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A couple of things got broken out of the Sci-Fi debate which seem to actually be genre-independent; there is a feeling that SF may benefit more from an exploration of this, because they're more common in that medium and inadequately covered in most RPGs, but they also have strong applicability to other genres too.  So I'm going to break out of the SF-only mode, and start this thread to try and resolve some of the unanswered questions that thread left hanging.

It keys to a point Paul made, about the unique character.  We all know the type, both from literature and roleplay: the first detective to be partnered with a robot, the runaway with experimental cyberware which does heretofore impossible things, the classic first-AI-made in a thousand incarnations, the bearer of the One Ring.  Characters who break the mold of their setting, who are perhaps the first arrivals of a new thing upon the world stage, or the last relic of an era which predates the setting's assumptions, or perhaps simply a character whose essential nature could only ever occur once.

Now, I want to strip this of the tag "unique" because it has the potential to set up an unproductive controverse-fest. :)  All characters are unique, we hope.  Instead, I think the term "groundbreakers" would work well to describe the character type I described above, especially coming from within a discussion of science fiction.  The most common source seems to be a character who is, or possesses, something unprecedented within his context.

Now, I will assume (without proof) a few things about gameplay involving these characters.  They are a lot of fun to play, often extremely memorable.  They can be bandwidth-hogs, assuming overimportance in their group; this can be bearable with one, but often breaks down with multiples or with the wrong player.  Their unqiue element, the thing that makes them a groundbreaker, cannot appear in the game itself - it does not have an entry in an equipment or powers list, even in the GM section.  If it is described in full by the game's author then its edge is blunted and savour lost; it should be the result of player creativity, not game designer cleverness.  At most, it may be hinted at; preferably, it is something made possible in the game's context, but original to this instantiation of play.

The key question is, how do we write games so as to best empower players to create groundbreaker characters, when writing in the groundbreaker element blunts its edge?

Secondary to this, how do we (tactfully) regulate them?  A group full of such is potentially less fun than one without any at all.  GM recommendations is an obvious, but sometimes inefficient, mode.  If we succeed in the above, then we need to consider this as well.  Note that if we don't have a good way to do A, then B is irrelevant, so I'd prefer if initial discussion tried to stay focussed on A.  It may also not be necessary at all, it's just a risk factor which (present in every group) increases if we succeed at the enablement step.

The enablement question may also bring us back to Big Idea stories, where the *setting* is essentially a groundbreaker itself.  The two forms are similar; they're both about the ramifications of something novel, and have an underlying Exploratory tone.  Interestingly, in The Limits of Sci-Fi, we did explore the possibility of a game system which enabled the GM to make his own groundbreakers - the Big Idea - and I think there's still meat on that bone.  The line between Big Idea and Groundbreaker is blurry; many settings and stories find their uniqueness focussed on one individual, whose existence in the tale empowers Big Idea-like grandeur.  I think I'm more interested in enablement of Groundbreakers, because a meta-setting which helps enable Big Idea settings has limited appeal, but Groundbreakers are everywhere, and turn up in many favorite forms (like the heavily mythic fable) of story.

So, how do you write your game such that it properly, maximally, supports this mode of player activity?  I have my own ideas, but I'll open the floor for a bit first... I'm interested to hear other suggestions.

Quote from: HarlequinI think the term "groundbreakers" would work well to describe the character type I described above, especially coming from within a discussion of science fiction.  The most common source seems to be a character who is, or possesses, something unprecedented within his context.

[A little edit from me:] Now, I will assume (without proof) a few things about gameplay involving these characters.[list=1][*]They are a lot of fun to play, often extremely memorable.

[*]They can be bandwidth-hogs, assuming over-importance in their group;

[list=a][*]This can be bearable with one, but often breaks down with multiples or with the wrong player.[/list:o]
[*]Their unique element, the thing that makes them a groundbreaker, cannot appear in the game itself.

It does not have an entry in an equipment or powers list, even in the GM section.  If it is described in full by the game's author then its edge is blunted and savour lost; it should be the result of player creativity, not game designer cleverness.  At most, it may be hinted at; preferably, it is something made possible in the game's context, but original to this instantiation of play.[/list:u][/list:o]

[And again.] The key question[s are]...[list=a][*]How do we write games so as to best empower players to create groundbreaker characters, when writing in the groundbreaker element blunts its edge?

[*]Secondary to this, how do we (tactfully) regulate them?

[*]So, how do you write your game such that it properly, maximally, supports this mode of player activity?[/list:o]I have my own ideas, but I'll open the floor for a bit first... I'm interested to hear other suggestions.

I've been moving towards games like this more and more.  I know I spend a lot of time touting it, but I've put a few of these things into Scattershot.

By the numbers:[list=1][*]Personally, I think this quality stems from the 'uniqueness' and is present in any character the player feels is 'unique' (exactly as you've differentiated from Groundbreakers).  Being a Groundbreaker simply magnifies it.

[*]For this reason, I almost always suggest at least a little Groundbreaking in every character, if it's in any character.

[list=a][*]Actually, it only becomes a problem if the 'Groundbreaking attribute' is an issue of efficacy.  When it is anything else, I don't see it having this problem.  'Spotlight hog' protocols can usually take care of everything else.[/list:o]
[*]Sometimes it's hard to write these into a character.  I think this is mostly because there are times that you think of something that would make for a neat Groundbreaker character, only to find that it encompasses an idea that the rest of the group considers a common part of the 'unwritten rules.'  I always suggest being able to, as a player, say that 'this is unique to my character' as a part of group character generation.[/list:o][list=a][*]By making games that explicitly say, 'make a Groundbreaker character' is an option.  Not only that, but by recognizing that the central quality of a Groundbreaker is that they break new ground, regardless of their actual 'point of breakage' and making that the most important point to the character.

[*]Well, when it comes to efficacy inducing Groundbreaking, many point-based systems could handle this with the above.  Otherwise, it bears on a combination of 'spotlight hog' protocols and how the game addresses 'the most important part' of the character.  If the rules are written so they either downplay or ignore the Groundbreaking attribute, I feel they miss the opportunity.

[*]Well for me, I wrote Sine Qua Non Techniques and am still working on something more concrete than Who's in Charge for 'spotlight hog' protocols.[/list:o]Anybody else have any ideas?  I've been kinda struggling to get past this point.

Fang Langford

Harlequin wrote:

Quote....a point Paul made [in the Limits of SF thread], about the unique character. We all know the type, both from literature and roleplay: the first detective to be partnered with a robot, the runaway with experimental cyberware which does heretofore impossible things, the classic first-AI-made in a thousand incarnations, the bearer of the One Ring. Characters who break the mold of their setting, who are perhaps the first arrivals of a new thing upon the world stage, or the last relic of an era which predates the setting's assumptions, or perhaps simply a character whose essential nature could only ever occur once.

I've been spending a lot of effort in the past months wrapping my head around a subset of this particular theme and it's application in a SF RPG. Specifically, I've been looking at stories where the "groundbreaker" (usually an individual) is the "agent of change" for the society in which they exist at the beginning of the story. Characters like Gully Foyle, Paul Atreides, John Sheridan, Ben Reich, and Jommy Cross (you could cast the net a smidgen wider and include the Skywalker boys, Anakin and Luke). Whether for the good of mankind, and/or as spectacular vengeance, "The System" as it has stood is torn down by the actions of the protagonist and replaced with something new... often ushering in a New Age.

Almost invariably, such characters are "more than human", or at least distinctly different for what passes as the "normal" human of the setting. The effects of their special talents often cut deep into the heart of the tenets and authority of the system, an annoying prick at first, but eventually increasing to a critical and civilisation-threatening level.

There are as many anti-heroes as heroes in this genre, ranging from the destructive Unmaker to the messianic. Ron made a great observation when I discussed this very subject with him a few weeks ago: that the destructive anti-heroes often end up "doing good" in some way [by changing or tearing down The System], whereas the heroic, messianic ones never quite achieve closure.

So how can we apply all this to an RPG? Here are my thoughts so far on applying this sub-genre of SF to (with kind encouragement from Ron) a Sorcerer mini-sup. I don't have all the answers yet, but here's what I have in a nutshell:

- Humanity represents a double-edged sword that is both the characters membership in/connection with "normal humanity", whatever that may be in the individual setting, as well as their "driving spirit", that which spurs them to change things. At 0 Humanity, two things could happen:

A) if the characters' abilities are developed to a certain extent, and the Civilisation Rating (see below) has reached a critical level, the character becomes "something else".... the next evolutionary step for that character (Keir Dullea becomes the Star Child, Gully Foyle into the Burning Man, Paul Atreides to burgeoning Kwisatz Haderach, etc), and moves beyond the scope of play (presumably, at this point in my thinking).
-or-
B) if the above conditions are not true, the character's "driving spirit" has been finally defeated. He/she gives up, goes insane, becomes a mindless cog of The System forevermore, etc.

- Humanity loss is connected to the development and use of the characters "special talents", much as it is used for the sorcerous rituals in the base rules. It could also be keyed to "setbacks", instances in play when The System has prevailed over the goals of the character.

- Humanity gain is keyed to the successes of the character against The System. Examples: Jommy Cross discovers the secret of the tendril-less slan and effectively blackmails them with the knowledge, giving him increased leverage against The System; or, Paul Atreides gains the confidence and allegiance of the Fremen, giving him a powerful force with which to oppose The System. Gaining Humanity allows the character to use and keep developing their special abilities.

- The System/Civilisation is tracked by the GM during play in much the same way that Humanity is tracked by the players, sort of a "Civilisation Rating". Humanity loss incurred by the players in the use and development of the characters' special abilities, and successes by the players against The System during play, add to this rating; conversely, if The System prevails in it's goals for the adventure, this rating is reduced accordingly. Once this rating reaches a critical level, The System comes undone, breaks down, revolution in the streets, dogs and cats living together, real Old Testament stuff.

- Mechanically, the special abilities that such characters posess can be handled pretty much like demon abilities in the base rules. The Sorcerer rules offer lots of flexibility in designing such abilities. These abilities should start off moderately powered, with the potential of becoming "cosmic" over time and development. I'm reticent to come up with a "list" of such abilities, and leave it more to player customization. I realize how open and "loose" that sounds... I'm not satisfied yet either.

- Defining The System, or Civilisation As It Stands, should be intimately connected with creating the characters. The setting has to be one that the players want to sink their teeth into and change, so I feel that co-authorship of the setting to some degree before play is essential.

- Pragmatically, it seems that this premise would be limited to smaller groups of players for effective and practical play. As Harlequin noted above:

QuoteA group full of such ["groundbreaker" characters] is potentially less fun than one without any at all.

Is this an incorrect presumption? If not, is it such a bad thing?

- My primary goal is to present this premise with just enough structure that it allows individual groups a lot of leeway in their specific application. Sorcerer is a great example of this model of game design, and (I think) a great rules set to work from for this subject. Writing this project as a mini-supplement has freed me up from coming up with a rules system to do it with (thanks Ron, really!).

I sincerely hope that it sounds like I'm on the right track with this so far. I'd be very interested in your opinions and approaches to the question of SF "groundbreakers".

-Rod

(This post was far too long. I apologize, but Harlequin's post cut so to the heart of my current focus that it all came tumbling out...)

I keep thinking there has to be a better word than "groundbreaking"; but I don't know what it is, so it will have to do.

Quote from: HarlequinThe key question is, how do we write games so as to best empower players to create groundbreaker characters, when writing in the groundbreaker element blunts its edge?

There are probably many ways. I've got a little way, something E. R. Jones devised as an overlay to D&D (and probably other games, but that's where I encountered it). He called it Mystery Options, and I explained it in detail on my http://tiras.tripod.com/ref005.html">AD&D Character Creation site, and provided some http://members.tripod.com/~Tiras/ref006.html">examples for use in play. (This is currently hosted on a Tripod site; I'm moving everything to http://www.mjyoung.net/">M. J. Young Net, but it will be a while before the massive Character Creation site moves.)

The short version is that at character creation the player rolls for aspects of his character that are unknown to the character (and in this application to the player also). The referee then begins to formulate a list of things the character doesn't know. These can be as simple as having a famous ancestor or knowing some simple skill learned as a child but forgotten, or as drastic as unknowingly being the hidden heir to the throne or son of a god. The referee then introduces into play hints that suggest to the character that there is something about himself he needs to explore, and lets this lead into greater levels of adventure. All the characters can opt for mystery options; not all the options will be groundbreaking. But then, one of the aspects of the groundbreaker is usually that he doesn't know he's the groundbreaker, at least, not at first. Which character will emerge as the significant one can be as interesting as what happens from there.

Rod, I'm intrigued by your idea. In reading it, I wondered how it would work in a historic setting. As the civil war came to mind, I wondered whether your system would do well in treating John Brown? (I've got some detail about him http://www.mjyoung.net/law/jb.htm">on my site if you want some background.)

--M. J. Young

MJ wrote:

QuoteRod, I'm intrigued by your idea. In reading it, I wondered how it would work in a historic setting. As the civil war came to mind, I wondered whether your system would do well in treating John Brown?

Thanks, MJ!
I do think that this system (such as it is at this early stage), could work in other genres than SF. Elric & Stormbringer spring immediately to mind for an archetypal fantasy application.

For my part, I am concentrating on the SF application.

John Brown is a good historical test case for this premise. If we were to suppose a hypothetical "John Brown's War" campaign, I see it coming down two possible ultimate results/interpretations (based on the historical outcome):

A) Brown reaches 0 Humanity and undergoes a sort of "dark apotheosis" like I mentioned in my previous post, and his famous raid is a result of the final development of whatever "special abilities" he's deemed to have in this hypothetical game (perhaps evangelical righteous fury, combined with his devoted/fanatical sons and other followers). This "final development" is what pushes the Civilisation Rating of the campaign over the top into apocalypse-ville, in this case defined as the subsequent breakup of the union and the civil war that follows.
In this case, we're saying that Brown "succeeded" at fulfilling the premise. He hangs for his crimes, but the nation is changed forever in the aftermath of his rampage.

-or-

B) Browns disastrous raid is a result of him hitting 0 Humanity without his abilities being developed enough to reach the aforementioned "apotheosis", which results in his failure to make the raid into a rallying event for slaves and abolitionists, gets most of his followers killed, and sends him to the gallows. His actions have still taken a toll on the Civilisation Rating, but not enough to push it over the top (although he probably got very close to this goal, as we know from history that the civil war started not long after these events).

In one case, John Brown could be said to have "succeeded", and in another, to have "failed".

I'll start a new thread about this specific project in the Indie Game Design forum.

We'll preserve this thread for general discussion about Harlequin's original question. Sound good?

great food for thought,
Rod

PS: here's a link to the new thread in the Indie Game Design forum: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5022

Thanks for the redirect, Rod... I really like your core concept and will definitely be tracking it, but I agree also that it's verging off-topic somewhat (esp. in the specific instantiations rather than general analysis).

There's still definite meat in the core thought, though.  Because although I think the class of characters you're talking about are not the entirety of the Groundbreaker class - not all GBs are system-breakers - it's a rock-solid cardcarrying subset, for sure.  Tying that sort to the integrity of their success at their objectives (which in your case is the Civilization Rating, but could easily be generalized, if something other than the System is your primary opposition) and giving them a fairly clear-cut pass/fail criterion is really interesting.  Given that I'm already looking at using defined Objectives as a core mechanic, I may well come back to the Civilization Rating and its kin at some later date and abuse it wholeheartedly. :)

Which is not to say that the Civilization Rating thing is what has me most excited about your post.  The central idea of the Groundbreaker ushering in a new age, even if not universally applicable to all GBs, does do a very good job of demonstrating the importance of the GB's interaction with the world; more on that in a sec.

The Mystery Options I honestly like less well; having things be entirely unknown to the player is not the style of gaming I prefer.  However, I can see its validity as a technique, and if more restrained, could be very interesting.  A couple of games do allow you to answer "up to the GM" to one or several of the blanks on the character sheet, and that's close to the exercise of the same option.  (Generally it's done through a poorly-implemented Amnesia disadvantage, but hey, we knew there was room for improvement.)  The problem I envision with it is that I can see it increasing artistic/aesthetic differences rapidly... if I opt for a Mystery Option with my hardnosed detective, and get "born sorceror" when I was expecting something like a love affair or MacGuffin, I may find my character losing coherence in my eyes. The GM merely thought he was giving me something cool to supplement a (to him) somewhat vanilla character concept, but did not properly realize how important that simplicity and earthiness was to my vision of the character.  Oops.  There are ways to rein it in, but I think it probably better to avoid the initial situation.

I think, though I couldn't have phrased it before, that Rod's phrasing gives me the werewithal to state the only thing I didn't like about Fang's comments (and suggestions)... that, although I agree that all characters should have an element of the heretofore unknown, there's a hidden requirement of the "pure" Groundbreaker type, independent of efficacy, which makes 'spotlight hog' issues nontrivial.  The hidden requirement is in the form of the character's interaction with the narrative... because the novel element of the groundbreaker comes across as trivial, if it does not emerge as absolutely central to at least some respectable proportion of stories told.  Rod's established type has this in strongest form, and thus he will necessarily suffer the spotlight issue in strongest form... because really, only one Groundbreaker or a single distributed-Groundbreaker can participate to the extent Rod is discussing, with the destruction of the System.  This is not going to be resolved with the ordinary level of spotlight-hog regulation standard to other forms, it will need something stronger and more organic.

That being said, I do want to sideline for a moment and introduce the concept of a distributed Groundbreaker to our concept-space here.  Not all GBs are single characters.  In the Caves of Steel example, it's the partnership which is itself groundbreaking.  Ditto for the character with the whispering AI in his ear... it's quite feasible to do both intelligences in the relationship as player characters, at which point they share the GB status between them.  In most such situations, what's truly novel is in fact the unique relationship itself - possibly in addition to the unique nature of one or both (or all) participants, but that's not required.

This form of the GB concept has clear advantages and disadvantages in the metagame environment.  The advantage - a strong one - is that it gets more players involved in the groundbreaking, allowing it to define the campaign more strongly without cutting anyone out.  The disadvantage is that it also shares out the "cool factor," somewhat reducing the individual thrill.  (Groundbreaker may well be tied into a form of ego play, alas, which means that part of those cool points come at the cost of ego gaming.  If this is balanced, it's not necessarily unhealthy, but it's certainly a point to watch and may be a better way to phrase it than "spotlight hog" alone - that being merely a symptom.  Let's leave the general advantages and disadvantages of ego-driven play for somewhere else, and merely treat how to reduce the interaction between GB status and unhealthy ego play, here.  I don't think they're necessarily hard-linked.)

Introducing that concept is taxonomy alone... it doesn't get us anywhere, it just puts tools on the table.  And I'm running out of room in this post and my workday, so the post I'd been planning (my own ideas on how to enable and promote GB characters) will have to wait.  Sorry to be a tease... :)

This may not be surprising but I too have been thinking a bit about the whole idea of Character Empowerment. I was at first disturbed by the fact that I may not be empowering my characters I think and design as a GM because well I mostly GM, hard to find people willing to GM in my area.

Borrowing some from Clausewitz, the groundbreaker character or characters COULD be thought of as the Center of Gravity of the current universe. Yes clearly in any game they are the Protagonists, but but often small Quarks in a rather large Molecule.  They often do not exert enough tremendous force in their gaming world.

So instead of treating them like just more stars in a rather large universe, perhaps we could look upon Characters as a sudden Singularity that has burst upon the scene.  Suddenly, regardless of their true power level, the universe brushes them with great victory and tragedy, they find themselves at the center of events and can influence the world beyond the mechanical ability of just their stats. How often do we see low power or beginning characters make a real impact on their world?  Though we know in real life those of supposedly small importance CAN make a huge difference.

Of course are they as a group this singularity or does each individual influence things in a noticably different way? I would think a combination of both would be most common.

Sean
ADGBoss