Limiting Character Types

[Bruce Baugh]

I've just noticed a recurring element in discussion of The Impossible Thing that seems to me to reflect an unsupported and perhaps unexamined assumption.

Implicit in most games is the idea that you make characters of a certain type, who will deal with certain kinds of situations. Even "universal" systems impose limits of various kinds. I'm seeing the objection raised that if Call Of Cthulhu says "and then you investigate" or Werewolf says "and then you deal with these threats to the survival of the world", this usurps the player's ability to control the character.

I'm unconvinced.

It seems to me that saying "I'm going to play Call Of Cthulhu in what the GM says is a game with the Mythos cosmology but I'm not going to ever have any interest in investigating anything and will in fact try to evade all contact with the supernatural" or "I'm going to play a werewolf in the World of Darkness with the standard overall setup but I'm going to try to be warm and fuzzy (so to speak) with the forces that are destroying the world" is really saying "I don't accept the premises of the game". Which is cool, and not innately wrong or anything. I routinely pass on games that do things I'm not interested in at the moment.

But is it really an infringement of your creative power within the course of play when the game offers advice that assumes players and GM are in fact doing what the game is set up to do? I don't really think so, as the tone of the question may suggest. Both CoC and Werewolf are quite clear about the crucial features of their milieus. I can use those mechanics for other purposes, but I think it wise to admit at the outset that I'm doing so, in a statement like "we're playing in a game where whatever challenges arise may be unrelated to the Mythos" or "while these pieces of cosmology are treated as fact by others, you are at liberty to question the moral and spiritual foundations of the whole thing".

I wouldn't use Ron's Sorcerer if I wanted to play a game about ordinary people whose goal is simplyt o conform to expectations. I wouldn't use Paladin for a game of morally ambiguous and unpowered thugs skating through moral and ethical fringes. I might very well use CoC for a game without any supernatural element or with a totally non-Mythos one, but I'd feel that I owed the players either a statement to this effect or a statement - as with the D20 Modern game I'm currently running - that there is a horror element but that they should trust me to explain it in due season. (And then players can decide whether they feel like trusting the GM or not.) In the World of Darkness games we do discuss the importance of making sure that folks in a particular group are either mutually clear about their assumptions or have some explicit "trust me"s worked out.

But given a game which makes its intent clear, I don't think that focusing advice on players and GMs who are preparing to play within that intent can reasonably be seen as a tyrannical infringement.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Howdy do, Bruce

Allow me to extend the customary welcome to the Forge and all of that.

I personally did not see this sort of thing in the Impossible Thing discussions. Could you elaborate a bit? I do agree with the sentiment so far.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Bruce,

I don't disagree with one thing you just said. However, I fail to see where it intersects with The Impossible Thing at all. (I've read the whole other thread, and feel the same way about a lot of the posts there.)

The Impossible Thing (a term I've never liked, just to know) is simply this: it is impossible for a story to be created while playing an RPG if the GM does not provide places for the players to make decisions, and allow for those decisions.

That's it. If you write an adventure where it's stated from the start that the characters will be hired by guy X to kill other guy X and you have to go here, here, and over here to do it, then the GM is going to tell that story in the game. (Note: yep, I said story. I said 'tell a story,' though.)

Now, if you create an adventure where the characters get offered a chance by guy X to kill other guy X (with reasons to do so, and reasons not to do so), then the group is creating a story together.

Writing that (and drinking a cup of joe), I see the point in your posts better. If you play in a game of Call of Cthulhu where you find clue X that states that unknown horror Y is coming and you have to do Z1, Z2, and Z3 to stop it, then the GM's telling a story. If you play in a Werewolf game where Pentex builds a factory that creates dead-fetus-blow-up dolls and you have to destroy it, then the GM's telling a particularly disturbing story.

But, take the following two examples:
- Call of Cthulhu: An invasion of fish-men threatens the coastal New England town, and you're investigating it. Finding one of the horrors in an alleyway, you pull out your derringer to get rid of it, when you notice its face looks a lot like your fishing pal, Lemmy. What do you do? BAM. Story.
- Werewolf: Said Pentex plant is polluting rivers, mucking up the air, and pooping in your breakfast. But, doesn't your Roman Catholic mom and dad work there, and if you destroy it, won't they lose their jobs? (And your Catholic mom will not understand if you tell her you're a werewolf and you've got to save the earth. She'll have Father Donelly over in an instant.) So, what do you do? BAM. Story.

To me, the Impossible Thing just says, "GMs, listen to your damn players. And give 'em good decision points." That doesn't seem to clash too much with these games at all.

[Bruce Baugh]

Jack, I took the Werewolf and Call of Cthulhu complaints from one or another of the Impossible Thing threads.

I do think that it's worth discussing how and in what ways games impose constraints on player creativity at the outset, but this strikes me as a different issue from the one about what happens in play, which Clinton seems to have just covered admirably. :)

[M. J. Young]

Implicit in most games is the idea that you make characters of a certain type, who will deal with certain kinds of situations....I'm seeing the objection raised that if Call Of Cthulhu says "and then you investigate" or Werewolf says "and then you deal with these threats to the survival of the world", this usurps the player's ability to control the character.

I'm unconvinced.

I think, though, that this is in many ways the module play paradigm: there is in the social contract an agreement that players are going to attempt to determine what their characters are "supposed to do" and do that.

Even within that context, I found some of the text quoted from Call of Cthulu particularly egregious. Telling me what my character is going to do next is the most egregious of all, even if it's intended as a way of putting me in the right place. Why can't I say that I'm in over my head, and want to go home and forget I'd ever come this far? Why can't I say that we need help, and had better find some somewhere before we wander into this horror any deeper? Why do I have to go where the referee says I should go next?

I ran The Dancing Princess on one of my players some years back. Briefly, in the fairy tale the princesses are coming to breakfast each morning exhausted in worn out slippers, and the king is seeking a hero who can find out what's happening and stop it. The hero is given a seat outside their room, so he can watch and listen to make sure they don't get out. The girls, though, are slipping through a magical trap door in the floor that takes them to another dimension, where demons disguised as princes are dancing the night away with them, working a charm spell that will ultimately allow the demons to come out and take over the kingdom by marrying the girls. Thus the girls are uncooperative, as they do not want their beloved princes taken from them, and they try to drug the hero before they leave so he won't hear them.

The night that our player character is there will be the last night that they vanish; when they return, the demons will come with them.

The player avoided the drug, but did not hear the princesses open and close the door. He was arrested in the morning when it was clear they'd escaped (must be his fault), evaded arrest, and locked himself in their room seeking answers. He found the door, and managed to find a way to open it. Stairs descended perhaps a mile to an alien terrain below, clearly another world.

Now, at this moment, my module could have said, "the player character descends the stairs, closing the door behind him." I, as referee could have said that. But all of this assumes that my player thinks his character is a hero and has any chance at all of succeeding in rescuing the princesses from another world. Why can't he at that moment go back, open the doors to the room, and announce that the princesses descended those stairs if the king wants to go after them with his armies? Why can't he leave the trap door open and escape through the window, hoping that when the army breaks through the door they'll assume he went down those steps and follow, or close the door and report him escaped? Why can't he hide under the bed and wait to see what they do? I can think of a dozen things a player character could do at this moment, not one of which is entirely inconsistent with being a normally heroic individual, that do not involve him going down those stairs.

Yet in a very similar situation the Cthulu modules says that the player characters will go to such-and-such place next, and this is given as a rulebook example of how play should be run.

That requires a specific social contract element that states players will attempt to determine what their characters are supposed to do, and will attempt to do that. This is not a violation of their autonomy per se; but it was not stated in any of the CoC rules that were quoted. What the players were told suggested that they would at that moment have full autonomy to do whatever they wished within their own concepts of their own characters; what the referee was told suggested that they would do what they were supposed to do for the story to go where it was supposed to go. There is nothing wrong with a division of credibility that gives the players the obligation to do what the referee or scenario expects; it's just not stated that way in the rules, and should come to us as a surprise.

As an aside, in regard to

Even "universal" systems impose limits of various kinds.

Multiverser imposes no such limits beyond the minimum and maximum possible values for the system (which is not the sort of limitations you suggest). Although a particular referee may impose limitations on the nature of starting characters, the system allows you to become whatever you wish and take whatever attitude you want to play.

One of the early test players took it upon himself to regard all these universes as an army-induced controlled group hallucination, and began killing as many of the "imaginary creatures" as he could in the hope that they would let him out of it. That certainly wasn't the expectations for play that the designer had, but they were regarded as completely legitimate in the context of what had happened, and he continued to play that way for quite a while, until he decided they weren't going to let him out. We don't care what your character motivations or beliefs are; the referee will play to you.

--M. J. Young

[Bruce Baugh]

Alas, I'll have to pass on commenting on Multiverser until sometime...down the road a ways, given the stack of stuff I have to do for work and my growing desire to do more play purely for personal fun. I don't want to sound like I'm wimping out, but I figure the world doesn't really need more assertions made in ignorance.

[Harlequin]

I think Bruce has identified something important and often neglected, as an element of preconstructed social contract (as in, when you open the game book, there it is, regardless of your playgroup).  That it's not a bad thing, and frankly often a good one - it's "buy-in" to the interesting things the designer has to say with this material.  

Clearly spelling this out in the game book, not merely implicitly via colour and mood, but explicitly, even supported by mechanics if feasible, is exactly the sort of intelligent design we seek to support here.  "Acknowledge that this is what you actually want to say to the players, and say it."  Excellent advice to game designers and something that Bruce's comments have caused me to bump up in priority in my own stuff.

The Impossible Thing discussion does risk condemning this behaviour, which would be a pity.  It doesn't - quite - and let's keep that discussion elsewhere.

It keys to the thing the printed Impossible Thing text is trying to get at, though, which (rather than criticizing the impossibility of the text itself) is worthy of attention.

The designer has some stories in mind when writing the text.  I use the word 'story' egregiously and intentionally, because the designer's intentions on this level are about as variable as interpretations of this word.  But he has a mental blueprint, a strong vision.  If this were not true, he probably wouldn't be writing the game.

This means that the game designer necessarily enters into the social contract, as a peculiar absentee party.  He has a very real input into the outcome of play, and a large part of this comes in proscribing or encouraging various things - including character types - and this needs to be heard and acknowledged, even if flaunted, by the group.  This input is not always consistent or clear - and identifying in what way this could be improved is obviously germane.

The first level this happens on is the mechanical - the rules support, or fail to support, these kinds of characters.  This level is a powerful for this... Tromeur's Wuthering Heights RPG does not support "cheerful" as an emotional state, characters default to "worried," sometimes oscillate into despondency or joy, but are never just sort of having a good time.  And obviously this level is invoked in all games to some degree - very few game systems support elder gods and viruses simulteneously.  But it's not the only level on which the designer has input into the social contract, merely the obvious one.

Textual assumptions similar to the CoC and Werewolf examples given, which assume (without supporting such in the mechanics) characters whose emotional states will lead them to behave thus-and-so in such a situation, are in fact another manifestation.  This one, the "module paradigm" as M.J. calls it, is pernicious only inasmuch as it (a) disagrees with the players' desires in their characters, or (b) is inconsistent in the text, often causing the assumptions to be "sprung on" players - or even GMs - too late for even well-intentioned groups to buy into the designer's assumptions.  Bruce's point is clear - this is not always a flaw.  The descriptors in Sorcerer are chosen from lists for exactly this reason - to limit character types and thereby strengthen mood.

All of this has a clear interpretation at our level of understanding.  Communication breakdown in the social contract.  Dysfunction results.  The game designer fails to communicate his contributions to the social contract in a clear, timely manner in the text.  And/or, the playgroup fails to acknowledge the designer's input into the social contract, creating CoC investigators who are rational cowards or Garou who are ethical relativists without explicitly noting, and contravening, the designer's assumptions.  Either party in this dysfunction may be at fault.

This is naturally more frequent in modules, which are typically inserted into play after the initial negotiation of the social contract is complete.  The module writer basically has to hope like hell that his assumptions match those of the social contract - because he gets treated like a silent partner. :)  Even in this instance, though, there is a non-dysfunctional solution... because the social contract is constantly under reevaluation, especially when a new member is brought in - which, for the module writer, is at the time the GM buys his module.  As with most social contract issues, the best solution seems to be explicitness and openness.  If the CoC module said clearly, on the back cover, "This adventure is for five investigators who are not generally inclined to back down," then he would be carrying on his component of the social contract renegotiation in a useful, sane manner.  But module writers merely suffer under a particular version of this, where they not only come to the social contract by proxy of text, but also late to the table; game designers should acknowledge the same thing, both in their mechanics and the text of how the game is to be played.

(Interestingly, this is the level of discourse addressed by the fact that in TROS, the designer has said that he expects the first few characters made by a player to be overly dispassionate and die like flies.  Not a gentle method of addressing the social contract, but indisputable.  In this instance the game designer is issuing a rules-backed ultimatum to the social contract negotiations: either alter the rules, play thus-and-so, or see your precious characters die.  The designer may be an absentee member of the discourse, but he is not without a voice.)

So.  The Impossible Thing could be seen as a single instance of poor communication within this context... the designer has said one thing to the GM at the social contract table, and another thing to the players.  Bruce's examples of situations where limiting character types is beneficial are, on the other hand, productive instances of the same manner of communication.  The designer has said, "This game will be more fun if you all play environmentally aware characters, because this will support the themes I wanted to explore with the setting and colour."

In fact, this level of the social contract is clearly implicit in the basic elements of play.  Setting and system in one set of hands, character in another set, and situation traditionally in a third.  There are other distributions, and they're usually softened and shared around, but nonetheless it's clear from our listed elements of play that the game designer must necessarily be party to the social contract... and it's up to him to do so responsibly, clearly, and in a manner suited to his audience.

[Bruce Baugh]

That's really nicely put, Harlequin, and actually clarifies some points I was still groping toward. Thanks!

[Gordon C. Landis]

I see very little substantive association with the Impossible Thing here, though I think I understand how those threads led Bruce to start this thread.  For me, the Impossible Thing isn't about infringement (though it may INVOLVE it), of a tyranical sort or any other - it's a practical thing, about how splitting up responsibilities clearly and near-absolutely may look like a good idea, but turns out to frustrate (completely) a sometimes-desired goal.

But on the subject of limits, and designer-agenda . . . I think I join most here at the Forge in saying "Hell yeah!"  Communicationg about how you envision the split of responsibilities, why you think those choices are good, how a play group should talk about it . . . I'm really looking forward to the new GammaWorld in large part because the bits Bruce has shared so far represent really great examples of how to go about that kind of communication.

So, I guess that's it - except I think this (how to communicate such things well) is great ground for discussion, and I too found Harlequin's post very clear and valuable.

Gordon