[Sudden Light] Covert Playtest: Protagonist Generation

[Paul S]

 I had a chance to try out a very abbreviated form of the first stage of Protagonist generation today in my improv. class, and it went swimmingly well.  Of course, the participants thought they were helping me to write a fiction piece and had no idea they were the first guinea pigs for my character creation process!

Our original group exercise (the class is "Improvisation and Creative Writing") was to randomly select a name from a phone book, go around a circle and add character traits.  Finally, we were to tell a story about the first day we met that character. 

I tweaked this exercise a bit and pushed it towards an experimental and abbreviated play test of Protagonist generation.  First, I gave the group a name to work with: "Tom."  I also gave them the themes transcendence, epiphany, and blindness to the truth that the world is filled with beauty (which would be an example of a Truth), but I also (rightly or wrongly?) said that they could write down any small details about Tom that they found interesting.  I wrote Tom's name in the middle of a notepad and circled it.  I instructed the group to write anything that popped into their minds given the themes I just outlined, visually linking them to Tom or to a previously named description.

Although I can't reproduce the finished page here, I'll list some of the details we generated by each branch of our idea tree:

-muck-raker, newspaper reporter, likes to follow people taking notes, voyeur, cried when his hard drive crashed and erased his notes

-smoker, sometimes generic brands, ex-wife, has dreams where he saves her, taking drugs for insomnia

-doesn't care for exotic food, unconsciously racist, drinks black coffee

-red hair, hoody, plain pocket T-Shirt, Blue, scuffed black boots, secretly inherited Nazi memorabilia from grandfather

-cloudy mountaintop, goes to church sporadically, goes to confession regularly

-rose-colored glasses mentality, child, kaleidoscope, looks at [the kaleidoscope] in the moonlight, prize possessions is a snow globe he keeps under his bed, his grandfather gave [the snow globe] to him, he's never seen snow

Because of time constrains, I had to cut the exercise short.  The group was on a roll and could have generated a great many more details.  I adore some of some of the images that were generated, such as the image of a man crouching, examining a kaleidoscope in the moonlight.  If I were strictly writing a fiction piece rather than designing a game, I'd be delighted with the richness of the material here.

In imagining the next step of Protagonist generation, based on this exercise, it seems as though the Mundane player would have an easier time of it.  For example, Aspects such as "ex-wife," "voyeur, "muck-raker," taking drugs for insomnia, "unconsciously racist," are all ripe hooks for the Mundane Guide to use to continue to keep the Protagonist blinded to the Truth.  As a Sublime Guide, I'd probably take "newspaper reporter," "snow globe from Grandfather," rose-colored glasses mentality," goes to confession regularly," and "has dreams of saving his ex-wife" as my Aspects, but these Sublime Aspects would seem more difficult to consistently work into scenes.  This may be due to, in part, that the group I was working with was not in a mentality for laying the groundwork for future game play, but were (rightly) attempting to create interesting character details and images for fiction pieces. 

I also erred (at least insofar as play testing is concerned) by stating that any detail connected to the character could be used, rather than stressing that I was looking for details that were especially important to the Protagonist himself.  I got some interesting visual images—that Tom has red hair and wears plain pocket T-Shirts—but these details might be tough for some players to divide between the Mundane/Sublime split and use as leverage in scenes.  However, on another level, I want these types of rich images in play.  Although I will try to write my game text so as to clearly underscore that brainstorming the Protagonist should  focus on those things that the Protagonist cares about the most and those things that most dominate his or her life, I'd like to include some mechanics here in order both broaden images for effective game play while also including mechanics which reward bringing evocative images into play.

Mechanics:
After the Mundane and Sublime Guides have claimed their Aspects, they may alter their chosen Aspects by spending Influence Tokens.  A Guide may spend 1  Influence Token for every Aspect they would like to modify.  These spent Influence Tokens are subtracted from the Guide's starting pool of 10.

Any alterations made must be connected in some way to the starting Aspect; modifying Aspects does not allow Guides to propose a Aspect not at all connected with the initial Aspect.

For example, a Sublime Guide has chosen the Aspect "has dreams of saving his ex-wife."  By spending an Influence Token, the Guide could broaden the Aspect and change it to "hero complex."  The Guide might want generalize the Protagonist's relationship mentioned in the original Aspect by modifying it to "still loves his ex-wife."  However, the Guide could not propose modifying the Aspect to "friends with a wise professor," "writes poetry," or "does volunteer work."  These later Aspects are certainly legitimate, but have nothing to do with the original Aspect of "has dreams of saving his ex-wife."

However, within this constraints there should be allowed a great deal of latitude.  Extremely general Aspects beg for modification.  An original image of the Protagonist with "has red hair," could be modified to "extremely proud of Irish heritage."  Modifying Aspects only have to have a tenuous connection with the original Aspect.

Modified Aspects have a mechanical connection to their originated Aspects.  If, during the course of playing out a scene, a Guide includes the pre-modified Aspect in narration, that Guide gains a number of Influence Tokens equal to half the rating of the Aspect in question (round down).  To continue an above example, the Sublime Guide has modified "dreams of saving his ex-wife" to "still loves his ex-wife."  The Guide has rated "still loves his ex-wife" at 5.  In during course of winning a Conflict, the Guide narrates the Protagonist attempting to reconcile with his wife.  During the course of the narration, the Guide includes the detail "Tom begs  passionately for Alice to realize that her alcoholism is destroying her and that their love can overcome it.  Deep in his mind, he still imagines himself as a hero  in shining armor, ready to save her from herself."  By including the details concurrent with a pre-modified Aspect "dreams of saving his ex-wife," the Sublime Guide gains 2 Influence Tokens (half of the Aspect rating, rounded down).  Gaining Influence Tokens through this process may only be done once per game session for each Aspect.

No more than 5 of the starting 10 Influence Tokens may be spent in modifying Aspects.

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Questions for Consideration: I'm tempted to include a condition in the mechanics that states that the Protagonist player has the final say whether a modified Aspect has appropriate relevancy to the originating Aspect.  I want to ensure that the system is not unfairly tilted towards one player (again, this is a competitive game between the Sublime and Mundane Guides) and the Protagonist player is a perfect arbitrator.  However, I do want to avoid centering the game around the final say of the neutral party—the Protagonist player—because that smacks too much of the traditional GM-player dichotomy.  I'd include bidding mechanics at this stage, but I want to avoid Guides spending their Influence Tokens too early, so that they can have influence over the narrative through play.  I could start off the Guides with more Tokens, but I fear giving out too many at the beginning, because it would be easier to reach Epiphany sooner, thus making for shorter games.

Any suggestions for resolving these design questions?