Character Arc Development in the PIE System

[themaloryman]

[themaloryman]

[themaloryman]

Chapter One: Rebroken Hills.
The following encompasses about the first three sessions of play, from the start of the game to the time Gabriel and Johnson left Rebroken Hills<At this point we had our first triple-6 score of the game, Deathglider rolling for Johnson to throw one of his knives with pin-point accuracy to kill one of the three. <

[themaloryman]

Chapter Two: The Slave Caravan
<As a person, I have very strong feelings on slavery, and was shocked to learn recently that it is still an issue today. (See http://www.donttradelives.com.au/dtl/ if you want to know more about this!) I decided early on to play my character the same way, as it would come more naturally, so concluded that Gabriel had some issues with slavery. I had not yet decided what they would be.< it brought the memories of his past flooding back. As he lay, tended by Mickey the medic, Gabriel thought again of Claire and of Alana, and of everything that had been taken from him.

A couple of days later, with Gabriel back on his feet, if not completely well again, the guards were told that this caravan was under quota, and that a raid would be organised on a nearby settlement to take some fresh people. Having made friends with one of the caravan guards Johnson agreed to go on the raid. Gabriel argued strongly against it, but neither could convince the other.

<It was at this point that I decided to create a background, and came up with the one at the top of this explanation.

[themaloryman]

Chapter 3: The File
<<

[Callan S.]

Hi,

Do players have and know they have the option to retire characters? Like say when the mine shut down, could the player have said the character just gives up and goes somewhere to start subsistance farming, or work as a bartender, or whatever and that's it, he wont be focused on in any further gaming?

[themaloryman]

Well, sure, I guess I could have done that. But seeing as how the mine closed in the first minute of the first session of this campaign, that would have been a smidgen futile... However, assuming that your example is just that - an example - my less flippant response would be that characters can be retired (because really, who could stop me if I want to do that?) and in fact this one has now been retired, having reached a logical and satisfying narrative close.

However, this thread is, I realise, boring as bat-sh*t, and I'm not going to be continuing it. I know Altaem, my GM, was thinking of starting a thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', or something to that effect, just to cover the bare essentials of what really worked well in the PIE-system run games. I think it will make for more informative reading than having to sift the dross of this post to find the odd gem of an event. So go look for that. And if you read all the way to the bottom before finding this note, well, sorry!

[Callan S.]

Sorry, I'd read the four year search and its resolution (giving up on finding his daughter) as part of an actual play account. Bad reading on my part.

[themaloryman]

Oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense! It was a valid question though, even if you didn't choose the best example. And my answer stands. Retiring characters is do-able.

[JoyWriter]

I notice that your character suddenly gained a past from the themes you thought were interesting and as a way to come back from sociopathy. I notice this seems a pretty common way for characters to behave in games I've been in: The player jiggles their character around at first, either playing it cagey, funny or really psycho, and then suddenly spreads into life.

Every game I play with one of my friends he starts with a comedy character until he gains a history, finds something to be heroic about and gets all the players to love him! (well me at least) This guy then gives his character it's own staring role in some fiction or other RPG he runs, and is pretty happy with it, although he often accompanies this with retiring the character, which I don't like so much. It seems a bit like he tries to make light hearted characters in sometimes deeply harsh worlds, and then finds a new way for that basic theme to properly interact with what is happening and that spontaneously produces the rest of the character. As it gains a place in the world thematically, the actual beginnings fall into place.

On the subject of PIE, how do you deal with self-other dice in two pvp situations? Say one gets a 6 for himself and a 1 for other, and the opponent the same? Do you require non-exclusive goals so they can both win and lose?

[Callan S.]

I'm extra confused now! Was the four year search written before any play had happened, or written after some amount of play had occured?

[themaloryman]

@CallanS
The four year search 'occurred' before any of the play, but was written by me at the end of the Slave Caravan chapter.

@Joy Writer
Not sure what point you were trying to make or if you were just telling an anecdote. However, I think my response would be that, not being familiar with the world I was playing, I really just played on the fly for a bit, then developed my character once I knew a bit more.

Regarding the mechanics of PIE, I linked to an extremely lengthy post in the Playtesting forum at the top of this thread, so you might to best to read that. I think PVP interaction is covered on about page 4, though it might be slightly earlier.

[JoyWriter]

It was an anecdote pretty much, with a theme to combine your experience and mine. I was considering how common I have found the same process you went through, for certain players at least. To be a bit more useful, do you find that happens often, and is it related to the depth of the world?

My own thinking is that when the world has a strong existing identity you need more time to get a handle on it, and I was pondering that difference between playing on the fly and characters that have history. I notice that during the first part you sort of added parts of the world to your character as you went, did that continue when you had a history and a kicker of sorts? I know in the case of my friend that he really gets into his stride when he has a feel for the characters voice, did you find development easier after a background kicks in?
I personally tend to concept my characters history from the ground up, in sweeping form, and then shift it in small amounts afterwards, so I don't tend to have this phenomenon, although it could perhaps lead to less work if I got the hang of it.

In my last post I added the comment about conflict mechanics both for my curiosity and to try to stay within the bounds of the thread title. How are you relating those two things - arcs and the conflict mechanic? Or is their a part of the system that you haven't mentioned that effects character development? Or alternatively where you just mentioning the system for context? Basically I'm trying to get a handle on what you want to talk about here, for speed and enjoyment for both of us.

[themaloryman]

@ JoyWriter: Fair comments. This thread was initially supposed to be an examination of how the PIE System has, by it's little quirks and random events, contributed to the development of my character. However, it has become obvious to me that these little 'golden moments' are a bit too infrequent to warrant a full character write up. That's just my failing. However, as I said, I think Altaem plans to start up a similar but more succinct thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', so I'm hesitant to clutter an already largely pointless thread. However, once Altaem get's his backside in gear and posts I'll be sure to link to that from here so you can get your question answered.

I think you're right about character development more generally, for me at least: I find that as a rule I try to create 'survival' characters for any new RPG - that is, balanced enough to fight or talk their way out of a situation. This leads to a certain lack of variety on my part, I suppose, but it does mean I generally avoid getting killed long enough to get a handle on the world. I don't normally create a detailed character background because often I'm not that familiar with the worlds we're going to play, though obviously I get to know them as we go. That stands for the last three games I've played under Altaem's GMing, set in the Vampire, Necromunda and FallOut Universes respectively. I've tried to get a feel for what's going on before worrying about character background. In fact, the only exception to this 'generic character' technique of mine was when I was playing a Star Wars RPG a few years ago. Since I was pretty familiar with the SW Expanded Universe I was comfortable writing up a detailed background. But I was really just a kid then, so 'in-depth play' wasn't something I did. I suppose if I were to play another universe I knew better (anything I've played long enough to get an understanding of, or whatever) I would create my character in advance. Altaem as a GM has begun now to allow his players almost to 'co-write' the worlds we play, so we can create places and people specifically for our backgrounds, and even include those people in play if we can achieve something that will justify that. That makes it a lot easier to write backgrounds that make for compelling characters and satisfying play, narrative and general 'arc'.

Hope I expressed myself better this time that I obviously did last time!

[Altaem]

I think Altaem plans to start up a similar but more succinct thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', so I'm hesitant to clutter an already largely pointless thread. However, once Altaem get's his backside in gear and posts I'll be sure to link to that from here so you can get your question answered.

link here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27287.0