Proactive versus Reactive--Illusory?

[M. J. Young]

John Kim and I (and several others) drifted into this discussion over in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12531">Plot is the Wake of the Characters' Desires:

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.

That was off topic over there, so I thought I'd bring it over here.

The problem is that this may work in defining real people, but it doesn't work in defining characters. The "status quo" doesn't really exist in a fictional setting; all that exists is the background created by one of the participants.

Let's suggest that the character lives in a world in which slavery is commonly practiced, but that there are those who argue against it--something like antebellum United States. He's a member of a plantation family, so his "status quo" is entirely based on the continued existence of the slave trade. But the abolitionists want to end that. Technically, that's also part of the status quo. It's a given that there are those who want to end slavery; they've been there since before the character was born. It's always been the case that his family has defended its way of life against those who would change it.

Let's posit another character, same world, wants to bring about the end of slavery. He's always lived among urban intellectual elite, and everyone he knows opposes slavery. For him, that there has always been this evil against which we are fighting; that's the status quo.

Now, this is a fictional world. Thus which side is winning is already part of the status quo. If we assume that the abolitionists have been gaining ground all this time, that slavery is slowly being eliminated (as many of the founding fathers thought it would be), then the "status quo" is that slavery is vanishing. So who is proactive and who is reactive? The distinction is meaningless. The slaver is proactive because he's fighting against the status quo, in that it's clear his way of life is already archaic and vanishing and he's fighting to reverse the process; he's reactive because he's defending the way things are for him. The abolitionist is reactive because to him slavery is the aberation in the status quo that threatens the free world; he's proactive because he's trying to eliminate the continued existence of slavery.

The proactive/reactive distinction would seem on the surface to be between the person who wants to change things and the person who wants to prevent things from changing. This, though, assumes that things are static. To say that I act because I object to the change that is happening rather than that I act because I want things to be different comes down to a difference between wanting them to be different from the way they are versus wanting them to be different from the way they are becoming--in both cases I am reacting to the world. In both cases I am trying to change what is happening in the background. In both cases I am saying that what is happening in the background is unacceptable to me and needs to be changed. If the background is not static, then in both cases it seems I think it is not changing the right way.

I agree that it's useful to recognize whether a specific character is the sort who is going to do something wherever he goes versus the sort for which you have to stimulate something that will force him to become involved. I don't see that as a different kind of motivation, though. The former type is almost always unhappy with things the way they are (whether it's because he sees great injustice in the smallest problems or because he never has enough wealth and power for himself); the latter type is almost always happy with things the way they are (and thus needs something in the world to make him unhappy). Both act when they are unhappy with the way things are, and not otherwise, so their motivations are fundamentally the same.

At least, that's how I'm reading it. I thought your superhero/supervillain dichotomy was very telling, but given the examples of Robin Hood versus the Sheriff and the Rebellion versus the Empire, it seems that it's just a matter of whether you're reacting to the way things are or the way they're changing.

Looked at another way, it would seem that when the Emperor was gaining power in the very first minutes of Star Wars (the original), Princess Leia was defending the status quo; as soon as the Emperor took control by disbanding the senate, she was attacking the status quo. She wasn't doing anything different, and her motivation didn't change. Yet by the proactive/reactive dichotomy, when she was defending the last shreds of the Republic, she was reactive, and when the Republic was finally swept away and replaced by the Empire she was proactive. In both cases she was responding to the way things were which she found unacceptable, whether it was the way they were changing or what they had become.

--M. J. Young

[clehrich]

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.

Looked at another way, it would seem that when the Emperor was gaining power in the very first minutes of Star Wars (the original), Princess Leia was defending the status quo; as soon as the Emperor took control by disbanding the senate, she was attacking the status quo. She wasn't doing anything different, and her motivation didn't change. Yet by the proactive/reactive dichotomy, when she was defending the last shreds of the Republic, she was reactive, and when the Republic was finally swept away and replaced by the Empire she was proactive. In both cases she was responding to the way things were which she found unacceptable, whether it was the way they were changing or what they had become.

I agree with John -- you're in agreement.

What John is saying is that at the start, when the status quo is the old Republic, Leia is reactive: she needs a prod or goad to act, and that prod is provided by Vader et al.

Later on, when the status quo is the Empire, Leia could choose to accept the new status quo or else become proactive: she needs no prod or goad, because the status quo is unacceptable to her.

This does seem to me a valuable distinction for thinking about characters in gaming, because it means that characters are designed from the start with reference to the universe in which they exist.

Consider Call of Cthulhu.  At the start, you might have characters who, because they don't know anything about the Mythos stuff, live in a universe that is totally acceptable to them.  Then they encounter something weird, and this goads them into reacting: this is a threat to the status quo as they understand it.

Later on (assuming they survive), they have discovered that the status quo is not what they thought; it is in fact horrible and twisted, with freak-o cultists trying to destroy humanity.  This they find unacceptable.  Now they go on the offense (become proactive) to hunt down these threats.

Of course, this does mean that "status quo" refers to the universe as the characters (and perhaps the players, depending on how you do things) believe it to be, not necessarily as it really is.  But the distinction is between finding the status quo acceptable and thus reacting to threats to it, and finding the status quo unacceptable and thus acting to alter it.

[John Kim]

A few references:  this is split from the thread M.J. mentioned, but is about concepts discussed in my essay http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/plot/proactivity.html">Proactive PCs and Related Issues.  

The problem is that this may work in defining real people, but it doesn't work in defining characters. The "status quo" doesn't really exist in a fictional setting; all that exists is the background created by one of the participants.
...
I agree that it's useful to recognize whether a specific character is the sort who is going to do something wherever he goes versus the sort for which you have to stimulate something that will force him to become involved. I don't see that as a different kind of motivation, though.  

I'll get into details later, but I can't tell what your overall opinion is here.  You seem to agree that this is a useful distinction.  Do you just want to have different labels other than "proactive" and "reactive" for these two sorts of characters?  Are there alternate labels which you would suggest?  

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.  

The proactive/reactive distinction would seem on the surface to be between the person who wants to change things and the person who wants to prevent things from changing. This, though, assumes that things are static. To say that I act because I object to the change that is happening rather than that I act because I want things to be different comes down to a difference between wanting them to be different from the way they are versus wanting them to be different from the way they are becoming--in both cases I am reacting to the world.

Here you are talking about the world as if it is a real thing which is naturally changing.  In fiction or in gaming, that isn't true.  The game-world is inherently static -- change only happens because someone makes it happen.  In the real world, there are a bunch of people sitting around a table.  One of them has to say something to make things happen.  

In practical game terms, there is a common distinction between the setting and adventure hooks.  The setting does not have interesting action nor does it demand it.  Saying "I go to my job" or "I go on patrol" isn't meaningful action.  Saying "I go try to topple the government of Chad" is.  

So, without too much of a stretch, let's say you have a GM and players sitting around a table.  You have a defined background, like the World of Darkness or Harn or somesuch.  You have created characters.  Now someone has to say something for an interesting game to happen.  This can be an external event which forces activity out of the characters, or it can be action on the characters' part.  

Looked at another way, it would seem that when the Emperor was gaining power in the very first minutes of Star Wars (the original), Princess Leia was defending the status quo; as soon as the Emperor took control by disbanding the senate, she was attacking the status quo. She wasn't doing anything different, and her motivation didn't change. Yet by the proactive/reactive dichotomy, when she was defending the last shreds of the Republic, she was reactive, and when the Republic was finally swept away and replaced by the Empire she was proactive. In both cases she was responding to the way things were which she found unacceptable, whether it was the way they were changing or what they had become.  

This seems to be talking in circles here.  The status quo doesn't change moment to moment.  i.e. If I hold up a store, the status quo doesn't suddenly become "There is a robbery in progress" and then it requires proactivity to change it.  That makes the "pro" meaningless -- all activity becomes "proactivity".  The status quo is a stable state in the larger sense.  

From my point of view, during the span of the first movie, Princess Leia is always reactive.  The plot of the movie is all reaction to the Empire's building and use of the Death Star.  With the Death Star destroyed, the impetus for action is gone -- i.e. the status quo is restored.  Yes, you can come up with all kinds of grey area cases, but that doesn't invalidate the concept.  The status quo is a normal, stable state of things.  Unusual things, things which demand action or attention, are the breaks from the status quo.  Yes, that is a subjective judgement, but still a useful one IMO.

[ErrathofKosh]

Questions:  
If I have something on my character sheet that drives my character to action (i.e. needs to rule the world), then he is proactive?
If something in the setting drives my character to action (i.e. the new Death Star), then he is reactive?

I'm I understanding this correctly?

Cheers
Jonathan

[John Kim]

If I have something on my character sheet that drives my character to action (i.e. needs to rule the world), then he is proactive?   If something in the setting drives my character to action (i.e. the new Death Star), then he is reactive?

I'm I understanding this correctly?  

That conveys some feel of the distinction as I see it -- but I have some caveats.  All action will involve both thoughts/feelings inside the character, and objects outside the character.  However, what drives that action differs.  Prior to the action, something had to initiate it, drive it.  I would term the lack of action to be "status quo".  Day-to-day things still happen, but there is no action in a dramatic sense -- no story.  At some point, this is broken and the action of the story begins.  

Proactive means that the character initiates the action.  i.e. There are objects which he acts on, but the driving force is internal.  To stop the action you will generally need to stop the character.  Reactive means that the character takes action in response to change.  He still has desire(s), but he won't take meaningful action until an unusual event happens to start things.  Once that intrusion is resolved, the character will stop taking meaningful action.  Now, of course there is a range between these two extremes.  For example, a character might go for a long way in response to only a slight prod or even an accidental event.  So this is somewhere in between.

M.J.'s Robin Hood example is a good one.  There are many versions of the story, and I'm not fresh on any of them -- so I'm going to avoid specifics.  But we can say that the status quo is that Robin Hood is an outlaw living in the forest, while the Sherriff of Nottingham is in charge of the town.  Either side can take minor snipes at each other, but it's only marginal action.  Robin makes regular thefts, but none of them are particularly decisive or interesting.  He is an annoyance but not a threat.  

I think of the Robin Hood story as being somewhat episodic, usually, and for episodes within the saga we can see clear initiators.  Now, at the exact midpoint between proactive and reactive would be if there is even-sided escalation.  Each episode, one side responds to the last episode with by initiating a slightly more decisiveness move.  Take the archery contest.  Prior to that contest, we were back at the status quo.  Suppose in a game the PCs were Prince John, the Sherriff, and their allies.  Now, if you just took the state of things prior to the contest, the players might say "Well, what do we do now?"  It would be rather proactive of them to spontaneously come up with such a plan (in my opinion).

[M. J. Young]

I see the proactive/reactive distinction, and I actually do like it; it probably does have value in a general sense. I've certainly had to deal with players who wouldn't do anything until prodded, as well as players who were always actively doing things, and from a referee's perspective they're entirely different things.

However, I still have trouble with the distinction as it refers to the characters.

It seems to me that all character action, and thus all player input, is ultimately based on the referee through his input as the world and non-player characters within it is doing things that our characters don't like, and so they will act to oppose these things. At that level, I have trouble distinguishing between what the referee is doing as the ongoing background of the world and what he is doing as a change in the ongoing background of the world. Either way, the player is reacting to what the referee presents, whether that is presented as "the way things are" or as "the change that is threatened".

We could create a background that said "for thousands of years this is how the world was, but moments before you were born that all changed, and now it's like this." To your father, trying to restore the old ways is reactive; to you, it's proactive? In either case, those thousands of years didn't really exist--they're only said to have existed as part of the backstory. That they "changed" just now means nothing but that we could be justified in opposing the change (making us reactive). If instead it had always been the way it is now but we want it to be this other way that's different, doing the same thing would be proactive--not because there's any difference at all in what we're doing or indeed to that to which we are responding, but because our backstory which was never played out tells us whether this is something we're trying to change or something we're trying to preserve.

Altogether, play comes down to "the referee says X is happening in the world, and the player decides he wants Y, so he opposes X". Whether "X" is the way things have always been or the change that is occurring now doesn't change this equation at all.

You could argue that when a character is proactive, it's because the world and he are designed initially as being at odds such that he will want to change it immediately, whereas if he's reactive it's because the world and he are not at odds until the referee makes the decision to change the world; but in either case, the player is responding to that which the referee presents as the current state of the world, affected only by when it became the current state of the world.

John says Leia is reactive throughout Star Wars, as she is reacting to the consolidation of the Empire's power in the Death Star. This, though, would be different if the Death Star and the Empire had existed since before her birth and her efforts are to create a new Republic like the one she never knew (which from the prequels may actually be the case). Instead of accepting the Empire as the way things are, she's trying to change it to something she prefers--proactive. So the argument can be made either way.

It's all give and take between referee and players. Some players are more likely to "make the first move" and others are more likely to "wait for the referee's move", and that's a useful distinction. However, characters are always responding to what the referee has done, whether it's what he did in establishing the world or what he does within it at this moment.

My head's a bit foggy tonight; I hope this is clear. Thanks for reading.

--M. J. Young

[Russell Impagliazzo]

I think proactive/reactive should be  more of a relationship characters have to the plot/exploration in the GAME than it is  one they have to the GAME-WORLD.  
A proactive character is one whose motivations, by themselves (without the need for a catalyst provided by the refereee, player or other players), drive the plot of the game.  A reactive character is one whose motivations do not of themselves provide a plot for the game, and need additional spurs to action before they become a part of a satisfying plot.  Thus, whether a character is proactive or not depends to some extent on what kind of plot the players are willing to spend time on.

For example, I was recently playing a game where most of the characters were frontiersmen-types.   Left to ourselves, our group decided to go hunt a bear, because a bearskin would be useful.  That was character initiated action; the group decided to do this based not on any kind of meta-reasoning, but on what our characters would most likely do.  Since the bear-hunt was played out for a whole session, I would say that for that session we were playing proactively.  If we as a group had decided that that was enough plot for us, and   the next session had gone fishing, and then repaired our huts, and hoarded food for winter, etc., then I would say we were in a proactive campaign.  
On the other hand, if the referee had glided past the bear hunt,  saying, ``You caught a
medium-sized bear and have a bearskin.  Then a mysterious stranger appears on the road,", then the session would not have been proactive, since the bear-hunt  wouldn't have been explored.   After the bear-hunt, the referee did in fact introduce a mysterious stranger, and from then on we played reactively.    Note that in the game-world, there would have been no difference between these two situations. A bear is hunted, and a mysterious stranger appears.  It is only because we decided that the bear-hunt was part of the plot that we were at all being proactive.  

Characters that challenge the game-world status quo in a significant way are more likely to be proactive, but I don't think I agree with John that the two are synonymous (if that is what he is saying.)    For example, in a campaign, there was a war between the ``Good''
army and the ``Evil'' army, with one city being neutral territory.  I played Orfluven, the representative of a neutral tribe of barbarians sent to seek war reparations from the Evil army for damage done to a village ``mistakenly'' raided by the Evil army.  When the game started, in parallel with reactive adventures, Orfluven sought out an audience with the Evil army captain, got one, and when his demand was rejected, warned the captain that this meant a blood feud.    This drove the plot of the game for a fair fraction of the time we spent playing.  In game-world terms, Orfluven was reacting to the Evil army raid, and he was working to restore the status quo.  In game terms, it felt like the character was creating plot, since the raid took place off-stage, whereas Orfluven's response to it was played out and altered the situation for our characters.

[Gordon C. Landis]

(Not a lot to say here, but maybe that's a good thing . . .)

I'm with M.J. on the "applies to players rather than characters", or at least I'd say it applies BETTER to players than to characters.

I also find that reactive/proactive works much better when it is in relation to a particular thing, rather than a blanket absolute.  As in, proactive regarding guard duty.  Reactive regarding mission selection. Etc.

Gordon