Inviolate characters: The Security Blanket

[Sindyr]

The idea presented in this thread was a major breakthrough in my Capes gameplayer. Previous to it the conflicts were boring. "So and so beats up so and so." "So and so extracts information from so and so." It was fun, to be sure, and even when I was playing at that "level."

This last weekend I ran Capes at a convention, and was playing Quentin Quadro, boy genius. My friend Bob (ubergeek2012) was playing Xixtan, a huge, terrifying robot, and I saw that he had a whole lot of debt tokens on Pride and Fear. So what conflict did I play?

Goal: Quentin Quadro terrifies Xixtan.

I sat on a nice pile of story tokens after that, *and* Bob got to "prove" that Xixtan was a huge, unflappable badass. Everyone wins, and it was way better than "Quentin Quadro fights Xixtan."

Actually, this is one of my objections to not having the Authorship rule - it makes engaging your other player trivial and no challenge at all.   Too obvious for me.

[Sindyr]

There is no 'my character'. There is only the character I bring to the table for all of us to play with.

The problem is, if there is no 'my character' than there is also no character I care about.

A problem that the authorship rule neatly solves for me and my group.

However, I am specifically NOT suggesting that people who enjoy having no 'my character' change a thing.

[Bret Gillan]

[quote author=Sindyr link=topic=19597.msg205786#msg205786 date=1145996209
Actually, this is one of my objections to not having the Authorship rule - it makes engaging your other player trivial and no challenge at all.   Too obvious for me.

Hi Sindyr! I'm not sure what you mean by this. What was trivial? This was a pretty big struggle.

[jburneko]

To weigh in on the whole thing,  I'm going to combine the concepts here.  The person who learns to play golf and tennis equally well and then decides they prefer golf is a superior person to the one who learns to play golf well and rejects tennis but has only tried it once or twice but hasn't put in the time and effort to truly experience and learn the game thuroughly.

I offer my friend Tyler who is an aethist as an example.  In my mind he is a superior aethist than most aethists because, despite his own displeasure has put in the effort to read: The Bible, The Koran, The Book of Mormon, The Bagahvagita, and a few other religious texts, cover-to-cover.

He is also the superior literary critic because, despite his own displeasure, he has put in the time and effort to read almost every great book ever written no matter how dry and boring and counter to his own tastes.

And more importantly, he has approached all of these with the intent to understand and grasp what makes these things great despite his own distaste for them.  And he has not given up until he has achieved that understanding.  And in some cases his displeasure changed to pleasure because in his effort he had an epiphany moment that altered his preferences.  That moment came only because he struggled through pages and pages and hours and hours of pain and displeasure and discovered that his displeasured stemed not from the work itself but because of an assumption or fault of his own that was holding him back from enjoying what was presented to him.

Do you want to be a healthier roleplayer?  Eat those vegetables you think are disgusting.  Eat them frequently and cooked a variety of ways and soon you may discover you've aquired the taste.  But until you've tried all the dishes and truly examined and experimented with those vegetables, don't tell us you don't like them.

Jesse

[Sindyr]

It's easy to get you to care about a goal if I am allowed to push your buttons.  Without the authorship rule, all I have to put down is:
Goal: You hero does X, where X is something that inflames you, like, has sex with a man. or cries like a baby, or beats his mother, etc.

It is relatively more difficult to come up with goals that draw in other players to getting engaged if one is denied obvious things like the above.  When you cannot take the easy road of threatening the image of the character they fancy, you are forced into spending more thought on it - what does the player sitting accross from me want?  And how can I dangle that in front of him?

I like that extra required thought.

[Bret Gillan]

Oh. Uh... okay. That's cool. Though I actually find that what I'm doing when I'm creating goals like the one I mentioned, or the goal that a totally newbie Capes player put down (Quentin Quadro learns his lesson - totally awesome, since I was playing him as a mad scientist with no sense of consequences) requires some thought.

It's easy to get you to care about a goal if I am allowed to push your buttons.  Without the authorship rule, all I have to put down is:
Goal: You hero does X, where X is something that inflames you, like, has sex with a man. or cries like a baby, or beats his mother, etc.

If someone I played with was being an asshat and laying down goals like that, they wouldn't get invited back. Not to mention you can veto goals like that.

I find it interesting that "has sex with a man" is something you think of as an inflaming goal, but I that's probably not worth getting into.

you are forced into spending more thought on it - what does the player sitting accross from me want?  And how can I dangle that in front of him?

I like that extra required thought.

Uh, as do I. You can do those things in the kind of play I'm talking about. In fact, I've found that it *encourages* that extra required thought to make the characters vulnerable to such goals.

Sindyr, I gotta say something, and Tony can tell me if I'm being out of line here, but I've been away from this forum for awhile and I come back and I'm greeted by a strange reply from you that seems to imply that my mode of play is "easier" than yours and that it doesn't have the "extra required thought" that yours does. Then I scroll down and you seem to be demanding that people not judge your opinions. Is passive-aggressively insinuating that my play is inferior to yours the way that you get people to respect your opinions? Because it's not working for me, and that's after being exposed to you for less than an hour.

[Sindyr]

To weigh in on the whole thing,  I'm going to combine the concepts here.  The person who learns to play golf and tennis equally well and then decides they prefer golf is a superior person to the one who learns to play golf well and rejects tennis but has only tried it once or twice but hasn't put in the time and effort to truly experience and learn the game thuroughly.

If I may rephrase slightly, someone may have a gift for golf and a natural disability to play tennis.  Perhaps it is enough to say:
The person who tries his best to play golf and tennis and then decides they prefer golf pursues games better to the one who learns to play golf well and rejects tennis but has only tried it once or twice but hasn't put in the time and effort to truly experience and learn the game thuroughly.

However, even that is not true - will explain why below.

I offer my friend Tyler who is an aethist as an example.  In my mind he is a superior aethist than most aethists because, despite his own displeasure has put in the effort to read: The Bible, The Koran, The Book of Mormon, The Bagahvagita, and a few other religious texts, cover-to-cover.

Do you want to be a healthier roleplayer?  Eat those vegetables you think are disgusting.  Eat them frequently and cooked a variety of ways and soon you may discover you've aquired the taste.  But until you've tried all the dishes and truly examined and experimented with those vegetables, don't tell us you don't like them.Jesse

First of all, I think it obvious that if one tried apples and finds one doesn't like them, it is not at all incumbent on one to try any other apple dishes.

More importantly, we are forgetting that in real life time is limited.

You can't try eveything - you don't have time.

I am an atheist.  I spent around 5 years investigating all things religious.  I had many and long discussions with Jehovah's Witnesses, Harvest Christian's, Protestants, and more.  I visited around a dozen churches in the areas, many several times.  I read all kinds of books, some that were suggested to me, and some that I found on my own.  I spent years questioning myself, my spirituality, and my reason.

At the end of that time, I felt I had pursued all needed ideas, thoughts, points of view, etc enough to conclude that atheism (or choosing to not believe in god, note: not at all the same thing as the positive belief that there is no god) is the rational way.

But let me tell you, there is no end to epople telling me "have you read this book? have you talked to this minister?  have you explored this religion or sect?"

One cannot spend unlimited time, energy, and resources on every matter, even one as important as faith.  One must judge for oneself how much needs to be invested versus the likelihood of getting a different result than the one we expect.

I am a fairly intelligent person (even if I can't type for beans, heh heh).  I am smart enough to know not to try 37 apple dishes if I know I hate apples.  Will I miss one that I *might* like?  Perhaps.  Is it worth trying them all, both in times of time and energy and in terms of repetitively experience that horrid apple taste on the of chance that it is "possible" that one of the dishes might appeal? Probably not.

Besides, I know I like pears.  It makes far more sense to try additional pear dishes that I probably *will* like than to spend time looking for a probably non existant apple dish, and experiencing that horrid apple taste each time.

[dunlaing]

Besides, I know I like pears.  It makes far more sense to try additional pear dishes that I probably *will* like than to spend time looking for a probably non existant apple dish, and experiencing that horrid apple taste each time.

If I liked pears so much, I would post on a pear forum. I would not go onto an apple pie forum and belabor the point that if you substitute apples for pears, all of the apple pie recipes taste much better to me.

I also wouldn't get extremely defensive about people calling me on it--particularly the person who wrote the apple pie recipe book that the forum is devoted to.

But that's just me.

[TonyLB]

Actually, this is one of my objections to not having the Authorship rule - it makes engaging your other player trivial and no challenge at all.   Too obvious for me.

Well that's a new one on me ... "Capes supports its intended style of play too well!  It makes it so easy to create passionate, engaging conflicts that I don't feel like I'm working hard enough!"

[Sydney Freedberg]

First, a public appeal: Let's please stop talking about pears, golf, and comparative religion -- I understand the value of metaphor and analogy, but I think at this point the analogies have caused us to veer way the heck away from actual incidences of play.

Now, substantively:

There is no 'my character'. There is only the character I bring to the table for all of us to play with.

The problem is, if there is no 'my character' than there is also no character I care about.

There isn't? I think I have to be misunderstanding you.

You don't watch movies or read books and care about their characters, which are not under your control? You don't play RPGs and care about your friends' PCs and the NPCs, which are not under your control?

Heck, actors manage to care intensely about the characters they play while having very little control over what the scriptwriters and directors do with those characters -- far less control than you have over a character in Capes.

Sindyr, can I ask you to post about moments in your own personal roleplaying experience that were most meaningful or enjoyable for you? And maybe that's a separate thread, but if you can show us a few cases where you had a lot of fun playing an "inviolate" character, and how that degree of protection contributed to your fun, that will advance my understanding of your argument a lot further.

[Vaxalon]

There is no 'my character'. There is only the character I bring to the table for all of us to play with.

The problem is, if there is no 'my character' than there is also no character I care about.

There isn't? I think I have to be misunderstanding you.

You don't watch movies or read books and care about their characters, which are not under your control?

I won't speak for Sindyr, but I'll speak for myself.

Yes!

I hardly EVER watch movies or read books and care about the characters as much as I care about my RPG characters - and the exceptions only come when the creators are much, much better than I am.  Mostly, I watch TV or movies either for the visuals (like Fifth Element) or plot surprises (like Doctor Who) or because my wife is watching (like House).

These days, I write far more than I read.  Having a character that strives for what what I say he should strive for, even when events says he shouldn't, is just so cool.

Now I can hear the wheels in Tony's head turning.  "That's great!  The fact that you VALUE that control that much, means that you'll fight for it all the harder!"

Now I understand that the conflicts that challenge that value are not intended to actually damage it.  They're intended to pook it, get me to fight back, and let me win.  I understand that.  The thing is... I won't win them all, and every time I lose one, the value of that character to me drops a peg.  Will I still enjoy playing?  Sure.  Especially if I'm hanging out with fun people like Tony. 

(I was going to post a metaphor here, but it would just distract.  )

[TonyLB]

The thing is... I won't win them all, and every time I lose one, the value of that character to me drops a peg.

Quick request for clarification:  This is your experience of actual play, or this is your untested hypothesis?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Now I understand that the conflicts that challenge that value are not intended to actually damage it.  They're intended to pook it, get me to fight back, and let me win. ...

Well -- no, not always

The thing is... I won't win them all, and every time I lose one, the value of that character to me drops a peg.

Always? Usually? Have you ever had an experience (playing Capes or something else, now) where your character got utterly defeated on something that mattered to you, personally, as a player, and your response was not, "oh darn," but "wow, that was much cooler than what I was originally trying to do"?

Because that's what my experience I keep citing (a few posts back, now) was like. In fact, looking back, all my favorite moments in roleplaying came when someone else contributed something to the game that I hadn't expected, couldn't control, and which impelled me to radically change who my character was.

[Vaxalon]

I've played Capes a grand total of five times.  Twice with Tony, three times without.

I'm going to leave the two games played with Tony out because Tony's a riot to play with no matter WHAT the game is.  I have no doubt playing with him could make GURPS enjoyable for me.

In the three games I played where Tony wasn't involved, my characters quickly seemed to become flatter, more distant, and out of focus as the game progressed.  Two of those three games were IRC games, though, and that may have had something to do with it, but the same thing happened when I played around the table with my wife, her best friend, and her best friend's daughter.  Everything just seemed to sink into the table.

My characters get defeated on a regular basis.  I'm a GM on a fairly regular basis.  But *I* don't get defeated.

There's a difference.  When the stakes are "Doctor Trinity's spine gets snapped" is a defeat for the character, and one I can relish because Doctor Trinity, as a villain, was always intended to be defeated.  Even if he was a hero, that's still fine, because it gives him the chance to come back from his adversity and triumph in spite of it.  "Doctor Trinity's ego gets crushed" is also a defeat for the character. 

When the stakes are "Doctor Trinity is revealed to be a faker and an idiot" (not "...is made into an idiot") that's a defeat for me.  It's kind of like a retcon.

Do you see the difference?

[TonyLB]

When the stakes are "Doctor Trinity is revealed to be a faker and an idiot" (not "...is made into an idiot") that's a defeat for me.  It's kind of like a retcon.

Do you see the difference?

I totally see the difference.  No question.

You know the word that's coming next, right?

But, I'll posit that there's another difference between two types of conflicts, which often gets conflated with this, but which isn't really the same thing at all.  The difference is between a conflict where, at the end of it, you don't feel you got to have a fair amount of input (based on whatever you think is "fair") and a conflict where you do feel that you got to have a fair amount of input, and where you've come to understand more about the arguments on the opposing side.

So, for instance, in D&D:  If the GM says "Okay, a bunch of goblins attack!  Roll initiative!" then we have a system in place that lets me have my say (with me thews!) in what the outcome of that conflict will be.  By the end of it, even if I lose, I probably feel like I gave as good as I got, and I know with some precision why it is that the GM thinks it's reasonable for the goblins to beat me ("Dude!  They had a goblin shaman!  We rate shamans now.")

Compare and contrast that with the same situation in D&D where the GM says "Okay, a bunch of goblins attack!  You guys are all captured," ... or even "A bunch of goblins attack!  You guys slaughter them."  In those situations I have not had my say.  I didn't get to contribute.  I also didn't get a chance to be convinced by the GM of the coolness of losing.  That cheeses me off, irrespective of the outcome.

Still with me?  I will eventually return to the main point.  We're headed back now.

In D&D there is no mechanic for the GM to say "Okay, she's an evil temptress and your paladin is young.  Does he hold out, or do they violate his vows of chastity with abandon?" and then let me have my say.  You can do it, but you get zero system support ... largely you talk with the GM, and maybe he actually listens to you, but maybe he just pays lip-service to what you're saying, then does whatever he wants anyway.  It is a markedly different type of conflict from the goblins, for that very reason.  I find it very difficult to conceive of losing such a conflict in D&D in a way that would make me feel assured that I'd gotten a fair amount of input, but lost anyway.

In Capes though, I get that experience all the time.  Someone proposes something like the Doc Trinity example you posted, and I dump a whole mess of my resources into it, and other people dump theirs.  Eventually I'm sitting there looking at the balance of power, and looking at my own remaining resources, and I say to myself "Y'know what?  I've said my piece.  I could keep jumping on this, and maybe even win it, but the process of playing this out has shown me the arguments for Doc Trinity being a liar and a fraud.  I can work with that ... particularly if I collect a huge whopping bribe of resources for letting it happen."

Now that's me.  Other people are different.  I'm interested to know, Fred, where you stand on this one.  There's lots of reasonable positions I could imagine for you ... maybe you feel that "fair" input into your own character is absolute, or maybe you feel that your input isn't absolute but the process let you down, or maybe you agree intellectually that authorship should be shared but you just can't get behind it emotionally, or maybe, or maybe ... blah, blah, blah.  Lots of possibilities.  How do you feel about it?