Transitioning from Gamist to Narrativist, Part II

[Steve Samson]

Well, we just finished our first gaming session under the new "more story" banner and it was NOT a scintillating success, for many reasons. This is a continuation of the "Transitioning GM/Group from Gamist to Narrativist" post I put up as Skar, before I was able to log-in under my own name. (By the way, how do I make that quote a link so folks can click on it to go to that thread? I don't know what the codes would be.)

This post covers a lot of ground, but I'll try to be as concise as possible without leaving out pertinent details. Basically, I'll share the pre-session communication (or lack thereof), what happened during the session, and the lessons I've learned from all this. Hopefully it will be interesting/helpful to someone. :)

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Two weeks before the session:

I send out a long-winded, four-part email. This email covers:

1. My perceptions of what everyone is looking for, based on recent feedback and earlier conversations with them. I list 7-8 things, and ask everyone to let me know if my perceptions are correct.

2. Several paragraphs of suggestions for ways in which the players can be more proactive in moving the action along or adding to the plot/story.

3. An explanation of the spiritual attributes concept along with several examples from movies (LotR and The Princess Bride, primarily).

4. A preview of the new magic system for the game (we are playing an original system that has been in "alpha" for way too long).

After a couple of days of crickets chirping, Tim (the engineer) responds (to everyone, as is our custom in email discussions) with some very cogent and helpful comments on the new magic system, along with a rebuttal of my suggestions for player involvement. I am taken aback by this, as my feeling is that they were just suggestions to be considered, not a position that needed to be refuted. His response wasn't hostile, but definitely came from a place of "you're saying we're supposed to do this, but I think that is the GM's job". I responded to his rebuttal, which just gave more weight to the whole thing, when really it wasn't the point of the original email.

More crickets chirping.

One week before the session:

We get together at Ted's for an evening of other gaming goodness (LotR Risk and poker] but talk briefly about the shift of storytelling responsibility. Negative reactions from Tim, Ted and Dave, but we don't have time to really explore it (kids on laps, wives joining for poker, etc.) I am baffled since I thought this was what they wanted. I am also annoyed that no one seems willing to respond to my email except for Tim's rebuttal. We confirm a date/time to RPG the next weekend.

I send out an email to everyone with the date/time for the next session. I let them know that I'll need their spiritual attributes by Wednesday in order to come up with an adventure for Friday. I give them a half-dozen things to keep in mind as they create their SA's and encourage them to call or email me if they have questions.

Crickets chirp for two days with the exception of one lengthy email from Kelly arguing why one of my suggestions of things to keep in mind about SA's is totally wrong. :(

I send out another email. In it I state that we got sidetracked about the whole storytelling responsibility thing and really missed the point of my original email, which is that in order for me to give them what they want in the campaign, I need to know what they want. I include just the section from the original email where I listed my 7-8 perceptions of what everyone wanted and again ask them to let me know if my assumptions are correct. I also say that I haven't received any SA's from anyone, which ties my hands as far as adventure prep if we are going to go with a more player-driven approach. I let them know that I am seeing strong signals that they don't want to go that route, which is okay, too, I just need to know. I ask everyone for a yes/no vote on the player-driven approach. I also toss out some things to keep in mind as we play to make the sessions run more smoothly.

More !*#@!% crickets.

Shari sends out an email suggesting that email might not be the best way to discuss this, so maybe we can talk about it on Friday before we play. This email gets a flurry of short responses (one "okay, let's do that, these emails are confusing me", one "when are we playing?", one "read your email, it's Friday" one "oh yah, totally missed that", etc.) I'm very disgruntled and not optimistic about the upcoming pre-session "talk".

I try to prep an adventure for Friday, but have NO clue as to which side of the player-driven/GM-driven fence the group is going to come down on. I wrestle with this for a while and finally decide to just come up with a railroad-type adventure with a couple of combats thrown in that will set up a cool (hopefully) premise and backstory for the campaign. I can't think of what else to do. Which leads us to...

The session:

We gather at Ted's. After some small talk, we start discussing the game and the direction the group wants to go. I stress that I don't think there is anything wrong with what we've been doing, I've just read a lot about SA's and player-driven plots and thought it might be something fun to try.

The group doesn't seem to have any objection to trying something new, including player-driven plots. They were just unclear about what that meant, what they had to do, how SA's worked, etc. A couple of them also voiced strong feelings of not knowing how to pick "good" SA's. They were concerned that they'd pick SA's that wouldn't be useful. I explained that in a GM-driven game that could indeed be a danger, since the GM might never lead them into situations where their SA's apply. But in a player-driven game, the characters will be constantly moving towards their SA's, and that that movement will create situation after situation in which their SA's apply. The subsequent lightbulbs were in the 15-25 watt range and there was some definite flickering, but I'm pretty sure I saw lightbulbs.

We then spent a good chunk of time coming up with SA's for everyone. I stressed that this can and should be a collaborative effort. There was some good sharing about character concepts and ideas were tossed back and forth about translating those concepts into SA's.

After SA creation and character tweaking, I briefly went over the new magic rules and we started the adventure. I may post the story and action separately, but suffice it to say that the railroad/expository/setup adventure I planned had no opportunities for the characters to use their brand new SA's, and their location (deep in a twisted, sorcerous forest, as established from the first two sessions of the campaign) didn't give me much opportunity to reasonably introduce new characters/situations. The adventure I ran got them to the nexus of the forest and it's corruption where they received a quest to recover an artifact from a large city halfway across the world and return with it to destroy the source of the corruption. We basically ended the session with the characters swearing an oath to complete this quest. The session was very flat overall, as is not surprising. I had some vivid and unsettling events/descriptions for the forest and NPC's, an emotional setting for the quest-giving NPC, and some intruiging revelations about the background events, but the players didn't have much to do except puzzle out some narrative clues and the two combats I planned ended up being totally lame. One was so unchallenging as to hardly get the players out of their slouches) and the one I thought would be really challenging ended on the first round by an extraordinay success on the part of Tim's character. (In a very telling comment on the combat system, this extraordinay success wasn't the least bit exciting.) The introduction of a new magic system was distracting and killed what little momentum the adventure might have had, as did the fact that we hadn't played in three weeks and so the stuff that was new then, was new all over again this week. In all, the lack of familiarity with the rules, the introduction of new rules, and some rules that frankly don't work well all added to the burden of an already weak session.

On the ride home I talked to Shari about it and she said she'd rate the session as a 4 out of 10 for fun (which is fair and accurate--I probably would have rated it a 3 myself), but that she was intruiged by the situation now and was thinking a lot about what could happen next. So at least I was able to set the hook for the campaign with her, and I think in most of the others as well. (Ted also mentioned afterwards that he felt better about the campaign now that the group had a goal.)

My intention with this particular quest was to dump them in a place seething with people, situations, conflicts and opportunites so that they can explore their SA's and get a chance to "steer the boat" a little as far as the plot is concerned. Overall I'd expect them to come back with the artifact, but we could take our time getting there. Based on their post-session conversation, however, they seem focused on getting the object, completing their mission and getting their reward.

What I've learned:

1. I need to make my emails MUCH shorter and to the point. (This is really true of all of my communication efforts. I tend to want to include everything.) If I want specific information from the group ("am I on the right track with this summary of what you want?") then I need to send an email with JUST that information in it.

2. Once the water is muddied, find other water. Once the email thread went off on a tangent, it was unrecoverable, at least with this group. I don't think it was unreasonable of me to hope for a response to a separate, much more concise email, but that apparently isn't going to happen with these guys.

3. That when the players said they wanted more story, they really meant that they wanted more story from me. While they are willing to try SA's and more player contribution, their total lack of response over an extended period speaks volumes for their lack of enthusiasm. It's possible that they may take to it, but probably not. ("You can lead a horse to water...") Also, the responses I got to comments during our "talk time" this session about their total lack of response to my emails ("I've been busy", "some of us have real jobs", etc.) also indicates that their mindset is one of wanting to just show up and be entertained. Thinking back over the past year, Tim is the only one who has consistently provided thoughtful input into issues of game mechanics and/or system design or who has even been reliable about responding to emails.

4. YOU CAN'T PLAY WITH ALPHA RULES. In our last campaign we had a lot of fun and the fact that the rules were very much in flux didn't seem to be an issue. In looking back, however, I realize that we had many sessions of "I wan't to test THIS mechanic so let's focus on THESE activities". We were primarily just doing stuff and seeing if the rules could handle it. The fact that these sessions grew into an evolving story was a happy accident. I think that in order for the players to be able to get into the story, they have to be able to get away from the rules. This can be accomplished by either having fewer rules or by making the players more familiar with the rules. And, of course, the players can never get familiar with rules that are constantly changing.

-----

So what to do from here? I think the first thing is to separate testing my game ideas from running a campaign. If I am going to continue GMing for the group, I need to find a system I like and run a campaign with that while I continue to work on my own system on the side. From time to time we can get together to test pieces of my system, but that should be separate from the ongoing campaign.

Secondly, I think the experiment with player-driven plots should also be separated from the campaign. A better approach (at least with this group) is to run a one-off adventure with The Pool (or something similar) and let them have a taste of really authoring an evening of shared adventure. If they like that, then we can talk about how to include some aspect of that into an ongoing campaign. But it definitely seems that their unfamiliarity with the concept, combined with the perceived ramifications of any "mistakes" on their part in an ongoing campaign, is making them all hesitant to try something so completely outside their realm of experience.

Anyway, that is what I'm taking away from the whole experience. As always, comments and questions are welcome and appreciated! :)

[sirogit]

1. Could you talk a little more about that email you sent out? It sounds pretty important. Like what examples of SAs or ways that they could protagonize themselves.

2. So, the system is like, a pretty unstable homebrew with SAs from riddle of steel tacked on...? How entirely was the SA system impleneted, such as in character-improvement/waning of SAs? Well, if the system is like a traditionial RPG, than it probably supports Gamist/Simulationist play alot better than Narrativist.

My suggestion would be to play an already designed Narrativist game, OR design a system yourself with narrativist intentions. I ran a one-shot of a game I made 12 hours prior to playing it and it worked great, but I think that has alot to do with the fact that it was very focused on what I wanted to do that session(Even though it had several inherent flaws.)

3. Shift of storytelling responsability. The most important responsability, for narrativism, I think, is your character deciding what to do. Is that what it meant? If that idea doesn't appeal to them, than they obviously have a pretty big personal bias against narrativism. Do you think they disliked it because of something else you bundled in with it as "storytelling responsability", though?

4. How is a twisted, sorcerous foresty devoid of potential uses of SAs...? I mean, if you wanted there to be interaction with a community, couldn't you just have them stumble on some Feyish sort of people? Lots of intereasting situations have been made in fantasy literature relying on characters stumbling on bizarre forest folk, what makes your situation idfferent?

5. What do you mean by narrative clues...?

6. The session sounded to me like, my typical interaction with WW's  games. A continual pretension of "story", and reference to what sounds like Narrativist gaming, but really some combination of Gamism/Sim that happens to be LESS supportive of narrativism than your average game of D&D, because

A. In order for the "Story" to be implented, the PCs must have less control over the direction of the game

B. Players are told that they MUST contribuite to a coherent story that doesn't really involve them, which means pretending to have a great intereast in what is going on, and not exploring what their character is intereasted otherwise

C. All sorts of mandates inherent in the games about the way that characters should do and think, including accusations of breaking the accurate models of creatures built from pastiche and/or threats to destroy their character with NPCs made exclusively to control PC behavior, etc etc. I guess it doesn't apply to your session, though.

7. Do you really think they just want to just show up and be entertained? To me, when you mention extended moments of their not doing anything to further the story, that you expect them to entertain themselves while you just show up. In any type of game it works best as a balance, I personally don't see Narrativisim as requiring any more player input than Gamism, just in a different way.

[JamesDJIII]

Wow - I had the EXACT response regarding "That's the GM's job" from a person I play with a lot. I found this out during a chat. Essentially, they saw providing any sort of narrative material as work, not fun at all. Now that I know this, it's much easier to work around and deal with.

[Caldis]

From my experience email is not a good form to try and decide on anything.  People naturally talk in a wishy washy form that takes a lot of going over to sort out.  When typing people fall into that form but they're also lazy and or need clarification on many points and it takes a lot to work those out, many emails.  Face to face discussion is the best way to sort out what people actually want.

[Steve Samson]

Sirogit,

Thanks for your questions/comments. I'll try to respond.

1. Could you talk a little more about that email you sent out? It sounds pretty important. Like what examples of SAs or ways that they could protagonize themselves.

I am going to post the relevant portions of the two emails as a separate thread, since I think they may be of interest on their own as an outsider's perception of SA's.

2. So, the system is like, a pretty unstable homebrew with SAs from riddle of steel tacked on...? How entirely was the SA system impleneted, such as in character-improvement/waning of SAs? Well, if the system is like a traditionial RPG, than it probably supports Gamist/Simulationist play alot better than Narrativist.

My suggestion would be to play an already designed Narrativist game, OR design a system yourself with narrativist intentions. I ran a one-shot of a game I made 12 hours prior to playing it and it worked great, but I think that has alot to do with the fact that it was very focused on what I wanted to do that session(Even though it had several inherent flaws.)

The system was definitely a big part of the problem. In the last campaign the system grew into a solid form from one session to the next, but ultimately ended up with two key problems: the magic system didn't work, and the game didn't scale well from beginning, low-level characters/challenges to higher levels of abilities and obstacles. Between the last campaign and the start of this one I added/changed several key elements (magic being the most notable, but I did make some other fairly major changes so that the system would scale better). I was overconfident about the system because, except for the two noted deficiencies, we had used it for our entire previous and very successful campaign.

My biggest lesson learned from all of this has been to separate testing from playing until the system is solid enough to support real playtesting. I actually think that the old version of the system better supported narrative play, and that the changes I made to make it scale "better" was based on the desires of a couple of my players for a more traditional low-level to high-level model of character growth.  Another lesson learned: Know the kind of game YOU want to make. I think I'd be better off returning the game to it's previous state and calling it done than trying to bend it to fit the goals of my players. I can always make another game to try to meet those goals. (These games are for my own education rather than for publication. I think I've got great ideas, but I need to work on my craft some more before I'll be able to create a truly quality product. I DO feel that I am coming up with really good pieces through this process that I can then incorporate into a finished game.) Incidentally, I hope that this is painting a picture of someone who is new to all this, and not someone who is the future Ed Wood of game design. ;)

3. Shift of storytelling responsability. The most important responsability, for narrativism, I think, is your character deciding what to do. Is that what it meant? If that idea doesn't appeal to them, than they obviously have a pretty big personal bias against narrativism. Do you think they disliked it because of something else you bundled in with it as "storytelling responsability", though?

I think the crux of the issue with the "storytelling responsibility" can be summed up with an anology: They wanted to take a multiple-choice test and I wanted to give them essay questions. That is, they wanted me to present a couple of distinct options for them to choose from (not list them for them, but still present clear and separate paths that the story could take), whereas I wanted to give them a situation and have them come up with what they wanted to do. It's hard to convey in this post, but from gaming with these guys for a long time, it's pretty clear to me that what they enjoy is making tactical decisions that have cool outcomes. I guess what I was wondering and hoping was that they might also enjoy having their decisions and cool outcomes occur on a more strategic/dramatic level.

4. How is a twisted, sorcerous foresty devoid of potential uses of SAs...? I mean, if you wanted there to be interaction with a community, couldn't you just have them stumble on some Feyish sort of people? Lots of intereasting situations have been made in fantasy literature relying on characters stumbling on bizarre forest folk, what makes your situation idfferent?

I totally see where you are coming from here. A twisted, sorcerous forest sounds like a GREAT setting for narrative play. In my prep I made this a twisted, sorcerous forest eerily empty of life save for a few sad, twisted creatures, the evil artifact at it's center that was corrupting the forest, and an NPC persona to give the characters the background info and starter quest. Not that it excuses lazy GMing (which is what it was, no question about that) but keep in mind that I'd be trying for two weeks to get SA's, background, or anything else that would help me create a setting/story/etc. that would appeal to the players and tie into their character concepts. I had zero input as to whether or not they even wanted to try out SA's and all that, so in the end, I said "screw it, I'll just create a setting/quest and they can run through it". I realize now that I could have created a really interesting dilemma for them by introducing a sympathetic population within the forest that depended on it's corrupt nature for their very existence. Then the group would have had to choose whether or not they really wanted to free the forest from it's curse at the expense of this twisted but otherwise innocent group of creatures.

5. What do you mean by narrative clues...?

Stuff about the backstory and environment that they had to puzzle out from clues that they found during their exploration. (In this case, journal entries from a hidden cottage on the fringe of the forest, a captured orc's suicide during the night and the cryptic message it left in elvish runes using it's own blood, the increasingly disturbing presence of unnaturally deformed creatures and bizarre environmental effects, etc.)

6. The session sounded to me like, my typical interaction with WW's games. A continual pretension of "story", and reference to what sounds like Narrativist gaming, but really some combination of Gamism/Sim that happens to be LESS supportive of narrativism than your average game of D&D...

Yup, that is what this turned out to be. I was convinced that they were going to veto playing a more active role in the plot, so I prepared an adventure that was very linear. By the time we got to actually playing, I just didn't have it in me to improvise much that night. At the end of the session I felt bad that I hadn't "done a better job" as GM, but then the next day I thought about it and decided that the responsibilty for a bad session had to be shared by all of us. If I'd had ANY input from them at all I would have been able to prep a much better session. That I misinterpreted their lack of input and wasn't able to improvise during the session was on me, though.

7. Do you really think they just want to just show up and be entertained? To me, when you mention extended moments of their not doing anything to further the story, that you expect them to entertain themselves while you just show up. In any type of game it works best as a balance, I personally don't see Narrativisim as requiring any more player input than Gamism, just in a different way.

Well, this is a sore spot with me so I'm not going to go into detail, but I know how much time I spend each and every week working on the game system, brainstorming/planning the campaign/adventure, writing up stories/summaries of the previous session, and handling the logistics and communication (such as it is) for the group and I think it's safe to say that my goal here isn't to have them entertain themselves while I just show up. :)

All I want is for them to make some contribution so that I don't have to think of everything that happens all the time. Ron talks about Director, Author and Actor stances. I'd add an Audience stance as well, which is what my group tends to be in a lot. When they aren't rolling dice or cracking jokes, they're waiting for me to tell them what happens next. I'd LOVE to have one of them say "I can't believe we're here in Khazan. My grandparents grew up here. I wonder if I've got any cousins or something still in town." Or, "It almost seemed like that last bandit recognized us from somewhere, what's up with that?" Stuff like that.

Anyway, thanks again for your interest., Sirogit. Considering my responses to your comments/questions has clarified some stuff for me and will help me in future sessions. :)

Steve

[Scripty]

All I want is for them to make some contribution so that I don't have to think of everything that happens all the time. Ron talks about Director, Author and Actor stances. I'd add an Audience stance as well, which is what my group tends to be in a lot. When they aren't rolling dice or cracking jokes, they're waiting for me to tell them what happens next. I'd LOVE to have one of them say "I can't believe we're here in Khazan. My grandparents grew up here. I wonder if I've got any cousins or something still in town." Or, "It almost seemed like that last bandit recognized us from somewhere, what's up with that?" Stuff like that.

Steve

I'm totally in the same boat. My own attempts to introduce my past group(s) to games that supported Narrativist play (or different stances) was a similar implosion. They enjoyed the change in stance offered by Donjon. The group also consisted of a number of what I call: "Wanna-GMs." These are individuals who are playing in order to get the opportunity to run their own campaign in the near future. Their desire, IME with the group, is inversely proportional to their abilities.

My attempts to change up the Stance a bit was in direct correllation with the above observation.

I thought: "Gee, all these guys want to GM. They often have clever ideas but rarely put forth the initiative to prepare an adventure or even a campaign for us to play, meaning I often get stuck playing with them in uninspired campaigns that either go nowhere or fizzle out after a few weeks of play."

Then I thought: "Hey, wouldn't it be nice to spread the creative agenda around a bit. That way they could have a say in how the game ran, as well as share a bit in the creation of it." I saw this as a "have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too" situation. These "Wanna GMs" would be in a position to run the game in a limited fashion or for a limited duration, driving the direction of the campaign through their characters and creating setting elements as well. This would save them from having to run piss-poor adventures to share in the spotlight that they craved.

Nice thought. It seemed rational at the time.

No dice, though.

It didn't occur to me at the time, but the perspective that I saw after the fact was that some of these players were only marginally interested in playing. They wanted to run a game. I don't know why. Their sessions were truly unsatisfying on the whole. Yet, they had to run. All the time.

And they saw this new type of game, not as an opportunity to run the game in a fashion that seemed more in line with their proclivities. Seriously, these guys either run with a module they haven't read or off the top of their heads. They've spent 45 minutes at the table to make maps while the players sat around, ate chips and stared at each other. They've borrowed entire groups of NPCs from games that I've (and others) have run, creating a wierd RPG genre of their own with an odd "pastiche" of other games run by other players. Overall they just have no desire to do any of the "work" associated with running a game. They just want to sit in the big chair.

I thought that narrative play was the answer. It works great for me. But something that has occured to me lately was that these players weren't interested in narrative play because they weren't interested in play. They were only interested in running the game again. So, any attempts on my part to create a "shared" creative experience were doomed to failure from the start. They didn't want to bring ideas to the table because, in all honesty, they were too busy thinking about the game they wanted to run next week.

It wasn't so much that they wanted to be entertained as they wanted the capacity to sit there and think about what *they* would do.

It's wierd, but I think it accurately describes a sub-group of the "Audience" mentality: the Armchair GMs or the Wanna GMs.

Do you think you might have any of these in your group? You might do well to lay these things out on the table before proceeding. Not necessarily the "I want you to create with me" part, but the "I want you to be engaged and make this interesting for you" part.

It should also be noted that another reason I wanted to shift the creative agenda was in order to engage the players. To have the players drive the story in a direction that they wanted it to go. It's not so much laziness on my part as a desire to end the need for reading the minds of my players. Apparently, from my experience, these players expect GMs to have ESP as well...

Scott

[Steve Samson]

Per Sirogit's request, I have posted the relevant emails. They are in the "Efforts towards Protagonism/SA's" thread. (Again, how can I make that title a link to the thread? Anyone?)

[sirogit]

I was worried that my responses were taking on abit too much of an accusational note, glad you found them usefull.

They don't sound terribly receptive at all. To me, the keypoint in noticing a player wants to play in a more narrativist style is that the voice complaints at their actions being led by NPCs. If they haven't done that, than they may not be very intereasted in Narrativist gaming at this point, or ever.

I still maintain a possibility of running the game where Shari's character makes the important choices and gives you feedback, and the rest of the characters are somehow charged to help her with their tactical playing. It would seem to fit what everyone asks for. Heck, if it doesn't work, it could be good, if someone says something like "Hey! Why does Shari make all the damn intereasting choices?" Than you give them an intereasting choice and see what they do with it.

Would it at all be possible that you could take a break from these players, and than get a new group that would be more excited about narrativism? Than, you could work it out with yourself about what Narrativism requires, pick up alot of a new tricks, and than maybe, you could retry it with your current players with more capable techniques and see if the narrativist thing works at all for them.

Games I'd recommend running in that event:

Riddle of Steel:
As mentioned before, the SA system, if well-impleneted, can do a good job at turning Gamist/sim intentions into Narrativist ones.

My Life With Master:
It's drama tracking system makes it alot easier to run a coherent story, and there is pretty much no support for playing anything other than narrativism. With the stipulation your players have an intereast in Gothic romance, ala Dracula, Frankenstien, etc etc, though I have heard threads about adapting to anything involving dysfunctional relationships centered on a single abusive figure.

[Trevis Martin]

Steve,

roll your mouse over the URL button (upper right)  in the post screen., It'll give you the code which is

http://url  or enter text here


regards,

Trevis

[Mike Holmes]

I was going to reply here, but decided to rant instead. Steve, this isn't meant to point you out particularly, you're just the guy who happened to set off the rant. Still, I think it pertains:

Mike's Standard Rant #7: You Can't Sneak Up on Mode

Mike

[RDU Neil]

... from a non-theorist, non-academic.

All this talk of Theory and CAs and Narrativist is fine...

... but it doesn't belong anywhere near the game itself.

Avoid any use of the "lingo."

Second... only do one new thing at a time.  Introducing SAs and then new magic rules, etc., etc.,   They are only going to focus on what appeals to them.  This group sounds like it will always look at "rules" before thinking "what is a cool story?"


My suggestion... ask them simply, "What does your character want?  Describe to me a scene in the game that would be fulfilling to the character.  That would make them real and interesting as if they existed in a real place, not just a pile of stats."  

If they can't do something as simple as that... you are in big trouble.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Steve,

I send out another email. In it I state that we got sidetracked about the whole storytelling responsibility thing and really missed the point of my original email, which is that in order for me to give them what they want in the campaign, I need to know what they want.

I think they probably don't consciously know what they want. Check out http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1095">on making the same character over and over.

Paul