[TSOY] (Actual Prep, actually) 1-on-1 character development

[Threlicus]

So this is my first post in the Actual Play area. I've been RPG-itching for a little while, since our previous group broke up, and so I've been pushing my wife Margaret into agreeing to do a 1-on-1 thing. She agreed -- though she wasn't hugely excited about it, she knows I really enjoy it and this is a good way for us to create us-time, and I don't feel like I badgered her into agreeing. We're pretty time-constrained with 2 small children, so our playing will probably be in 2-hour blocks (after the kids go to sleep, before the baby wakes up for food & our bedtime) at most once a week, so I was looking for systems that will enable us to focus on what interests me in that short time. I chose The Shadow of Yesterday, as I think it is well-enough suited to 2-player play while the Keys are one of the cooler mechanics out there IMHO, and though Near is cool, the system is pretty generically adaptable to diverse genres.

I started by suggesting a few broad genres that I would be interested in playing in, and my wife chose modern spy, somewhere between Alias and Bond in feel, something I'm very cool with. We had discussed some of the newer techniques, so I suggested that we could start the game off with a non-mechanicized Kicker (explaining what it was), and she jumped on that. She eventually (see below) suggested as a Kicker that her character was a student who had gone after her professor who had been (apparently) kidnapped; and now that she has found him, he doesn't want to be rescued. Cool.

Now, the painful part. I started digging for details. For me, if I want to define a character, the best way to do it is to have people ask me questions. the answers bubble up and pop out as I make stuff up to answer the questions on the fly. I think this is because of my GMing experience; I have to do it that way for NPCs, so why not for PCs too, right? So, to try to help her I started asking questions; what disturbed me was how much she dodged the questions. We were mostly doing this talking over dishes and similar housework, so there were plenty of things to dodge the questions WITH, and I didn't worry about it too much. However, then we sat down and tried to actually get the character down on paper. TSOY characters are a little more complicated than some, but not terribly complex beasts, so I was surprised how long it took us to get, for example, 11 points divided between the 3 pools. The net result was that it took us probably about 3 hours sitting and talking, between me explaining how the rules worked and what the stats meant, and her dithering over choices, to get a fully-statted TSOY character. Even then, she still lacks a name, and three of the 5 'initial' advances are unspent (there's nothing WRONG with that, of course, but it seems to me more symptomatic of the problem here than a deliberate choice on Margaret's part).

So I guess there are two things here: One is, should I be really worried that Margaret is not investing in her character, or getting excited about the situation? Experiences and advice from others who have dealt with similar 'reluctant' players would be helpful. I suspect the 'ask provoking questions to help define the character' technique isn't working, and maybe I should just let things develop in play. Second, I would a few suggestions about how to make the inital session, when we actually start play (which should be next time) really cool so we both look forward to doing it again.

I'm going to describe more about her character from what we've been able to put together to help people interested in pursuing the second question. She is an educated Iraian woman, who apparently had an affair with this professor. There are two things about her character that she developed independently, though I put them into 'Secret' form: one is, she is very good at 'reading between the lines' -- by spending an Instinct point, she can deduce a fact that the person she is speaking to would rather keep hidden. (A good Secret name would also be appreciated!) Second, she is extremely flexible -- by spending a Vigor point, she can twist her body into contortions. Both of these Secrets I hope to put to good use, by getting her character into a) conversations with secretive folks and b) handcuffs, straitjackets and the like (non-escape uses for this appreciated too). The only Key she has is Key of Discovery (not in the standard book; 1 XP whenever she pursues secret knowledge, 3 XP when that pursuit lands her in trouble), and that's a little worrisome as well, for a 1-player game. Her 2-skill is Deceit, and she has no combat skills.

Also established through conversation: Her parents are on poor terms ('disowned her' -- though I'm not sure the Iranians do it the same way we would. ;) because they found out about the affair. She's got an older brother on her parents' side and a younger sister (12 yo) too young to really understand why she can't talk to her sister; the professor is a professor of computer science, but where he's been hauled off to is a mine somewhere in the wilds.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I wanted to give you feedback on why I, at least, wasn't giving you feedback.

1. In my experience in posting at the Forge, stepping into this conversation is close enough to stepping between you and your wife that it poses dozens of pitfalls despite good intentions. I simply don't want to do that.

2. Also in my experience in observing these spousal, highly-negotiated games, two goals get seriously confounded: (a) saying this is how to play, and yay, we're playing; and (b) saying really, I promise, role-playing can be fun. I don't think those two goals are really compatible. You can't convince someone something is fun from the ground up. They have to see something in it, themselves, doing at least a little bit of the (b) work, in order to be interested in the (a) part.

3. I have come to think that traditional character creation is the Numero Uno thing to avoid in an introductory-role-playing situation, most especially anything concerning point-allocation, and to a lesser extent, back-story and goals. Unfortunately, that puts me in the position of saying, "I think your horse done run out of the barn a while back," which isn't very encouraging.

I read over your post again, and I hope I'm wrong about you and your wife in particular. But at this point, at least based on patterns or trends in observation, I'm not really optimistic about your chances.

Given that all of my post is a serious buzzkill, I'm not sure where you want to go with it. I'd like to make the discussion interesting and useful for you, but I'm also pretty inhibited by #1, above. Let me know what you think.

Best, Ron

[Threlicus]

2. Also in my experience in observing these spousal, highly-negotiated games, two goals get seriously confounded: (a) saying this is how to play, and yay, we're playing; and (b) saying really, I promise, role-playing can be fun. I don't think those two goals are really compatible. You can't convince someone something is fun from the ground up. They have to see something in it, themselves, doing at least a little bit of the (b) work, in order to be interested in the (a) part.

Ah... I should clarify a serious oversight in my first post. My wife is a fairly experienced gamer and has had fun gaming in the past, so I don't think we're working on the (b) question... She played for several years in a long-running Ars Magica saga, and more recently in the previous Amber/Nobilis groups that broke up. Now, she's never been as enthusiastic about it as I am, and at least part of her fun has been in doing things together with me, but in general I don't think the (b) part is a problem. The problem I think we're having is finding the fun that we both know is there, somewhere, but being a bit elusive at the moment.

3. I have come to think that traditional character creation is the Numero Uno thing to avoid in an introductory-role-playing situation, most especially anything concerning point-allocation, and to a lesser extent, back-story and goals. Unfortunately, that puts me in the position of saying, "I think your horse done run out of the barn a while back," which isn't very encouraging.

I see where you're coming from here. I think the dangers are not there for some people, who happily create backstory or work quite well within an allocate-numbers character creation system; I'm one of those people. On the other hand, my wife is not such a person, and I know and knew this (she wanted quite a bit of help in the past on character creation in the other groups, and to a lesser extent with the Ars Magica seasonal activities, which are rather mechanics-intensive).

I was of the impression that, compared to something like Ars Magica, TSOY was quite a bit more streamlined -- which it definitely is. But that impression is definitely swayed by my own preferences, and perhaps it isn't streamlined enough; I may even need a whole paradigm shift (though I'm quite blind about seeing where to go). In any event, despite this horse being mostly out of the barn, I'd be interested in thoughts on better approaches to take; certainly I'm not committing to playing this one out if we don't have fun (although I want to at least try one 'real play' session to try to find the fun), and I don't think I'll have any problem (with the b, above) suggesting that there is fun to be found somewhere else and trying another tack.

Given that all of my post is a serious buzzkill, I'm not sure where you want to go with it. I'd like to make the discussion interesting and useful for you, but I'm also pretty inhibited by #1, above. Let me know what you think.

Hmm. I do understand the pitfalls as well, I've seen train wrecks on this topic on the net. I guess as long as discussion stays focussed on the RPGing part of our relationship (I'm not looking for parenting advice!) I'll have a pretty thick skin and I'll promise to "assume good faith". What I'm really most hoping for is some suggestions about where, given what I can tell you about Margaret, she is most likely to find fun and how to get to those places. (Without losing sight of my fun, either, of course, but frankly I'm less worried about that at this point.) Perhaps I should post a bit about what parts of our past games I have observed Margaret having fun in; if you think that is useful I can try to write a bit of that up too.