Holy 'That's what PCs are' Batman

[Marco]

Hey Val,

Fortunately yer not dead yet :)

When I see a post that says something like:

"PC's fufill a different role than protagonists." I go "no they don't." Now, there's context and examples and it's all fine points right? I don't think so.

[aside]
It may be part of the bulletin-board medium. People leave out IMO, IME, and the words can or may all the time. If he'd sayd "PC's may fufill a different role than protagonists." I'd have gone yeah--they can. Sure. And if you play with a strong meta-plot and make it central to the important-action of the game that's a risk you run. When you say "Meta-plot does this." I go "no, meta-plot doesn't--you do." Dig that? WoD doesn't do that--the gamers do or don't.
[/aside]

I think a lot of folks have the belief/experience that in non-narrativist gaming the PC's aren't "protagonists" and that the PC's don't have any real effect on the game world. I think that's embedded into a good deal of the discussion here.

I might be wrong--it *might* all be the specific vaguries of context--but I don't think so (Example: in The Imp Thing posts, while Mike agrees with me that it's impossible only in a Narrativist context, he doesn't correct new posters who say "my players believe in the impossible thing" --or even agree with me that the term is unclear--when the poster clearly isn't speaking at all about Narrativist play--more or less everyone just kind of nods.)

Felix's thesis is very interesting and quite, I think, worthy of examination. "Robin was designed as a PC," he says. He's got a point--but I think it's a point that hinges on that misconception (the same engine that drives The Impossible Thing).

Let's look at another example: Lord of The Rings. Who're the PC(s)?

All of them? Well, that's an easy answer--but if we assume both Batman and Robin are both PC's then we're avoidng the thesis altogether.

If Frodo and Sam are the PC's (the ones who actually make a difference) and (in several opinions) the major vehicles through which the stories are told, then we see a case where the PC's are essentially pointed in a direction and fired like a catapult. They get captured, buffetted, betrayed by golumn, etc. They don't make any major *decisions* outside of that to keep going and carry the ring in the first place. Because they're so weak, they're highly "deprotagonized" (in the sense of disempowered) by the world (this is a literal reading of the story). Not a good model for a game.

If we assume Aragorn and company, we have the ultra-bad-asses whose sound and fury amounts to nothing (at most a holding action to buy more time and maybe take some heat off of Frodo and Sam). Hey, that might be the answer--they're the standard RPG PC's.

Except for the problem that the stories *are* told from the standpoint of the hobbits. There's just not a whole lot of question with the way the books are structured (hobbit in war goes unconscious? Cut secene to after the battle).

In short the comparison of literary structure, identification with character, and genre-emulation break down in the transform to RPGs. RPG's are complex beasts and the tools for analyzing them are still primitive (the GM power-dial is a good one--I'd like to see some models that account for shifts during play. If the GM allows a major change at one mode and disallows it (through illusionist technique at another) and then hands the PC's directoral power in the next installment, would there be a way to categorize the game as a whole?). But essentially, I think the metaphor is badly broke.

Moreover, I think there is a "standard mode" out there and it has some general rules that are stated and mostly agreed upoin in common language:

Do the PC's do make a difference in traditional play? Ask around on RPG.net: "in standard play, are the PC's generally supposed to be the ones taking the actions that make the difference in the story?" The answer, I believe, will be yes (the more complex posters may address meta-plot concerns. Narrativist gamers may say "no," but if you get a baseline and phrase the question in a general fashion, I'm pretty sure most gamers will agree that yes, their character's actions do get to make a difference in the plot.)

(if you feel the urge to argue that even though the answer is 'yes' that's not what happens in practice, then you have hit the foundation of why I post the way I do).

Check this out:

Blowing out these walls can be a choice on the parts of the group(Narrativist D&D), or can be built into the system itself(octaNe, Trollbabe, Dust Devils).

Perhaps you read: "hey, Narrativism is a way of dispensing with this along with many others." I don't. I think it's a common misconception that Narrativist play is the only way of dispensing with If-Then Walls, protagonizing players, and avoiding The Impossible Thing (or some combination of the three).

No? One test to see if that attitude was prevalent would be to look at someone who is promoting their brand of protagonized play and see if (even jokingly) another poster was to say "hey--I think you've been playing Narrativist."

-Marco

[Jason Lee]

Perhaps you read: "hey, Narrativism is a way of dispensing with this along with many others." I don't. I think it's a common misconception that Narrativist play is the only way of dispensing with If-Then Walls, protagonizing players, and avoiding The Impossible Thing (or some combination of the three).

Narrativism has a very narrow definition - you must be addressing and Ergian Premise.  In the absence of a thematic question like 'what would you do for love?' you can definately be left with something more Simmy like 'what would my character do if she was in love?'.

I don't think the belief here is that Nar is the only way to have protagonizing play (if so, I have serious objections...but I doubt that's the case).  I don't think that was even meant to be implied.  Sure, maybe Nar can be said to have the overt goal of protagonized play...but that's not the same thing as saying it's all that does.  (A square is a rombus, but a rombus isn't necessarily a square.)

However, this is all off-center from the topic - which is about those forms of play that are not protagonized.  And I don't think there is some magical GNS boundry that defines these games.

[Bankuei]

Hi Marco,

I believe that playing without those walls can be done in all GNS styles, sorry for not making this clear.  I brought up the examples I did, simply to reference playing without walls using games with and without rules to enforce that.  I'd definitely be interested in folks pointing out Sim and Gamist designs that have specific mechanics that prevent if-then walls.

I think the big issue is that we have a serious disjunct between these two things:

-The players are supposed to be in full control of their characters(minus personality mechanics, etc.), hence, protagonists
-The game can only work if it falls within those preset if-then walls

The first idea is usually expressed within many games, explicitly.  The second part cannot work with the first without either the player's consent and/or input.

Consider the concerns voiced about players ruining a game with "too much power"...Is it too much power to decide to "turn down the offer at the tavern, cause the job sounds stupid/boring/too dangerous/etc."?  See, the problem is that there isn't an acknowledgement of "loaning" power.  Players are "loaned" power and then have it taken away, without being informed.  

"You can do whatever you want, now you have to pick from 2 choices, now you don't get a choice!"

Aside from a few games, there's no explicit rules telling folks when or how this thing happens.  GMs don't say nothing, suddenly its the stick and carrot, and you don't know why.  You don't know what your options are, or if you'll get any consequences from it.  You're being punished for not following a plan you aren't told about.

This is highly dysfunctional behavior.  Think about it if it was a relationship, "I'm mad at you for something I won't tell you about, so I'll control/punish you through unrelated things".  Instead of recognizing the two ideas don't mix well, and just choosing one or the other, we have tons of ways to "better hide" what's going on.

I've played both with and without the walls, and I think both work great when the group is on the same page.  I think when it doesn't get talked about, when folks "just assume" is where massive amounts of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and just plain problems pop up.  Usually it goes to one extreme or another.  Felix's D&D story is one example of the disjunction, although the typical cases of railroading is the other usual example.

Does that clarify my stance for you?

Chris

[M. J. Young]

Felix, if I'm reading you right, you're essentially saying that in games that are based on some established corpus, such as a story or a television show or a movie or other series, the players have no control over the world, and so don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

What I'm not certain is whether you're saying this is how it usually happens, or you're saying this is inevitable with this type of material. I can't say much to the former, as I don't play in a lot of that type of game created by someone else; but on the latter, I would argue that there are ways to use this material which protagonize players significantly.

I run a lot of pre-existing material in Multiverser play. I probably use a lot of different approaches to it, but I'd point out that there are two ways of bringing a player character into such a world, and both can be made to work quite well:[list=1][*]What if my character was in this world also?[*]What if my character was in this world instead?[/list:o]
When I run Sherwood Forest, for example, all the major characters are already there--Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, the Shire Reeve of Nottingham, Prince John, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, Richard the Lion-hearted--each in his place. Then I put the player character in Sherwood Forest and have him encounter the Merry Men. What he does from that is entirely in his hands. I had a guy join the Merry Men; I had another guy travel to Nottingham and get a job working for the Shire Reeve in an effort to find out the other side's position and movements. One character ignored both, built a hospital, and started caring for the poor. It's within the power of the player character to rescue King Richard, to kill Prince John, or to do whatever he wants. This is an also situation. If he wants, he can become one of the Merry Men and learn to use the bow and the quarterstaff and just be involved in the robbing from the rich and giving to the poor stuff. He can have exactly as much power as he wants.

However, if I go with a movie script, or with most books and stories, I run them as instead scenarios. In The Last Starfighter, I'll probably remove Alex Rogan if I can get the player to take the hook. In Prisoner of Zenda, Rudolf Rassendil is replaced with the player character, who is now the image of the king and hooked into replacing him when things start going wrong. I've pulled Michael Corbin out of If Looks Could Kill, Fortunato out of Cask of Amontilado, even Blake out of Blake's 7, and replaced them all with player characters. It then becomes their prerogative to do what they would have done in those situations, to work out whether they've got a better solution to the problem than the people who did it in "that other world".

This doesn't mean they're railroaded into doing that. Not so long ago I ran several players independently in parallel through the Kevin Costner film version of The Postman. One of them recognized the danger of the Holnist army, and struck out east toward DC, picking up a few people along the way and planning to try to rebuild America when he got there. One began a one-man guerilla campaign against the Holnists and General Bethlehem in particular, styling himself "the Ghost" and harrassing them until the men were so skittish he was able to walk into their camp, enter Bethlehem's cabin, and shoot him in his sleep unopposed, and then announce that he was taking over and rebuilding democracy. A third stood up to Bethlehem in one of the villages, and was immediately conscripted and put to work. Using such skills has he had, he began secretly running a subversive underground movement until finally he got the army to rebel against the leadership and overthrow itself from the inside. Thus when you do replacement, the question becomes, what would you do if you were in this situation?

I don't think I'm unique in this. I gather that the Buffy TV RPG does something very similar (I've not seen it). One of the players gets to be the slayer, and the others get to be the slayers friends and support people (the Scooby Gang). The core of the world is in place; the concept of what the slayer is has not been altered. But the players get to decide how things are going to happen. This seems to me to be the way to take an existing product and protagonize the players within it: give them the identities of heroes within the world, and let them shape the outcomes their ways. You can still use the seeds of most of the episodes, as long as you remember that these seeds will grow into a story that is as much defined by the player choices as by the antagonists and the world.

That suggests it can be done and it is being done. Sure, there are plenty of games that don't do it well at all, that are so locked into their heroes and their stories that they miss the point of play; but there are ways around it that are being used.

Aside to Chris--your comment about how play runs in many games is interesting. Have you seen the thread about whether Module Play equals Participationism? (Note: in the middle of that thread, "Module Play" is renamed "Trailblazing".) I think your comments might connect to that.

--M. J. Young

[Bruce Baugh]

Thanks, Mike, that was just the distinction I was thinking about.

If I were running a Star Wars game, I would likely either set it somewhere far away so that there's room for the PCs to be as heroic and important as the heroes of the original trilogy, or replace Luke, Han, Leia, et al with the PCs. The Buffy game does take a similar strategy: one of the PCs is the Slayer, by default instead of Buffy, though it's possible and supported to have a Hellmouth elsewhere, a game set before or after Buffy present, and so on. (It's also the most successful game I know of with significant disparities in PC power level. It helps that the White Hats get distinctive cool stuff of their own, of course.) The Hellboy RPG makes provision for normal people and for highly weird unique characters who can work with the existing cast of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense or instead of them. If memory serves, James Bond 007 had the similar setup, where you could play James or someone else in the 00 section.

In each of these cases, the goal is to capture the setting and the tone of stories taking place in it without necessarily duplicating particular published stories. But there are tropes of event, character, description and the like that fans will be looking for, and good games adapting existing material capture them.

[Bruce Baugh]

Er?

I did mean M.J. Young, but I can't see anything from me or from earlier posters that warrants this response.

[Le Joueur]

You've got no disagreement with me on the fact that the Robin character was there for young readers to identify with, respond to, and project into.  I think its a little weak to call 'him' a player character.  Role-playing games don't have any difficulty getting their players to identify with their characters (no matter how Batman, Luke, or Indie they are).  Thus I don't believe they need to use the same kind of engagement tools and tricks.

Besides, I think there are clear ways to put the players into positions like Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo.  Why, if I were going to run Star Wars....

Fang Langford

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Moderator stuff: I deleted a message earlier in this thread by Mike Holmes that was meant to be a private message, as requested by him.

[Felix]

There's been a lot of interesting stuff here.  I think any concerns I had about fitting new characters into an established work have been addressed. But there's another aspect to my Robin Theory; I'm not sure at this point if I'm repeating what I said in my first post or this hypothesis has been altered by the thread.  

In many stories (whatever the medium) there are protagonists and major characters I'll call pseudo-protagonists (is there a better phrase out there?). Often the pseudo-protagonists seem like protagonists, but don't quite fit into the story. Let me start with an extreme example, A Marx Brothers movie. Most characters in the film -- the main actresses, Zeppo/the love interest, the villains -- are expected to act like normal society folks of the time. Groucho, Harpo and Chico, on the other hand, don't have to obey those rules. They can act however they want and get away with it. (Villain insults the rich Margaret Dumont, he gets slapped;  Groucho insults her, she swoons). Zeppo, I would argue, is a pseudo-protagonist; he looks like a main character, but isn't obeying the same rules that the other three brothers do.

To take a subtler example, look at Star Wars: A New Hope. For most of the characters, morality is completely black and white. Good rebels, virtuous princesses, and good Jedi knights fight an evil empire, evil storm troopers and the Dark Side. Han Solo, on the other hand, doesn't fit this mold. He's good, but not 100 percent pure. He'll shoot before it's clear his life is in danger (or did before Lucas changed it); he asks for money before helping Obi Wan and Luke.  He's also a pseudo-protagonist.

Or look at Marco's example of LOTR above. I'm going to argue that the Hobbits are the real protagonists there and Aragorn et. al. are the psuedos.

When D&D came out, it clearly said "You play the psuedos. The real protagonists of the story can't effortlessly slaughter thousands, or survive unspeakable disasters, but you can."  It led to the problem that D&D couldn't even begin to model normal people.

In many RPGs, though by no means all, they set up rules for playing a pseudo, who, by my definition, doesn't quite belong in the world they're trying to model.

Several example of games have been given that try to get around this, such as Buffy.

(I have to cut this post short, since I've got to step away from the computer for a little while. Does this seem to have a point? Do I need to elaborate?)

Felix

[Bankuei]

Hi Felix,

I'm not sure I understand how you are using the term "protagonist".  

A protagonist is a character around whom a story revolves who makes decisions that affect the story in a major way.  This is irrelevant of their moral state or of any consequences that may befall them.  The investigator from Ninth Gate and Bugs Bunny are both equally protagonists.

Using your example, Han Solo is definitely a protagonist, because he chooses to come back at the end of movie to save Luke at the last minute.  He made a meaningful choice, regardless of the motives behind it.

Let me know if I'm off here, but I think you're confusing the idea of protagonist with the idea of "the good guy".  If I'm mistaken, please let me know.

If you mean by "playing a pseudo", a character who is outside of the norm, then I agree that most games do provide for that.  That generally is the nature of heroes, but doesn't take away from their protagonism in any fashion.

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Marco wrote,

I think it's a common misconception that Narrativist play is the only way of dispensing with If-Then Walls, protagonizing players, and avoiding The Impossible Thing (or some combination of the three).

My essay explicitly states the converse - that Narrativist play is only one of many successful means to generate successful "story" play. I'd cite Paul Elliott's original description of Illusionist play (re-assembling "what's going on" after each session of play) as the top contender.

Best,
Ron

[Felix]

I don't mean that the pseudos are outside the norm; they're outside the rules of the story itself, although if well done it's hard to realize it.  In Star Wars, everyone you meet is obviously good or obviously evil, and almost all actions are immediately identifiable as the right thing or the wrong thing; the fact Han sometimes has motives beyond doing what's right puts him apart from the rest of the world. Zeppo Marx may be a main character, but you don't laugh when he's on the screen. Robin looks like the typical Batman hero or villain, but he doesn't quite fit in; he doesn't use his own theme (no robinrangs, no robin cycles; he decided to become a masked guy only after discovering Batman's secrets, not of his own volition like the other major characters).

Can these people be protagonists in the sense that they're a major focus of the story? Yes. However, they don't quite fit into the framework of the story to begin with. As I said, it's often subtle. I might be imagining it in the case of Han Solo while trying too hard to make this point.

In a lot of RPGs, player characters are in that situation. Whoever made the world they're in -- George Lucas, the GM, a published setting -- has made characters that are designed for that world. PCs can seem to fit in, but ultimately they don't. I'm not talking about the way they can interact with the world and change the fate of it. I'm talking about the fact that they were created as a tool for players to interact with the world, not necessarily to fit in.

Example: Marco's LOTR example above. The focus of the story should be on Sam and Frodo, who I'm calling the protagonists. But in most systems, such as D&D, the character creation rules are designed to create the butt-kickers, "pseudos" who played a big role, but weren't the focus of the story theme-wise, and seem to follow different rules than the others.

I'm not sure I'm expressing my point or not. Is this clearer?

Felix

[Emily Care]

Hello all,

Interesting questions, Felix. Thanks for sharing your insight!

"You can do whatever you want, now you have to pick from 2 choices, now you don't get a choice!"

It's the "choose your own adventure" principle.  Yes, technically you get a choice, but it's the minimum.  The recent threads about No Myth and Plotless-Background Based are examples of the other end of the spectrum from the woo-woo! railroading, minimum choice gaming that is commonly deplored.  

Part of what it comes down to is responsiveness on the part of the gm (if you have just one) and flexibility about what is accepted as part of the game.  Marco, your CoC campaign sounded fabulous! Ah, there's an issue there---I read your post and thought, what a great take on that situation, how fun it must have been to go deeply into madness and the dark side.  It's like what folks get out of play kill puppies for satan.  Letting your shadow have some time to play.  But, I can also imagine how the gm must have felt--it might have violated all her ideas about what her campaign had been intended to be about/contain, and even gone against her conception of the universe.  You broke her baseline, with your vision of what could be :)

Can these people be protagonists in the sense that they're a major focus of the story? Yes. However, they don't quite fit into the framework of the story to begin with. As I said, it's often subtle.... I'm not talking about the way they can interact with the world and change the fate of it. I'm talking about the fact that they were created as a tool for players to interact with the world, not necessarily to fit in.

Felix: when I saw the topic of the thread, I thought you would be getting at something more like this: that the pc's are a tool for interaction in the world.  My view showing.  I think something we're talking about here is not just looking at the character as something that let's you make changes in the world, but also have say in determining narrative--they are a  narrative tool when it comes down to it, regardless of whether you are building "the big plot" with their actions, or if you're just running around smiting folks.  

I'm curious about what you mean by "not necessarily to fit in". There are many ways this is probably true:  the pc's have something other character's may not: a single persona behind them, giving them motivation and motion; the pc's traditionally are part of an adventuring party who, like the hero in the western or Bill Bixby in the Hulk, are wandering through the lives of those they meet (or kill, you pick it) and aren't going to put down roots.  Ars Magica starts from an alternate take: you start by putting down roots.  There's also the matter of game worlds often being owned by the gm, and the players just coming in and playing, but not being really vested in the world or its continuity etc.  

What did you have in mind?

Regards,
Emily Care

[Felix]

I'm not sure I'm expressing this right, but here goes: roleplaying is about exploration. I know that means more than wandering around (exploration of setting). Most people in most world's aren't interested in exploring, in any form. They may do things, they may go through great emotional trials, but it's because they have to, not because they have any desire to explore. A D&D peasant can get abducted by kobolds, but they don't want to. They might have an affair with a neighbor, but it's not because they want to explore the emotional ramifications and charges of infidelity that will result.

Somehow, an RPG has to give a character incentives to explore.

So how do you make a character who is interested in exploring? One of the easiest ways is to make them an outsider, somehow. Robin was supposed to make it easier for kids to explore Gotham. To him, this was an adventure. To Batman, it was just a job that had to be done. Robin was supposed to give it a sense of wonder the eight-year-old comic book reader could appreciate, so they could follow the fight against evil and the dark, angular tones of the city. One of the constant themes of Buffy is that the slayer is an outsider; her job is to take care of things the average person shouldn't know exist. In Sorcerer the PC has powers known only to a handful of others, and must keep them a secret.

Other possible ways to encourage exploration exist. But forcing the PC to be different from the world, making it impossible for them to lead a standard, everyday life, is a simple, and commonly employed, way.

Felix

[simon_hibbs]

Interesting discussion, but I can't disagree with the premise of the orriginal post more.

When you're a kid and you watch the Star wars films, who do you imagine yourself as? The fact that the most popular toy linked to the game is the plastic lightsabre, ought to be a good clue. Yes Han and Chewbacca are great characters and many of us can identify with them but, secretly, who doesn't want to be a Jedi, or Sith, or at leats have the choice of which road to take?

Likewise with Batman, who seriously wants to be the sidekick? Not me, and not any players I know. That's why the best route in a game like Star Wars is to set your game before or after the main action, or far enough away from it that the story is about your characters, and the people they're fighting, the people they're saving and the places they visit. For my campaigns in such a universe, the battles between Luke and Darth would be just background colour.


Simon Hibbs