Emotional Engagement

[timfire]

Hi y'all,

In the Indie forum, apparition13 asked how he can generate an emotional reponse from the players. This was my response:

How do I set things up so that, ideally, everyone at the table can feel that "frog in my throat, eyes getting misty" feeling a great self-sacrifice scene can elicit? How do we make PCs distinctive and "real", even if they are only around for half an hour? How can players connect with characters they may not be around for that long?

I'm very skepital this is possible in such a short time span. I'm also skepital that you can repeat this pattern over and over every single session and get the same emotional response from the players.

I think the simple fact is that it takes time to develop a relationship/attachment/whatever between player and character. Sure, having a character be killed is disappointing, but to generate that real "lump in your throat" feeling, the players need to honestly care for the characters. This doesn't come easy.

In my experience GM'ing The Mountain Witch, it seems to take playes, oh, at least 3 or 4 hours before they really start to care for their characters. It's around that time that choices stop being easy and they start hestitating just a little bit before deciding.

If you really want to generate that visceral "lump in your throat" feeling, my advice would be to slow things down. The more time you spend building up to an event, the greater emotional response you will get from the players. (That's the theory, anyway.) That's an issue I have with tMW, people always want to play the game in a single session, in like 3-4 hours. But it's so hard to properly build up the characters in that time.

TMW uses basically a three phase structure to accomplish what it does. (Actually it uses four phases, but the forth isn't really applicable to your issue.) First, you introduce low stakes action that allows the players to define their characters. Then, you start providing situations that allow the characters to develop their relationships. Then -- and only then -- do you start to force the characters to start making hard choices.

The second issue I have with what you want to do is that generating this type of honest emotional response from the players is very taxing for the players. Players can't endure that type of emotional intensity day in and day out. They will start to shutdown or emotionally withdraw. If you honestly want a high PC casaulty rate, then you might have to accept that the players will remain disconnected from their characters.

What does everyone think about the time issue? I don't think time alone is enough to generate honest emotional engagement, but I do feel it's a crucial element.

[Brendan]

I know it's mildly bad policy to use examples from other media, but I think this is fairly universal.  I write ten-minute plays; it's a powerful format that keeps your audience interested in every second, when done right.  But one of the most important pieces of advice we hit on in my playwriting class in college was "You can't earn a death in ten minutes."

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Tim:

I completely agree that time is a big factor.

That's why I put a rule in PTA that your protagonist's spotlight can't be the pilot episode or season premiere. It takes at least one episode to get everyone on board with what the protagonist's issue is all about.

[GB Steve]

I think much of it depends on what kind of response you want. It's pretty easy to make players angry, just arbitrarily damage their PC in some petty fashion.

I also think that you shouldn't necessarily be trying to foist an emotional response on people who haven't asked for that kind of involvement. If players know what the game involves, and are signed up to it, then it's more likely to happen.

I know that I'm less interested in my emotional response but more interested in playing a character's response. So whilst I might show fear or anger, it's not really mine, it's me acting out what I think the characters reaction would be.

[pasoliati]

How does this work with the idea of Kickers (I haven't used them myself yet)?  Kickers seem to be trying to get the character to make a hard decision at the beginning.

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, Tim.

I agree that time is a factor, but not just time. I feel that if you want emotional investment, you need to give the players creative investment as well. I've played characters for months of real time that I didn't really care if they died or failed or whatnot because I had no creative investment in them--that is, the GM had de-protagonized my character and disempowered me.

In the kind of games that you and I and most folks around here design, time is helpful because more time = more opportunities to apply one's creativity to the SIS = more emotional engagement in the SIS. In The Mountain Witch, players aren't twiddling their thumbs until they become invested in their characters. They're playing! Each of your three phases gives the player a chance to create a little more of his character--to show off a bit of himself.

In With Great Power... I do much the same thing with the level of Suffering. Each Aspect of a character has a level of Suffering that goes up and down through play. Each time you want to change the Suffering of an Aspect, you have to describe what it looks like. Which means as the game goes along and you change the Suffering of your Aspects you have to put a little more of yourself into the game--that little bit of creativity, that little bit of brain-power into answering the question "What does this change look like in the SIS?" does more than just expand the SIS. It secures a little bit of emotional investment along with it.

How does this work with the idea of Kickers (I haven't used them myself yet)?  Kickers seem to be trying to get the character to make a hard decision at the beginning.

Yes, kickers do force a hard decision at the beginning, but that's not their greatest strength. The most important thing about a Kicker is that it is player-generated. The player is saying "I'd like to face this kind of problem." The GM then gives them the kind of problem they asked for, and BAM! they've got some emotional investment in it. Why? Because they created it. They're creatively invested, too.

[Brendan]

I agree that time is a factor, but not just time. I feel that if you want emotional investment, you need to give the players creative investment as well. I've played characters for months of real time that I didn't really care if they died or failed or whatnot because I had no creative investment in them--that is, the GM had de-protagonized my character and disempowered me.

Michael, do you think it's sensible to say that time is a limiting factor--that is, necessary but not sufficient?

[Valamir]

No, I don't think Time is a limiting factor, I think its just a symptom.

I think the key is the ability to identify with the character and the situation.  To recognize (perhaps on a primal level) something with then character and situation (even if its a fantastical version) that the player can relate to.

If that happens right off of the bat, I think you can get the emotion with very little time required.  One can get an emotional connection to a character in a short film, for instance.

I think the less the player knows about / identifies with the character up front, the more time it will take them to discover something to identify with...and that's where the commonly cited time factor comes in.

I think prelude scenes like that it DitV's is quite effective at getting that connection made quickly so that subsequent play can have a level of emotional response with much less time required.