NPC demands [split off from Midnight to HQ]

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Oh, a fantastic example.  It shows me another angle on Bangs that I've felt insecure about without quite being aware of what it was:  half of whether something is or isn't a Bang is in the mind of the player.  

Incorrect. Whether or not something is a Bang is 100% in the mind of the player. Only he is concerned with railroading and such concerns - the character is oblivious.

Misunderstanding.  My mistake, I should have expressed my thought more clearly. It wasn't the player-PC divide I was thinking of, it was the player-GM divide, in the sense that a large part of the reasons of whether a Bang will work is inside the mind of the player alone and not accessible to the GM because it has never come up in play before and never been talked about by the player and GM.  

I've felt kind of an obligation to come up with ideas that would be "good enough" to count as Bangs, and have been secretly frustrated when they didn't seem to work as Bangs because the player in question "simply" decided and moved on,

Well, this sounds like a mode problem. For the "sim" player, it's no different a decision than any other - he only has to consider what his vision of the character says, and not what he himself thinks about the situation.

Hm yeah.  The two players I remember doing this have strong Sim tendencies (strangely enough ones that weren't too well compatible with each other).

...or conversely I've been mystified-and-delighted when something turned into a character-defining moment when I hadn't anticipated that it might.

And this will continue. But hopefully it'll be a tad more emphasized in that everyone will "get" that these are big, fun moments.

That'd make me one happy GM.  I like to be surprised by my players.

Why don't any roleplaying books tell you that?  

Not even Sorcerer does, or not in a language I can understand.

Because even Ron didn't understand all of this when it was produced. I'm mostly reiterating his development on the ideas in Sorcerer over the past few years since it's publication. These ideas are cutting edge.

No doubt about it. I only wish they were more accessible to roleplayers, I'm sure many groups would are more than ready to go beyond that weird "role" vs. "roll" view of playing.  

When I first read "Sorcerer and Sword" (borrowed from a DnD GM I was playing with and my first access to a Sorcerer text), I understood perhaps 5% of it. The bits I did understand I liked immensely and I kept coming back despite continuous frustration - because frankly, my frustration at not being able to do what I felt I wanted from RPGs grew even greater once I realised there might be another way.  

On the whole that GM didn't do himself a favour when he circulated the book around his group - the majority of the players hated it and if anything, grew more resistant to mode and style changes than they might otherwise have been.  

(All that hasn't stopped me from buying all the Sorcerer books for the brilliant ideas in them;  but I'll know better than to hand them out to people to read - and that is what frustrates me a bit.  These ideas deserve much wider access than a few determined GMs are able to provide to their own groups, I think.)

With my limited experience trying to use Bangs, I've mostly had a easier time playing off general player expectations and situations than with specifics players had created, say, as part of a character background. "Bangs" have tended to fall flat when I was catering to a player's expectations, and worked (or created themselves, almost) at times when we suddenly found an issue that no one had ever looked at too closely before.

Hmm. This is as likely to be wrong as it is right, but that, combined with other things you've said before, sounds like "battered player syndrome." That is, some GM or GMs used lots of hooks to railroad the characters in previous games, and so they're cautious about their characters being "hookable." They bought into the campaign issues implicitly when they decided to play it, so they're not being hooked by those issues.

One player on Thursday finally told us that he tended to stay away from NPC relationships (and make sure that an NPCs and family in his background were dead) because of that GM he'd had who'd always kill them off.

The saddest thing about this is that it is such a commonly used GMing technique in games like DnD;  and I suspect the reason can be a good one:  the GM may be trying to involve the players in the game emotionally and to make the game more fun and interesting and meaningful.  
(Of course there also are GMs who simply enjoy screwing players over, I've briefly known one of those;  and GMs who can't draw their players into a scenario (or groups that won't be drawn in) other than by killing important NPCs.)

Again, in this case, a player responding in a "well of course he does X" manner is saying that they don't want to allow the GM the power to hook their character. They'll do whatever "My Guy" would do.

Another symptom is "turtling" where the player resists all attempts to involve the character in any meaninngful way. Got any of those players?

I had a turtle until a couple of months ago (I posted a thread in Actual Play asking for advice).  It was obvious that the turtle wasn't enjoying the game a lot, yet he claimed he did, always turned up, and always chronicled sessions most reliably.  He finally left the group after personal tension between him and another player erupted.  

Heh, think that I could feel Adrienne cringing even through the computer screen - though only she can say for sure. But Fred was adult about it, and the scene ended very interestingly.

That makes my arm hairs bristle.  What I'd want to know in this situation is what Adrienne felt the whole thing.  Male players having their male PC hit on a female player's female PC is very common in roleplaying games, and I've seen too many situations in which this was clearly dysfunctional because it made the female player uncomfortable (usually unnoticed by male players/GMs) to be quite comfortable here.  

Again, narrativism is about player reactions - 100%. So the players are exposing themselves to each other in some ways. And that can be uncomfortable at times. But I'd say that handled well, that uncomfortableness is actually healthy for the game.

Yeah, as long as both players have ways to make each other uncomfortable. In most games I've seen (especially fantasy), unspoken group consensus implies a sexist attitude towards women.  It's taboo in the sense that the attitude can't be mentioned, much less criticised at the table, yet it is played on a lot.  

I think this is a topic for another thread iy fou want to discuss it further?  

Yep, that's classic. Consider that there's a hidden "Sex" Keyword on each character's sheet - we've been over this on the rules list. So all issues of maleness, or femaleness (including pregnancy) are automatically valid for all characters.

Again, I'm not comfortable with this, from past experience.  Care to split this off?  (If so, what is the rules list? Can I access it to find that discussion?)

[Mike Holmes]

D'oh. This is so easy it shouldn't be allowed.

It is easy to engage players via the NPCs they've created. Keep in mind that some or all of these NPCs can be on the R-Map. Heck, the PC can be on R-Map, too if you like. Whole games can be played just within the confines of one's own family.

There are other centralizing methods as well, but these are the two best known.

Hm... Do I dare ask for more methods?  If you like to post more, I'm still avid. :-)

Here's another one: the organization. All the characters are at school at Hogworts. For Glorantha, all the PCs belong to the same village - or even more tightly, the same temple. The "team" concept implies missions. Whereas the organization method says merely that the PCs have some similar concerns.

Often the "team" concept implies an organization, but not always. Just as often, the team is independent (think supers), or reports to a single powerful patron - theoretically the Three Musketeers belong to the army, but they really only report to one person, if at all.

Note how you can mix and match these. The tightest combination I can think of involves a PC team that troubleshoots for an organization, where the R-Map used is the organization. The classic rooting out the traitor thing, or somesuch. That's probably overkill, but you get my point.

Any value can be used to centralize. Could be a single NPC that the characters are all in love with. Or a religious movement that they all believe is crucial. As with R-Maps, these things can be added in play. Basically any value, or set of values can be presented to the group as a whole, and work to create centralizing action.

Yes, even a shared "Loves Adventuring with These Guys" can work, creating the classic "party." The advantage is that with HQ, there's a numerical committment to this concept that represents something in-game. And it's something that can then be challenged in-game as well, so you never have the case where play is "shaped" unnaturally to avoid such conflict. It's an interesting concept when you play with it right.

The maps I've used in time/dream scenarios were tiny - no more than half a dozen NPCs with a few simple ties, some obvious, others not so much.  We never played for long enough to fully exploit any map, but the players usually had a strong sense of what mission they wanted their PCs to be on and would treat the NPCs like supporting cast in, say, Star Trek shows: to be involved with for one episode, then to fade away again.

Well, this all sounds pretty positive in terms of getting people in touch with the R-map. Was there some problem you were pointing out here?

Unfortunately, one player was so attracted to the dream/time places that he insisted to have a new PC come from one of them.  He played the PC only for two sessions and had a lot of trouble finding his way into the Team the group has formed.  He gave up during our character conversion session on Thursday.

Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed the character. (I told him about my concerns, but when he insisted and seemed really enthusiastic, I let it go.)

This seems like a whole new concern. I would have allowed the character in an instant. I'm not sure what the problem here is. That he didn't get onto the team?

One thing to keep in mind is that not all characters have to be in on the centralizing method used. If all the PCs are on a team but one, then engage that other character via R-Map. The whole point of what I've been saying about teams and such are that players can have their characters walk away at any time if they like. So you have to be prepared with something else to keep them linked with the other PCs.

Or simply states, "Follow Line at End of Hook to Find Interesting Adventure." With (if it gets really bad) an implied threat that if you refuse the hook, you'll sit around bored for the rest of the night.

That's what I meant by "have to do this." It's a player level penalty. You play the scenario, or you don't play at all.

Note that grabbing can be quite forceful, actually. In fact, it can look like railroading to a player who's not interested in the situation. It's only got to provide multiple avenues for the player in question.

Railroading?

"Look like", I wrote "look like." What I'm saying is precisely what you were saying. That is, if player A doesn't see what's interesting about a decision to player B, then using a lot of GM authority to move the game to that place can seem to player A like you're railroading player B.

This is not an issue, I'm merely trying to illustrate that tactics that are used for railroading in some cases can be used to create bangs when done properly.

I've done that quite a bit in traditional linear games with no Bangs - sprung an ambush, sent spies or assassins after PCs, put PCs in the middle of a violent event without asking etc.

Yep, this is what I'm talking about. And they probably were bangs, BTW. Or, perhaps the gamism version. "You wake up naked in a slave pen" is how one of the famous D&D A series modules begins. Which is merely setting up the challenge. It gives the players opportunity to shine, it doesn't take it away. The only difference between this and a Bang, is that a Bang intends to deliver a thematic decision instead of a tactical one.

It wasn't the player-PC divide I was thinking of, it was the player-GM divide, in the sense that a large part of the reasons of whether a Bang will work is inside the mind of the player alone and not accessible to the GM because it has never come up in play before and never been talked about by the player and GM.

I see. It's true that you can't be 100% certain about what'll turn a player on. But HQ is all about giving you assitance in this. Watch especially which abilities the player spends HP on. This is a strong indicator about what they'd like to see.

On the whole that GM didn't do himself a favour when he circulated the book around his group - the majority of the players hated it and if anything, grew more resistant to mode and style changes than they might otherwise have been.

(All that hasn't stopped me from buying all the Sorcerer books for the brilliant ideas in them; but I'll know better than to hand them out to people to read - and that is what frustrates me a bit. These ideas deserve much wider access than a few determined GMs are able to provide to their own groups, I think.)

Hmm. That's the first I've heard of that happening. Seems to me that if the ideas are good that the books should be a fine way of getting the message across. I dunno.

One player on Thursday finally told us that he tended to stay away from NPC relationships (and make sure that an NPCs and family in his background were dead) because of that GM he'd had who'd always kill them off.

Classic.

The saddest thing about this is that it is such a commonly used GMing technique in games like DnD; and I suspect the reason can be a good one: the GM may be trying to involve the players in the game emotionally and to make the game more fun and interesting and meaningful.

Well, I think in a lot of cases, the problem is that the GM is using the NPC deaths as a hook. The scenario is that there are a band of orcs wandering about looting. But the PCs don't seem interested in stopping them. So we'll kill off an NPC to get their attention and give them a motive to kill the orcs.

And this is seen as dramatic - I mean it is the stuff of good stories, vengeance and all. The problem is that the player isn't really "compensated" for their loss. That is, they're out an NPC that they care about, and all they get for it is an excuse to kill orcs. Which doesn't resolve anything about the death of the NPC, really.

So, unless the player uses a lot of Pawn stance, they're likely to find NPC death this way to be abusive.

That makes my arm hairs bristle. What I'd want to know in this situation is what Adrienne felt the whole thing. Male players having their male PC hit on a female player's female PC is very common in roleplaying games, and I've seen too many situations in which this was clearly dysfunctional because it made the female player uncomfortable (usually unnoticed by male players/GMs) to be quite comfortable here.

Yep, I'll admit that being in IRC probably made the situation worse. That is, here's Fred, pretty annonymous to Adrienne, doing this.

The problem in this situation is that the female player in this case is being forced to make a personal statement about how comfortable she is with this sort of thing. It's quite complex - I don't think it's that women have a problem playing a sexual character, I think that they rightly have a problem when a man forces them to display just how interested they are in these things by forcing them to create a response in-character.

Basically, it's the player using his position in the game to feel someone out, without the normal repercussions for doing so. Very invasive.

Except in this case, I knew that this wasn't what Fred was up to. I'm not Fred's bestest friend or anything, but he's a member of this community who participates conscientiously, and from what I knew of him, I was pretty sure that he was just playing out the drama of the scene as he felt best (in fact, he opened up his character in that the scene was based on a misunderstanding on his part that he'd enginnered knowingly - he was just asking to get shot down). I almost stepped in, just because I thought that Adrienne might be uncomfortable anyhow. But she seemed to catch on to what Fred was up to, so I didn't. I hope that I was reading things correctly. Hard via chat.

Instead, the pressure ended up creating a pretty neat situation. Adrienne told me today that she's purchased a "Conflicted about Okhfels" ability for he character (that's Fred's character). And I think he might have something similar. Meaning that it's just rife with all sorts of potential conflict in the future.

Sexism in general might be a topic for elsewhere (and do a search as it's already been done a lot). But, generally, all players must feel that they're equal participants in looking at issues, or they're not going to have fun. So no player should be there just to be the subject of other players objectification. Be it sex, religion, age or whatever that's being preyed upon.

I'm still not sure what your issue is with sex as a keyword, or why it might make you uncomfortable, but, sure, start a new thread so we can elaborate on it. The "rules list" is: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/

You may have trouble finding it there, however, as it's pretty high volume. Might just be easier for me to synopsize in the new thread.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Yes, even a shared "Loves Adventuring with These Guys" can work, creating the classic "party." The advantage is that with HQ, there's a numerical committment to this concept that represents something in-game. And it's something that can then be challenged in-game as well, so you never have the case where play is "shaped" unnaturally to avoid such conflict. It's an interesting concept when you play with it right.

Very. I loved your suggestion of giving a "Member of NN Team" at a fairly high rating.  

The maps I've used in time/dream scenarios were tiny - no more than half a dozen NPCs with a few simple ties, some obvious, others not so much.  We never played for long enough to fully exploit any map, but the players usually had a strong sense of what mission they wanted their PCs to be on and would treat the NPCs like supporting cast in, say, Star Trek shows: to be involved with for one episode, then to fade away again.

Well, this all sounds pretty positive in terms of getting people in touch with the R-map. Was there some problem you were pointing out here?

No, on the contrary, just a clarification. I was responding to your warning about the danger of individual players getting "sucked" into such maps and trying to explain why the danger was maybe less than it must look like from my previous descriptions.

This seems like a whole new concern. I would have allowed the character in an instant. I'm not sure what the problem here is. That he didn't get onto the team?

That's leading away from the topic, but very briefly speaking (and with hindsight) I suspect it may have reinforced latent OOC issues.  

The whole point of what I've been saying about teams and such are that players can have their characters walk away at any time if they like. So you have to be prepared with something else to keep them linked with the other PCs.

Absolutely;  and as I've said I like the team concept for our game.  I look forward to seeing what the remaining players do with it.  

Hmm. That's the first I've heard of that happening. Seems to me that if the ideas are good that the books should be a fine way of getting the message across. I dunno.

Again, that leads away from the topic a bit.  But here goes.  

Presentation is core to getting a message across, and while the game rules and (to my perception) the general advice for creating character concepts are written in a concise and crystal clear way, the GNS terminology is somewhat obscure to anyone not used to it and may be offputting.  

Here are the responses from the three people who didn't like Sword and Sorcerer; all of them have some sort of degree, all hold jobs, age range is mid-twenties to early forties.

- One player admitted he didn't understand the book, other than that it had rules for a game in it that as far as he was able to work out couldn't be used with DnD.  After some attempts at explanation from someone who claims he likes Ron's thinking, this player now says that Narrativism is "when you have your character speak as if they were in a book or a film".  (Rolling eyes while saying that - I can't blame him.  He's the self-labelled "rollplayer" in my game, but really likes to play a character to the hilt.)

- One player has read everything but wasn't thrilled.  He wasn't drawn to playing Sorcerer (fine by me, that's not what we were planning anyway) and the theory went straight by him.  By that point I could see why (it's just not explained in clear enough words for a first-time reader, and not all roleplayers are enthusiastic about theory, or frustrated enough to turn to theory anyway in the hope of finding solutions);  so I dropped the theory stuff and I asked him specifically what he thought of the guidance for making characters with protagonist potential.  He shrugged:  he wasn't impressed.  He likes supers games a lot, so I wonder why not even that bit appealed to him.  (I don't have the book with me, but I'm pretty certain that the character creation chapter (The Hero?) is written very clearly.) Then again, this guy is a trained actor, so he may have his own views on how to approach a character concept.  

- One player had lots to say about the bibliography, he disagreed (in great detail) with most of Ron's evaluation of books and authors.  He appears to have followed all the internet links in the back of the book (he expressed surprise to find many of them broken, years after the book was published...).  He claims to have read the entire book but when we talked about other chapters (such as game theory, or how to make a character a protagonist), he clammed up. He's usually good at pointing out "problems" with things, so this makes me suspect that in reality he at most skimmed over those parts of the book.  

The problem is that the player isn't really "compensated" for their loss. That is, they're out an NPC that they care about, and all they get for it is an excuse to kill orcs. Which doesn't resolve anything about the death of the NPC, really.

So, unless the player uses a lot of Pawn stance, they're likely to find NPC death this way to be abusive.

Yes.  Although I've known players who will sit back and do nothing until the GM delivers a plot hook "good enough" to grab their attention. That's abusive too;  so a GM killing players' NPCs may be abusive, or simply desperate to get the game moving in the face of disdainful players.  (This may be a chicken/egg situation here.)  I know I've had players like that. I've always wanted player input and player involvement in my games far too much to start killing off NPCs just because, but it can make life extremely difficult.  


It looks as if we have exhausted the thread's topic though? Or am I overlooking something?

[Bryan_T]

I'd had some hazy idea of bangs before reading this.  This thread however....opened my eyes.  Or ears.  Or some unamed sense, or something.  By happenstance, in the first character interaction of my first HQ game (just starting in PByahogroup--oh how long have I been waiting!).......bang happened.  Deep and tangled family ties versus multiple personality traits of the type responsible, reliable, wise, and patient.  Does he rush off to try and intercept whatever it is approaching the village, or stay with the warrior's patrol which is going to go more slowly but probably deal with whatever it is properly?  There we were in the equivalent of the first five minutes of playing, and I had an essential decision to make about the character.

And it felt SO GOOD!

In the end I used his flaw "doubts own competence" to break the tie in favor of staying with the patrol, and for sure there will be long term implications of this decision.  

Having had the experience, then reading the theory, makes it all come into focus.  

But it occurs to me that as a player, you can do a LOT to make a hero more "bangable."  I've always thought of this as giving the narrator "handles" to be able to get a grip on the character, but now I'm looking back to see how those handles can be positioned to make bangs easy.  

Wow, it is like a door was just opened in my mind, with a whole room full of possibilities behind it that I hadn't even realized were there.  Not quite as cool as first learning calculus, but up there on the scale of "new mental tools that let me do things I couldn't reliably do before."

Thanks a ton, Mike, and the others in this thread too.

--Bryan

[Mike Holmes]

And it felt SO GOOD!

Yep, actually having control of theme creation is pretty cool. My personal theory is that everyone really wants this, the only question being how aggressively you go after it relative to activities meant to provide a feeling that the game world is "real." But that's GNS theory that I won't go too deeply into. The point is, however, allowing players the opportunity to create theme is a great place to create interaction.

But it occurs to me that as a player, you can do a LOT to make a hero more "bangable."  I've always thought of this as giving the narrator "handles" to be able to get a grip on the character, but now I'm looking back to see how those handles can be positioned to make bangs easy.  

I agree with you, here, but I'd say two things. First, players tend to do this naturally with the system I find. For example, flaws may at first seem kinda pointless, but if you put them out in front of a player, they tend to bite on them based on a "well, if it's an option it must be there for some reason" rationale (I try to spice this up by telling people that flaws are "free" abilities that just happen to be double edged). Whatever the case, players take 'em. And they take all sorts of other juicy stuff too.

But in part this relates to the second thought, which is that HQ simply gives you mostly juicy options. Relationships are the obvious example. Players take loads of them, and they're all, every one, a perfect source of an issue for the character. Personality traits, too. In fact, given how resolution works, and other features of the system, almost any ability you take becomes "issuable." So, really, the system makes it hard to create a character sans good handles.

For example, you'd have to refuse to take all the mandatory relationships. Stating that, somehow, your character was an orphan who'd become a hermit at a very young age. And he'll have no magic, because he can't believe in anything. He really can't even have an occupation, because that even establishes identity. I mean, you really have to depower a character in order to substantially reduce his level of issue potential. And even then, that, itself, can be an issue. I mean, what's more premise-laden than being an orphan ("Will I ever belong to a family?")

By linking character power to abilities that have to be meaningful in play given the system, HQ ensures that it's always possible to "bang" a character. Now, it doesn't make it so that such Bangs are automatic. The GM still has to look. But they're always there.

And, yes, a player consciously trying to give the character more easy to identify issues can do so. But I don't think that it's neccessary to do so to make the character easy for the GM to handle, and you can end up with an overly melodramatic character if you try too hard. You, know, only one evil twin, or secret past or the like per character.

What I'm saying is that if the player isn't A) an active turtle, and B) really creates an interesting character to play, then I think that it's usually fine.

One place that can be problematic with chargen is a meta-consideration (unrelated to the rules), which is appropriateness to situation. That is, if you detatch a character from his home (and this is, of course, really common in fantasy play), and worse, put him in a place where nobody practices the character's religion, and don't find some way to connect the character well to the situation at hand, then it becomes a lot more difficult to create bangs for the character. It's a lot easier to have a father character show up and cause pressure than it is to create a situation that evokes the father relationship indirectly. It can be done, but it's a lot harder to come up with the circumstances that'll cause this. Try to collide two values like this, both tangentially, and it becomes really, really hard. Bangs like this often fizzle.

This is why it's really important to do group chargen, and to have the players aware of the general concept of play before things begin. That is, you should all agree that the action is in a Heortling village or something. Then, even if someone plays a Lunar, they know what they're getting into, and can make the character work with the "away from home" concept. It also means that the narrator can then try to help the player find his connection to the scenario.

For all the above about how relatively easy it is to create Bangs from the average player, that doesn't mean that the other participants shouldn't have a hand in creating each character. Because not only will the players give good advice, but when taken, each player becomes invested in the characters he helped. Unconsiously each suggestion helps create a character that the player wants to see played out. (And this sets up the dynamic you need to have for scene play to work really well).

Mike

[Bryan_T]

By linking character power to abilities that have to be meaningful in play given the system, HQ ensures that it's always possible to "bang" a character. Now, it doesn't make it so that such Bangs are automatic. The GM still has to look. But they're always there.

Sorry, I hadn't expressed one thought very clearly.  I'm sure the above is valid, but I look at this mostly from the point of view of a player (it is what I do best).  Reading this thread gave me the vocabulary to say "in building characters, I've always been looking for ways to make bangs happen naturally as part of the game."  

Not that I don't appreciate a narrator making the extra effort to create them.  That is awesome, and can lead to most excellent role playing experiences.  I'm not discouraging narrators from looking for bang opportunities, or even creating bang driven games.

BUT, I'm saying as a player, I can create a character (either explicitly or not, depending on the system) who has fundamental choices built in, fundamental choices that will pretty much inevitably get triggered.

Sure, you have to be careful not to get carried away....when fiddling with a new game system I've often started off building a pathologically conflicted character first, not to play but just to get it out of my system before making someone more sane (although every now and then playing such a time bomb, given the right circumstances, is fun).

Anyway, I'd agree, HQ by it very nature tends to build in certain conflicts.  But as a player, by making concious decisions, I can focus these where I want them, and help influence the theme of things (yah, I'm the sort of player who has more of a "let's create a story together" attitude than a "I'm ready to be entertained" attitude.  Not claiming one is better than the other, just explaining where I'm coming from)

To draw a parellel, some modern theory says that kids heavily influence their parents parenting style.  In a similar vein it seems that the heroes should influence the telling of the tale.

OK, I'll stop babbling now and go walk through the snow with a big grin on my face :)

-Bryan

[Mike Holmes]

Anyway, I'd agree, HQ by it very nature tends to build in certain conflicts.  But as a player, by making concious decisions, I can focus these where I want them, and help influence the theme of things

Well, my point was that the players decisions about things like keywords are what make these automatic conflicts happen. Meaning that the player is unconsciously incorporating the sort of themes that they want to focus on.

In this way, the players automatically do have that sort of influence. They may not realize that these decisions will do this, but they will.

Yes, you can do this consciously, too. And that's even more fun when you're doing it, as you anticipate the issues. It's just that it seems to work out the same way in play, whether the players preferences of character premises are encoded as such intentionally or not. The game doesn't let them fail to do this.

I'm not saying that one shouldn't do it consciously. Nor am I saying that you can't improve on the game by doing it consciously, you probably can. All I'm saying is that if you don't, you'll be just fine. Which isn't a reason not to do it. I'm just trying to reassure players who don't understand this idea that they're not going to make uninteresting characters if they're not creating them this way consciously. Also, narrators don't have to bug their players to do this, either - which seldom works anyhow. Either a player has "seen the light" on how/why to do this, or they haven't.

So, hopefully your example will make some "converts" to the idea of proactive character design. But for those who don't, I can still trust to HQ's design to ensure good characters for these purposes.


What's a more powerful skill, however, and usually only seen a lot in players who are sometimes also GMs, is the ability to manipulate situation in play to create bangs. As hard, or harder to teach than making characters with good handles, creating "player bangs" is a truely nifty skill.

For instance: your character loves girl X, and desires object Y. The player has the character run off in the middle of a date with X to check on some data about Y. This cues the GM to have X come to the character with an ultimatum, "What's more important, me or that Y!" Sans the player's action, there is no conflict present.

Basically, it involves to a large extent having your character make mistakes intentionally based on OOC knowledge. For example: the player knows that a certain phrase will insult NPC A, who they are interested in influencing, but the character does not. So they have their character insult A "accidentally" at just the right moment, setting up a situation where A demands some sort of compensation in order to be influenced. Said compensation can he something as omnipresent as honor. "Grovel before me, and I'll consider it!" Again, the sutuation that allows for the bang is created by the player in this case.

Anyone can create bangs in play. It's just a lot easier to engineer with the control of a narrator. But skilled players do it all the time, too.

Mike