The care & feeding of Behavior Mechanics...

[Bankuei]

Hi John,

Excellent questions!

2) Confusion about "how to roleplay" a given situation becomes easier to resolve.

Let's start by recognizing that behavior can be defined in two fashions: concrete and abstract.  Concrete behaviors include, "Will not kill", "Runs from spiders", "Always pays tithe", etc.  Abstract behaviors include, "Good", "Evil", "Compassion", "Cruelty".  Notice that concrete behaviors indicate specific actions, while abstract behaviors require a value judgement to interpret whether specific actions fall within them.

Mechanics such as Burning Wheel's Instincts, Paladin's Laws, GURP's Quirks, and CoC's Sanity rules are all pretty clear cut.  You find few arguments springing up about these, because they are dealing with concrete situations.

Abstract mechanics on the other hand, often are more contentious, especially if you add in GNS incoherency on the part of the group.  Nonetheless, there are many groups who find even the very vague alignment rules from D&D easy to work with because everyone at the table is on the same page as to what they mean in play, there isn't a lot of value differences between the group.

All that said, behavior mechanics run the gamut from well designed to poorly designed.  Consider CoC's sanity rules and how well they facilitate play; no one is confused if their character should be played as sane or insane.  And when insanity strikes, there is a good description of what kind and what sort of effects it should have on the character.  Contrast this with D&D's abstract alignments and also recognize that they are often a battleground when GNS incoherence strikes a group.  

Poorly designed behavior mechanics do not negate the fact that well designed ones are still great guidelines for roleplaying.

Second, understand that when something doesn't have rules, the usual assumption for traditional games is "GM's fiat".  Consider the difference in player empowerment between having the GM say "You go insane" and being able to point to your character sheet and say, "Hey, I got 30 Sanity points left!  I'm ok!" and playing without such a mechanic, at which point it comes down to who can be more persuasive or forceful.  

Because THERE is a rule, the group can understand it and work with it.  It is a clear part of the social contract.  As I said earlier, the undefined parts are where conflict arises most often.

Chris

[Kesher]

As has been pointed out above, in a well-designed game, clearly understood by all participants, BMs have a powerful reason to exist & can lead to powerful instances of protagonism for all involved.  To restate, I don't think that BMs having a clear purpose, clearly understood, can ever lead to "disempowerment"; only misapplication or incoherence can accomplish that.  

OK, I don't agree with this.  Surely I can make behavior mechanics whose purpose is disempowerment.  Indeed, I see that as a powerful use of behavior mechanics -- exploring loss of control or helplessness.  Not everything has to be positive and empowering.  While I agree that they can have an empowering purpose, I don't think that any arbitrary behavior mechanics will be empowering if they are just understood.  

I've got an old essay that I wrote on http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/personality.html">Personality Mechanics, by the way.

John, a couple of things:

First, thanks for the link to the essay; I've actually poked around on your site, just haven't yet geared myself up to do more hardcore analytical reading... :)

Secondly, I think you midunderstood what I was saying.  You're definitely right when you say that BMs aren't arbitrarily empowering.  However, unless I'm reading you wrong, you're talking about character disempowerment; I was referring to players.  

As far as characters are concerned, I couldn't agree with you more, that it can be a great way to explore certain avenues of behavior, ones players don't usually want to deal with in their own lives, but can certainly deliver a potential cathartic impact when happening to a character.  Which is why I've actually become very interested in mechanics that cause loss of character control, but allow potential narration of the event by the player themselves.  Donjon has a mechanic that works in this way, but I'd like to try & intensify it; As I perhaps clumsily narrated above, I think this can lead to an entirely different experience of playing, with potential Story creation that wouldn't happen if things were played "traditionally" (i.e., character acts the way the player would themselves be most likely to act in a given situation)  

IME, Actor stance is usually a farce propagated through multiple levels of Illusionism (how's that for a spoonful of jargon... not done yet); Author (or Director) stance, leveraged (inspired?) through well-designed BMs, can (again, IME), lead to a more satisfying playing-of-roles & Premise addressment.

3) Third, behavioral mechanics tend to division power a bit more equally amongst the group.
I don't see this, offhand.  Can you give some examples?  To me, if I compare Call of Cthulhu with Basic Roleplaying, I don't see how it distributes power more equally.

I don't wanna put words in Bankuei (Chris') mouth, but I'm guessing he was thinking of games where BMs play a larger role, though I can't think myself (as I'm sitting here) of a good example...

You know, isn't narration-sharing a kind (form) of BM?