Cheezy Cracksmoking

[DaGreatJL]

Something I've noticed y'all like to do a lot/ have done a lot in the past is dissect popular terms and ideas in gaming. Therfore, I'm going to through one out that comes up quite a bit in my neck of the woods. It is known as either 'Cheese' or 'Crack'. As 'Cheese' is more wholesome, family-friendly term, and everyone here is certainly in favor of wholesome and traditional family values as good and decent humanst beings, I'm going to be using the term 'Crack' for the remainder of my post.

Crack, in the local gaming community I live in, is a derisive term use to describe characters, storylines, or other forms of ideas in a game that are either highly improbable or involve ideas that would make it difficult to incorporate them, which makes them inappropriate. WoD games are good for providing examples, as they contain many characters or ideas that are given a great deal of attention and detail, but which are also noted as being very rare. Specific examples from WoD products include Salubri and Abominations; both of these character types are given enough detail that someone could create and run a character without having to do much invention, while they are both considered to be not only extremely rare, but also are hunted with quite a bit of tenacity and ferocity by other forces in the game setting, such that including them as PCs either has a dramatic effect on the kind of storys run (more influtential than any other characters, anyway), or that is forces a GM to step away from the published source material to incorporate them (not making them as hunted, in short), which some see as negative. Because of this, those who explore such ideas are ridiculed. People in a player role are not the only ones who can be guilty, either; a GM can smoke crack, too.

So, is this a prejudice anyone else has encountered? Does anybody have any thought on anything I just said?

[ethan_greer]

I have not personally witnessed the phenomenon you describe in gaming, but I'm sure anyone who has once been (or is currently) an adolescent can relate to the sort of thing you are talking about.

A snap judgement would be that you need to hang out with some less uptight gamers.  Or find some fellow crack smokers and explore whatever themes you want in your games.

What's the issue here?  Is there a problem you want others here to help solve?  Are you just venting frustration?

[Ron Edwards]

Hey there,

Hol' on, Ethan, I think I see it. No trolling, no adolescence; this makes sense.

Best example that comes to mind: Marvel mutants, especially right around 1987 or so. "Mutant" hits it big with the X-Men around 1982-1984, right? I mean, biiiig in the comics world of the time. So all of a sudden every damn new character across the line of comics is a mutant - and the frequency of new characters goes up too. Plus, a bunch of characters are retro-written to be mutants as well (there was some talk of Spider-Man, as I recall).

Look in a basement, there's a mutant. In the sewers, mutants. Running corporations, mutants. Abraham Lincoln was a mutant. Oh, geez, a new superhero? He's a mutant! Wow! Say it ain't so!

Parallels in role-playing: well really, anything occult/role-playable in the World of Darkness if we're talking about the metaplot-heavy supplements of about eight or nine years ago. Also, the Harrowed (undead) in Deadlands. Lots of others, I'm sure.

The Crack (or Cheese) factor appears, to me, to be basically part of the picture in any pop culture entertainment medium. Don't really see how to escape it.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

To recap, the phenomenon is that publishers put forth material on character types that are extrmemly rare, and/or problematic socially. And then players play them

Oh, yes, I've seen this. But what is the problem? I mean surely there are potential problems, but they come from all sorts of places.

Firstly, most times when something like this is published, there's a caveat in the text saying that it's probably problematic. We've all read it, "This character type is probably best suited for NPCs, as playing a PC of this character type is difficult or may couse problems in play." This is about as effective as putting a kid in a candy store and telling him not to eat to much because he'll get a stomach ache. Players love to play unique, new, and interesting concepts. These usually top those criteria. So eventually you get players begging to play these sorts of characters. And what GM isn't goint to allow it if the player seems earnest that they'll try to work through the difficulties. Like a junkie, the player will promise the moon and sun to get to play a character like this.

And GMs do it for the same reason. They make the most interesting opponents, or the most novel NPCs to interact with.

But where do the problems begin? Well, these sorts of characters are almost always channeled thematically by their type. Are they hunted by both sides like Abominations? Well then what PCs other than Abominations can they hang out with? They can't show their heads in the real world, and they can't in the WoD sub-cultures either. So, other than run, what do they do? What percentage of characters of this ilk are designed with some ability to look like a "normal" member of society, just to get around these problems? Way to high for suspension of disbelief. "There are only four in exisence, but three just happen at random to be able to shield their natures from others?"

Essentially it takes a situation which requires lots of SOD and makes it even more stressful that way. Take Ron's Mutants example. We are already being asked to believe in superheroes to start. Then we're being asked to believe in a certain sub-group of superheroes as some minority. Then the minority starts to look like the majority, and we're just supposed to understand that it's a perspective thing?

This all said, I'm a firm believer that it all can work.

Yeah, that's right, nothing of the above problems are insurmountable. But the players really have to be invested in making it work. If they're taking the type just because of the Kewlness factor, or because it's powerful (Abominations, "I wanna be a vampiric werewolf, too!"), then there's every chance that things are going to devolve in play to something totally unbeliveable. Players have to buy into the issues, and GMs have to agree to make those issues the center of play. Sure, play one of only three Abominations in the world, but be ready to have the game be about fear, distrust, hiding, the negative sides of insanity (only role-players ae capable of seeinng a positive side, anyhow) and potential for reconcilliation or permenant death. If those aren't themes you're interested in, don't play an Abomination. That goes both for the player, and the GM who's going to run the game. The GM will have to cater, and he must like that idea, or it's not going to work.

In the end, this is nothing more than a contract between the player and GM about what the game is going to be about. As long as everyone agrees, it can work. But too often, leaving the contract unstated, or other third party players having different ideas, means that misunderstanding will cause friction. Potentially fatal in terms of the game.

Mike

[ethan_greer]

It looks like a may have given the wrong impression with my post.  Let me reiterate:  It seems to me that what you're talking about, DaGreatJL, is a social issue of peer pressure (which is what I meant by the adolescence reference).

In other words, you've noticed a trend of, "you will adhere to the standards set forth by <Game Company X> or face ridicule" in your gaming community.  Hence, playing the weird fringe characters doesn't happen as often as you'd like.  Am I correct in my assessment?

I agree with Ron that this sort of thing is unavoidable.  I also agree with Mike that it can be overcome in certain cases by social contract.

Didn't mean to come across negative, but my intentions were waylaid by my own poor word choice... :)

[Bruce Baugh]

Ah, yes, the "you can't want to play an exotic or rare character without having base horrible motives, unlike the rest of us pure and good gamers" thing. Pfeah. It's not like any of us has somehow "earned" a right to play world-rewriting magicians, ancient vampires, superheroes, or gods; it's just that people get accustomed to a particular baseline set of conditions for PCs and stop thinking about how this too is all purely unearned escapism.

Once one realizes "these are all constructs of the imagination", it's much easier to move beyond "that's too powerful" and "that's too cheesy" to "Would we get an interesting game out of this?" and other actual practical questions.

Several of White Wolf's developers make the same point in slightly different language: if there are enough characters of type X to stock a party with, type X is not too rare to appear as PCs in your campaign. If players like the characters and are willing to deal with the challenges they face and if the GM has thoughts for neat stuff to turn up in play, then they're precisely like any other type. A fair number of gamers who play in the same published setting slip into thinking of all campaigns as sharing the same world. Of course, they don't; they are at best like Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, etc. (and my fellow geeks can hold the jokes about which games are the ones for Earth-C, thanks very much :) ). The campaign at hand is its own thing, and has no obligation to conform to some general demographic.

And sometimes the small groups get neat stuff. Someday I'm going to actually run some of the campaign seeds I set up for the update of the Manus Nigrum in the Vampire Storyteller's Handbook - either the one with a single coterie of Nagaraja sheltering among the kuei-jin of Korea, knowing that they're allowed to survive only as long as they keep coming up with useful information, or the one with the Old Clan Tzimisce and his/her/its followers, who are taking over a housing project to run like a classic fief.

[ThreeGee]

Hey JL,

Well, sure I have. Of course. Any game about conflicts and power levels that pretends to be about the simulation or the *role*playing-not-*roll*-playing is going to have a high cheese-factor, also known as beardiness, wankiness, or whatever. Welcome to the wonderful world of incoherent games. I have seen about a million-and-one ambidextrous drow rangers, hundreds of Salubri, Ched-dar and Space Wolves by the metric bazillion, and so on.

Was there any particular reason you asked?

Later,
Grant

[DaGreatJL]

I'm not totally sure what I'm looking for in response here; I guess partially whether this is something that comes up with other people.

Also, I'm interested not only is people's responses to the prejudice against crack (though I do appreciate that, lemme tellya), but also with people's feelings on the cracksmokers themselves. One thing that strikes me is how the character is defined in terms of what they are, as opposed to who they are; cracksmokers (and others) will describe their characters by listing the categories they fall into first, and put a description of the character's personality as a second priority. I don't think this is wrong; however, it's based on a different set of assumptions than what I am used to using in my own play, and so it confuses me. I think I misrepresented the issue in my initial post; I'm interested in gaining a better understanding of both the cracksmokers and those btohered by the fumes by hearing what others have to say about this.

[Ben Morgan]

I have seen a great deal of this sort of thing going on as well.

I was in a cyberpunk game a while ago where one of our players had come up with a Solo who was a sniper expert, grew up in the Mafia, and was recruited by the CIA as a double agent.

Now while there may be nothing inherently wrong with this concept, but in the context of the game we were running at the time, it was entirely dysfunctional. The story that was already in progress had the PCs working for a German organized crime syndicate (fighting mainly against the Chinese Tongs), and it was fairly street level, so the inclusion of a character that brings in two wholly new and separate organizations such as the Mafia and the CIA really didn't fit at all with the rest of the group in any feasible way. As a result, there was a lot of groaning, the occasional "Behold, the Power of Cheese!", and it ended with our sniper friend taking out another PC with his high-powered sniper rifle from 1/2 a mile away. After that, the situation devolved and ceased to be about game issues.

I've also seen a Vampire LARP where 4 out of the 7 existing Salubri in the entire world end up living in the same town in central Jersey (ie: where the LARP took place), and there was an entire coterie of [supposedly extinct] Cappodocians not only impersonating Ventrue, but working themselves into pretty influential places in the clan power structure.

The way I see it, there's several things going on here:
1. It is as much the GM's responsibility as anyone else's to ensure that everyone's on the same page. Allowing someone to create a character on their own and then making only the most transparent of attempts to look the character over when that player shows up 5 minutes before game-time and hands you the sheet is asking for trouble.

2. A good concept in the world does not guarantee a good character. I've come up with some damn interesting concepts fro time to time, but they'd be thoroughly unworkable as characters.

3. As has been stated, showing someone a unique character option (such as a Salubri, Abomination, White Howler, Cappadocian, Drow) and then telling them it would be best to not play it as a PC is much like bringing a kid into a candy store and telling him not to eat too much.

-- Ben

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Best example that comes to mind: Marvel mutants, especially right around 1987 or so. "Mutant" hits it big with the X-Men around 1982-1984, right? I mean, biiiig in the comics world of the time. So all of a sudden every damn new character across the line of comics is a mutant - and the frequency of new characters goes up too. Plus, a bunch of characters are retro-written to be mutants as well (there was some talk of Spider-Man, as I recall).

I always liked Stan Lee reason for coming up for the concept of mutants. Basically, there are only so many radioactive spiders. So he came up with mutants and it was like there, that's done.

I haven't noticed this prejudice, but then I'm not really looking.

[John Kim]

It is as much the GM's responsibility as anyone else's to ensure that everyone's on the same page. Allowing someone to create a character on their own and then making only the most transparent of attempts to look the character over when that player shows up 5 minutes before game-time and hands you the sheet is asking for trouble.
...
As has been stated, showing someone a unique character option (such as a Salubri, Abomination, White Howler, Cappadocian, Drow) and then telling them it would be best to not play it as a PC is much like bringing a kid into a candy store and telling him not to eat too much.

I see this mainly as a group dynamic problem.  i.e. There is nothing wrong with having a single Abomination in the PC, as an integral part of the premise for the campaign.  However, if every player wants to have a PC who is unique, then the result may be a mish-mash which robs the campaign of any focus and strains suspension-of-disbelief.  

It isn't really appropriate, I think, to blame the player for wanting such a character, since in the right circumstances it can be a good idea.  Expecting well-behaved players to always step down may mean that it is the most stubborn (and least appropriate) player who gets to play the unique central character.  There are a few things which can be done for this, I think:

[*] The weird/unique/cheesy choices should not get special rewards by being more powerful, as is often the case.  For example, 3rd edition D&D took careful steps to make the core classes of Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard both powerful and interesting.  
[*] The issue of spotlight time needs to be addressed.  Having the cheesy character be hunted is not a drawback to many players -- it gives the player even more spotlight time to fight off the hunters and require the aid of other PCs.  The Buffy RPG addresses this by giving the players of non-Hero characters twice as many Drama Points, which allows them greater control over the story even though their PCs are not as powerful or unique.  [/list:u]

[Othyem]

In a lot of the games and sessions I have been a part of, you will hear an expression shouted (at the gamer or GM, whomever is 'smokin the crack') that is a little crude, so close your eyes if you don't want to hear.

"WHAT KIND OF DICKCHEESE IS THAT??!!??!?!?!?!!?'

That's just what seems common in our group. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that it only happens to be said when I'm around.

Othyem

[deadpanbob]

One thing that strikes me is how the character is defined in terms of what they are, as opposed to who they are; cracksmokers (and others) will describe their characters by listing the categories they fall into first, and put a description of the character's personality as a second priority.

Hello DaGreatJL,

First things first - I'm unashamed of being a dyed-in-the-wool, twinkish, cheese slinging, cracksmoking, power-tending to prioritize Gamist goals during instances of roleplaying-gamer.

Champions character concept: Blind, Alien, Son-of-The Gods, Mutant, Indian Shaman, Ancient Kung-Fu Master!

Play an Abination, in a party of Abominations?  You bet.

Play Abberrant without the Taint rules?  Sure.  Done that.

Used all of the natural break-points in DD, espeically in 2ed D&D Skills and Powers to make the most unstoppable 1st level character ever created?  Me all over.

Spent an entire life of GMing forcing my players, albiet subtly, to endure my absolute control over the Campaign, the Universe and Everything, including their character decisions (unspoken/implicit Illusionism)?  Yep.

Why?  Because, deep down inside, when all the lights are out, I LIKE TO WIN.  I look at a Roleplaying Game sometimes and see it as a GAME.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  The other half of my schitzoid RPG personality likes to tell great stories that address serious Premises and produce a coherent Theme in play.  But this part of my personality generally only supports the need to be the Alpha Monkey sitting at the table.

And I'm the worst kind of Cracksmoker too, because I know that if I put my list of kewl Game Winning powers up front, people will say "CRACKSMOKER!".  So I can rationalize with the best of them.  I can construct elaborate backgrounds and justifactions for why my characters are the way they are.  I can, pretty much, talk the average GM into letting me play anything.

Since encountering the Forge, I'm a lot more honest about my motivations, too, and my Roleplaying experiences have gotten consistently better.

I don't think this is wrong;

Good, because playing a Roleplaying game with an eye toward the Goal of beating the player sitting to your left, or beating the GM by foiling his/her well laid plans, or even if it's only surviving those well laid plans, is a valid and often enjoyable way to play the game for some people.

The main thing I've realized about Roleplaying lately is, it's best to get all these issues out on the table before playing.  Everyone involved, in a non-emotional, non-judgemental sort of way, needs to lay out what they expect to get out of a game.  If Cracksmokin' play isn't your cup of tea, while you might be able to play with them on a few occasions, it'll be hard to play with them consistently in a campaign of any duration without laying out some pretty serious ground rules (Social Contract) between all the players and the GM on when Cracksmokin' will be a focus, and when it won't, and how the decision to switch in and of of Cracksmokin' time will be handled.

Note that this type of discussion doesn't have to be a have it once and it's settled kind of thing, it can be an evolving discussion that allows for the agreement to change, for the type of playing to change, to allow for players tastes to change.

Just the blathering confession of an avowed Cheesy Cracksmoker, as they say, YMMV.

Cheers.