Man Against Himself: Personality Mechanics

[M. J. Young]

There have been several threads about personality mechanics recently, but I suddenly had a thought about these that might be worth addressing.

I think it was http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7620">Personality Mechanics that work (for you) that introduced the subject to my thinking of late, and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7812">Brief Critique of Relationship Mechanics struck me as very much connected to that. So my mind was in the neighborhood.

I was writing one of my as yet unpublished Game Ideas Unlimited columns, about using weather and natural disasters within games,

Man against nature is usually listed as the first of the three great story conflicts (the other two being man against man and man against himself), and while that includes more than battling the weather, it certainly does include battling the weather.

I think at that point something was fermenting under the skull, but I wasn't quite sure what it was.

Then I read a very favorable review of Paul Czege's My Life With Master, by the wonderful Steve Darlington, which went into detail about the mechanics. It sounds wonderful.

But I realized that those mechanics are, in the main, personality and relationship mechanics--and that such mechanics are probably necessary for some man-against-man stories and nearly all man-against-himself stories.

The issue in MLWM, if I'm getting it right, is whether the character will be able to choose to do what he wants to do. Whether that's choosing to do the right thing or the wrong thing isn't the point; it's something which I think we as humans all face at times: trying to find it within ourselves to do what we wish we could do.

We don't have a lot of trouble with this when it's "out there" in the physical realm. Sure, people complain about the whiff factor of fortune at the end systems; but most people don't complain about them, and we all sort of grasp the concept. I may want to cut off the dragon's head with my sword, but will I be able to do so? Let the dice decide. I may want to walk across this tightrope to reach the other side, but can I keep my balance? Let the dice decide. I may want to resist the intense heat of the beast's fiery breath, but can I survive it? Let the dice decide.

The problem is that when we carry that over to the realm of individual choice, we touch something sacred to gamers (perhaps something addressed in one of the recent My Guy threads, such as http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7919">My Character Would): the ability to determine character choice. We say that the character will not quail at standing up to the injustice despite the fact that the Crown Prince is happily accepting it; to say that you need to roll to see whether you can do that is a slap in the face of our characters' self-determination. We say that our character's dalliances with prostitutes have not left him guilt-ridden; to say that you need to roll interferes with our decisions about who this person is.

I remember long ago some module stated that in a certain room was a cask of excellent wine. Any character who tasted it had to make a wisdom check not to taste it again; and any character who tasted it again had to make another wisdom check at a penalty not to take another drink, and so on with increasing penalties for intoxication and the inability to break the cycle without a good die roll. It seems silly, really. Why can't I just say that my character tastes the wine, remarks how good it is, and moves on to the next room?

On the other hand, would I ever say that my character finds the wine too tempting to resist, and so endangers the lives of his companions as he sits and guzzles this beverage? Most players would not do so, I think. A personality mechanic may be the only way to make temptation work.

My Life With Master may demonstrate that such personality and relationship mechanics are perfectly reasonable and appropriate; that man against himself adjudicated by die roll is not an unworkable conflict in a role playing game; that we can wrestle as much with our inner demons as our outer ones with the right mechanics.

Maybe I should have made this another Game Ideas Unlimited article; but I haven't read MLWM, and I wanted to get some thoughts from people who were more familiar with it.

Thoughts?

--M. J. Young

[Trevis Martin]

I can't comment on MLWM just now.  I have read it once but I need to read it through again a couple of times more to really absorb it.  That said, it occurs to me that Humanity as it is treated in Sorcerer is the Man vs. himself conflict as adjudicated by a die roll.   The characters have the ability to choose their behavior at every point except when they hit Humanity 0.

Trevis

[Mike Holmes]

The entire concept of the Synthesis system that I and JB Bell came up with is that the character is constantly changing, and that this is at constant odds with his own self-perception. In fact, we called it the Self System at first.

A copy of the latest rules is available in the files section at Indie-Netgaming if it's at all interesting.

From a really dramatic protagonist viewpoint, not to mention a real world Zen standpoint, the character can do anything. It's only himself that he has to contend with to get to his goals.

Mike

[Dauntless]

An interesting topic.

The power of choice or freewill reverberates strongly in most people (although surprisingly few seemed to get this was the core idea behind Matrix: Reloaded).  We mostly just take it for granted that we as players should be able to control our characters as we please barring external circumstances (mind control for example, and even then most players absolutely despise this).  A part of being a hero is that he follows his own path, and that's why we look up to heroes.  They do things that we wish we could, not just because they are better at tasks than we are, but because they had the courage and strength of conviction to actually follow their power of choice.

But in real life, we are often at odds with our own inner demons.  Should this be reflected in RPG's?  Some personality mechanisms can reflect this "steering" of a character's behavior.  At least in the Hero campaigns I've run in the past, players almost always bellyache when they aren't allowed to do as they please, even when they got points as disadvantages and I enforce their psychological limitations on them.  Only the best players take it in stride and realize it's a part of the challenge of roleplaying.

And here we can delve a little into the GNS model of player focus.  I've noticed that the players who bellyache the least about power of choice manipulations are the players who have Simulationist leanings.  For Gamists, they want to win or be powerful....a lack of choice takes away from their tactical arsenal.  For the Narrativist, having their choice determined for them is like having another actor steal their lines.  But for the Simulationists, they seem to see it as a rational modeling of inherent limitations of man's psyche.

So if you're developing a game with a Simulationist framework, I think having "Man vs. Himself" would be a good idea to play with.  It should be easy enough to implement with a robust personality mechanic, and well-defined "triggers".  For example, let's say a character has a Personality Trait of Slothful.  The character may be strong and have good skills, but he'll probably perform some skills more poorly than others (say for example a farming skill).  The trigger is dependant on both the trait and the context of the situation, but plenty of examples should be given which could trigger the trait to express itself.

[John Kim]

But I realized that those mechanics are, in the main, personality and relationship mechanics--and that such mechanics are probably necessary for some man-against-man stories and nearly all man-against-himself stories.
...
On the other hand, would I ever say that my character finds the wine too tempting to resist, and so endangers the lives of his companions as he sits and guzzles this beverage? Most players would not do so, I think. A personality mechanic may be the only way to make temptation work.

Well, I can't comment on My Life With Master.  From what I hear, it is a very cool game.  I have heard many stories of personality mechanics working well for such stories.  

On the other hand, I know from experience that personality mechanics are not necessary for man-against-himself stories.  Nor has it been restricted to particularly rare players.  This was reinforced by my recent convention experience -- given the right circumstances, there seem to be plenty of players who are willing to, say, get drunk and endanger the lives of their companions and themselves.  I think that simply removing the social/meta-game stigma attached to this is very effective in this.  

For example, the Ripper game was a non-Lovecraft-based Call of Cthulhu campaign set in 1888 London with various occult happenings.  One of the aspects I really liked was the descent into madness.  We had tossed out the CoC Sanity rules, and instead just agreed to role-play our characters reactions.  Three of the five initial PCs all had IMO great slides into madness, ultimately to self-destruction for two of them.  The cool part was seeing how much it made sense.  For example, I am still convinced that in many ways Grimmond's violent paranoia was in many ways a more sensible reaction to what we saw than the adventurous spirit of Mr. Edwards and Miss Woodhull.  

Many other campaigns that I have known also featured man-against-himself stories.  This is not to deny that it can't work well with personality mechanics, of course.  My only point is that it isn't neccesary.  Comparing the two is probably difficult.  I haven't had good results from personality mechanics, but that likely has to do with other aspects of my style.  Others may feel success from mechanics which just felt flat to me.