Plot is the Wake of the Characters' Desires

[John Kim]

We're simply talking about two different ways of setting up "story" here; two different ways of playing.

OK, I can't figure out from the rest of the post what you mean here.  What are the two ways?  One way, I gather, is the step-by-step procedure which you outlined in your first post.  What are you saying is the other way?  

Again, this is clearly not the point of view you're working from. We're coming from different places.  I don't passive characters exist.  Shrek may not look like he's doing much at the start of "Shrek," but we know he's managed to build a home far away from everyone else.  He's actively gotten away from everyone.  He built his shack. This is what he's done. He's worked toward that. When the other fairy tale creatures show up, he tries to get rid of them.  Just because he's not out trying to dominate the world doesn't mean he's passive? Right?

You're inserting the word "passive" here, when I use "reactive" for this.  I agree that Shrek isn't passive -- but I would also say that he is reactive.  Without a bunch of fairy-tale creatures squatting on his home, he would just continue to live out a quiet, dull life in his swamp.  No, I don't consider that to be proactive.  Without that external breaking of the status quo, there is no story from him.  

You and I are working from different spots, I think, in terms of what we mean by Character, Story concerns about Plot and such. The fact that you can't see the difference between an "internal Kicker" and what I call Desire makes this clear.  The Desire is.... well, the Desire.  The Kicker (internal or external), is a sharp threat to or opportunity for, the Desire. It ramps up the issue of the Desire immediately, throws the desire into a clearer focus, and begins what will later be called, The Story.  It is the change in circumstance that makes a story possible.  (In the internal Kicker example offered above, the devotee feels a loss of god's presence.  Well, that's a change.)

Well, saying the "The Desire is The Desire" is obviously tautological.  So let's try to clarify it.  We can take Baraud as an example, or we can take Tony's example of an internal Kicker:

"I was saying mass yesterday, when I suddenly realized that I can no longer remember what it felt like to really believe"

Now, maybe we can set for this character a Desire of "find inner peace".  Do you think this works as a Desire and a Kicker in your model?  With Baraud, his desire in a grander sense is to re-make the world in the vision of the Eight Demons philosophy.  I don't think I can reduce it down to a simple sentence.  But I don't think it would be hard to provide a moment of inner clarity similar to the above -- say as he is walking into Cuthren village to see a kindly mother sigh as she is clearly overtaxed by her children, and have a profound sense of the wrongness he sees in that.  

It's possible that there is an easy resolution of our terminologies -- namely that my "proactive character" is one which you would say has an internal Kicker, while my "reactive character" is one with an external Kicker.  But I'd want to try out more examples here.

[Alan]

We're simply talking about two different ways of setting up "story" here; two different ways of playing.

OK, I can't figure out from the rest of the post what you mean here.  What are the two ways?  One way, I gather, is the step-by-step procedure which you outlined in your first post.  What are you saying is the other way?  

I think he means that the player can create the reasons for the character's proactivity, either during preparation (Kicker), or during play, in response to a situation he finds interesting ("mini kicker in play).  

In the first case, the GM prepares for situations from the player's Kicker.  In the second, he comes with some situation ideas and fine tunes them in response to what the player chooses.

[Harlequin]

Dunno, I see a lot of direct connects between what you two are talking about, I think it's still mostly syntactical disconnect.

Chris is talking about constructing a particular reactive/proactive structure for the character, using a tweak to the "order of events" during character generation & conception.  This structure - latent Desire, Kicker related to Desire, Tasks and objectives generated by the player based on this event - isn't a universal, it's a specific structure.  That's the whole point of Sorcerer's approach, right?  The PCs follow a specific, constrained structure.  All he's really saying (as I read it) is that he sees a refinement to this enforced structure, which produces a slightly different sort of PC.

John is talking generalities.  The specific type of character that Chris is referencing fits into John's overall analysis, but so would many others.  To pick an example of another structure, let me present a character which is superficially similar to a "Kubasik Desire-driven" character, but is actually quite distinct IMO.

Fred the rogue, classic AD&D type, has some motivations written in.  He fell in love with this girl, her father had him exiled, someday he's going to go back and steal her away.  In theory, everything he does could be seen as being driven toward this end.  But from a couple of standpoints, this is inaccurate.  

For one, he's not playing in a strongly Nar campaign; this GM is old school.  Players get hired, abducted, framed, or otherwise plonked into an adventure, danger and excitement result when they respond, everybody has fun.  Fred's player has no problem with this, it's what he's used to and expects.  So Fred, although clearly possessed of a Desire, is in practice a reactive character because the group is not playing in a proactive mode.  Once again, nothing wrong with that, they're going home laughing at the end of the night.  The Desire is essentially colour.

For two, Fred as a character isn't all that heavy-handed a romantic.  Sure, he loves the girl, and has every intention of going back to her someday.  But he's pretty relaxed about it, because (say) she's an elf, she'll still be there (as will her father) in a decade or two.  And because he's a fun-loving, high-living kind of guy.  What's the classic KOTD quote?  "I go spend it all on whores and beer!"  So it's not even like Fred is being poorly portrayed, in terms of his presence in a largely reactive-structure campaign.  The playstyle in fact suits his personality; while there are things he truly wants, those are secondary to his day-to-day existence.  Nor is that day-to-day existence his "Desire" in these terms; the logic chain "Live the good life -> Don't get hanged -> Solve plot hook" is awfully weak compared to just looking at this character as essentially reactive.

All of which is simply intended to demonstrate that there's no fundamental disconnect; John's analysis is a broad umbrella which can legitimately cover Chris' suggestion about character-structure as one of its cases, though it's not one of the specifics he elaborates in the essay.

As for the structure Chris is proposing, I like it.  It ties into some thoughts I've currently been having in my own system; I may actually end up with a setup where characters use a different effectiveness stat, depending on whether they're in "Proactive" desire-driven mode, or "Reactive" player-isn't-feeling-inspired mode.  And in the desire-driven mode, a structure like what Chris is proposing is pretty much exactly how I'd want to run things.

- Eric

[Kubasik]

John,

I apologize. You're absolutely correct -- I did insert the word passive -- I don't know why. I can only offer because I can't imagine a character who is "reactive" by definition.  I mean, once "prodded" the character is now "proactive," right?

That's why I see it in terms of Opportunity or Threat to the Desire.  The character (in my way of looking at things) reacts and takes action on and off through the story.

If the situation is such that his desire is not being met, and the Opportunity arrives (Luke Desires a Life That Matters and he sees a princess asking for help), he moves into action.  If the character's desire is being met, but its threatened (Maxiumus in Gladiator Desires Peace, but a murderous son siezes the reigns of Rome), he moves into action.

Action-Reaction-Action-Reation-Action-Reaction is the name of the game when it comes to a story.

As for the tautological thing -- please back off right now.  That sentence was clearly stating that the Desire is a different item than a Kicker -- and you're the one who conflated the two.  I said the Desire is the Desire to make it clear it's not the Kicker.  It's not like I've been obscure about this at all.  I've provided examples.  The fact that you don't (yet perhaps) know how to boil down Baraud's nature into a Desire is perhaps the crux of our two different points of view.

But you're right -- we need to triangulate with both a Desire and Kicker.  A Kicker (or a Bang) is just a Thing That Happens if it has no impact on the core nature of the character.  This Desire is the core of the character. It defines choices, actions and behavior.  It is what the character is.

The whole thing with internal Kickers and external Kickers, proactive characters and reactive characters... I can only say, none of it makes any sense to me.  That is, I think *you* seee these distinctions as important. I see how they matter to you.  They are meaningless to me.

A Desire is a Desire. It defines who the character is.  The Desire meets a Kicker.  The character is now on a path to manifest the Desire and make it concrete.  Desire is something the character carries around inside him. Action is the things the character does to make it real.  Characters can do lots of things to reach for their desire before they meet the Kicker.  Then the Kicker happens.  And the stakes become higher than they were before.

I can't say I know enough about the Eight Demons philosophy nor what the business about the sighing mother means -- so I can't tease out the Desire from this.  All I might suggest is: What does Baraud want to feel that he does not feel, that, when he encounters the Eight Demons philosophy, he thinks, "If I master this and change the world, I'll finally feel the way I want to feel."

Here's an example from my end.

The far future.  Humans have settled the stars. An alien race arrives, attacking human colonies. They release a plague designed to kill humans. Billions start dying across the stars. The humans, desperate for survival genetically alter the beasts of earth. They give them the power of speech, the ability to use tools, stand on their hind legs.  Lions, dogs, bears.  The whole deal.

Herekles is a lion. He profoundly in awe of the Humans who gave him the power to think and be amazed by the world around him.  His Desire is to Earn the Life He Has Been Given.  He serves the humans faithfully, always putting himself in harms way as the humans battle the aliens and search for a cure. He's respectful of the humans, submissive despite his martial prowess.  He has no concern for his own children, always trying to win the approval and love the humans.

He's still starved for this -- no matter how many battles he wins, nothing seems to make him feel like he's earned this gift of life.

Word comes: there's a world where the aliens have the cure.  The Kicker: surely if he were to save the entire human race he'd have earned the life he's been given. His life would finally have MEANING. The story propper has begun.

What Bangs the GM offers will turn it from a striaghtforward attack into a story.

As far as internal and external goes, however, I'd offer that the example Ron signed off on earlier (not feeling the presence of God) is external.  There's a disconnect from something external.  I don't think internal Kickers exist because I'm not sure how it demands external action.  But that's just me.  I work from a model of Dramatic Narrative.  I think that's the model RPG work from best.  And that means reacting to and taking action upon other characters, objects and situations.  (Ron may have much more to offer on this, and I'd love to hear it.)

Thus, by the defintions I'm using -- for better or worse -- Desires are, by Defintion internal.  They exists independed of any specific goal, but an internal state or emotion or passion the character wants to reach.  And Kickers, by my light, external. They are the strongest opportunity yet to allow manifestation of the Desire into reality (either by bringing the Desire about or preventing the Desire from being shut down completely.)

Christopher

[M. J. Young]

Having just come out of a superhero world, I found John's example of the superhero/supervillain dichotomy very compelling. I very clearly see that my play was motivated by:

[*]Encountering villains who needed to be stopped;[*]Looking for any villains who needed to be stopped;[*]Preparing myself to be better able to counter villains who needed to be stopped.[/list:u]Everything I did was in response to what the referee set up in terms of the actions of villains. I'd have said I was reactive; they were proactive.

But looking at it again, it strikes me that the villains are also reactive, as much as I am. The difference isn't whether we're proactive or reactive; the difference is to what we are reacting.

The choices are whether we're reacting to the way the world currently is or reacting to a change someone attempts to make in the world. That's not really all that useful a distinction. If I'm a hero in that setting, then I react to attempts to change the world for what I see as the worse. But if I were a villain, I would be reacting to what I see as the unacceptable nature of the world. Were we to turn the world on its head, Robin Hood is reacting to the unacceptable nature of the world as it is and the Sheriff of Nottingham is reacting to Robin's efforts to change it. Similarly, the Rebellion is reacting to the unacceptable nature of the universe as it is and the Emperor and Vader and the Empire are reacting to the Rebellion's efforts to change it.

Thus the proactive/reactive dichotomy fails. It becomes nothing other than whether that which is unacceptable is the nature of the world as it is or the changes someone else is trying to make within it.

Sorry, John, I liked the idea initially, but that dog won't hunt, as they say.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

This thread has got me going back and forth, which I love.  I understand what John means about status quo, yet I also see what Christopher means about threat/opportunity and Desire.  John also asked about "proactive status quo preservers."  I started thinking about novels I really like and think would be fun to be in, i.e. would have been fun if they had happened as RPGs.  I was also thinking about whether you could distinguish among the terms discussed here and produce something wonderful.  I think this also bridges M.J.'s point that the other people in the story, e.g. villains, react to the protagonist(s).  Here's where this led me.

First of all, three characters immediately stand out to me as "proactive status quo preservers."  Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and the Continental Op (I'm thinking particularly Red Harvest, but the series of stories works too).  Interestingly, they're all fantastic characters, much better than a lot of their obvious competitors (I find Philip Marlowe, for example, a self-righteous macho jerk).

Every one of these characters really has two desires.  First, he wants nothing in his comfortable life to change.  Second, he wants to be involved in exciting events.  These desires are, of course, pretty much contradictory.  If this were Sorcerer, the "wants nothing to change" might be a Desire in Christopher's sense, and the "wants to be involved" might come from the Demon somehow.

In any event, what happens is that something crosses this guy's path that threatens the comfort desire and suggests an opportunity to the excitement desire.  So what has to happen is that the guy has to get involved in such a way that the ultimate outcome is the comfort he desires.

Wolfe wants to be idle, fat, and rich, playing with his orchids and eating Fritz's cooking, never going out of the house, with everything on a rigid schedule.  The problem is that this means he has to be paid, and getting paid involves working as a detective on a murder case.  Why did he pick such a job if he wants peace and quiet?  The second desire.  Which, incidentally, is also why he pays Archie to prod him into action.  The ultimate result of most cases is that Wolfe solves the crime, gets paid very well indeed, and he can go back to his orchids and food with a sense of smugness: he's got it both ways.

Archie wants to live the high life, play with pretty women, and annoy officious people.  The problem is that this means he has to work for Wolfe, who's a freak, and this means he has to get involved in murder cases.  He's charming, handsome, intelligent, and dances well; why did he pick this job?  The second desire.  Which is also why he sticks with Wolfe, and is willing to put up with his shenanigans.  The ultimate results are identical to Wolfe's.

The Op, in Red Harvest, wants to do a minor job in Personville (known as Poisonville), get paid, and go home.  He's fat, middle-aged, bald, and so much a nobody that he doesn't even seem to have a name.  What happens is that this turns into a murder case, and then that turns into a big corruption thing, and then it turns out that there's a seething cauldron of hate and craziness in Personville.  What the Op does is to stir the cauldron and turn up the fire.  Why?  Second desire.  In the end, about half of Personville is dead, including both nice and awful people, and the Op goes home.  He concludes, about his boss in San Francisco, "He gave me merry hell."  But he enjoyed it all, horrible though it was.

So what does this really say?  That when the Desire is "status quo", and there is some other push to make the response not be "hide under the covers until it passes" when craziness occurs, you have a great formula for plot and proactiveness.  Using Christopher's formula of putting Desire before Kicker, I think what's also helpful is to have a second, perhaps submerged Desire (or a Demon?), that says, "Hey, my Desire is threatened, this is an opportunity to get wild!"

[Doug Ruff]

If I understand this thread correctly, we're moving slightly from the original theory that started this thread, insofar as characters have multiple desires, which may conflict with each other.

If so, I think that's good; a character with only one Desire feels a bit 'one-dimensional' to me.

Having said that, I am still very attracted to the idea that a good Kicker must interact strongly with one or more of the character's strongest desires - even if it's the basic human desire to Stay Alive.

I would even dare to say that some of the best Kickers (which I see as being primarily player-created dramatic events) will bring multiple conflicting Desires into play. For example, Duty vs. Family Ties, or Power vs. Love.

To use the Shrek example: Shrek Desires to be Left Alone. He also has submerged Desires to Be Accepted and to Find His True Love. That's why the Princess Fiona quest is such a good Kicker for him - it engages the last two while threatening the first.

In other words, it requires a hard choice, the resolution of which reveals what is most important to the character.

I've deliberately avoided the use of 'proactive' and 'reactive' here, because I believe that all Desires are active. They may not always be acted upon - this may be because of stronger competing Desires or environmental concerns (which reinforce those competing Desires, especially the Desire to Stay Alive.)

Hope this is useful,

Doug

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I should like to toss my hat in the ring in support of the concept that "proactive/reactive" is not a useful concept in this discussion. If it applies to fictional protagonists at all, it would be at a far more detailed level of analysis, well after they were established as protagonists in the first place via the concepts Christopher is discussing.

I am really not liking the sudden focus on terms that were introduced (and not well defined for our purposes) later in the discussion. I'd like for everyone to step back and check out Christopher's first post, then focus on what the thread is about.

Doug, your comments about "active (case closed)" and various Desires make a lot of sense to me. I suggest that small-d drama, which is to say what we all enjoy even in the lowliest action flick, arises because one of them or some distinctive compromise which we can call a Desire of its own, rises to the fore - and that the circumscribed time/locale of a story (unlike real life) is actually designed for this purpose/process.

Best,
Ron

[John Kim]

The Op, in Red Harvest, wants to do a minor job in Personville (known as Poisonville), get paid, and go home.  He's fat, middle-aged, bald, and so much a nobody that he doesn't even seem to have a name.  What happens is that this turns into a murder case, and then that turns into a big corruption thing, and then it turns out that there's a seething cauldron of hate and craziness in Personville.  What the Op does is to stir the cauldron and turn up the fire.  Why?  Second desire.  In the end, about half of Personville is dead, including both nice and awful people, and the Op goes home.  He concludes, about his boss in San Francisco, "He gave me merry hell."  But he enjoyed it all, horrible though it was.

So what does this really say?  That when the Desire is "status quo", and there is some other push to make the response not be "hide under the covers until it passes" when craziness occurs, you have a great formula for plot and proactiveness.  Using Christopher's formula of putting Desire before Kicker, I think what's also helpful is to have a second, perhaps submerged Desire (or a Demon?), that says, "Hey, my Desire is threatened, this is an opportunity to get wild!"

If the Op's Desire was for status quo, then he would have just done his job and gone home.  That's the status quo.  In fact, he did the complete opposite and knowingly started a bloodbath.  So I think you are 100% wrong that the Op's Desire is keep the status quo.  He might say that, or maybe give the deceptive air of just going about his normal business -- but it's not true.  

I think that Red Harvest is a good example of proactiveness, because it is a situation which doesn't demand any action.  i.e. The Op could easily have gone home and nothing much happened.  In game terms, there was no external Kicker -- or there was a Kicker which was weak because it didn't demand action and didn't engage anything personal about the little-known Op.  

Of course, it is also a valid and useful technique to have a clear internal Desire and an external Kicker which engages that Desire and demands action -- just as Christopher Kubasik outlines in his initial post.  But I think it's interesting to explore outside of that particular technique as well.

[Paganini]

Seems to me that this can be summed up in a pretty simple way. Plot means nothing. Plot is "what happens" in your story. It's equivalent to Ron's term "transcript." The old fashioned word for what Chris (K) is talking about is "motivation." It seems to have been lost in the mists of time.

I get this a lot from writing books; it drives me crazy. So many books about writing put a huge emphasis on plot... you gotta organize your plot structure, use this technique of forshadowing, this technique of mirroring, blah blah blah. And when you get done reading, you're stumped, because you have no place to start. You've got a whole bunch of different kinds of hammers, but no boards and no nails. Because these books almost always fail to convey that character motivation is what actually generates plot. Without characters who want something, and who will take action to get it, *nothing* will ever happen.

It's a very simple concept when you step back and look at it; but it's also crucial to the writing process, and seldomly articulated, these days, from what I can see.

[Kubasik]

Hi all,

I'm tight for time, so I can't respond to each post.  Here's the shotgun.

Paganini -- yes, exactly. And I'd offer that RPG module/adventure design did a lot to make all plot and remove character.  Because, well, game companies could sell plot, but not the player's character.

I would offer, though, I'm suggesting something a little different than motivation. Or, at least, a specific flavor.  Motivation might be -- "He killed my wife."  But my point is that one man's dead wife is another man's freedom from the ol' ball and chain.  I'm saying a Plot element (a Kicker or Bang), means nothing without the inner context of a character's nature.  And I call this most vital of inner context's Desire. I like it because Desire, for me, suggests something the character wants and will move toward.

I'd echo what Ron said as well.  The human eye can sort a gazillion colors.  But a painting reduces those down to comprehensible number.  Art simplifies life.  So does storytelling.  A character is never a human being.  This Desire business is simply a tool for simplification to productive ends.

That said, a character is not impervious to other desires. That's how Rick can become a different man by the end of Casablanca.  Influenced by other characters, other Desires might grow or change.  But that first Desire is the one at stake.

Oops.  Gotta go...

Christopher

[John Kim]

But looking at it again, it strikes me that the villains are also reactive, as much as I am. The difference isn't whether we're proactive or reactive; the difference is to what we are reacting.

The choices are whether we're reacting to the way the world currently is or reacting to a change someone attempts to make in the world. That's not really all that useful a distinction. If I'm a hero in that setting, then I react to attempts to change the world for what I see as the worse. But if I were a villain, I would be reacting to what I see as the unacceptable nature of the world. Were we to turn the world on its head, Robin Hood is reacting to the unacceptable nature of the world as it is and the Sheriff of Nottingham is reacting to Robin's efforts to change it. Similarly, the Rebellion is reacting to the unacceptable nature of the universe as it is and the Emperor and Vader and the Empire are reacting to the Rebellion's efforts to change it.

Thus the proactive/reactive dichotomy fails. It becomes nothing other than whether that which is unacceptable is the nature of the world as it is or the changes someone else is trying to make within it.

Sorry, John

Um, M.J.?  You say, "sorry" and that it "fails" as if you think you're disagreeing.  I completely agree with you.  In fact, this is exactly the topic which is central to my essay.  What you call the "universe as it is" is what I refer to as the "status quo".  So as far as I can see you're agreeing with me.  i.e. Proactive and reactive mean nothing more (and nothing less) than relation to the status quo.  Proactive are those who oppose the status quo and will act to change.  Reactive are those who uphold it.  

I think this is a useful distinction for gaming.  For example, proactive characters don't need an "adventure" in the sense of an external hook or prod which goads them into action.  Instead, the GM can describe the normal setting and have the PCs create the adventure by their actions upon it.  Now, you can shift the terms and say that the PCs are just reacting to the world as it is.  But the distinction is still there -- you're just arguing over what the word for it should be.

[M. J. Young]

Nathan is right. Motivation isn't really "He killed my wife." It's how I feel about it and what I want to do because of it. "He killed my wife" could be the foundational event for my vendetta, or for my depression, or for my emotional release, but it is the reaction that defines motivation, not the event. What the character wants now is the motivation, not what prompts him to want it. What prompts him to want it might be the cause of his motivation or the removal of the obstacle to what he always wanted anyway, but it's not the motivation itself.

I'm taking the proactive/reactive question to http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=134579">Proactive versus Reactive--Illusory?

--M. J. Young

[Kubasik]

I normally don't do this, but what the hell...

M.J., I think that's supposed to be, "Nathan and Christopher are right."  Since that's what I started this thread saying.

In my affirmation to Nathan's comments I should have written "For some people Motivaion might be -- 'He killed my wife.'"

But I think from all my posts on this board, it's clear I don't think that's a worthwhile motivation.

Nathan might like the "old fashioned" term Motivation. I avoid it not to gussy up some new lingo, but because I think the term has been corrupted and become blurry.  Cop shows talk about "motivation" as "he killed her for the money," or "she was having an affair."  Clearly not what you, Nathan or I consider a true motivation.

Moreover, we tend to reflexively think along Freudian models of behavior -- this happened when he was child, so he behaves this way; he suffered this horrible experience in 'Nam, so he did this...  This, too, is often considered "motivation" for behavior. The trick is, all sorts of people expereince all sorts of similiar situations -- and behave in all sorts of dissimiliar ways.  I've finally turned my back on this kind of thinking and have decided, as you point out, how a person defines the events around him is going to be the "motivation" -- not the events himself.

But even "defining" or "feeling" might lead to passivity in character behavior. So I use the word Desire, which I think leads a character forward.

If someone wants to use the term "Motivation" in a constructive way, great.  Nathan seems to be right on target with it.  But for me the word is too wrapped up in Hollywood Producer-Speak from personal experience and I needed a new term, an internal term that compels a character to action, that I could tape to the top of my computer screen and keep me focused.

And so I chose Desire.

Christopher

PS Also, in the spirit of the Forge, I wanted to give credit where credit is due.  While reading Walter Froug's interview with Frank Pierson, I read about how Pierson cracked the script for "Dog Day Afternoon."  He was stuck on the assignment -- creating a screenplay based on a real bank robbery that went horribly, disasterously wrong.  You'd think al the material would be there, but we're talking about making into material an actor can act -- and he couldn't figure out how to give the Al Paccino character's actions enough shape.  He was ready to walk off the job and say he couldn't do it.  Then he realized the Pacino character wants "to make everybody happy."  That *internal* motivation is what allowed him to turn a series of true events into a screenplay.  I've let it worm in my head for a few years, and can now see how looking for that internal nugget allows most movies to find a shape.  Call it anything you want, I find it a useful approach.