The Party Principle.

[Cadriel]

This is something that has always bothered me in roleplaying games:  there almost instinctively a "party" or general group that becomes the collective protagonists of the game.  For the most part, the significant members of this group are the PCs.  This makes sense in a game like D&D, where the tactical party is a necessity, or with superhero teams and the like.  But beyond that, it is just plain contrived...why is every roleplaying game about a group of protagonists?  This especially bothers me with regard to Narrativist-type games, when most literature tends to have one strong protagonist and not multiple.  (Other major characters exist, but there's no concern about active time for them, they're not always active, and they don't make the decisions that ultimately count.)  And a lot of games which are otherwise quite revolutionary simply bow their heads in deference to this old song and dance of the PC group, which is constant and inviolable.  Generally, social contract even dictates that there is some degree of trust within the party; games where this trust is broken are notorious online and in gamer circles as being very bad examples of play.

So, what I want to open up a discussion on is a twofold question.  One, is elimination of the party principle worthwhile, or am I alone in bristling against the concept?  Two, what methods can eliminate it without making the game lose interest for the entire play group?

My own answer to the first question is "yes," obviously.  But with the second, I am somewhat confounded; the best solution I can come up with is basically that of distributing GMing priveleges among everyone who isn't portraying the protagonist (e.g., everyone else has a sort of stable of NPCs who they involve)...but I don't know how it would necessarily function.  Ron invokes the metaphor of "playing bass" for Narrativist GMing; if I may steal it and expand on it, what if you said the singer was the only protagonist, and the rest had different responsibilities?  It bears some developing, I think.

-Wayne

[BPetroff93]

Okay, originally I had this huge post detailing the history of gaming and the many and varied ways the you can get a party together without seeming forced.  Towards the end of my post I realized one essential fact and scrapped all that bullshit, it is this:  

Character connection is only a problem if you are working with the "actor" stance implied in most mainstream "simulationist" games.

What do I mean by that?  Well, if you have a concept of PLAYER who sees through the eyes of a CHARACTER, who acts in a story created by the GAME MASTER ( or even worse, STORYTELLER) then you are stuck for the reason why all these wacko characters are hanging around and working together to complete some group objective.  

On the other hand, if you sit down, as a group, in order to co-author some kick-ass stories, than character involvement and connection becomes an integral part of the story.  It is all one thing and not multiple things.  (hmm....Zen of roleplaying design?)  It then becomes equally important for the players as to why their characters are united, and they (the players) have a vested interest in their (the characters) social interaction.  

If you all sit down together with the idea of writing a story together (author stance) you will automatically want characters that make sense to that story.  Or is you sit down with the idea of the players as co-directors and the game as a movie (director stance), than you will automatically want to arrange the enviroment to match the characters.

In closing I want to recommend some games for those who are having this problem:  Orkworld, Sorcerer (of course) and Trollbabe.  Good luck and good gaming.

[M. J. Young]

Wayne--

I'm glad it bothers you; it bothers a lot of people. Somewhere I saw a cartoon in which the characters were saying, "let's enlist that guy, with the big 'PC' brand on his forehead."

Brendan suggested that this was a throwback to simulationism; I'm inclined to think it's more related to gamism, but that's not particularly relevant. The fact is, it's becoming less and less common.

In Sorcerer, the player characters are connected to each other at the outset, one way or another, through their relationships--but they are usually not (from what I understand) working together. They are each working toward their own goals, which may correspond but are more likely to conflict in some ways.

Multiverser has been in print since 1997, and one of the first thing that people notice about the game is that it makes every effort to send players in different directions. "Character parties" only happen in that game if 1) the referee decides to bring the characters into close proximity with each other and 2) the players decide that their characters have good reason to work together. The recent novel, Verse Three, Chapter One, is a good representation of this: the three player characters come together because they're the only humans in the entire world and share an unusual experience (that of being versers), but they bicker amongst themselves about all kinds of things. It isn't until something happens to which all three of them would have their own reasons to respond that they pull together and go do it. Most of the time, the player characters are pretty much on their own, doing what they want, with little or no interaction between them. Generally, the game remains interesting for everyone because not only is each player the protagonist of his own story (in the broadest sense of "protagonist" and "story"), but each player is also captivated by the events in the other stories unfolding around him.

I've recently been playtesting Legends of Alyria. Like Sorcerer, this game begins by creating characters who are connected to each other, but usually in oppositional ways. Our playtest experiences are in a thread in the Alyria forum, but the short version is that we started with a good person, an enemy of that person, a friend of that good person, an ally of the enemy, an unrelated good person who has been deceived by the enemy into thinking the good person bad, and a last good person who barely knows the main good person but does know that the bad person is trouble. Those people are certainly connected, but they aren't about to form a character party--they're going to tell a story in which alliances are made and broke, friendships are strengthened or tried, and everyone has his or her own objective to reach.

Those are some ideas of how it can work.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with a party concept when it makes sense; but you really do have to find a reason for it to make sense. In one D&D game in which I was a player, the party existed because I, as one of the players, went out and hired a bunch of people to work for me when I was hired by someone else to fulfill a mission. There are a lot of ways to make parties make sense; the point is that you have to use one, and you have to accept that whatever the reason is that brings them together, if it fails they'll fall apart unless some other reason brings them back. Example: Han Solo and Chewbacca were part of the Skywalker party because they were going to be paid, and once they were paid they left. They came back because they realized that the friendships they had built were more important than the money they'd been paid, and they could help these people.

Hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

--M. J. Young

[BPetroff93]

Oh I agree, I think the "party principle" had it's origin in Gamist style, which grew out of wargaming.  But in gamist style the "party principle" does not usually offend....no one really cares WHY the party is together in story element terms.  It is only once we get into the world of simulation, and begin to slide towards naritivist tendancies, that the rational of the "party" becomes a problem.

[Marco]

Well, no, it's not simulationism. And I don't think it's GNS related either. It's historical to AD&D. You go adventuring in dangerous places? Don't go alone. This is mere common sense and as common sense it's applicable to any GNS mode.*

A group of players making characters that somehow fit together isn't narrativism either. It's common sense as well and can be practiced in any form of play. Inter-character connections are hardly antithetical to exploration or step-on-up challenge assessment.

Don't want "parties" that "don't make sense"? Tell the players to come up with a reason they're all together. Or give them one and have them make characters within those parameters. Or let them split up if they like. None of that's GNS related.

-Marco
* Lack of internal consistency can be a defect for any mode of play.

[Dr. Velocity]

Well, from my point of view as a player and sometimes referee, I won't throw around the terms like Gamist, Narrativist and Simulationist like I have a keen understanding of them unless I feel I can do so with moderate confidence; I'll just go from my view, whatever 'theories' it happens to incorporate.

The 'party' being a 'throwback' is, I'm sure, a valid observation, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing, since the whole real point of getting together to game (regardless of style) is social interaction.

Above this, however, the party, is a natural metagame entity, encompassing the abstract, in-game substance of the real-world people sitting around the kitchen or what have you - there is a 'party' relationship existing between these people, therefore, the most comfortable default is that there is also a party relationship between their characters. The party doesn't really have to have much more reason to sit around in the inn than the players do - bored, enjoye each others' company, etc.

I do, however, also find that what has frustrated me most is most players' not really unwillingness, but simply their dismissal of coming up with a background and possible relation to the other characters. Its good enough for them to have everyone generically assume 'they all met, at different times, in different places, years back'. If they get interested, they might write something up later, or during a game, but if its not vital RIGHT NOW, they'd rather just play the game. Understandable but still frustrating.

I've also considered the issue of the party, compared to the main character protagonists and supporting characters or sidekicks, etc from books and movies. The thing is, even with narrativist ball-passing, you are
most likely going to wind up with a pretty evened out party with no exceptionally outstanding character as the 'leader', if the players are all enjoying themselves and paying attention and helping build the story - because usually the social contract kicks in unconsciously, and players will probably pull their punches on some things to INTENTIONALLY allow other players to get some spotlight and have some time to shine - OR, if a player IS really hamming it up and seems to be pulling dinstinctly ahead with a serious amount of narration placing his character in a considerably high elevation compared to the others, usually the others will pick up the pace and make their narrations more INTERESTING or clever, to sort of offset the 'leader' aspect of the other player.

This is not to say you can't have a leader or obvious main character - I in fact, most enjoy playing secondary, supportive, quirky characters who will unabashedly play second fiddle to other characters, even though mine may (humbly) be a BETTER character, or if I'm a better player (again, humbly I say this). But in a group, you are BOUND to have more than one strong, active player, or you will generally have NONE that really outdistance another. I think its extremely rare to find a group where ONE player is significantly a better, more active and take charger person, with ALL the other players being sidekicks - usually if this happens, at least one of them has the potential to be the main character but is deferring to the other player out of respect or to try out a new playing style, etc. The problem is, even if you have a group of players that WOULD willingly accept and support, with narration, another character as being the Hero, sometimes it really just can't be helped how they tell the story. Some of my characters, even while I was running as referee, were the most interesting and personality-rich, among any of the player characters (again, humbly). Without even making more than a vague attempt to have an interesting character to play with, one 'supporting player' may just naturally tell a better story, or at least one as interesting, as the main story, so I think a lot of study would need to go into finding a balance of player cooperation and scope of 'main hero'.

Lastly, I will put MY personal opinion forward, that I don't LIKE non-party games. Non-judgmentally, I would contend that the want of a main character with other supporting characters, all played by other players, is more along the lines of asking other players to help you write a book, under your guides and premises, for what could be seen to be ultimately only your ends, rather than a social interaction and cooperative session with time and development for everyone's character. This is fine, but needs to be clearly presented as it is and NOT as a game, if this is more what you want. I've played in Warhammer FRP games with almost no party cohesion, where basically all the other players turned to chaos or evil and went off their own ways and passed notes and talked to the referee and no one knew what anyone else was doing unless someone spied on them. This was admittedly new and kinda neat and the ref did a decent job of still giving time and attention to everyone and did an admirable job of keeping his information and sub-plots seperated, but I still really felt isolated, even while playing my necromancer with his own followers and outsmarting the other players, etc. We were all right there across the table from each other, yet there was almost no common ground or in-game communication between any of us - each went his own way, usually everyone opposed each other, and were on like 3 or 4 different sides in a fight... althought the experience ITSELF of being able to play like that was something I am glad I was able to do, I did not find it at all to my taste and really missed the cameraderie of all being on the 'same side'.

[RobMuadib]

So, what I want to open up a discussion on is a twofold question.  One, is elimination of the party principle worthwhile, or am I alone in bristling against the concept?  Two, what methods can eliminate it without making the game lose interest for the entire play group?

-Wayne

Wayne

Hey interesting question. I would say you are always going to deal with some sort of "party principle" in regards to play of a role-playing game, since play is shared among the participants. One trick to deal with this is changing what the "party" is about. As you mentioned, changing the distribution of power/authority among the players is a largely untappted area in design. Ian Millington talks about some ways to do this in his game Ergo, which is actually a meta-system you can overlay onto traditional games to change the standard structure. You can find it on his site http://www.collaborativeroleplay.org.

It offers some intersting ideas of how to change the game and the involvment of the players. Allowing them access to larger elements of the game world, and say in narrative planning. By elevating all players to "GM status" you can avoid the feeling of all the player's character's having to "fight" for spotlight time, by providing them other ways to take part in the game.

As part of this sharing & collaboration, you can have players engage in Ensemble play. Which is basically having the players make up a number of characters, likely of different power levels/situations, and play out narratives featuring different character's from the Ensemble. This is what Ars Magica does, by expanding the scope of play for the players from "avatar" stance. Generally, it is good to allow each player one or more "Proprietor" characters, that only they have control over, along with a cast of shared characters as well. Also, like Ars Magica, providing a "meta-character" to focus the action around is a good idea. Thus players can take part in playing narratives about character's who are part of Covenant, serve on the same ship, are part of the same noble house, etc. Without the necessity for all of the same character's to be involved in every exploit of the focus/protagonist character for a particular narrative.

Another interesting take, since everyone has the authority/power to act as GM, is to allow some character's to take the part of antagonists. This is Full on Troupe play, allowing the players to take on all parts of the "play" as it were.

Also providing means for the players to take part in the creation and development of the larget setting provides more options as well. Maybe a player has designed an interesting new monster, or cult, etc. That player may want to introduce it into the narrative as antogonist to the other players. Since only the player who designed it will have full knowledge of it's nature, it will provide engaging to the other players since they will be able to act within the guise of their characters in dealing with this new conflict, etc.

So basically, one way to do it is to acknowledge the idea of play is shared. But changeup how it is shared, and who is doing what from session to session. I am reminded of the Thieves' World anthology, in how the Author's had their character's stories interact within the shared world setting, one author's Protagonist being a supporting player or cameo in another's yet all adding to the grander backstory of the setting.. Play that way can be split up to be grander and more equitable. A different kind of party as it were.

This is the approach I am taking to play of my game, The Million Worlds: Chronicles of The Eternal Cycle. You can find info about it in the indie-games forum under various "TMW:COTEC" threads, if your interested. It is inspired in part by Universalis' collaborative nature applied to more standard RPG mechanics, with an emphasis on collaborative world building and detailed simulationist mechanics. This is definitely an area of design that is ripe for exploration, as the GM + players paradigm is even more ingrained than rolling dice

Best.

[Ben Morgan]

One reason I've seen for the probverbial "party that defies logic" is that a lot of people seem to think it's somehow wrong for the GM to place limits on what kind of characters the players can create. Not merely weird, or unconventional, but stepping-on-toes rude.

If I'm running a game, and I say "come up with whatever you think is cool", I'm invariably going to get a batch of incompatible characters, especially if they create them on their own and simply show up with sheets in hand.

On the other hand, if I say "sit down together and come up with characters that all have a reason to blah blah blah", then blah blah blah can be the anchor, and you don't have to invent reasons to keep people from straying off. The last time I ran Vampire, I told them "create any character you want, but they have to be from somewhere other than New York (where the game was set), and they have to have a reason for coming to New York." Then it simply became a matter of letting each player zip off in the direction they wanted to go, and place interesting things in their path, such as NPCs that opposed their goals, or nifty external events. The PCs, for the most part, had goals that were neutral, and a few were mutually beneficial. However, there was no sense of a traditional "party", as they spent most of the time alone or in small clusters, and only maybe once in a complete group. More often than not, they ended up simply running across one another in the course of trying to accomplish their own things.

It also helps if you don't have to deal with people who do assholish things just for the sake of being assholes. I left a D&D group very very quickly because of that sort of thing.

-- Ben

[Cadriel]

Okay, we'll take things one at a time.

Brendan:

What you say makes sense, but it doesn't really defend the "party principle" to me.  In fact, it makes me question it more deeply:  why is it that the story has to be stretched to fit the needs of multiple protagonists (as portrayed by all of the non-GM players)?  If they all sit down wanting to create a story, isn't there some tension created within that by everybody having a separate protagonist with different aims and what have you?  It seems to be an inefficient system to implement, and I think it's a remnant of old Gamist design that is not necessary when so much of the other baggage has been chucked.

M.J.:

The Alyria thing makes sense to me...it's a step, at least, creating characters who are linked but won't fit into a party style or anything.  But it seems to still have the multiple-protagonist necessity...which is something I seriously would have to call into question.  What I'm thinking of is along the lines of having each player control a number of characters, and at the beginning of the game the group basically decides, "Okay, we're going to focus on this guy for this session, tell his story."  The other players get to involve their characters, maybe come up with a new one or two, even have scenes not involving the protagonist, but it's never a multiple-protagonist situation (which I think is less tenable and less gripping than a single-protagonist story).  In a very real sense, I'm questioning the necessity of the GM; I think there is somewhere to go with this kind of alternate play structure that will lead to more interesting games than a "three or four people playing protagonists, one person playing everything else" approach.

Marco:

I'm speaking of the more pervasive tendency for all players except for the GM to control one protagonist each, someone who has "protagonist!" marked on his or her forehead or not.  It doesn't matter if the group is together with a good rationale; I'm thinking that this is an assumption whose time has, frankly, come.

Dr. Velocity:

I'm thinking that I should've been bolder in my original post and simply said that I am really not into the whole "everybody except the GM gets a PC who is appreciably different" groove that is omnipresent in RPGs (well, I haven't read Universalis, so I shouldn't speak unequivocally).  You make some good commentary on what happens when there is a PC group in place, and even how it can help people find their own unique playing niches.  And if you're into it, I think it's cool.  But I think that your analysis of one-protagonist play is really underestimating things.  I will endeavor, in another post, to attempt to describe what I would see play (both in-session and over multiple sessions) turning out like under the kind of system I'm thinking of; it's very far from a "help me write my novel" kind of deal, in large part because - hey - the supporting characters can do just about anything short of making the protagonist's fundamental theme choices for him/her.

Rob:

Thanks for the link - I'll give it a read in some detail this morning.  And, I can't believe I didn't think of Ars Magica!  Except for the GMful-ness (which I guess is still a thing for people), the ensemble style of play really was emphasized in AM; that's the sort of thing I've been thinking would be so much more interesting than all-PCs-are-protagonists (especially when you get into PC group splits).  And yeah, I like the concept of full-on troupe style play, with the players as the antagonists, a lot as well...simply because, well, having all the fun of playing the bad guy given to the GM is just unfair to players.  :-)  It'll give me a lot more to mull over, and whenever I can coax a group together (having a little trouble there) I hope to get some good mileage from it.

Ben:

I've done similar things in the past; it's really cool that it's worked out for you.  But, ultimately, I'm dissatisfied with the party model, even when it's not a cohesive group, because there is a number of people with the "PC" label and then everybody else has the "NPC" label.  I guess it's not so much the rationale as the innate acceptance of the split that bugs me.

And an overall comment:

I've gotten some really good responses from fans of the traditional RPG setup, and I think that it's very cool that it worked for them.  I genuinely appreciate the replies and insights.  But I remain convinced that there's a lot of worthwhile material to be mined out from more ensemble-style play.  So, I'm just going to ask that we steer the discussion more toward the second question that I asked (what to do after you get rid of the traditional several players playing PCs, one GM model) and less toward the validity of the party concept (which, clearly, works for a number of people and has its place).

-Wayne

[Lxndr]

My answer to your first part of the question:  You are not alone.  I've bristled too.  Though, obviously, parties aren't ALWAYS a bad thing, either.

Now to try answering the second half.  This part will be a bit ramblier.

Even with a lack of a "party", there should still be some reason why all the characters are a part of the same "story" that's being told.  In otherwords, I think the PCs are all protagonists of their own stories, but they DO impact one another.  Just because they are all protagonists does NOT mean they are a group.

There are many literary models with intertwined stories; the biggest one that comes to mind are the alternate-history-war novels by Harry Turtledove.  Also think of a lot of soap operas, and how they handle what amounts to multiple protagonists.  Keep scenes with any one individual (or group of individuals) relatively short.  Do a lot of "camera panning" and scene framing.  Switch back and forth a lot, instead of focusing on any one individual too long.  Of course, this is less of an issue in play-by-mail and play-by-post games, where you don't have to worry so much about dividing up a 4-6 hour time block.

Make sure that no PC turns into a secondary character - they should all BE protagonists in their own story, as well as characters influencing the events of the other protagonists' stories (including, when necessary, antagonists).  Just because they're all protagonists doesn't mean they're all on the same side.  Of course, the spotlight can change from session to session, or hour to hour, whatever feels the most comfortable.

Think of a Vampire game set in the average city - there's only thirty to sixty vamps, on average, if you go by the population suggestions in the book.  And even if there's a few hundred, that's still a relatively small population.  Your non-party PC group are GOING to impact one another, through their actions, simply due to the community.

So, it would be good to figure out why your PCs are all existing in the same story, and preferably come up with a network of NPCs and/or events that helps tie them all together in a web.  Direct connections between PCs is also nice, but not as necessary.  Then, use this web in your game, so that when one PC drops an action into the pool, the ripples spread outwards.  

Thus, even if they're never in a "party," even if the PCs never do more to interact directly than maybe glance at each other while walking down the hall in opposite directions, they're still a part of the same /story/.

It also helps (imho) if non-party games aren't played secretly.  As a GM, don't take each player off separately for his character's scene.  Do it right there at the table.  Dr Velocity's "everyone went their own way, and passed notes, talked to the referee, and no one knew what anyone else was doing" method, while it might be fun for a while, isn't really to my taste either.  The PLAYERS (including GM) should still be seen as a group working towards the same goal, even if the CHARACTERS are unaware of it.

(I also /like/ the idea of giving everyone a stable of NPCs, a variant of the "troupe style" play in Ars Magica.  But I've never done it myself, and I'm not sure what added complications or benefits that might bring.  It could definitely be an asset, if done right, but I'm really not qualified to speak on it.)

PostScript:  Okay, it feels to me as though you've changed your question.  Your initial question was "the party concept" which involves "a group of protagonists" and what you do once you've broken that mold.  I believe I've answered that, above.

But now you're saying the 2nd question that you asked is "what do you do after you get rid of the players-playing-PCs, one-GM model?"  This is also a good question, but I don't believe it was implied in "abandoning the party model."  Nonetheless, I'm posting this as I do believe it answered your question as it was originally stated, and I hope you'll be able to get some mileage out of it anyway.

[Marco]

Okay, we'll take things one at a time.

Marco:

I'm speaking of the more pervasive tendency for all players except for the GM to control one protagonist each, someone who has "protagonist!" marked on his or her forehead or not.  It doesn't matter if the group is together with a good rationale; I'm thinking that this is an assumption whose time has, frankly, come.

-Wayne

I would think the PC's being the protagonists and in a position to make the decisions that shape the story would be pretty central to a lot of Narrativist play moreso than Gamist (once you remove the team aspect I was talking about).

But yeh, I once ran a Babalyon 5-style game where the players were sometimes handed a sheet of a visitor to play for that session if their primary character wasn't involved that time. Something like that?

-Marco

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I have myself often wondered about the whole party mentality thing. It seems to stem from several things at once, which may not always be true for the particular game as written or as played but the behavior continues.

First is combat. naturally if a challenge is set up for all four characters, but only three are present, then it will be rough. If the challenge is set up for only one character, and all five go, it'll be a cinch.

The other is participation. If your character isn't there, you can't say anything. Or, just sit there and twiddle while we play.

This is not necessary in evry game, as I had mentioned, but behavior tends to be self-perpetuating.

A better question is why break the party mentality? What is trying to be accomplished? What effect is desired?

[Bob McNamee]

By the way Cadriel,

The game Ars Magica does much of what you suggest.

All the players get together creating multiple characters, these become group property, if I remember right.

The 'party' that results usually consists of one vastly powerful Wizard (each player creates 1), a few Companions (lesser friends, priests etc), and Grogs (generic soldiers, servants etc)

The whole cast is a Coven and Adventures usually spotlight one Wizard or the other travelling with an entourage of Companions and Grogs.

Sure it still a party, but (from an in-game power perspective) its got one Player Character (the Wizard) in the Main Protagonist spot.

[BPetroff93]

Sure Cadriel, abso-fuckin-lutly, it doesn't defend the traditional concept of a party.  I wasn't really trying to.  Maybe I wasn't clear in my point.  My point was that if the character creation is a integrated part of the story, even if everyone has their own protagonist, they will mesh into the story and you won't be standing on your head screaming, "Why is the hardened assasin and the xenophobic elfsupremist banding together to save ANYTHING?"   The party only stands out if we beleive the "big lie before breakfast," that gamemaster creates / controls the story and players create / control their individual characters.  If we all create story and characters together we will create BELIEVABLE characters in that particular story.  Characters who have believable reasons to work together.

In the body we only notice individual organs when they are not functioning correctly.  If you notice the party as a separate entity than it is not flowing into the story naturally.  Troop play and shared storytelling are great fun, and if you like them better than the traditional rpg separate character concept  than play them.  However, you can have a "party" in traditional rpging and have it make sense to the story, then you won't be bothered by it.  It will fit right in.

[pete_darby]

The follow up question is, if you play a game with a group of players whose characters don't form a group, how do you play as a group of players?

I agree with an earlier suggestion, that eliminating the GM, and forming a pool of characters for play can both help continue a game session without a formal "adventuring party," but I instinctively feel that flow of play woudl become a problem (for reasons I'm finding it hard to atriculate at the moment). Perhaps the largest problem would be a weakening of identification between player and character, but a conscious move towards a more directorial stance isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it?