Access to the inner world of characters

[Johannes]

The inner world (knowledge, desires, fears, moral etc.) of characters plays crucial role in most litterature. In litterature the reader is often given access to these inner worlds by some stylistic means like omnicient narration or inner focalization of a person or stream of conciousness. Even if the inner world of the characters in not explicitly represented in the text we assume they have one and make sense of the fictional events on the grounds of these assumtions. Sometimes a story is like a puzzle where we try to understand why a character did something.

In RPGs the access to the inner world of characters is usually quite limited. Normally players have access only to the inner world of their own PCs and the GM only to the inner workings of the NPCs. Because reception and production are interconnected in RPGs (a player is both an author and an audience member), this usually means that only players are allowed to determine the inner workings of their PCs and only GMs have the power over the inner worlds of the NPCs. Players even can become very territorial if somebody else is trying to determine the inner world of their character(s). There are of course significant objections to this rule like the mechanical handling of fear and panic or personality mechanics or social skills which can override the power of the player but the scope of these mechanics is usually limited.

I'm interested in hearing how has the usual, stereotypical pattern been broken in your games and how did the group react. I'm interested both in the reception aspect and the production aspect of this. I'm interested both in mechanics and informal cases. It would also be interesting to speculate about the significanse of this inner world convention, in the case of the plot for example.

[Emily Care]

Hello Johannes,

Interesting topic.  I've not been in a game where there were specific mechanics addressing the internal world of a character, but I did act on sharing it a bit in a fairly free-form (rules light) campaign in which I took part.  

Every so often, when inspired, I would do a monologue about what my character was thinking/feeling.  This character was the newbie to the setting (Ars Magica covenant) and was tangled up in a murder mystery and various other plotlines, so the internal musings may have functioned similarly to a narrator's reflections in mystery fiction. The other players didn't seem to mind. I didn't hog spotlight time or anything. Just took a moment here and there. But I don't necessarily remember anyone else doing the same thing.  

I actually only remember it because another player comment how I did that with this character, but never did it with my other main character: who happened to be an insane, telepathic former-serial killer.  :) Ain't gaming grand.

Hope that is of some assistance.

Regards,
Emily Care

[Mike Holmes]

Matt Snyder has been working on a game called Dreamspires which is, essentially, nothing but inner world issues. The whole thing seems to be a symbolic representation of the character's subconscious issues.

Now if Matt would only get to finishing it...

:-)

Also, the InSpectres "confessional" mechanic comes to mind as giving us insights in exactly the same manner that reality TV shows do.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd also call attention to the games which set characters' own attributes in opposition with one another, as in some applications of Sorcerer, and very definitely in Le Mon Mouri.

Best,
Ron

[Bankuei]

I'd also like to point out that aside from literature, cinema and television are excellent media to look at in terms of showing "inner" issues without necessarily going into an internal monologue.

Most notably, in both media, characters are very vocal about how they feel, as well as very expressive.  In terms of games, this is often skipped past for several reasons:

-Conflict and character are usually authored by the same person.  In roleplaying, they are often handled by different folks.  Conflict serves as an excellent way of defining a character's inner motivations(that "meaningful choice, if you will).

-Control over narrating how things go down is usually where important details that give away attitude, feeling, etc. are usually only in the hands of the GM.

-Scene framing solo scenes to let that kind of stuff play out is also usually solely in the hands of the GM far too often.

I think between these 3 issues, is the reason so many folks choose to simply hand narration control over to players, to solve the 3 simultaneously with minimal effort.  The ability to define conflict, narrate the imaginary "cinematography" of it, and the ability to set up scenes where expression can play out, are all key towards giving more detail than the classic marvel comics, "Oh I hate you Fire-guy!  You killed my family, blah,blah,blah!"

Chris

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I'd also like to point out that aside from literature, cinema and television are excellent media to look at in terms of showing "inner" issues without necessarily going into an internal monologue.

I'm just going to note an example here:

In Jaws when the chief is watching the beach, all worried that the shark might attack someone and suddenly the Kitner boy screams. They did a camera trick I believe is called a stretch where the background seemed to get further away while zooming in on Brody at the same time. This combined with the musical hit visually communicated that sinking feeling the character suddenly felt at that moment.

I mention it for two reasons.

When I called my brother and told him I had found a lump, we both flashed on that same scene from Jaws because it mirror what we both felt at that moment.

The camera trick was a method of comminucating the inner emotion of the character and it did so in a manner particular to the medium of film. It wouldn't work in Radio or print, for example. Is there a method for communicating inner emotions like this that are particular to the medium of RPGs?

[Bankuei]

I know what camera trick you're speaking of, but unless you're with a bunch of cinema heads, its probably not going to fly well as a description in game.  My recommendation is to stick to expression through character.

Some examples:

Exampleman (Sharp intake of breath) body goes lax, arms fall at side, object is dropped....(In order to do this, the player's body language can communicate a lot of the expression)

"Zoom in close on Exampleman's face!" (player's face is a look of utter shock)

Player closes eyes, head curls down into hands

A lot of emotional expression is best down by the player, and conveyed as the character.  I'm not one of those folks who advocates jumping around and screaming as a roleplayer, but simple facial expressions and body expression can give so much more non-verbal communication.  A lot of the non-verbal communication gets used as internal monologue in literature, turns into verbal communication in comics, but theatre, tv, and cinema it stays what it is: visual.

Chris

[Emily Care]

The camera trick was a method of communicating the inner emotion of the character and it did so in a manner particular to the medium of film.

That is an expressionistic technique.  This approach was used  to great effect in early 20th century German film, and then in Film Noir. (Think looming dark shadow in an alleyway) The visual images reflect and heighten the emotions elicited by the plot in the viewers.  

I don't advocate trying to use the same exact techniques in roleplaying, but there are visual aspects to rpg. Description, or color, for example. In addition to having players express emotions through their characters, one might use the world/setting etc to reflect the internal experience of the characters as is done in film.  John LaViolette's idea for Court of 9 Chambers for players to describe descriptive elements comes to mind.  

Color is often said to express tone in roleplaying, that's what it's ideal for.  Though it could also come off as contrived or trite. Like the typical thing in films for it to rain when a character is sad (traditional pathetic fallacy).   The setting/matter of the game would have to be suited to it.

But that's sort of outside-in if it's introduced by gm.  Perhaps players could be encouraged to introduce elements related to their internal experience.  

--Em Care

[M. J. Young]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Wraith: The Oblivion. I haven't played it, but Seth (Ben-Ezra) raves about it at times. In many of the World of Darkness games there are mechanics attempting to drive the inner conflict of the characters, but in Wraith this reaches the level that another player at the table plays that aspect of the character's personality which is in conflict with his preferred desires. I don't know more about it than that, but it sounds like a fascinating experiment.

The closest I've gotten is the letters and journals approach. That is, when the game session is over, players are encouraged to write in-character "records" of the experience in a variety of media appropriate to their characters. I've done reports to a liege, personal journals, letters to a distant sister, and similar writings myself. At the beginning of the next session these are read aloud. It helps bring all the players to the same page of the story, as it were, as it recalls what happened "in our last episode", from the characters' perspectives. (It has a lot of other benefits. It helps players flesh out characters, as they have to think in character between games to write from the character's perspective; it cues the referee on what players are enjoying, because those are the things that will wind up reported, in general. It also encourages creativity, particularly if different characters in the party see events from peculiar perspectives, such as the fighter who thinks he carries the day and the wizard who thinks the fighter is all bluster.) Within the pages of these journals, players often express character feelings and perceptions, worries and tensions, sometimes creating fragments of personal history and expanding who the character is, which might not have been apparent in play--but once so expressed can be played upon during play. I remember once writing a journal entry in which I told how the equivalent of my character's high school girlfriend was killed in a sports exhibition accident, and in which I mentioned two other friends of ours who also were involved in such exhibitions. It was not long after that that my character heard that one of those friends was staying in a very strange place a mere two to three days away from the city in which he was staying, and began wondering about whether to try to reestablish old connections. So it does work, that is, it can enhance and expand role playing by revealing inner character thoughts and feelings even in so limited a context which later become important to play generally.

As to the camera example, what would be wrong with

As you scan the water, suddenly your eyes fall upon a boy, a familiar boy, clearly in trouble. For a moment, the rest of the world fades from view, and all you see is this child, desperately in need of aid that you are not sure you can render.

I think that has the same effect in second person description as that stretch shot has in film (although I've never seen Jaws).

--M. J. Young

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I know what camera trick you're speaking of, but unless you're with a bunch of cinema heads, its probably not going to fly well as a description in game.  

I wasn't suggesting using camera movement direction in an RPG to try to get the same effect but to illustrate how one medium has come to a point where the particulars of that medium are being used to reinforce theme/emotion/whatever to enhace said medium. If you watch an older movie, like say the original Miracle on 34th Street, it almost looks like they just used the same set-ups and staging of a stage production to shoot it. This is one of the reasons why Citizen Kane is held in such high regard. It doesn't look like that. It made use of the camera, the fact that this was going to be on film and manipulated the inages that were being recorded.

I can see RPGs as going through a similar period at some point, if it hasn't already, where the particulars or quirks of the medium are manipulated for effect in a way that is unique to the medium.

[Johannes]

Hi,

Interesting things have emerged. However I'd like to point on to a artificial but usefull distiction between direct access and indirect access. They are not actually separate categories but opposing poles in a continuum. Here's my definitions:

Direct access: audience (the players) can trust the information they recieve - given that the narrator is reliable (not lying or mistaken). The information is absolute in a sense. Inner monologue falls pretty much into this group. I'd also put the camera example towards this end. Also "My guy is pissed of." phrases during the game fall into this.

Indirect access: audience can trust the information they recieve to the extent that their own interpretations of it are right. Reasoning the emotions of character from its behavior falls into this.

The in-game journals and such fall somewhere between.

The idea of mediums representing inner worlds in their own unique ways is interesting but I'm having trouble coming up with RPG examples. Perhaps the mechanical representation  of personality and emotion (see my opening post) is such a thing. I personally usually find these mechanics just annoying.

I think that there are at least two more issues that hinder the development of inner world representation in RPGs.

First, the players have unlimited access to their own characters. Because the players already know the inner world of their characters they don't bother with its representation. It's enough that it affects the behavior of the character.

Second, the direct representation of inner world gives the player information that the characters don't have (unless they are telepaths :-). This is against the common ideal that players as audience should be limited to the PoV of their characters which is thought to simulate reality well. Giving direct access brakes the illusion of real life.

EDIT: I forgot to write that I think that indirect access is well developped in RPGs but direct access is not. My original interest was with direct access but all insights on any access are wellcome.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

The idea of mediums representing inner worlds in their own unique ways is interesting but I'm having trouble coming up with RPG examples.

I also.

Perhaps there is no unique feature to RPGs but instead RPG is a unique collection or pre-existing features? Film is unique because of a technological development-- the motion picture camera. RPGs have not such development.

I think that there are at least two more issues that hinder the development of inner world representation in RPGs.

First, the players have unlimited access to their own characters. Because the players already know the inner world of their characters they don't bother with its representation. It's enough that it affects the behavior of the character.

Second, the direct representation of inner world gives the player information that the characters don't have (unless they are telepaths :-). This is against the common ideal that players as audience should be limited to the PoV of their characters which is thought to simulate reality well. Giving direct access brakes the illusion of real life.

And there are already games that break this assumption of avitarism in RPGs. Games like Universalis, and I suspect others are out there.

[Bankuei]

I highly suspect that traditional oral history/storytelling probably has a good handle on the usage of oral description and communications that we're looking for.  The problem is, we, as a written language culture, have moved away from the intimate familiarity in those tools.

Second, our visual culture is no longer based off of "real time" observables.  Mentally, we have a whole new visual language of cuts, zooms, slow mo, sped up action, spin around matrix images, etc.  Instead of comparing things to nature, we compare to movies, videos, tv shows, videogames etc.  This area still has yet to define a common language(for the non-cinematographers, anyway).

While I doubt narration-wise("describing what happens") is much different than oral storytelling, I do know that our communal language of describing how it happens has certainly changed.

Chris

[clehrich]

If your game foregrounds internal conflict issues (e.g. Sorcerer, apparently Wraith, etc.), one way to encourage internal narrative focus would be to stress the division between inside and outside.  Suppose, for example, that you had a Sorcerer campaign in which all the PCs are apparently very stereotypical: pulp heroes, for example, or something of the kind.  So upon meeting another sorcerer, you immediately know what he's supposed to be like.  The thing is, as the game goes on you begin to discover that this guy does not always act as he should -- because of his demon(s).  So part of the object of character interaction is to find out what's going on behind the mask.

This is a central design concept for my game Shadows in the Fog: every character has a mask, and pretty much tries to maintain the mask.  As the other characters get to know him better, though, they begin to learn about what's behind the mask, and why he keeps it hidden.

[Ian Charvill]

Perhaps there is no unique feature to RPGs but instead RPG is a unique collection or pre-existing features? Film is unique because of a technological development-- the motion picture camera. RPGs have not such development.

Roleplaying games, uniquely(?) among story-telling media, do use dice and I can think of at least two games that do use dice to reflect the inner world of the characters.

Unknown Armies provides a character with an Obsession, a Fear Stimulus and a Rage Stimulus, all of which can be used to modify dice rolls.  The inner world of the character directly modifies the mechanics of the game system.

Similarly, Riddle of Steel's Spiritual Attributes allow the inner passions of a character to affect the size of that character's dice pool.

I would be surprised if there weren't a number of other games that do similar things.