Establishment vs. Development

[M. J. Young]

I'm currently running a Multiverser campaign in forum play, and we've found that the player characters are all openly introspective in their posts. Some of them are very gamist players, others considerably more narrativist or simulationist (I haven't studied it closely, but that's my impression), yet all of them get into talking about what their character is thinking and feeling.  It will frequently happen that a character has to choose what to do, and the player will write an extended post weighing the options before stating a decision. Conflicted characters who do something against their better judgment, characters who are angry or amused or otherwise internally reacting to the situation, all this comes through the posts.

It occurs to me to mention it because one of our newer players posted a side thread to ask whether she was being too introspective, and nearly everyone else in the game said absolutely not--by all means, tell us what your character is thinking and feeling, because it makes the thread so much more interesting. The only caveat (I raised it) is when you're done telling us what you think and feel please also tell us what you do, because I can't very well have the world or characters react  to those thoughts and feelings--a long post which is solely introspective helps me a great deal*, but without action it leaves me wondering what to post in response.

*Particularly in Multiverser this is valuable, as a lot of world events are driven by the General Effects Roll, which is a randomized determination of whether things go the way the character wants them to go. In order to interpret GE rolls, I really have to have a pretty good handle on what the character hopes and fears in the situation at hand, so I can steer to the right balance based on the roll.

Thus even Gamist players have to let me into their characters' interior life, because things can't "go their way" if I don't know what "their way" is.

--M. J. Young