How do you make a situation a character cannot walk out of?

[sirogit]

I'm very intereasted in capturing what Valamir calls in a RPG.net post: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88152&perpage=10&pagenumber=1

Situation-driven play. I read the thread a few pages across but it seemed to be very largely random jives, so excuse me if he covered this already.

What are good guidelines towards making a situation that characters cannot walk out of? Personally, I'd view the two main factors: The situation, either driven by the nature of it's existence or the GM "pushing" it, and the character, which we will assume to be mainly underneath the control of the desires of the player.

Even though it's made to be a critical point that the player wants the situation, it's also said that the situation must be something the character cannot walk out of or refuse.  

Now, what are the elements of a character's obligation to cannot walk out of? Immediately I could think of that the stakes have to be important to the character. Should it than be established that the player does not have the option of making his character not care about those stakes? That his character cannot have the option of beleiving that his actions will do absoutely no good and refuse to participate? Should the Situation somehow follow the character even if the character makes no action on its part?

[Paganini]

Siroget,

It's pretty much a given that your players want to play this way. You can't really force them to do it (well, unless you kinda sucker them into it without them realizing - Trollbabe can kinda do that, I guess).

This thread might help:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4738

[pete_darby]

Well, for me, the killer is that in Nar play, you can't make it so the character "can't" walk out of the situation. Sounds like serious de-protagonization to me.

But what you do is make sure that walking away is significant, has interestng reprecussions for the ongoing game. That way, whatever the player chooses to happen makes the game more interesting.

Anyway, I think that Ron's Nar essay will help you a lot with this. In my role as magic 8-ball, I counsel patience.

[Valamir]

Exactly right Pete.  

There are a few techniques that can help point in the direction.  But unfortuneately there is no "do this and you'll be there" prescription.

Note these techniques are non exhaustive nor are the necessarily required.  They are simply aids to the process.

1) Group character creation:  This is a big one and I highly encourage it.  Why?  Because the key to situation is grabbing the players.  Group character creation helps get all of the players feeding into the same vibe.  They start riffing ideas about each others character and in many ways are building the foundation of situation right during the character creation process.

Another advantage is creating characters as a group helps tie player goals and character backgrounds more closely.  Too often the "character" has goals or desires or weaknesses that the player isn't really all that interested in.  He wrote down a back ground because he was "supposed to" or "the GM required it".  GMs then make the mistake of concluding that just because the player wrote it down in the background it must be something he's interested in and so makes for a good "hook".  Not necessarily.  Often times such backgrounds are just words filling a quota.  This is even worse when the "backgrounds" are provided whole cloth by splats --- "your character is a member of Clan X.  Clan X wants goal Y.  Therefor you the player must be interested in pursueing goal Y for your character".  Not necessarily.  Add to that system required choices, and advantages / disadvantages taken simply because they provide points or bonuses and you wind up with a situation where the GM cannot trust what's written on the character sheet to generate hooks that will jazz the player.  

"Well my character is supposed to want that, so I guess I'll go along" may move the game forward...but if the player's just going through the motions its going to feel flat.

Group character creation doesn't fix this, but it does significantly help avoid the problem.  Between the brainstormed ideas, having other players get excited at some concept you had and jointly flesh it out even more, and the synergistic effects of the group effectively raising the bar for everyone, its much easier to get a group full of characters that everyone is pumped about seeing in play.  Not automatic.  But easier.



2) A situation is where setting and character collide.  Something must be going on.  Something which the PCs by their very presence will effect the balance of.  This is where scenario prep can go awry.  If you're looking for situation based play, you have to make sure not to inadvertently slip into plot based play.

To avoid plot based play the players not only need to have choices, but they have to be real choices...not "non choices".  A non-choice is one whose answer is a foregone conclusion.  There is no such thing as a choice that is *automatically* a non choice, because its possible for any choice to have meaning.  A good choice is one that the GM cannot predict what the player will do.  If the GM can look at the character sheet and say "ok I'm pretty sure Rokar will choose to do X", or if the GM knows his players tendency and can say "ok I know John is going to pick a fight with this guy" that's a warning sign that there is a non choice ahead and play is vearing into plot mode.

In plot based play, its typical technique to try and predict the most likely choices by the characters (sometimes based on meta knowledge of the players) in order to narrow down the possibility tree of If-Thens for the scenario design.  A good choice for situation based play is one where the GM isn't sure which way the player will go but is mentally prepared to accept any choice the player makes as being one that is good for play.

Another key to the choice is there must be consequences.  When I said a good choice was something that a character cannot simply walk away from, I should have added "unscathed".  Choosing not to get involved can be a choice...but only if there are consequences.  Those consequences start with what that choice says about the character and ripple out to how others view him and who is helped and who is harmed by his choice.  If some will view him as a friend and some as an enemy even though all he does is walk away...that's a potential choice.  If walking away makes a statement about whats important and not important to the character (a statement the player wants to make)...that's a potential choice.  If alls walking away does is avoid an encounter and its not really saying anything then its not.

Its not up to the GM to deliver the "right choice" or the "wrong choice".  Any choice the player makes because its important to them and they get a gleam in their eye when they do it, and heads around the table are bobbing in appreciation is the "right choice".  It is up to the GM to deliver consequences.  And consequences on both sides, careful not to make one side so obviously optimal that it becomes a non choice.


3) The GM must not be committed to any particular outcome.  This is probably the hardest one to actually follow through on, because most GMs are story tellers who in the process of setting up a scenario can see where the "cool" story line comes from.  Its easy to fantasize about player choices and where they will take them and being able to spring the big twist on them and getting to see the shocked look in their faces when you demonstrate your cleverness (that was always the big payoff for me as a GM.  When the player's eyes got big and the gasped...no...you didn't just do that...  That can be fun play too.  But its not situation based if its prepared in advance.

If the GM has an idea of where the cool story goes and what the "gasp" moment should be, then he's going to be overly tempted to try to guide the players there.  And that moment of guideing is the first step on the path of determineing what the right choice and wrong choice is for the players.  If they do "A" instead of "B" they'll miss out on X, so many GMs will start to manipulate the choices to make sure they get to "B".  Even if the manipulation is subtle and simply involves relocating "B" or modifying this is still manipulation and still heading down the road to plot based instead of situation based play.


4) But its important also to not let the players wander aimlessly.  There is a mistake going too far in the other direction where the GM is so afraid of potentially manipulating the players that he doesn't do anything and the players just flounder around lost.  This is where the techniques of Bangs, Relationship Maps and Aggressive Scene Framing come into play (discussed at length elsewhere).  Bangs are nothing more than the old adage of bringing the mountain to Mohommed.  If the players aren't finding the choices, bring the choices to them.  That's a Bang.  Anything that causes the players to make a real choice (not a non choice) is a Bang and GMs should be prepared with a bunch of potential Bangs to throw (often called the "bandolier of bangs")

Aggressive scene framing is not the same as manipulation mentioned above.  Manipulation is a way of getting the players from where they are now to their destination by avoiding or jiggering or sleight-of-handing past the choice.  Aggressive scene framing is a way of getting the players from where they are now to the choice.  Note, I said players specifically here.  It may well involve characters, especially if a change in geography is warranted.  But the key is moving the players.  The sweet spot is to move them right when interest starts to wane to somewhere where interest in engaged once more.  Wait to long, things may flounder, but be too aggressive and you can cut into things that are important to the players.  There's no harm in allowing a player to say "wait I'm not finished yet" and holding off on the transitional wipe.  Often, once players get into the idea, they'll suggest good transition points and scenes they want to be framed to.  My Life with Master makes this a built in explicit part of a player's job.


I'm sure there are others that I'm missing.  But those are some of the big ones.

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Sirogit:

You might also want to approach it with the goal that any choice the player makes has interesting story potential rather than "take the bait or leave."

[sirogit]

I'm thinking of a game where the player and the GM really want the game to focus on and address this situation, and this situation, the player's character etc, have been created by the group. I think there's still alot that can go wrong, though, for example:

Say the situation that GM and player have agreed on that a man is both a serial killer and loving father, the premise is which part of his life is he going to let suffer because of the other?

So it starts off play that he ambushes a woman in a parking lot, and recognizes her as his daughter's idol, her math teacher. Play begins

After seeing the knife she gets away from him, and runs for a phone. The killer corners her to stop her from calling the cops, but isn't quite prepared to kill her because he can't stop of thinking of how much his daughter will be crushed. During this time the woman cries to him about how horrible this is.

Now, the player says that his character is overcome by her cries, and resolves to let her go and never kill again. This is not the player's way of saying he doesn't like the theme, this is his declaration about the theme: This is how much tragedy is needed before the character's murderous impulses become irrelevant.

So, it would seem that the player-character is completely out of this situation. At the moment there really isn't anything for him to do unless he HAS to be a serial killer again.

Now, there's a question if this is altogether, a failure: We found a situation which plays out the theme perfectlty, we addressed the premise and the character made an important descison. Now, there's the question if the character was properly motivated to be a serial killer: This is only really evident in the fact that he was willing to risk himself by doing so. In that his drive to be a serial killer was only invalidated by a threat to the most important thing in the world to him means that the drive isn't nessecarily poorly designed or a throwaway.

But, I have expiereinced similar events while running a game that even though the player has requested a situation, they have somehow "walked" away from it with no evident player-dysfunction: at a certain moment, there was just no real consequence to be had from walking away compared to the risk and trouble of facing it, so he made his character take the "reasonable" action.

Nonetheless, I think one of Valamir's pieces of advice would have made this better: If stopping to be a serial killer had consequences, I. E., perhaps recently he's been killing only to cover his tracks somehow, and by stopping, he occurs risk on himself and his family. This does make the whole affair more hardhitting and dynamic, in my opnion.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Another possibility is for the "participate in the adventure" agreement to be explicit in the Social Contract. In this case, we simply agree that the characters shall be protagonists (with full decision-making power) and that the circumstances provided by the GM will engage the characters enough to make those decisions, whatever they'll be.

That's how Trollbabe works, and it's the origin of the rule in that text that "the trollbabe cannot leave the adventure." It's an artistic agreement very much along the same lines as several musicians agreeing not to play independently of one another while jamming.

You'll note that those musicians do not use the argument that, for instance, because "my piano can play different chords from the rest of you, that I will go ahead and do just that." The piano's use is subordinated to the Social Contract.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

I'm afraid I'm not following your last post Sirogit.

The player didn't walk away from that situation.  There was a clear choice, kill (and satisfy whatever serial killer desire there is) or not kill (and avoid crushing the daughter).

There were clear consequences Kill (and hurt the daughter), or not kill (and purhaps increase the odds of being caught).

The player made the choice to not kill.

How is that remotely walking away?  Seems like a pretty profound statement was made to me.

I'm not clear on the distinction your making, or what the missing element is that you're looking for.

[sirogit]

Yeah, in the example, I think I confused "walking away" with something that had the similar outcome of ending the situation early, resolving the situation on the getgo by the character giving up. The difference being that resolving it is satisfying and forms a coherent story.

The situation I provided is actually pretty close to my ideal to be created by a group... Making it suck as a bad example. my apoligies.

It's actually hard to think of a really good example in theory where the player and GM cooperatievly work towards an ultimately dissapointing outcome... But I know it's possible. There's alot of factors in actual play that turns "Become overwhelmed towards where you can't continue that life" into "Just ignore the whole thing"

Thanks for the advice in the thread, most of it looks very usefull.

[Mike Holmes]

There is one potential "danger" that I can think of here. And that's that a character's story gets told too quickly. That is, in the serial killer example, if the player decides that they're never going to kill again, then isn't the story done?

Well, the answer is that it could be.

See, your questions all assume that the player takes no responsibility for what happens. That they want a longer game, but close it out. That they want some sort of conflict but then avoid it.

It's possible that somebody would do this. It's called being a bad participant for Narrativist play. So, uh, don't. Use social pressure, or whatever you do to make players not do that.

In practice the fear is unfounded. The player playing the serial killer won't say, "I'll never kill again." Or at least he won't mean it. That's left to be seen. The GM wanting to continue the game puts a helpless victim in a perfect situation in the next scene. Then if he walks away again, then we know he's kept his vow. OTOH, who knows, maybe he'll break it creating yet another theme.

It's my experience that players know when the story is over, and, if you talk about it explicitly, they'll let you know when they want to end it. Or will even work with you on a "deadline". "Let's try to finish up with all the storylines by the end of next session is a reasonable goal to state.

So I wouldn't worry about it. It's not often an issue. If you have a player playing in a different mode, or breaking an agreed to narrativist agenda, then fix the problem per usual.

Mike

[Callan S.]

God damn troll babe being mentioned again...I'm gunna do a search now.

Anyway, on topic, I can only think of this example I'm about to try one day:

Me: Okay guys, theres a nifty dungeon over here with this and that features, does it sound good to you as players?
Group: Mmm, yeah, sounds good.
Me: Okay, now you tell me why your characters would go there.


Christ, they know their PC's better than me, they can make something up.

[John Kim]

I don't have a good answer for the question here, because I usually do the complete opposite.  I almost always allow the PCs to walk out of their current situation.  Then I make the adventures out of the situations that the PCs don't walk out of.  So a lot of sessions end with me asking the players "Where are you going from here?"  and then for the next time I prepare based on what they intend to do.  

The trick is in providing enough interesting background for PCs to be able to pick situations.  If you make up individual adventure hooks and try them out, it is hugely inefficient.  My approach is usually to work out an interlocking set of factions and relations -- cf. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6178">Plotless but Background-based Games.  So there should be a big set of elements which can be used for many different adventures.  

A few specifics: I do start my campaigns off with a single Bang -- some sort of immediate call to action to get the ball rolling.  But after that, I generally turn it over to the players.  I have noticed that I am tending to (1) set the campaign around the PCs' home rather than following wandering PCs, and (2) set the campaign in the real world where I get lots of background for free.