in traditional rpgs the guy
who runs the antagonists is also the rules referee.

How about making the antagonist another type of PC?

I often farm out antagonists to the player-characters for them to run
in addition to their player-characters.

It means that I can run sequences in which a player-character is
confronted by or confronts his/her nemesis and involve two players
instead of just one.

The antagonists are not full player-characters, of course, because
they lack the freedom of player-characters -- when a player plays an
antagonist, he or she agrees to operate that antagonist with the
recognition that this is the player-character's story and not the
antagonist's story, that they are one more part of the story with which
the player-character interacts.

Players love it because it gives them the chance to ham it up, to
develop their own challenges with which to tease their friends by way
of the antagonist, and to play nastier characters than their heroes.

Doctor Xero

[M. J. Young]

It is traditional in role playing games that the players' characters all have to be part of the same group, and therefore all have to be on the same side. They're supposed to work together to win against the obstacles presented by the game, hence by the referee. That's why it has been said that there are no winners and losers--because in that sense, you're not trying to defeat each other, but work together to beat the game. (You're all winners or losers together, and no one can gloat that he beat everyone else.)

It's not necessary. Player characters can be adversaries. One can be the Nemesis of another.

Legends of Alyria is going to put this forward in spades. Character generation works by creating all the heroes and villains of a story, and then parcelling them out to the players according to who thinks they can best portray a particular character in the story. It's kind of like something I heard about auditioning for a role as an actor: you don't ask whether you can get the lead role, but in which role you would best contribute to the overall strength of the show. (I'm sure Richard Harris would have made an excellent Harry Potter from an acting ability perspective; but because of who he was, he made a much better Dumbledore.) In this sense, taking a character role in Alyria is casting yourself for a part in the story, and some of the players will be the villains, opposing others.

Multiverser has always left it entirely up to the players whether their characters want to help each other or kill each other. It's not up to the referee to impose that on them.

Most early games envisioned the character party idea, and a lot of people can't get past it in their thinking; but there are a lot of games in which player characters can be enemies.

--M. J. Young

[Bill Cook]

Damn, that chain of thread links was useful.

I've messed with having a Monster DM before.  It gave me manager's dilemma: he did the work but not the way I would have.

More recently, I drafted a design that requires players to play adversaries.  You lose character ownership, however.  Using an antagonist GM could solve the issue.

Responding to M.J.'s post:

Yes, in my current Sorcerer campaign, there are two characters shaping up to be aweful villians that must eventually be put down, should the right prevail.

Just reviewed your initial point.  I guess the challenges to player-to-player antagonism are (1) depersonalizing targeting actions and (2) avoiding character death to sustain drama.  Having an antagonist GM (as opposed to an antagonist player) could underscore the utility of his stable.

[Henri]

Last fall/winter a friend and I ran a game of White Wolf's Dark Ages where three of the characters were a pack of werewolves and a fourth was a very powerful, evil vampire who was trying to move in on their territory(there was also an inquisitor and a mage running around, but I'll leave them out to keep it simple).  On the whole, the game was successful and people had a lot of fun, but there were issues with both deprotaginization and balance.  

For example, in one session the werewolves sneak into the vampire's castle during the day time, while the vampire is asleep.  In order for the vampire's character not to be too bored, we gave him a sequence of dream sequences that were tied to the invasion of his castle.  However, since he was asleep, there wasn't much he could do in terms of meaningful decisions, so he was somewhat deprotagonized.  Finally, the werewolves get to his chamber.  The vampire's body guard, realizing he has no chance against a pack of werewolves, starts shaking the vampire to try to wake him, until the werewolves slash his throat out.  

Now I was faced with a hard choice as a GM.  It seemed terribly unfair to the vampire's player to simply allow the werewolves to stake him as he slept and then bring him back the Cairn for a ritual vampire bonfire.  So I said to him that he could wake up on a successful Willpower roll (difficulty like 8 or 9).  As you can imagine,  A LOT was riding on that roll.  As it turned out, he succeeded, woke up, and managed to slip away unharmed.  

But now the werewolves's players were disgrunteld because their characters had gone through enormous sacrifice to get themselves into the castle in the day time with the understanding that they would catch the vampire asleep, and in the end they achieved nothing.

Anyway, this isn't "Actual Play," so what's the take-home message?
Basically, the White Wolf system was not designed at all for this type of play, and we very soon were way beyond what there were clear rules for.  Also, WW gives the GM a lot of authority to make arbitrary decisions.  This is basically bad for this type of game.  So the take home message is this.  You need a system that will cover whatever you want to do in a non-ambiguous way, so that the referee isn't making a lot of on-the-spot judgement calls (which are essentially arbitrary).  The job of the referee should be to mediate the rules and make sure they are applied fairly, not make them up on the spot, which is what I was actually doing.

Incidentally, in the end, the vampire was destroyed, but the entire sept of Garou was wiped out, except for one of the PC's, who escaped and decided that being a werewolf totally sucked and ran away and got married to a human and tried to live a normal life.  It was a tragic game, but we (the GM's) had decided for the players that it would be tragic, and there was really nothing they could do about it.  Like I said, lots of deprotaginization.  If I were to do it again, I would have to think hard about how to avoid that.

[Henri]

I thought this might be useful.

Blood Opera
Play in which character generation focuses on potentially irreconcilable differences among at least some of the characters, and in which scenario generation is designed to put as much pressure on these differences (and therefore on unexpected alliances as possible). Notable for high mortality rates among characters. An example of Situation. Term coined by Ralph Mazza, Jake Norwood, and Ron Edwards.

Blood Opera appears to be a special case of this, where it isn't so much that one players is the "bad guy" and the others are "good guys" so much as everyone is at each other's throats (but in a Nar way, not a Gamist one).

[Albert the Absentminded]

Does everyone have to be limited to a single character? I'm thinking of a structure where everyone has several characters - a star, a few supporting cast, several extras. The protagonists would all be (at least loosely) linked together, but the antagonists(who are also loosely categorized as stars, support, or extras) might be highly separated.

The role of rules referee need not be assigned to a single person. I'd be leary about people playing a star(protagonist _or_ antagonist) while refereeing unless that person is scrupulously honest about gaming, and some people probably shouldn't be referees if they are just playing supporting cast, but extras are there to be abused as necessary, so - *shrugs* - most people probably won't have enough of an attachment to extras to be willing to cheat to have the spotlight always on them.

-Albert

[Doctor Xero]

It is traditional in role playing games that the players' characters all have to be part of the same group, and therefore all have to be on the same side.
---snip!--
Most early games envisioned the character party idea, and a lot of people can't get past it in their thinking ---snip!--
--M. J. Young

Or shouldn't get past it if it's part of the genre being re-created.

When I've run games which are along the lines of WoD's Vampire: The Masquerade or a super-punk campaign, I have had wonderful experiences with rival or even enemy player-characters.

However, when I'm running a game which replicates the feel and spirit of the superhero subgenre, I expect players to construct characters which replicate that subgenre's tradition of cooperating heroes (whether merrily cooperating or bickering but cooperative).  This is not the result of an inability to get past a certain mindset but rather a respect for the genre.

The crucial thing, of course, is that I always make certain that potential players know ahead of time whether I'm hoping to replicate a particular genre's feel (superhero, space opera, James Bondesque super-secret agent, etc.) so that those who don't like that genre can decline to play in that particular campaign, no hard feelings or frustrations.  (Or convince me to run a campaign in a different genre, which has happened on occasion.)

I will never forget a campaign a dear friend of mine tried to run which was devastated within its first and only episode.  The game master had asked every one of us to build player-characters who would incline to cooperate with each other and to interact with the NPCs of his world -- the sort of characters who would try bargaining with an orc first rather than get Knights-of-the-DinnerTable all over the orc.  He forgot to emphasize this to one player, and the player built a borderline-sociopathic munchkin character based on the Wheels of Time series.

Within two hours of play, the player's character slaughtered captive orcs and tried to kill a fellow player-character for interfering, and the player himself later browbeat the game master as immasculine and effeminate for wanting cooperative player-characters to the point that the game master disbanded the game.  As for the player, he then foreswore gaming with "roleplayers" (defined by him as anyone who treats NPCs as characters not obstacles and who focuses on interaction and player cooperation instead of combat and rivalry).

My friend refused to game master again for about half-a-year, and now he only runs hack-and-slash campaigns in which he is completely indifferent to what player-characters do to the NPCs or each other in his campaign creations.

That anecdote illustrates neatly why it's so important that players understand the kind of campaign that is being run by the game master.

Doctor Xero

[Doctor Xero]

On the whole, the game was successful and people had a lot of fun, but there were issues with both deprotaginization and balance.
---snip!--
It seemed terribly unfair to the vampire's player ---snip!--

I think that's part of the problem that can take place when running a campaign with enemy player-characters :
is the game master expected to be technically objective about the rules
or
is the game master expected to promote player enjoyment?

If the game master is nothing more than a rules arbitrater, then it really has no bearing on whether or not a player is bored or frustrated or suffers tremendous unfairness and unjustness in the game world so long as the rules are followed to the letter.  This works fine if the players are interested in that kind of game.  (For example, the admirable game of chess works that way.)

If the game master has the responsibility of conducting the campaign in a fashion which maximizes player opportunities for enjoyment, however, then he or she has an interesting dilemma when player-characters are enemies in a win/lose situation : how does the game master manage to promote excitement and minimize dispiriting frustration for both the player who wins and the player who loses the conflict?

It can be done, but it's tricky!

(For example, I've run games in which one player genuinely wanted his evil player-character to be defeated, since he considered the character to be wonderfully vile, but he wasn't about to hand over any victory to his fellow players but expected them to earn it.  He had great fun being evil, they had great fun initially losing and then gradually coming to defeat him, and all the players enjoyed that moment when his villain met a properly grisly and melodramatic ending.)

Doctor Xero