I listened to my friend's game last night

[Dr. Velocity]

I've been on both sides of this fence and can also give my own observations, but like most other people, can't definitely say whats right or wrong.

My gaming group, which is not currently in form, but may be again, consisted of a couple of my friends and myself, and mostly my cousins, so ages ranged from around 30 down to around 15, and my aunt played for one campaign, as "The Baroness". My friend, 30+, who ran the game, enjoys role-playing as a psychological observation of the players and their developments and how they approach things, so he is very liberal with activities and character freedom, in the interest of individual projects within the game.

The problem has been, most of the players like role-playing/roll-playing, doing exciting stuff, but don't have the attention span or interest or creativity to really work on things like backgrounds, coming up with motivations, character-specific goals, interesting quirks, etc. They'd like them but they're just basically non-issues to most of the players.

Role-playing is passing a night (or series of them) with a group of your friends, having fun, cooperating in some fashion, even if its cooperating with them to have an orderly way to fight each other - so motivation sheets and background info questionnaires, etc. would meet stony gazes from my group, some would try even though they really had no clue what to do or why they were doing it, others would register unmistakable and harsh resentment for that sort of 'domination' by the referee.

The thing is, the system we use is Warhammer FRP, so its not like theres a whole lot to it, and no big deal is ever made out of perfect bookkeeping, and usually players would be rewarded for interesting attempts to solve problems, whether they had a skill to do it with or not. Well it ended up with me having to change characters because my Good Halfling Priest would soon be in danger by the other players, most of whom became Chaos God initiates of Khorne, Nurgle or Slaanesh, or went the opposite and became Paladins or Nobles of Law - my new character I went with was an evil necromancer who dressed garishly to throw off suspicion.

It worked and was fun, but even during all the plotting and scheming against each other, you could see a visible unwillingness or inability in some of them to actually put effort into character depth; this is going to sound bad, but its like they simply were not SMART enough to actually use their imagination in an external way to come up with an idea for how they want their character to be. Now, that wasn't the case of couse but thats what it seemed like, and I myself have trouble PLAYING, and doing bookkeeping and putting clues together, but LOVE making characters and backgrounds and motivations.

I ran WFRP a few times and quite honestly, my friend basically 'ruined' the players for me, they all wanted to run off, set up their own bases, gain followers and plot and gain power and prestige, basically independent of the others - this was a difficult tendancy to come back from, and at the same time I had to also bring them back from wanting to play genocidal miscreants - basically none of them have the ability to play a 'good' character one night and an abomination the next - they get in a mindset and their next fifteen characters will have carbon markings on them from being copied off that first one. Even the non-evil ones seem to have this obsession for a certain theme and doesn't care much for the in-between; in fact, even the Paladin, who liked Law and killing Chaos, chafed against the rules, and when his buttons were pushed enough, he killed one of the other unarmed player-characters on the spot, in cold-blood, after both the referee and myself pointed out all the effects this would have.

Dysfunctional could definitely fit this group, though it ran for almost two years, once a week, and I'd say everyone had a good time and had fun about 90% of the time, so... basically, don't feel alone.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Good post, Dr. V. What do you think of these tiny conceptual tweaks?

1. "Smart" isn't really the issue so much as one of priority. You're talking about the relative importance of Exploration (and its applications, GNS) - to these players, it's pretty small. The hanging-out and so forth are the priority, so "what happens" can be minimally intense, and that's that.

2. In groups that I've seen matching your description, when a player does feel strongly about what his or her character does, that it can be traced directly to a social interaction between the real people that probably occurred right in that session or just before. Does that sound like it fits?

Best,
Ron

[Dr. Velocity]

I have to agree - meta-game speaking (I guess I use these phrases correctly, I read them here and in other forums but a lot of them are just a bit too technical for me to adopt them), the players want to have fun and enjoy the game, and for most, its really only a slightly evolved version of 'kill the monsters and take their stuff', though everyone does enjoy *some* actualy role-playing opportunities here and there - just not frequently. While it doesn't bother me that they dont' like to role-play for role-playing's sake (I don't like to do interaction segments as I also consider the game should be 'not a lot of work' and having to be on the ball to talk to NPCs can be taxing), I do wish they would be more interested in the creative and cooperative aspect, but, they do what they enjoy and overall, the game stays interesting and fun so I guess thats what really counts, and it really WAS interesting to watch how the players would react, both to game obstacles and each other's actions - you could see the personal conflicts, given illusory form as in-character rivalries, which, after some more than heated episodes, eventually resolved themselves, in and out of game.

Secondly, following that up, yes, a lot of the strong convictions held by the players relate either to their own personal player convictions (as would be expected) and/or experiences they are currently undergoing, such as being frustrated at work, domestic trouble, teen rebellion, etc.

The high-level Elven Paladin-Mage (the referee was VERY liberal) in my example who killed the other PC is a friend of mine, a bit older than me, so in his mid 30's. The PC was a low-level iniatiate with no spells, played by my 16 year old cousin, whose previous character gained infamy (and not a small amount of player concern) for being able to play about the most evil, ruthless, brutal, blood-thirsty murderer we had ever seen depicted, even in movies or books. Attempting to play a neutral character now though, the PC decided that, upon finding a giant well of warm, bubbling blood in a cavernous crypt in a Necromancer's lair, the natural thing to do was to drink it. Well, while this was of course stupid and would lead to no good, the Paladin PC warned him, since it was obviously tainted with Chaos, he would have no choice but to kill the initiate immediately if he did that.

From this, you could tell the Paladin player was not only reacting to the current situation but also the other player's previous minsanthrope (who almost killed the Paladin). Since then, we have all played together, and while the initiate player has changed his style and worked on more unusual, creative characters (FINALLY!), he consistently butts heads with the Paladin player, regardless of game system or worlds or characters, even though, surprisingly, the players themselves actually get along quite well and good-naturedly with almost no hint at all of rivalry in anything. The things of interest are the 16 year old going through his rebellious teen, moving into adulthood phase, the the Paladin player, having a wife and two well-cared for children and being a very hard worker to provide for his family - my friend suggested the "Dad" archetype, for lack of a better word, was very obvious in the conflict between the two. My aunt (in her 40s, creative but not an experience role-player), who played the Baroness, a logical, law-minded character, was most interested in order and keeping things running smoothly and everyone cooperating and having the same goal, which of course neither the Paladin nor the "bad" characters were comfortable with, though the Paladin sided with her most times by default because they were closer to being allied than any of the other players. She, or her character, rather, being the real mother of a lot of the other players, including the miscreant PC, seemed exceptionally irritating, in her "Mom" role, even in-game, I suppose making the young players feel like even in a fantasy hobby, they could not feel they were independent and make their own decisions.

It was a tremendously revealing campaign, and while we've played many others since then, that was the first and the one that everyone will always remember, as there were so many strange and creative events, mostly, I think, due to the person-to-person reactions to each other, more than to anything the referee came up with.

[Jason Lee]

Interesting. There is a plot involving a search for some artifact or other, yaddah, yaddah. I don't believe there is a time limit, but there was in the last one (see when the GM says threads) The whole Welcome to my world idea is precisely it. My hat goes off to you for showing the relationship between two things I thought were unrelated, the sheet and the chimney thing. It also explains the morality thing as well. It is his story. Yet the players supposedly control the protagonists of his story. Therefore, it is the Impossible Thing in action. Woo-hoo. Thanks.

Hmmm...so it is.  Insightful.

I think this is why you're linking up the questionnaire to the chimney example.  Out of context, the chimney thing could mean nothing at all; from the fact that you, a fly on the wall in effect, pick it up as a disturbingly consistent detail suggests to me that this is how the whole game runs.  It sounds like when the players said, "Is there a chimney?" they were really saying, "I'm guessing that in your vision a chimney wouldn't be out of place; do I see things right or am I still just flailing?"  So you've got an RPG as weird 20 Questions.

The bit about 20 questions is much better wording than I could accomplish (which is what I meant by 'making the players struggle through the details' - making them ask the 20 questions).  I think the whole Impossible Thing falls apart if you quit doing this.  Making the players find the right answer is just slow railroading (which I think is more frustrating than railroading at regular speed).

But, I understand you aren't actually trying to fix the game.