diffusing the drama

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I have been wondering about a roleplaying phenomenom.

PC: "Can I go down that corridor?"
Me: "Sure"
PC: "Okay, I go. Does something happen?"
Me: (taking the cue as the player "wanting" something to happen here) "You hear a door down the hallway creak open."
PC: "I have my gun! I didn't leave my gun!"
Me: (shaking my head in amazement that PC would think I'm trying to screw her/him over THAT hard; or screw him/her over at all) "Of course not. I know you have your gun."
PC: "I crouch in the hallway. What happens?"
Me: "A flourescent light flickers on and off in the room and then settles into total darkness. You think you hear something moving in there."
PC: "I run!"
Me: "Where? Down the hallway? Into the room?"
PC: "Hell, no! I run back the way I came! I'm getting out of there!"
Me: (flabbergasted and a little frustrated) "Okay. You make it out of the building. What now?"

PC: "You tell me..."

My ex-roommate had told two relevant gaming stories.

[1]In a

Villians & Vigilantes game, the villians were after a series of artifacts that were scattered around the world. However, the players found out that one of the artifacts was located right in town. So, instead of going on the globetrotting adventure the GM had planned, they sat around and waited for the villians got the other artifacts, killing many in the process.
[2]Another V&V game. The villians were going to blow up the hero's base. One player suggested blowing up their base first so the bad guys couldn't do it. Eventually, the others agreed.[/list:u]

I my ELfs game, I introduced an evil prince who could have been an interesting nemisis. One of the players killed him, but not just killed him but also decapitated him so there could be no mistake in killing him nor any chance of the guy coming back.

Consider a PC has a sister. The sister was the players idea, not the result of some kind of background generator like Central Casting. He wanted his character to have a sister. Then the evil wizard comes in and wreaks much havoc, finishing by kidnapping the sister. When asked what he plans to do about it, he mutters some sort of excuse to avoid going after the evil wizard.

Now, I'm not interested in talking about these individual examples nor playing blame shell game (The GM should have done this or that) I am interested in thought on this phenomenom.

Personally, I think this stems from a couple things.

First, people will always take the easiest action to achieve their goals. If you can do what's needed something easy, why would you do something hard, right? If someone does do something hard, it's usually because they have learned that the easy way doesn't work all that well.

Second, most people do not like complications in their lives. "May you live in interesting times" is a curse. Not that being bored is good, either, but having dram in one's own life tends to be seen as undesirable.

Third, no matter how deep the players think they're "immersing' or whatever, they are also the people sitting at the table. My Elfs player recognized a potential recurring villian (something I have my doubts the character would recognize. Possible but not as certain as it was to the player). Rather than have to deal with the grief from this bad guy for sessions to come, he kills him in a way that leaves no chance for error.

So the player, thinking somewhat inside their character looks for the quickest, easiest way to solve whatever problem that comes their way. However, they are not perfectly inside their characters, so out-of-character knowledge and point of view colors their judgement. Therefore, the players take actions that put their characters/themselves at the least amount of risk and/or thwart potential for future complications. This makes the life of the characters easier.

[Shreyas Sampat]

What are you getting at, Jack?

If I understand correctly, you're stating something I'd always thought was self-evident for certain styles of play and irrelevant for any number of others.  Is there some aspect of this issue that you want to discuss?

[montag]

I have no idea where you want to go with this, but I'd like to offer "thought on this phenomenon". It may be irrelevant or nonsense.

I think the phenomenon stems from incompatible goals in two separate cases:
A: On the one hand, the character, who would want to live as long as possible and seeks to avoid danger and on the other hand the player, who wants to experience adventure.
B: The mirror case is the character wanting to do something (rescue their sister) and the player wanting to get game specific rewards without risking too much.
While I don't think both cases need to be considered separately, I think each example should be clearly assigned to one of the two:
the Corridor (A, character wins), V&V1 (A, character wins), V&V2 (B, player wins), Elfs(A, character wins), sister (B, player wins)

Now the A cases where the character wins strike me a perfectly reasonable results of immersion. No one wants to die or get hurt, and the noble prince who doesn't shit his pants when confronting an evenly matched foe is either pretty dumb or more likely a creature of myth. While it is fun to play such mythical heroic beings, immersion into such a character  actually requires some heavy frontal lobotomy to work. I don't know about V&V and Elfs, but Shadowrun (wherefrom the Corridor was drawn) IMO clearly doesn't suggest such mythical heroism.
The B cases, where the player wins are IMO perfectly normal examples of "bad" roleplaying or perhaps merely insufficient immersion (which is _not_ to say immersion equals good roleplaying, I'm considering two separate reasons). I'm tempted to say these are the only "worrysome" cases, but they just will happen from time to time.

@Shreyas Sampat
Could you say more about which styles of play you're thinking of?

[Bob McNamee]

Hmm...

Lots of failure of Social Contract - Genre Expectations to me.

Having read the Shadowrun account...seems to me like this is a case where I'd be very tempted to say to the Player...

GM: "OK, you leave, now what?...
Player:"You tell me..."

GM: "OK, your character notices a promising ad on the video screens of an appliance store across the street for a security guard at SeniorCitizenMart...might be the safe job he's been waiting for... the contact number's there..do you want to memorise it?"

Player: "What?" [then probably claims my char not a wimp etc etc]

GM: "Ok, no problem, he's not a [wimp etc]...what is he doing/wanting in the world thats more interesting than being a rent-a-guard or an accountant "

[no offense to any rent-a-guards or accountants :)  ]

Me? if he said "I don't know you tell me" again...I'd put the character on unemployment, enroll him on a government work program and tell the Player to roll up a new character that he's interested in playing.

V&V examples both--- Bad Genre Expectations fit again
This is something that really needs to be discussed with people before and during play.
As a long-time Champions GM we rarely had problems with this, since all my players were on the same page here... most of us were into comic collecting, or at least reading (early through late 80's) at the time we played... the main thing for us to get clear was what subtype of supers we were playing.
The only time we had any real problems were in side games played in the college with the odd player who was coming from a classic dungeon style RP-ing...
the same problem that can be found in spy games, where right in the middle of the villains gloating speech (genre expectation) they get leveled with max damage team up...before telling about the doomsday device etc.

The Elfs game... hmm, well its a bummer for you... but not necessarily out of range for genre or character really...
One thing I liked about the Trollbabe game was having several NPC's all of whom could setup into the villain limelight (in one way or another) if one got killed...perhaps the one to fear wasn't the Baron...but his Chamberlain Corto...mage and power behind thr throne...etc.... even if my original idea about the chamberlain was that he was a snobbish dandy...go with the flow there.

or bring back the original NPC as an undead 'headless horseman'... :>

The killing could also be a signal that the Players don't care for that style of NPC... or they just think its their job to make things hard on you.

"Turtle syndrome" is the name I think someone coined for a lot of this right?

[Bob McNamee]

Whoops...sorry I just reread your post saying you didn't want to comment on the specific examples...sorry I missed that line.

The sister example is an interesting one though...in my games taking a sister is a signal that you want to see her in play in some way...kind of like a TROS SA...so I would be as confused as you...

Ok, the right game system could correct for many of these types of 'faults'.

Primarily, it need to promote play (and not penalize merely taking action), and more importantly it needs to promote taking appropriate actions for the genre.

...Inspectres..comes to mind-- sure you can get stressed out... but its not like you'll die...

You are right to spotlight the concept of 'These are real people playing a game not characters making decisions...'

Some of this is play style problems brought over from other games, or those who GM-ed  and Played with them before.
Some could just be GNS (and subgroup) style differences.

A lot of it is a lack of communication between the people playing.

[Shreyas Sampat]

In response to montag:

I see this kind of behavior whenever a player's goals include "being sure my character is safe, happy, and comfortable." or something of the sort.  In such a game, you should expect such behavior as a matter of course.  In a game where this isn't among the player's goals (I've seen some amazing, flamboyant, headlong recklessness in short Mage games where the goal was more or less, "get the MacGuffin and find out what it does"), you won't see this kind of thing.

It's only interesting behavior when it's dysfunctional because one person has the "safety" goal and someone else doesn't.  Then you get (if I understand it correctly) a form of My Guy Syndrome.