Importance of Characters

[Scripty]

Hi. I'm mostly a lurker here, but I've run up against a wall in my last few campaigns. I could really use some solid advice from you guys (and girls) at the Forge.

You see, the problem I'm having with the groups with whom I currently play and for whom I currently run is with the characters. I had been hitting this glass-ceiling of Simulationism and Narrativism, while the wind was being kicked out of the sails right at the last moment. This rarely happened (for me) in games in which I only played. Generally, my PCs are built as seething cauldrons of Kickers, Bangs and Story Elements. Typically, more meaty stuff for my characters is left on the GM's Cutting Room Floor than I've ever encountered coming from other players when I GM.

The reason for this is simple, to me at least. I find complicated characters to be more interesting over the long haul than cardboard cutouts. So, characters that I play often have families, significant others, tragedies, ad infinitum. This also raises the ire (I've noticed recently) of some players as subplots tend to intersect with my characters more than others. Other players in these gaming groups also tend to get bored with their unstoppable bricks that appeared out of nowhere just as the momentum is really starting to kick in for my 50-year former Wizard's Apprentice with a Lotus-powder habit and a daughter that hates his guts.

Something I've noticed quite recently is that I'm enjoying playing more than running. I enjoy running games. I'm okay at it. But the lack of enjoyment from running the games was merely the result of stories going pretty much nowhere. The characters that the players were bringing to the table had no ties to anything and therefore existed just for the combat. No matter what game I brought to the table, the groups' default mode of play was "hit us with your best shot".

I tested my theory about characters making games more interesting by running a few one-shots and short 2-3 game adventures using pre-generated characters that I had made. The games were a hit. The groups STILL talk about these games, months after they have been run. They talk about the pregens they played as if they were their own creations even though the pregens had flaws and challenges within their character concepts that the players (in these groups) would have never introduced of their own accord. A few even want to continue these games later on. I'm not adverse to doing so, but a number of players want to create their own characters. Their concepts: Vampire Hunter D, without the funny hand thing.

I'm not sure why this is but I'm theorizing, from my observations of the groups with whom I play and run that:

1) Many of the players want the "untouchable" character. The character that can't get dropped in combat, has no history to truly haunt him/her, never makes a mistake, etc.

2) Many of the players want this "life insurance" because they have something invested in their character after spending an hour or more making them. I think the pregens went over so well because the players had nothing invested in the characters up front. It was okay for some of the players to have a pregen character who had a nagging mother and no physical skills because they didn't make the characters. They were just playing them. Oddly, this produced more protagonistic play as the players were more apt (from my observations) to send their characters into harm's way. So a player who was adverse to drop his 20 CON fighter into a fray to save a damsel in distress had no problem pitting his STR 1 (Buffy) weakling up against the school bully.

3) Players, of course, get bored eventually with their "untouchable" characters as they find no real "character" there to explore. There's no depth. So the game soon degenerates into an exploration of setting rather than character and, subsequently, the focus of the game goes from the individual players to the GM. To the default, "let's see what the GM throws at us this week" as opposed to a game exploring the characters that they have created.

So, I was looking for any corroborative experiences here that others on the Forge may have encountered with "life insurance" minded PCs. I was also hoping to find a means of turning this mode of character creation around. For systems, we've played most everything from Feng Shui to D&D to The Window to Over the Edge, but the end result has been the same. The players spend 40 minutes trying to figure out how best to maximize their damage causing and damage soaking capabilities and return with a background such as "I was orphaned when I was a small child and do not remember my family or have any friends or pets. I am a powerful warrior now. Go."

Oddly enough, I've only had 1 character die in four years of GMing in this area. I'm not a killer GM. So what's up?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Wow - what a thorough post. I think in many ways you answered most of your own questions regarding the other people, so perhaps the real question is, What do you want to do?

If you want to keep playing with these specific people, then there's a bit of a problem. You want them to play very differently from what they're used to. It seems to me as if - pending some major input from tuletary deities or sunspots - they are not especially inclined to change their habits concerning characters they make up themselves.

Perhaps a kind of blend of the pregenerated vs. wholly-player-generated concepts is your best bet. There are lots of ways to do this, but what if you were to provide five or six "frameworks" containing nothing but contexts for the characters (brother to whom, escaping from whom, etc), and let the players fill in powers-stuff? For instance.

Less drastically, do exactly what you did before with your pregenerated characters, but this time, provide each one with a "crossroads" set of options for the player to choose among, during play, when the time comes.

I also strongly suggest checking out the material available for Legends of Alyria (see the threads in that forum for links), as well as getting your hands on the game InSpectres. Both of these games take an unusual approach to character creation, such that the players really can't do that classic "my guy, no ties" model, and they're far more engaged in what's going on than is typical prior to play.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

I think Ron has a lot of good points.

The key thing was this: your pre-gen experience worked wonders. That's important. They *can* get behind the stuff you like. Here are some more suggestions:

1. Exploration of Setting can be *closely* tied to character. Or rather, instead of giving them Setting, give them Situation and make it applicable. This can be going into the family vaults and finding out old Uncle Warchester was a really *bad* guy ... and his family is still probably doing those same bad-things--to Ron's brilliant concept of kickers (check threads).

2. Something I've toyed with is telling each player to come up with a way their PC is related to the two PC's next to them. It can be shared goals, a shared past, a blood relationship, etc. You might get "We all went in the dank dungeon together"--so maybe talk to them about why you're doing that ("This game will be shaped by your characters so make 'em interesting")

3. Make the characters before the first session. Then you can take time to wrap the story around them (I dunno if you're doing this or not)--it's hard to retrofit Wolverine ... but with two shotguns when everyone is at the table and you've got *anything* pre-prepared.

4. Consider playing a "focused game." Invite everyone who's interested but make it clear that this is an alternate gaming night to try out "this weird character-oriented stuff."  Anyone who shows up should be ready to make a deep character (give 'em guidelines before hand).

-Marco

[Scripty]

Thanks Ron and Marco for the advice. This was exactly what I was hoping to find here. Ron's idea of "frameworks" are great. The players responded well to the "templates" in Feng Shui, although the "melodramatic hook" was often glossed over. I'm not so sure about "giving up" the group so to speak. My observations cover three separate gaming groups in our area (roughly 25 or so different gamers). Each week, I run one game almost exclusively and play in two others. The other two I also run from time to time, but not all that often. Being that a number of these players are pretty good friends of mine, I wouldn't want to isolate any of them by selecting a core group of players for a separate, more Narrativist style game. Although I admit that this would probably be the most efficient means of achieving my goal (more player/character driven game sessions).

Thanks also for the links. I'll take a closer look at InSpectres. I've corresponded off and on with Jared in the past. I really respect his work. He's prolific as all get out. I have looked over Legends of Alyria, but, other than knowing that Seth Ben-Ezra has a name I would kill for, I must admit I'm not all that familiar with it. Thanks again for the direction.

Marco:
I think you picked up on the same wavelength as me in noticing that the groups (all 3 of them) responded with more character-driven play when given pregenerated characters. Even with templated characters they were more prone to act proactively in the story (although not much).

As a rule, I always do #3. Sometimes I'm more stringent about character than others. When I see a character that's really lacking, I tend to ask questions. I do a game that I call the "3 Why's". If a player says his character has no parents, I ask "Why does you character have no parents?" The result might be something like "They were killed by orcs." To which the resulting question is "Why were they killed by orcs?" And then, of course, the player follows with either something nifty like "They were sold out by my uncle." or something lame like "They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." After I've gone through 3 levels of "Why?" I follow up with more detailed questions like: "Since your parents were killed who raised you?"; "Do you ever visit the spot where your parents were killed?" etc. until a character starts to form out of the morass. The problem is the majority of players tend to glaze over after the first "Why?" and some are completely tight-lipped after the third.

Of the four, I especially like numbers 1 and 2. No. 2 I will most likely use within the week. Thanks for the help.

As a follow up question, especially for Ron, do you think it's possible to start out with a shell of a character like, say, Conan at the Tower of the Elephant and then develop them along the course of the story? Of course, we know that Conan would one day become King, but everything else is pretty vague.

How would you do that, especially in regards to Sword and Sorcerer or games of a similar genre? The reason I ask is that I don't see it, hopefully, as being to terribly off topic and also I think that it might be an approach that these groups would be interested in taking.

Is there any way to handle the group of Solomon Kanes whose histories are revealed in play??

Thanks again for the help and advice. I'll let you know how Ron and Marco's suggestions work out. I'll also look into InSpectres and Legends of Alyria.

[Jason Lee]

I can sympathize.  We've got one player, who we've been playing with for six years, who is convinced that if his traits aren't high enough his character is going to die.  Why this is completely ridiculous is that in the system we are using it is impossible for your character to die if you don't choose for it to happen.  It doesn't seem to matter how many times I tell him we can't/won't kill your characters - he just refused to believe me.  Near as I can it's because he still firmly believes that the rules end at the GM's screen.

I'd say "Try a system where character death is up to the players", but I haven't had any luck so far.  Maybe you would have better luck with that approach, given these players seem to be suffering more from a rut than inflexibility?

[Harsh Tranquility]

I've been in that GM position of players playing nothing but walking statistics, so I though I'd throw in my two cents.  You mentioned "Life Insurance" mentalities, I judging on the fact you want to get a more narrative game, this is an asset. You see even though it a superficial attachment they have to their characters, they have an attachment. You can use this draw drama out of them, since they don't want to lose their characters they value the in game life of their character, meaning they won't purposely go head long in to a potentially lethal situation, meaning they will react more like real people. So that means you can attack there minds instead of there combat ready sheets. Let me put this in to practice for you.

Awhile back I was GMing a game of Spycraft with my usual group, the game was a continuation of a pervious campaign, so in story terms a few years passed, in game terms they jumped up a few levels, well having invested a pervious campaign with the same characters they choose there levels so they maxed out there sats. Long story short, this made it hard to give them villains and challenges that they couldn't totally crush with their die rolls. So, reacting to this I attacked and challenged something about their characters that does not level up, there characters minds. I introduced a psychic that could force fear on people with dreamlike trances. What happened was when one character was affected I took them aside and gave them a one on one role-play through this dream. (of course they didn't know what was going on, they thought they were kidnapped and set to some weird prison or something) The thing that kept it edgy was that if they shot some one or set of a grenade or something, it happened in real life. (And they were asleep in the same room) so if the demolitions expert, a free sprit, was suddenly trapped in a 5' by 5' room, they try breaking out with explosives, but meanwhile the rest of the team sees there demo guy pulling bombs out and setting them up in their room, what do they do, he their friend and they don't want to kill him but he has a gun because in the dream the demo guy may see them as guards trying to stop him from escaping, so he will shoot at them.

I hope that was clear. Needless to say even if they didn't plan on character based role-playing by send certain situations at them I forced them to make decisions that require allot of character. The one situation jolted them in to expecting this kinds of deep decisions, make them think out there characters. Maybe this can help, I know it worked in my group, maybe it work for yours.

Good Luck With Your Game

[Jeph]

Hmm....

A suggestion: use games where the best way to "munchkinize" a character is to give it a rich background. Riddle of Steel comes to mind; I only have the QS version but even that's mega-nifty. You might even want to make a few templates since they respond well to that sort of thing--like "knife fighter," "archer," "knight,"--I'd figure all the combat statistics and set the best Profession, and figure status, equipment etc.; and then let them choose the rest of their professions and, most importantly, spiritual attributes. Really stress spiritual attributes, like spending 5-10 mins with each player discussing where to put them.

And make sure they know the only way they can rock the proverbial house is to motivated to do so.

(oh yeah. And that learning curve bit. Uh...yeah, you'll get over that. ;] )

[Marco]

I can sympathize.  We've got one player, who we've been playing with for six years, who is convinced that if his traits aren't high enough his character is going to die.  Why this is completely ridiculous is that in the system we are using it is impossible for your character to die if you don't choose for it to happen.  It doesn't seem to matter how many times I tell him we can't/won't kill your characters - he just refused to believe me.  Near as I can it's because he still firmly believes that the rules end at the GM's screen.

I'd say "Try a system where character death is up to the players", but I haven't had any luck so far.  Maybe you would have better luck with that approach, given these players seem to be suffering more from a rut than inflexibility?

Wuh--woah. System Doesn't Matter.

*astonished*

-Marco
[I'm not being faceitous. I've got issues with SDM as it's presented and argued here--but that's, um, extreme. ]

[Jason Lee]

Wuh--woah. System Doesn't Matter.

*astonished*

Yikes!!!

Heh, in a way, I suppose so.  System can only matter if you let it, all the book can do is flap its pages at you in impotent rage if you don't want to listen to it (to incorrectly quote Ron).

[Ben Morgan]

I can't help but tinker with nearly any game system I run. The vast majority of rules that I change these days are related to character creation.

I tend to veer away from point-based systems in favor of a sort of "Pick some of these" approach. Example: Advantages/Disadvantages(Merits/Flaws, Qualities/Drawbacks, whatever). Instead of having point costs/bonuses for Merits & Flaws, I would simply tell my players "choose up to three of each", and simply ignore the point values. This way, when someone chooses a particular merit or flaw, they're doing it because it's interesting, not because they get more points.

I also do the same thing with equipment. I'm sick of seeing lists and lists of every last little trinket a character owns. Instead, I say "just tell me what the three most important things are that you carry around with you." I'm nice and I let them count stuff like "cigs & a lighter" as one item.

I will fully admit to stealing this idea from Jared (Specifically, octaNe's rule for coming up with your character's description).

This can be tailored to nearly anything you want highlighted in the game. I'm running Legend of the Five Rings next, and one of the things I'll be including is "come up with three NPCs that are important to your character". I'm also encouraging them to use the Heritage Tables found in the clanbooks.

One thing that has worked surprisingly well is Secrets. I told my Cyberpunk players: "Come up with a Secret that either your character is hiding, or something that is being hidden from your character. It will come out in-game." The great thing is that the players all came up with their secrets in front of the other players, so they were all in on it. Some would say that would kill the surprise, but it worked out better this way, because as a player, you were slowly nudging things toward this secret coming out, and because the others are in on it, they can help, but more importantly, they won't do something that will accidently screw things up for you. Nothing's worse than a secret that gets revealed too quickly.

I'm all for focused games. One of these days, I'm gonna run a game where all the players decide beforehand how their characters die, and then concentrate all my energy on simply getting to that point for each of them.

-- Ben

[Ian Charvill]

As a follow up question, especially for Ron, do you think it's possible to start out with a shell of a character like, say, Conan at the Tower of the Elephant and then develop them along the course of the story? Of course, we know that Conan would one day become King, but everything else is pretty vague.

I'm not Ron, and neither do I play him in a TV sitcom, but yeah that can work.  What you do is take advantage of things the players do in the early sessions and feed them back and build on them in later sessions.  It's just developing the character in play.  I tend to prefer it as it avoids the problem of a player inventing a cool bit of background that never gets revealed in play.

I can sympathize. We've got one player, who we've been playing with for six years, who is convinced that if his traits aren't high enough his character is going to die. Why this is completely ridiculous is that in the system we are using it is impossible for your character to die if you don't choose for it to happen. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I tell him we can't/won't kill your characters - he just refused to believe me. Near as I can it's because he still firmly believes that the rules end at the GM's screen.

I've had more luck with this kind of thing (7th Sea in my case).  I think it's a case of system does matter but the personalities of the people at the table matters more

[Gary_Bingham]

Scripty,
I think that one of the problems that you are encountering with your group right now is that they have forgotten that they also have a responsibility to develop the story not only the GM. They have fallen into the trap of thinking that their characters are no more important than the paper and dice that formed them, or that their characters are too important to risk involving in a story that the GM has forged. They need to be reminded that their character is their way to buy into the story, add to it, and make the story theirs as much as it is the GM's. I know that this is getting into 'Impossible thing' territory but it is through colourful, complex and engaging characters carefully woven into the setting with the game premise in mind that, in my opinion, gets closest to the game experience that you seem to enjoy, and facilitates a cooperative approach to story-telling

Perhaps your group has a lesson to learn, or more likely re-learn about how to best play in the same sandpit with each other.  But how do you achieve this lesson? I cannot confess to know the best way to achieve a change in your gaming group, but I know that my current gaming group had a similar experience about a year ago, to the point that some of the group were considering abandoning gaming altogether. We decided on a course of action to remedy the problems in the group and I believe that we have rekindled our enjoyment of the hobby and perhaps brought our gaming experience to new levels. I have a few suggestion for you to take a look at, they are working for us, and they may work for you. Here goes.
 
1) Well in my group, as an element of the social contract, we have agreed to rotate the responsibility for GMing around the table, so that everyone gets the experience of running a game on a regular basis. Now some people like to play and some people like to run games. But I find that the effect of this round robin approach is that it gets everyone thinking like a GM. Everyone wanting to be part of the process of creating the game world. This is apparent in the character generation stages of successive games as players show a willingness to weave their characters into the game setting of their accord with Bang, Hooks, Kickers, Complexities and Hang-ups. Now we constantly surprise each other and this is from a group that has many years of role-playing experience. Decades in some instances.

2) Try new games. Systems do Matter. I agree with Ron you should try Inspectres, but I will add you should try Sorcerer, Riddle of Steel and Wuthering Heights. Experiment with new and funky games for short periods of time. I don't know if that is what you are doing when you have been testing your theory. But a new system can help channel the group's effort towards a common goal through a mutual exploration of the material. A new system can also break players out of established modes of play and get them to re-evaluate how they play.  Like your group, we constantly discuss and debate the Sorcerer games we played in for a period of only 3 weeks over 6 months ago. But I do believe that we have taken the lesson learnt from the experiences in our games from one game to the next.

3) Finally I recommend that you get back to basics. The best way I can offer for you to achieve this is to get your group to get involved in a collaborative act of story telling. A wake up call to show your group how much fun being a part of the story can be. You should try Universalis with the group in one of two ways a) Use it to relearn what it is they like about gaming, involvement in characters in which they have invested time and energy. Create a couple of one-shot stories last no more than a game session or two. b) Use it to create the characters and setting for your next game. Start the session with a pre-made Setting, Premise and/or Theme, which will focus the game into using the system that you wish to GM and let the players create the game setting amongst you. After an hour or so, put away Universalis and break into the GM/Player mode.
Gary

[Kaare_Berg]

Scripty,

I do not agree that system does matter. However some systems makes your job as a GM that much easier (which to me as a lazy sod is priceless).

My advice is to gradually reward your players with "story bonuses" as you explore their backgrounds in play. Let me show and tell:

In my current V:tm group we had a "lets make some characters and play tonight" session. We spent very little time on character background since we were all eager to play.
Instead we explored backgrounds during play. One player had car-thief ala GTA:Vice City (console game) as a concept. Coming from Philedelphia he asked during play if he had any contacts in New York (our setting). Sure he did, and when he met his contact we got a subplot and at the same time created a bit more background for the character. The same things have happened to the other characters to a greater or lesser extent.
Now this session has grown into one of the more memorable campaigns I have run.

This may create more work for the GM at first (oh joy!), but when your players start seeing the tangible benefits storywise of backgrounds, they will start thinking in those patterns (its pavlovian).

Eventually you will be able to make the campaign character driven.

There is not one way to solve this, but I think a combination of the advice given here, like Ben Morgan's three important NPCs, and a gradual approach will get you there in time.

[Marco]

Scripty,

I do not agree that system does matter. However some systems makes your job as a GM that much easier (which to me as a lazy sod is priceless).

Hi Kaare,
Although it is not clear to me what exactly is meant by System Does Matter, one common interpertation (and one of the ones that I think has merrit) is that "some systems make your job as a GM that much easier." (or more globally, you may get better "mileage" out of one system than another).

In other words, System could be said to 'matter' in exactly the sense you've described.

Now, as I've said, I think there's a lot more questionable stuff hung on the same nail (both in terms of ignoring the implications of System Does Matter and attributing way the heck to much to it) but if you conceded that a given system might make life easier for someone ...

Then what exactly do you mean by System Doesn't Matter?

-Marco
[

[Kaare_Berg]

Double arguments, my spesiality.

Sorry for confusing you. I am as stated lazy. By that I mean that my preperations for a session 9 times out of 10 consists of a few loose notes of clues, NPCs and quick theme and purpose definition. The rest I have in my head or improvise.

By saying that system does not matter I am saying that you can create wonderfully detailed PCs in any system. The process is universal. It maybe that the GNS discussions have confused my definition of system, so to clearify this: system is to me *sharp intake of breath* the rules that come in the book.

What I was trying to show was how I go about creating backgrunds for PCs with close to none in play. I make them up as we go along. Often a player will grab on to the framework I suggest and elaborate on this himself. This involves trust between me and my players, but I found that it creates vivid and memorable games.

Some systems (per my def.) facilitate this (why I love TROS), but ultimatly one does not need the system. There you have my circular argument biting me again.

it really becomes sort of a zen like philosophical problem: Here is the game grasshopper, it will aid you on the way but it is not the solution.

You do not need rules to create backgrounds, but at times it may help.

Any clearer?