Efforts towards Protagonism/SA's

[Steve Samson]

This is in response to a question raised in the "Transitioning from Gamist to Narrativist, Part II" thread. In that thread I mentioned that my efforts to get my group to try Spiritual Attributes as a way for them to be more involved in the story received either no response or negative responses. A request was made to see the actual emails to better understand this.

There are two issues going on in the emails. One is SA's, but the larger issue is one of player involvement in the story. Since this seems to me to be highly relevant to any discussion of SA's (or perhaps more accurately, SA's are highly relevant to discussions of protagonism (if I am using the term correctly)) I am including those portions of the emails as well.

Note that my entire experience with SA's is based on reading about them here on The Forge. I do not yet have my copy of Riddle of Steel, so everything is based on what I have heard about SA's, which may be of interest to Jake and Co. as an illustration of one person's perceptions and possible misconceptions.

(Jake: FYI, I ordered my copy of TRoS through your site on 1/26 but have not yet received it. Finally on 2/11 I got a very nice email from Tundra apologizing for the delay, explaining the problem and assuring me that my order had been shipped. As it is now 2/15, I expect to receive it in the next day or two.)

So here are the relevant portions of the emails regarding both SA's and more character involvement in the story, as well as summaries of face-to-face conversations.

DISCLAIMER: The point here isn't to say I'm right and my players are wrong, or vice versa, but merely to share the experiences of ONE group regarding protagonism and SA's as a device for player involvement. CONVO is a face-to-face conversation, EMAIL is an email that I sent out and REPLY is a response I got from a player.

CONVO:
I merge a crude version of SA's onto my existing homebrewed system. In my implementation I have Honor, Faith and two Passions that the players can choose for their character. I explain that Honor is their personal code of conduct, such as "protect the weak", "always tell the truth" or "never leave a man behind". Faith is a larger worldview that influences their life decisions. Passions can be loves, hatred, fears, etc. Passions especially should be fairly specific. I suggest that they make sure their passions relate to a specific person or group. Since my system uses a d20 roll, their SA's will act as a numeric bonus rather than the extra dice in RoS' dice pool system. I also explain that their SA's will increase each time they take an action that illustrates or furthers one of their SA's, whether or not the action succeeds. These SA's can then be spent to improve their traits and skills. I give examples of using and improving SA's. My players seem somewhat confused, but also intruiged by the whole idea and come up with some SA's. We run an adventure and the SA's come up a little, but not too much. This is definitely a sign of my own unfamiliarity with SA's and lack of experience designing player-driven settings. Two players mention that they picked "bad" SA's and ask if them can change them. I emphasize that they can, and that SA's will naturally shift during the course of a campaign as their character's values and priorities change.

EMAIL:
I've been doing a TON of homework on my end from a game design/GM standpoint. I 've probably read close to 100 message board threads the past couple of weeks discussing various aspects of system and adventure design and session management. I am *really* excited to try some new stuff with you guys. But before I can move forward in a new direction, I need to find out from all of you exactly what you are looking for from the game and how comfortable you are trying something new. Based on feedback from the last session, as well as numerous prior conversations with Tim, Ted and Dave and some recent conversations with Shari (Kelly, I'd really love to get your input on this as well, we just haven't had a chance to talk about it yet) here is my impression of where we stand:

   1. We all agree that more story is good.
   2. We'd all like to roleplay/contribute more, but are unsure how and the session atmosphere doesn't encourage trying.
   3. We all like the *idea*of spiritual attributes (or traits or whatever I end up calling them) but need some guidance in choosing them and using them in gameplay.
   4. You (as players) want me to guide you through the story more. I (as GM) want you to take the initiative more. I am hoping that the concept of spiritual attributes will help us both in this regard.
   5. All of you agree with me that the joking makes it hard to get into the story/characters. Some of you think this is not an issue, while others (including me) would like to tone down the joking somewhat in order to facilitate a more immersive story/session.

Please let me know how accurate these impressions are.

Here are some thoughts/suggestions on how we can improve our gameplay sessions...

I feel very strongly that while all of you *want* more story, etc. you all (with the exception of Shari, who isn't jaded yet) fall back into a very narrow dungeon crawl mentality during play. This last session was a great example. By the end of the session, you were all tired of exploring the estate, but you kept exploring it! Why? I think you were doing it only because you are in the habit (from years of D&D dungeon crawls and computer games) of clearing every room in a level looking for treasure or for keys (in whatever form) to "the next level". I would suggest that if your character (or the group as a whole) doesn't have a meaningful reason to do something, don't do it! The Keep of Irrelevance (as Ted named one site from the old campaign) was another good example of this: You guys were bored out of your minds, but you went through every room on every floor of that keep. I submit that it's not my job as GM to make the things you do interesting, it's your job as players to do things that interest you. I'll provide opportunities up the wazoo, but you all have to choose which opportunities to pursue and how to pursue them. Again, I think the whole concept of spiritual attributes/traits will be a big help with this.

Regarding spiritual attributes, I am going to try to both open them up a bit while also narrowing them down some. As far as opening them up, instead of limiting you to Honor, Faith, and two Passions, I am going to let you decide what types of traits your character has. For example, your character may have no honor or faith at all, but may have ambition, loyalty and two great loves. Basically anything that you can think of that defines your character's motivation works as a trait. But... I am going to ask you to be specific about them. A trait has to be something specific that can be used to guide your character's actions. For example, in the last session Ted felt that his character believed in Karma--that what he does in this life will revisit him in future lives. That's great background, but it's too broad for a trait because it doesn't provide Ted with any guidance on how his character will act in a given situation. A better trait might have been "Do no harm to another until they harm, or threaten to harm, me or my companions." (This would more accurately have been Honor than Faith, which is one reason I don't want to force you guys to pick a faith for your character just because it's on the character sheet.) Here are some good examples from movies/literature that might help:

Inigo Montoya from "A Princess Bride"
Drive: Avenge the murder of his father by finding and killing the six-fingered man
Honor: Fight fairly. There is no honor or profit from winning, but only from winning well*
Loyalty: Fezik (or whatever the giant's name was)

Samwise Gamgee from "The Lord of the Rings"
Love: Frodo Baggins
Love: Animals and plants, especially those of The Shire or rural life*
Honor: Keeps his word no matter what

Aragorn from "The Lord of the Rings"
Destiny: Assume his role as the King of Gondor and heir of Numenor in Middle Earth
Love: Arwen Evanstar
Love: Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin

* Note that Inigo's sense of honor and Sam's love of animals and growing things don't provide much opportunity to USE the SA bonuses, but they do provide great opportunities to GAIN points for character growth. Probably Sam would keep his love of Frodo fairly high so that he can use those bonuses to keep Frodo safe. He would spend down his other traits (honor and love of animals and growing things) to improve his attributes and skills. As Sam shows his honor and love of animals and growing things during play, he'd earn those points back for yet more character growth. My call on Inigo's sense of fair play is that he wouldn't get to use the trait bonus on every fight, but he WOULD get it in a fight where his opponent cheated (as in his final scene with the six-fingered man who runs away and ambushes Inigo with a thrown dagger). Before the ambush Inigo would fight without the bonus (from his honor, he'd still get it from his drive to avenge his father), but he'd get the bonus after the ambush, which (at least in the movie) was enough to offset the wound he received and to finally kill the six-fingered man.

REPLY: (From one player, Tim. No one else responded at all. I also think it's significant that Tim didn't mention my summary of my perceptions of what the group wanted/needed, nor did he talk at all about SA's. It was a rebuttal of my position that the players needed to play a more active role.)

And I'll fire back....if we're doing something that appears to be wasting
game time fruitlessly, steer us away.  The Keep of Irrelevance seemed, from the players' perspective, to be an important thing to search.  We were chasing some orcs (who were aiding the dark skinned man and holding Lord DQ, or something similar I think) and they happened to retreat down a path leading to this keep.  A keep in the middle of nowhere, apparently associated with our goals, and it had no significance whatsoever?  Why lead us to/through it at all?

I don't think it's a matter of Pavlovian conditioning to dungeon
crawls.....we just keep hoping that around the next corner is SOMETHING
important to the game.

As GM you are the storyteller.  We all play a part and add color (and a
certain random flair) to the game, but you tell the story.  If you keep the
plot coming we'll add the heroics.  If we're wandering aimlessly then it
means you've lost us and need to gently reel us back in.

EMAIL:
My responses to your responses. :)

> ...if we're doing something that appears to be wasting game time fruitlessly, steer us away...
>
How do I know what you (the players) consider to be a waste of time? Shouldn't you be the judge of that? Just because what you are doing isn't moving you closer to "winning" doesn't mean it isn't important to you, so how can I know what I should steer you away from?

> I don't think it's a matter of Pavlovian conditioning to dungeon crawls, we just keep hoping that around the next corner is SOMETHING important to the game.
>
Which is why you keep checking around corners! This seems to me to be classic Pavlovian conditioning to dungeon crawls. Stop checking around corners for goodies (either combat, loot or the next plot point) and make some of your own!

Also, that is twice that you've referred to "the game" as if it had it's own agenda. I think this is a great example of the very mindset that I am trying to make you aware of. This isn't a computer game or an off-the-shelf module with pre-defined victory conditions. I don't want to decide what you have to do to "win" and then steer you toward that. I want you to tell me what you want for your characters and then I'll try to weave that into a larger story. But you have to be the masters of your own destinies. You decide what is a "victory" for your character. Killing the bad guy to get his treasure makes for an uninteresting story. But a character we care about who overcomes fear, danger and hardship to accomplish meaningful goals? That is the stuff that the great stories are made of.

> The Keep of Irrelevance seemed, from the players' perspective, to be an important thing to search.  We were chasing some orcs (who were aiding the dark skinned man and holding Lord Delquion, or something similar I think) and they happened to retreat down a path leading to this keep.  A keep in the middle of nowhere, apparently associated with our goals, and it had no significance whatsoever?  Why lead us to/through it at all?
>  
>
Actually, your recollection of events is a bit blurry, Tim. The path of the dark-skinned man and Lord Delquion led to the keep (where you found some orcs guarding the pass), but the elf footprints ended at the entrance to the keep, the lone prints of a human led into the keep, and a large number of orcish footprints led away from the keep down into Crushbone. You correctly surmised that Lord Delquion had been handed over to the orcs and taken into the heart of Crushbone and that the dark-skinned man had entered the keep alone. Furthermore, in the next session the dark-skinned man defeated you all *and left* before you ever actually entered the keep. So the dark-skinned man was gone and Lord Delquion was obviously in the hands of the orcs. I believe if I was leading you anywhere it was *past* the keep and into Crushbone itself. I contend that your primary motivation for searching the keep was to find cool stuff, or more likely that you had no motivation for searching the keep but that you did it as a conditioned response: The GM put it here so we have to explore it. To use your own terminology, this is a corner, we have to look around it. The problem was that this corner led to a whole series of corners, none of which had anything around them of importance to the story.

To be honest, I think that I put the keep there to give you something to do after you had rescued Lord Delquion or to use as a resource in your rescue attempt. It was also a nice physical location for the plot divergence (fight the dark-skinned man or rescue Lord Delquion) as well as a natural thing to find on the summit of a mountain pass between two warring factions.

> As GM you are the storyteller.  We all play a part and add color (and a
> certain random flair) to the game, but you tell the story.  If you keep the plot coming we'll add the heroics.  If we're wandering aimlessly then it means you've lost us and need to gently reel us back in.
>  
>
/startRant [directed.at.tim=false]

Well, this is where my frustration arises. Frankly, I feel that I shouldn't have to be constantly reeling in five adults for 6+ hours every time we get together. You guys need to not wander aimlessly. You guys need to make contributions to the story. You guys need to add some flavor and texture to the world. You guys need to stay focused during the important scenes. I'll tell a story, but I want it to be YOUR story. I'll provide the framework and the direction, but you guys need to be bringing something to the table every session. (Not just playing when you get here, but actually have something in mind before you arrive, such as some background or other information about your character that you can share, an interesting plot thread or hook, a suggestion for an upcoming adventure you'd like to see, a bit of roleplaying you'd like to try, or some constructive feedback for me on the system, the adventure or my GMing.)

/endRant

CONVO:
We get together for a non-RPG game night and briefly discuss the previous issue. Two of the players give ridiculously extreme examples of how it can't work if the players control the story. (I honestly can't recall what they were now, but I remember at the time being surprised at how abrupt and extreme their examples were and thinking, "Wow, these guys are really threatened/defensive about this whole thing.") We agree that it's my job to provide structure and direction, but that they can contribute more, too.

EMAIL:
I've got something in mind for this next session that will give some overall direction to the story, but I need to get everyone's spiritual attributes so that I can use them to create adventure/roleplaying opportunities along the way. Please email me your SA's by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Keep the following things in mind for SA's:

  - You need at least two SA's, and can have up to four. The more you have, the more opportunities you'll have to use your SA bonuses and/or improve your character (through roleplaying and accomplishments).
  - An SA can be an Ambition, Destiny, Love, Hate, Loyalty/Duty, Honor/Code, Faith, Oath, Fear or anything else along those lines.
  - At least one SA must offer a compelling reason for foregoing the comfort of home to risk hardship and mortal danger.
  - At least one SA should relate to one or more other party members.
  - Your SA's should offer good roleplaying opportunities ("Afraid of the dark") and/or adventure hooks ("Earn admittance into the Freeport Thieves' Guild.")
  - Your SA's should be fairly specific and unique. "Hates orcs" doesn't work because everyone hates orcs. "Avenge the murder of older brother at the hands of Kreeg, a Crushbone orc legionnaire" is good because it is specific. "Believes that orcs are not evil, just misunderstood" is good because it is unique and loaded with opportunities for roleplaying and adventure.

Call or email if you have questions or want to run something by me.

REPLY: (None, then this from Kelly after two days.)

I would like to respond to choice number 3 on this however "- At least one SA should relate to one or more other party members."  WHY?!

I would like to say that it has been my experience that Players should not
really decide on the relationship between the other players characters.
There are a few reasons for this. The main reason I say this is that this
does not create any sort of bond between the player characters (pc's) unless they develop their characters together. I believe that any sort of character connections should be provided by the story/storyteller. Since we already have a character concept, that might entail a complete redesign of the characters.

I mean how can I say to Gronk, my dwarf, tells Flip, tim's elf "I must know you because your Elf sister was in love with my brother who was murdered by Kreeg, a Crushbone orc legionnaire." Let's spend the next 2 years together looking for him. That would give me very little incentive to really group with him. It also just gives a tenuous connection at best.  

To have characters that suddenly discover they are cousins or are on the
same quest to recover the mystic Ankara stone for their church might not be the best of conditions.  I have to say since we all have very different
playing backgrounds and as we will see, playing styles from one another.
Players coming up with commonalities between one another will be difficult.

However if within the story the situation was that "ok all of you were
captured by the crushbone orcs and were chained together for 3 months doing hard labor." [Ed: This is the premise we used to start the campaign.] This will create a much better 'bond' or instill a sense of
comradely than some flighty affair had by one of you siblings or the search for some old rock. A player made history won't create the need/interest in staying together to continue risking their life for person. Carry either of these lines to their conclusion what will happen when we find Kreeg or the Ankara stone. Who will want to be the one to deal the deal blow to Kreeg? Who's church will get the blessed rock?

Perhaps these are extreme examples. And everyone here is capable of more thought than this, but I just wanted to get my point across.

EMAIL: (entitled, "Let's try this again...")

In my original email I gave you a list of what I *thought* the situation was and asked each of you to let me know if my perceptions were accurate. Instead, we all got sucked into a tangential argument over who is supposed to do what in a gaming session. Here is the "my perceptions" section from the original email. Please review it and respond:

-----

[Ed: from the original email.]

-----

Regarding this past week's tangent, it seems to me that arguing over what the GM is *supposed* to do versus what the players are *supposed* to do reveals a mindset that there is a right way to play RPG's and a wrong way. I propose that nothing could be further from the truth. Just because you are all used to the GM providing virtually all of the background, plot and details of the story doesn't mean that that is the way it has to be.

What I am proposing is that we try something different--that we try a campaign in which you, the players, take a more active role in shaping the story. I honestly would have expected that you would all think that was *more* fun than being relatively passive participants. If you want to try it, then *how* we do it is a separate discussion. If, however, your response is "No, we don't want to do that" then that's the end of it. So what I need from everyone is a yes/no vote on whether you want to try this. If you do, great. If not, that's fine, too--I'll just run a more traditional campaign.

Anyway, that's it for now. Hopefully this will clarify for everyone my original intent and give you all a few things to think about. The last thing I'll say is that RPG's are all about creativity, resourcefulness and endless possibilities. Let's all apply those traits to find a system, a campaign, a gaming style and a division of labor that is fun and satisfying for everyone. Thanks!

CONVO:
No meaningful replies to this email, my girlfriend (who is also a player) suggests that we all discuss it in person before our next session, which we do. We get the whole "who is responsible for what" thing smoothed out a bit. Everyone creates new SA's together with me providing guidance and facilitating suggestions from the rest of the group. We run a session (which doesn't go well, but that is primarily because I thought the group was going to veto SA's and protagonism and I prepare a very linear session and I'm just not up to improvising anything better).

-----

MY ASSESSMENT:

Protagonism and SA's aren't hard concepts, but they seem to be hard for players to fit into their own, possibly very narrow, concept of "how RPG's are supposed to be". Given the chance to do this again, here's what I'd have done:

1. Post on The Forge my own understanding of SA's to make sure I had them right.

2. Post on the Forge requesting help in introducing the concept protagonism to a group and for ways to implement SA's outside of TRoS (which I suspect may be too "crunchy" to be a good fit for our group, although I can't say for sure until I have a chance to read it and possibly run a few sessions.)

3. Keep my emails short and to the point. If I hadn't gone into suggestions for ways to improve play, I might have actually received a response to my main question (i.e., "do I have a good understanding of what we, as a group, want?")

4. Run a one-off adventure such as the TRoS demo that I've heard discussed. This would give my players a good taste of both protagonism and SA's without them having to feel threatened or pressured.

5. Discuss, in person, what they liked or didn't like about the one-off session. Ask if they want to try some of that in our ongoing campaign.

6. Plan a few sessions that slowly transition from more linear, GM-driven play to a place where I am providing a rich environent for drama, but they are making the decisions on what direction the story goes.[/b]

[coxcomb]

Some random thoughts about this:

I think there is a difference between players who "want more story" and players who want to stick there necks out and direct some of that story themselves. I have played with quite a few people who are happy to quietly participate in the game without bringing out much of their character, and who are uncomfortable with their character in the spotlight. Strangely, the best example of this type of player that I know loves to develop back-story for her characters and to develop them in play with the GM alone so that noone else knows what's going on. Of course, I don't know your players--but you may have shaken them up a bit too much all at once.

Related to the above, talk about RPG theory can be scary to players that are not inclined toward theory themselves. And even if you do get a dialog going they won't necessarily "get" it right away. I had a player once who was totally on-board when we talked about player-empowerment and emphasizing description over mechanics. Yet, he couldn't grock the idea enough to stop the old habit of "I hit him" in combat. Take it easy on your players. RPGs, especially those where players have lots of input, really involve putting a personal part of yourself out in the open.

The second replay e-mail is interesting to me. It sounds, from what Kelly is saying, as if the players were not collaborating when making their characters. If that is the case, then I totally see the point about not wanting to come up with SAs that involve other PCs. On the other hand, it's strange to say that such connections should be made by the GM. I think one of the best ways to get a group to think about characters (beyond the stats) is to have everyone make characters together and to mandate that they all figure out how they know each other at the time of creation. It sounds like this kind of happened in your last in-person conversation.

Hope some of this is helpful.

[Bill Cook]

Hello, Steve.  Not familiar with your reference thread.  Don't know if you were looking for advice/observations, but your situation reminds me of my group's first brush with TROS, though I recognize you're harvesting mechanics and concepts from Forge threads.

I would have done the same thing.  There's a lot of exciting new ideas floating around in here!

5. All of you agree with me that the joking makes it hard to get into the story/characters. Some of you think this is not an issue, while others (including me) would like to tone down the joking somewhat in order to facilitate a more immersive story/session.

Lord, have I had issues with this.  I didn't really get into the joking until I spent more time in the player's seat.  Then I really gave in.  Now when I GM, tabling the game is a reflex.  And prodding with humor is not only acceptable, it is a tool that adds variety to my kit.

I submit that it's not my job as GM to make the things you do interesting, it's your job as players to do things that interest you.

But it is your job to come up with something that may lead to interesting decisions;)  As for the first-person shooter POV, one term: scene framing.

Without knowing you or your group, I think it's generally valuable to minimize acrimony.  A simple check is to count the last five exchanges (i.e. conversations, e-mails) and confirm that four were unforced and affirming.  Easy to say, I know.  You implement by avoiding blame and releasing feelings of disappointment or frustration as they occur.

Replace

[*]"You guys should be . . ."
[*]"But it's not my job to . . ."
[*]"Alright, can you guys be a little more serious?"
[/list:u]

with

[*]"I'm so disappointed.  I was hoping that . . ."
[*]"Well, I feel like it's never going to . . ."
[*]"It really frustrates me that the story isn't coming out."
[/list:u]

'pologize if I got a little preachy.  Hope this is useful.

[Andrew Norris]

I really *want* to give you some ray of hope here, but I can't. From reading these exchanges, I think that  your assessments of the group's wants are accurate. There's not much motivation to play in the first place, it seems.  They're not going to want to play a Narrativist game, and people are going to continue to be unhappy if you try to force it. Specifically, you'll be unhappy.

The thing about GNS is that it's descriptive, not prescriptive. Your players sound like they want Sim/Exploration of Setting done in an Illusionist fashion.  (I don't know, maybe not even Illusionist -- the responses seem to indicate expectation of railroading as the only way to play.)  If you can find a way to provide that that allows you to still enjoy the GM role, then I think things can work out; if not, then you're just beating your head against a wall to try to make them have different tastes.

My advice to you is pretty simple. I think you will find a benefit in backing away from the problem a bit. (I originally wrote "I think you should lighten up", but that's putting it a bit too personally.) Obviously there's conflict over creative agenda here, and that's causing some stress, but the larger issue is that you seem to put a lot of time, effort, and mental energy into these session, and the others don't.  You aren't going to be able to get them to put more effort into it, so you might consider putting in less yourself. Whether that's restricting yourself to one night of prep per session, using published material to reduce your workload, or plain not GMing, that's up to you. But I think you'll continue to be dissatisfied if you try to get them to change their gaming habits.

[Jake Norwood]

Try Playing inSpectres for a while.  That'll put them into the beginning of the right mentality for SA type play--I use it.  And it seems like you've got a pretty good idea of what SAs are.

Jake

[jeffd]

I've had pretty similar experiences trying to stick SA's into my current Fading Suns game.  We were coming up to an ending point, I was happy to be done but the players wanted it to keep going.  I made introducing SA's a requirement, which was rejected.

I eventually gave up.  The way the game runs made the players happy - the Sim/Exploration of Character with some Illusionist stuff on my part was good enough for them to where they didn't want to change it.  I'm going to start a Riddle of Steel game (realizing that that's what i *really* want to play) and let another FS player run that game.

JD

[November Kilo]

Steve,

I feel for you, man.  I'm sitting in the same boat.  I consider my group broken up because no one else will run, and my players won't change from "story is cute, but where's the orc to stick my +5 sword in?"  

I'll second Jake's suggestion.  I don't know inSpecters, but you might want to try shifting slowly to something that supports a player driven axis.  Kinda like a Dungeon Crawl patch, step them down slowly.  I assume that you could do it with your homebrew too, but just changing the game might help reinforce "this is something new."