[Dulcimer Hall] Crypto-romance Character Development

[TonyLB]

Dulcimer Hall characters are super-spies of some stripe.  So as I look at character development (i.e. how the character evolves over time as a result of their choices, successes and failures) I know that examining how they go from Infinity-competent to Infinity-plus-one-competent isn't going to be too much fun.

What would be really cool is to examine how they change in their self-image, and in the ways that self-image collides and combines with the world.  I think I see characters in these genres undergoing distinct arcs in these issues:  They start off thinking that they know something, then what they know is undercut, then they know nothing, then eventually they create a new understanding.  And then, of course, they start that whole process over again.

I think that it's the tension between the elements of their self-image that drives things forward.  If Ada believes she's a stone-cold killer, and everyone expects her to be a stone-cold killer, and she wants to be a killer... well, you're not exactly conflicted.  If Ada believes she's a stone-cold killer, and Shane expects her to be a killer but Michael expects her to act according to her sense of morality, and she wants to admit her love for Michael... well then, you've got some tension going there.

So anything that develops the characters toward a situation of no-tension is a bad thing.  But at the same time, development is likely to occur through resolving tensions.  How do you systematically assure that resolving one tension automatically increases another one?

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

One idea might be to create several "personality types" or something akin to that.  For example a spy might become one of the following: Sadistic, Suicidal, Arrogant, Passionate, Moralistic, Power Hungry, Obsessed, and so on.  

Each of these personality types would have special advantages and bonuses that would make the character A) more proficient, B) trigger "bangs" that would test their knowledge and self image, and C) open up new opportunities for the character in the game such as joining a Secret Inner Circle, Undwerworld Crime Syndicate, Elite Strike Team, Romantic Relationships, A Promotion within the Intellegence Oraganization, and so on.  

You would have to possess one of those personality types in order to possess the qualities the "Bosses" of those affliliations I mentioned above are looking for.  Otherwise, you're just a face in the crowd.  Thus the system is designed to encourage them to gravitate to one (or more maybe?) of those extreem character traits.   That oughta give you the exploration you're looking for.

Anyway, don't know if that's what you're looking for, but it might help point you in the right direction. :)

Peace,

-Troy

[TonyLB]

Well, what sort of development, structurally, are you talking about here?

Would players just decide "Okay, I'm Sadistic now?"  Or would it be the outcome of their choices?  Or would it be a choice offered to them as the outcome of their choices ("No, I'm not Sadistic!  I had good reason for torturing that busload of orphans last week... and the one the week before... they were isolated incidents, I tell you!")?

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya

Well, what sort of development, structurally, are you talking about here?

Would players just decide "Okay, I'm Sadistic now?"  Or would it be the outcome of their choices?  Or would it be a choice offered to them as the outcome of their choices ("No, I'm not Sadistic!  I had good reason for torturing that busload of orphans last week... and the one the week before... they were isolated incidents, I tell you!")?

-Okay, good point.  Here's how I would approach it.  You're looking at carrots and sticks.  All the characters would start out basically proficient and capable.  In whatever organization they're in, they're considered adiquate.  But they never get the really juicy assignments because no one knows who they are.  So, their out inspecting fertilizer plants for terrorist activity or pulling long hours watching video tape at the local pier for smuggling.  Kinda blah.  That's the stick.

-Here's the carrot. It is up to the GM to provide them with opportunities to make a name for themselves.  Let's take the video watchers at the pier.  One of their buddies gets captured by the smugglers and is going to be executed.  At the same time a surprise shipment of arms comes in and the PC's superiors knew nothing about all this.  What do the players do?  Here are their options:

A) Just watch.  They aren't suposed to get involved.

B) Sit and call for instructions and inform superiors of the events.

C) Call the police.  At least the bad guys will get busted.

D) Head out to their car and grab their high tech weaponry, save their friend, and bust the smugglers for all the glory.

E) Grab their guns, go in, shoot their buddy, take the head smuggler hostage, and then demand to get in on the illeagle profit from the arms sales.

-Each of these choices could be assigned a point value.  Choice A would earn you just a few, while choice E might earn you a whole bunch.  The more daring, the more points you earn.  These points are added to a scale, when you pass a certain point on the scale, the GM is free to give the character a Bang or an opportunity to join a cartel, get a promotion, change jobs, and so on.  You can also earn negative points for being too reckless and endangering your "cover" and such.

-Also, at various points on the scale, the character would get skill bonuses, new ablities, access to new weaponry, etc.  Think of it as a status tracker instead of an exp bar.  You earn status in the game.

-That help any? :)

-Peace,

-Troy

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Just quickly to add on.  You could also make the scale a triangle rather than a ruler.  You could have three factions and you earn Status with each faction wich moves you in various directions within the triangle.  A little more complicated, but still another possibility.

Peace,

-Troy

[TonyLB]

Okay, two modifications, and then I'm going to start running with this, and see where it leads us together.

First, I don't want the characters to start off as anything mid-level.  I'm drawing some influence from Amber's unrepentant egotism here.  The PCs are super-spies.  They are the elite.  People as cool as them create a shadowy subculture in the world.  The only people cool enough to contend with them are people in that subculture... people they have a personal relationship with.  Anyone with no emotional import to them is fodder, deadly perhaps as the pawns of someone who is important, but in no way important on their own.

So the character development and rewards won't be cooler equipment and better status.  They start the game with access to anything they want in that department.  But that's fine, because we can give them emotional rewards that increase their relative effectiveness against their real enemies.  You don't get a bigger gun, in order to fight generic bad guys.  You get the confidence to not be a victim, in order to fight the machinations of your abusive, controlling mother.


Second, I'm not really sold on the idea of having the rules system lay out the cartels.  Rather, I think each player should make their characters world-view into an ever-evolving cartel.  And then the other players can choose whether to have their character fall in line with the role that world-view would assign them, in order to gain status in that particular cartel.

So, for example:

[*]Shane is a manipulative, scheming bastard.  He believes that he is the Hard Man, the one person who will step up to make hard choices for the good of mankind.  He believes Ada is a Weakling, because of her simpering morality.  He believes Michael is his Acolyte, a worthy successor that he is grooming.
[*]Michael is a reluctant but effective killer.  He believes that he is Angst-Boy, forced against his will to do terrible things, but actually good and fluffy on the inside.  He supports Shane's belief that Shane is a Hard Man.  He believes Ada is a Damsel, a helpless innocent that he has to protect.
[*]Ada is recently trained, still dripping with morality.  She believes that she is a Good Woman, and tries to act accordingly.  She believes Shane is the Devil.  She believes that Michael is a Good Man.[/list:u]So here, people have choices to make about what cartels to ally themselves with.  Say Michael supports Shane's decision to execute a bunch of refugees contaminated with a bio-weapon, rather than risk the spread of the infection.  Ada stands up to him and manages to smuggle the refugees to safety.

Michael gets points from Shane for supporting Acolyte.  He gets no points (and may lose points) from Ada for undermining Good Man.  Those points probably go to increase his self-identity as Angst-Boy, but might go to changing his opinion of Ada as a Damsel.

Shane gets points from Michael for supporting Hard Man.  He gets points from Ada for supporting Devil.  These probably go to support his belief that Michael is his Acolyte, but might also go to changing his opinion of Ada as a Weakling.  Or not.

Ada gets no points from Michael for undermining Damsel.  She may or may not get points from Shane in relation to Weakling... did she undermine it by acting strongly, or support it by acting morally/stupidly?


Okay... see, I'm not loving that yet.  I like the structure, and the way it fosters conflict, but it seems to be rewarding falling into accord with other people's views of your character, where all the fun obviously comes from there being an important tension between being rewarded for (for instance) being a helpless Damsel, and maintaining your own self-image by taking action when required.

Anyway, I hope that gives you more ideas!

[Bill_White]

If you imagine that players are giving each other both confirming and disconfirming reinforcement of their character's views of each other, then maybe if you tied some aspect of in-game effectiveness to the relative proportion of confirmation and disconformation within each relationship, you'd have a system that motivated players to maintain a tension of some kind.

What I mean is:

Michael's view of Ada becomes Damsel +0/-1 (confirming vs. disconfirming).
Shane's view of Ada becomes Weak +0/-1 similarly.
Ada's view of herself becomes Good +1/+0 (she awards herself the point).

What game-mechanical advantage could Ada be awarded so that in her interactions with Michael and Shane she is more effective because she has more confidence in her self-image?

At what point are other characters required to change their image of you to more closely resemble your self-image--and what reward does this get you?

Maybe the motivation to maintain the tension is that if you conform to others' view of you, the advantage you get when you finally break their expectations is increased effectiveness in that instance; if you've been bucking their expectations from the get-go, you don't get the advantage of surprise but you do have influence over what they do:  if you support my view of myself as a Hard Man, you'll act like you're at least a little afraid of me.

Wow, this is hard.

Bill

[TonyLB]

Mechanically, that part's not hard.  Or rather, it was hard the first time, but I know how to do that now.

If you want to give people a reason to balance two types of activities, you reward both activities, with different resources.  Those resources should be okay on their own, but exponentially better when used together.

What those resources should be, how frequently they should be awarded, and how they should achieve synergy is... y'know... hard.

I'll point out that I already have two such synergistic resources in the Task/Conflict hybrid system that I was planning to use for resolution.  However, I suspect that they may shift a bit too quickly to give a satisfying sense of stateliness to character development.

[TonyLB]

At what point are other characters required to change their image of you to more closely resemble your self-image--and what reward does this get you?

Hrm.... HRM!

Interesting.  I didn't give that question enough attention on the first go-round.  That's a good one, because (turned on its head) it becomes "How can you, as a player, force another player to bring their view of your character into line with your view?"

My intuition is that the answer is that players are never forced to change their image of another character.  You can work and work, and achieve great things, but your nagging sister can still think of you as a helpless little kid.  That's just how people are.

But players should be rewarded for having their images of your character well aligned with the actual character... or, rather, for having images of your character that you will choose to support (whether because they are aligned with your image already, or because they're sufficiently intriguing that you'll change the way you play the character to match).

Gah.  You're right.  This is getting hard.

[Doug Ruff]

Perhaps it's getting complicated becasue we've drifted from the original question?

How do you systematically assure that resolving one tension automatically increases another one?

If this is all you need answering, then it's pretty simple. Each character starts with at least two different 'aspects' which are in tension. Some of these will be 'self-image' and some will be 'projections' i.e. what other people think of you.

Then, just make it so that you aren't allowed to resolve a tension between any two aspects, without introducing a new one.

Taking one of your examples: Michael thinks he is Angst-Boy; Michael thinks he's an Acolyte, Ada thinks he is a Good Man.

Let's resolve some of these traits.

(1) Michael helps shane kill some innocents, resolving the tension between Good Man and Acolyte; he's not as nice as Ada thought he was, maybe.

So, Good Man disappears, but it is replaced by a new trait to represent Ada's new perseption of Michael. "Bastard" may be appropriate, especially if she feels something towards him.

(2) Michael rebels and refuses to help Shane; resolving all three traits. Michael is now a Just Another Weakling [to Shane] who is Isn't Going to be Pushed Around Anymore [self-image] and is still a Good Man [Ada].

This seems really obvious, so it probably isn't what you are looking for! Perhaps you could be a bit more explicit about what you mean by "resolving tensions?"

[TonyLB]

You can, indeed, just tell the players that when they resolve one tension they have to create another.  But that's a lot of work for them.  If there's one thing I've learned from reading a lot of Sorceror Actual Play posts, it is that players are bad at creating tensions.  If you ask them to do it without any mechanical support then you're asking an awful lot of them.

I'd rather have a system where, when one tension resolves, they can just look at their character sheet (and maybe the sheets of others) and immediately have inspirations for new tensions.  The pattern that creates these inspirations should emerge naturally from the mechanical process of resolving the previous tension.

[Garbanzo]

So, maybe a formalized network of relationships, where it's clear what movement means and where it will take you.  
Too simple would be Rock-Paper-Scissors (I dunno, Moral, Evil, and Indifferent, or something) where if I move from my current position, (a) I have a choice as to what that means and (b) it's clear what my choices are.

The Good-Evil-Indifferent example is terrible, though.  The suggestions up-thread are much more evocative.

Maybe have them interact like the 5 Chinese elements.  Earth, Wood, Metal, Plant, Water or whatever.  (In case I'm pulling this from an obscure game instead of oriental philosophy: laid out like a pentagram, with [or without] arrows demonstrating the flow of movement).  

Is this what you mean, Tony?  Players have clear, logical places to move to, and clear implications as to what that means.  Each position mayl have a set of associated tensions/ benefits, or these may be exactly that you accord more or less with others' perceptions.

=====

Each character sees themself as occupying a certain slot.  Each other character sees that character as occupying a certain slot. Are both perspectives limited to using the Personality Pentagram to regulate their changing views?

Perhaps, to get all crazy with things, each position offers finite choices when dealing with any conflict.  ("Ok, I'm a Weakling.  In any conflict , I must use one of these tactics: Appeal to higher power, Flee/ avoid conflict, Superficially fail, Get saved by the cavalry in the nick of time, or Grovel.)  Success or failure must be expressed in one of these terms.

Or, most cleanly, each position offers a pair of fixed bonuses, one for task-res and one for conflict-res.  I may make the tactical decision to move around to change the way these layers interact.  I am slowed by knowing that I'll lose the aligned-with-others'-perceptions benefits.  Or maybe I want to move around like a monkey, but I only change position when the majority of opinions place me in a new slot.


I dunno, that's all I've got.

-Matt

[TonyLB]

Interesting.  This also has the potential to let Player A pigeonhole Character B not because of the way that Player B plays them, but because Character A needs a certain archetype in their world-view to get bonusses themselves.

For instance:  Shane believes he is the only one who will step up to make hard decisions.  He needs somebody to cast into the role of a moral weakling who will let the world go to hell in a handbasket rather than get their hands dirty.  So he casts Ada into that role in his world-view, whether it really fits her or not.

[Doug Ruff]

For instance:  Shane believes he is the only one who will step up to make hard decisions.  He needs somebody to cast into the role of a moral weakling who will let the world go to hell in a handbasket rather than get their hands dirty.  So he casts Ada into that role in his world-view, whether it really fits her or not.

Which gives Ada's player a mechanical bonus for living up to his expectations, at the cost of having someone else define an aspect of her character, in a way that  she may not be happy with.

Of course, there has to be the option to refuse the bonus, which is an out-and-out bribe.

I'd also like to go back to this issue:

I'd rather have a system where, when one tension resolves, they can just look at their character sheet (and maybe the sheets of others) and immediately have inspirations for new tensions. The pattern that creates these inspirations should emerge naturally from the mechanical process of resolving the previous tension.

Look back at my example, each change to the traits was a direct consequence of play. However, the example doesn't include any strategic input from the players.

So, what if the whole set-up happened because Shane's player created the scene where Michael was forced to choose between killing innocents and rebelling against Michael? And he did so because he gets a mechanical incentive for doing this?

I'm wondering whether it is possible to put all of this in a mechanical framework which rewards players for revealing each other's traits (or giving them traits to choose from) and then creating situations which generate conflict between two or more of those traits.

Here's a quick idea:

(1) Each of us starts with a small number of traits which represents our self-image. All traits give a small mechanical bonus in play.

(2) I can offer you "bribes" in the form of new traits, which will give you more bonuses in play if you use them against any one else except me.

(3) However, if you use them, then you have proved my opinion about your character correct. This means that in any conflict between the two of us, I get to call on your dice from this trait. Or I can use your dice to support my own agenda against other people.

(4) I can also call for conflicts which place two or more of your traits in oppositon to each other; this Threatens your traits, and unless you can resolve the conflict in a way which protects all of the traits, you lose one or more of them (this may also increase the traits which you protected, but by less than the traits which you lost.)

Back to the example: I'm playing Shane, you're playing Ada. I offer you a 2-point Bribe in the form of the trait "Naive Optimist". If you accept the bribe, this gives you two dice when you are attempting to change things for the better, including to persuade Michael not to hurt people.

However, if I'm in conflict with you, this gives me two dice to use against you.

Michael's player is getting nothing from all this, so he needs to engineer a situation where you give up this trait in order to protect another trait (say, your self-image of "Good Person". So he frames a scene where these two traits come into conflict.

However, you still get to choose which Trait gets thrown over. If you decide that the bonus from Naive Optimist is more important to you (or it fits in better with your conception of your character) you can choose to throw the Good Person trait instead.

Whaddya think?

[TonyLB]

Of course, there has to be the option to refuse the bonus, which is an out-and-out bribe.

Why?

EDIT:  Edited to remove a huge, long-winded exposition and replace it with a single word... possibly my most improved post ever.