Why should player's support their characters?

[Josh Roby]

Tony, my clarification about divergence between player and character goals is this: if the character is trying to "screw up" and the player wants him to succeed at screwing up, then there's no real divergence, and the character's competencies should determine his chances for succeeding in screwing up.  On the other hand, if the character really wants to do something (in a fictional, in-character sort of way) and the player doesn't, then we have a topic to discuss.

Ironically, the best system I can think of for the second scenario is Capes.  Conflicts are declared by the players, not the characters, and there's no reason why you can't have Captain McBlasty's Blaster powers "overload" and start shooting school buses full of nuns.  And if the other players set their good-guy characters to help overcome McBlasty's little problem, then you-the-player end up getting Story Tokens out of the deal.  Sounds like a lot of comics plots I've seen, actually.

As Emily implied, I think this only really works with Conflict Resolution, or at least it doesn't work with any Task Resolution that we've seen.  There aren't many games that describe negative character competency or have mechanics for manipulating such in specific tasks.

The reward system is the sticky point.  As long as reward systems focus on increasing character competency with the "in-character" justification that the character is growing and learning, you'll have sincere disconnect with any behavior that isn't bent towards that goal.  Capes escapes that by using Story Tokens, which have many diverse uses, most of which are completely uninvolved with the character and give their advantage directly to the player instead (if I remember the rules correctly).

Troy, as far as GURPS and DnD go, if you're playing them "straight" with focused and objective-oriented scenarios, this sort of question doesn't even come up.  The point of these games isn't to explore character faults, it's to express character competencies.  If you really want the character angst and you're doing it with GURPS, you're hammering in nails with a wrench.  That said, I've seen character failure totally rewrite GURPS scenarios -- it's just never been the player's intention to do so.  The point is still the same: character failure did more to the "story" than the endless iterative successes ever did.

[TonyLB]

Vincent:  Check and double-check.  Your example from Sheckleton is dead on.  The apparent ease of rearranging character vs. player interests is dead on.  I say "apparent" because I'm uneasy... there's got to be some reason why so few game support this, doesn't there?

Joshua:  Interesting.  I'm digesting that.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

I read your example, Vincent.  To me it seems your goal was to do something awesome through your character.  Your adversary prevented you from doing so.  Therefore your character failed to provide you the advantage you were looking for: an instance of something AWESOME happening rather than an instance of nothing happening at all.  In my eyes, she didn't help him succeed, she helped him fail.

Now, I am very ready to admit we could argue in circles about this over and over, and I do think your point is certainly valid to the way you're thinking.  My big issue with all of this is I'm just not grasping the whole point of the discussion.  The whole idea that a player would drive their character to fail at providing a more fun instance of play seems antithetical to all that we are doing here.  

Peace,

-Troy

[lumpley]

Vincent:  Check and double-check.  Your example from Sheckleton is dead on.  The apparent ease of rearranging character vs. player interests is dead on.  I say "apparent" because I'm uneasy... there's got to be some reason why so few game support this, doesn't there?

The way I figure it, the most reasonable way to arrange a game is so that my goal's alignment with my character's goal is flexible. In this conflict, I want my character to succeed, so I take her side; in this next conflict, I want her to fail, so I take the opposite; in the third, I don't really have a preference, so I invest lightly or heavily in neither or both or whatever.

Emily mentioned Elfs, I mentioned Under the Bed, Joshua mentioned Capes, I'll add Breaking the Ice for certain - I predict that a new standard of flexibility replaces the old standard of fixed me-and-my-guy.

Designing the opposite game, me-against-my-guy - you'd want that dynamic to really support your particular design goals. Now that we have flexibility, we won't leap to design inflexible games, unless we've got some certain thing to say that the inflexible design will serve really well. It's not a matter of it being hard, it's a matter of it being specialized.

Seems to me.

I read your example, Vincent.  To me it seems your goal was to do something awesome through your character.  Your adversary prevented you from doing so.  Therefore your character failed to provide you the advantage you were looking for: an instance of something AWESOME happening rather than an instance of nothing happening at all.  In my eyes, she didn't help him succeed, she helped him fail.

Now, I am very ready to admit we could argue in circles about this over and over, and I do think your point is certainly valid to the way you're thinking.  My big issue with all of this is I'm just not grasping the whole point of the discussion.  The whole idea that a player would drive their character to fail at providing a more fun instance of play seems antithetical to all that we are doing here.

Well - no, I can't go along with that.

Let's see. First off, my character Erwin totally 100% succeeded at what he was trying to do, which was: stay in the sleigh. No doubt about that.

Second off, I didn't have some awesome thing in mind that depended on Erwin falling out of the sleigh. Him falling out was the awesome thing. Him not falling out, however, that wasn't any kind of setback - Meg's awesome thing happened instead.

There was no possible "more fun instance of play" outcome that we missed. There was no possible "less fun instance of play" either. There wasn't even any "more fun for me, less fun for you" outcome. There was: this awesome thing happens (I hope it does!) vs. this other awesome thing happens (cool with me!).

That's typical of conflict resolution designs. I've won and lost ten thousand conflicts in games in the last few years, and I can't think of a time where nothing happened, where play sucked because we got an un-fun outcome. That's a task resolution fear.

-Vincent

[xenopulse]

Well, Vincent, I guess you answered the particular question I asked in the AP thread here instead :)

It seems to me that I can think of instances in which one outcome is cooler for all involved than another; I actually thought that's one reason you introduced the "say yes or roll the dice" rule in Dogs--if you suggest something, and I just totally like it, I'm not going to oppose it. There was an instance in one Dogs AP thread where the players played out certain things without using the conflict rules, and it was all good, exactly for this reason (though some people argued that they should have used the rules anyway).

So, my follow-up question is this: is there something to be had from opposing players even if I thought your proposal was way cool? Does the suspense of whether it actually comes about add something to the game intensity, for example?

[TonyLB]

Christian:  I think that topic (which I read as "How do you benefit from invoking the rules when the rules aren't strictly necessary?" sub-classification: "Disagreement, hero or menace?")  is drifting a little far from the rest of the thread.  Your question seems pretty much purely in the player-sphere, whereas what we're addressing here is (I think) the interface between the player-sphere and character-sphere.  That having been said, it is a topic very much near and dear to my heart, so I really, really hope that you'll split off a thread to discuss it.

Vincent:  Yeah, I'm not real keen to design a game where you can only oppose your own character.  It might be cool, but I don't have a message for it.

But... but... right now we seem to have flexibility mostly in games where opposing your character and supporting your character are identical under the mechanics.  What is being addressed is purely what you, the player, want.  In that case, the rules are not a tool for meaningfully communicating anything about you (the player) in relation to your character.

Actual play example of a glimmering of something beyond that:

I was playing the young Vanessa Faust, going on her first murderous rampage.  I played "Goal:  Vanessa feels completely justified in her actions."  Let's say that there is a black side (Vanessa would do it again, without regret) and a white side (Vanessa thinks that slicing people to ribbons is probably not something she should be doing).

I staked Vanessa's Justice Debt on the white side, then proceeded to roll up the black side with her various character faults.  What I'm saying, right there, is something like this:  "Vanessa wants to regret this, she'll feel unworthy if she doesn't regret it, but everything in her character and situation says that she won't actually regret it.  She doesn't have that strength of character in her."

Eric and Sydney jumped in on the white side, and ramped it up to a decisive victory.  Vanessa wins (despite my efforts against her).  She is not, actually, as unredeemable as I believed.  Other players see something in her that I (by choice or by belief) didn't see.

Now that's really pretty minor stuff, because characters in Capes are very quick to rebound:  superheroes don't really scar very much.  But it does point a direction:  character failure can be mechanically different from character success, without either being undesirable to the player.  You can, in short, hurt the character deeply (and communicate that hurt with mechanics) without reducing the player's ability to use them as a tool to affect the story.  If you give players that option then they can make statements-in-action about what they think their character deserves.  They can play a character they think is scum, for instance, and try to steer him to the doom he deserves.

So, let me check:  Am I making any sense?

[Emily Care]

You can, in short, hurt the character deeply (and communicate that hurt with mechanics) without reducing the player's ability to use them as a tool to affect the story.  If you give players that option then they can make statements-in-action about what they think their character deserves.  They can play a character they think is scum, for instance, and try to steer him to the doom he deserves.

So, let me check:  Am I making any sense?

Completely to me. We can be free to take on characters that we do not personally wholly sympathize with, since our desires need not mesh with theirs. Vanessa's story is a great example. It accomplishes this, while at the same time introducing empathy for the character on the part of the player. Imagine that: complexity!   

We can also make statements in action about what the character needs to suffer to become the kind of person the player hopes for:  an artist who suffers, a slave who overcomes, a warrior who lives through horror.  In the past, it's been the gm's role to do this stuff (well, if if was anybody's), if we are committed to moving into ways of cutting up the game task distribution pie, we've got to find ways to make it easy & fun to do it ourselves, and to each other. 

best,
Em

[Josh Roby]

Tony, you're making sense.

Two of the elements of the Old Paradigm of Gaming were (a) that the only tool a player had to affect the events in the game was the character, and (b) hurt characters were less effective.  Combining those together, a player wanted to avoid having their character hurt at all costs because that would reduce their ability to affect events in the game.  Both of those axioms are coming under scrutiny and being changed.  The first is easy to see, with games like Polaris and Capes and others that parcel out powers and rights beyond the finite keyhole of the player character.

I think the second bit is what you're getting at in this thread, however.  Can we make games where hurt and pain and loss actually empower the tool of the character or the controlling player to affect the story?  Negligent's soon-to-be-renamed Carbon Soul allows players to inflict Trauma on their characters, which increases character effectiveness temporarily.  I think Orkworld did the same with Trouble (it's been a while), but these are both currency issues.  Taking it a step further, having a stat for 'Reckless' or 'Hurt' and letting that forward the story (specifically as the player understands it, not the character) in ways that aren't necessarily pleasant for the character.

Emily: your second paragraph, exactly.  How many times have we played characters who we wanted to tough it through something to earn something else, and the GM never supplied us with the opportunities to do the toughing it through?  Empowering the players to create their own opportunities will give them one more tool for characterization and story development.

Back to Tony --
You are also, on a parallel track, disentangling the absolute control of the character normally attributed to the player.  The player rarely actually has this absolute control, of course, but it's an assumed, if incorrect, "truth".  The player supposedly always knows their character best, and there are no real surprises -- very rarely can the player be said to "discover" new information about the character, and if the player does make this discovery, it's usually an artifact of his creation.  (Sidenote: the been-done-a-thousand-times thing where the PC is amnesiac and the GM decides to make them the Prince of Abuwhateverizan is an example of the player explicitly giving that "control" to the GM.)  This actually reminds me of the How To Host a Mystery games, where the players portray murder mystery characters in a set of four scenes; one of them is the murderer, but doesn't know that until the start of the fourth scene.  Surprise!  Similarily, you seem to be advocated a systematic method for creating these revelations for player characters -- incorporating this new information to the character concept should provide for some interesting roleplay, indeed!

[timfire]

Backing up a bit to the question of why don't support this---Tony, I think you're overlooking a whole class of games that do support this. Games where the players compete for narration rights rather than strict success/failure. For example, The Pool. If I remember right (not like I've played the game, admittedly), A Monologue of Victory simply grants narration rights, and as such, the player can simply narrate whatever they want, success or failure.

[Gordon C. Landis]

What Tim Said, and Dust Devils.  In my very firstest-ever trip to GenCon - firstest-ever time playing a Forge game with the designer - I had an essentially unbeatable hand, for both narration and "victory", in the final round of a demo for Dust Devils.  I used the narration to get my character shot - probably killed - and everyone else gets away.

Now, these are devil-driven characters - maybe the "best" thing for him was to die somewhat(almost accidentally)-nobly.  Does that mean I was driving for or against "character success"?  As an over-arching rule, damn if I know - of such stuff is Narrativism made.  In this particular case, what I the player decided I wanted, once I knew I had about all the rights the game text could grant me, was get "my guy" shot.

Now, that moment was also a driving factor in my design thinking - I've found too much fuzziness between "what we say the fictional things are attempting to acheive" and "just EXACTLY how much that can be twisted by 'narration rights'" is a big barrier for some folks in playing Nar-ish games.  I tried to provide some tools for this in SNAP, but as usual, a group of well-communicating players dedicated to having awesome stuff happen no matter what will generally be able to overcome any fuzziness issues.

[TonyLB]

Tim, Gordon:  Granted.  There are games that allow you to work against your character in narration.  I didn't give them the credit they deserved.  Mea culpa.

Right now I'm focussed on a more specific issue.  Very few games let you back up your character failure with importantly different (but still workable) mechanical outcomes than you would get with character success.  Certainly the Pool and Dust Devils do not appear to do that, unless I'm misunderstanding.  Does that make it clearer where I'm focussed now?

[Darren Hill]

Pace is a game where you can drive for short-term failure to make you stronger in the long term.
IIRC With Great Power works this way too.
And there are many tales of Trollbabe players seeking conflicts that they hope to lose, so they can hose their characters but in so doing get control of the SIS. This isn't purely an example of narration-rights style game, it's a game where failure, specifically, can be sought after. It's an exemplar of a game which provides different but still workable mechanical outcomes than you would get with character success.

I'd like to see more of these games - I agree it's a very interesting subject.

[Jason Lee]

Just a small note (I agree with what's being said):

Failure is often, not always, associated with escalation of a conflict.  If you want rising action then failure is important to encourage.  Of course, success can escalate as well, but usually seems to do so as a partial failure (complication).

This is opposed to the outright success that is so important to de-escalation and the anticlimax that is the heart of Gam.

[TonyLB]

We can also make statements in action about what the character needs to suffer to become the kind of person the player hopes for:  an artist who suffers, a slave who overcomes, a warrior who lives through horror.  In the past, it's been the gm's role to do this stuff (well, if if was anybody's), if we are committed to moving into ways of cutting up the game task distribution pie, we've got to find ways to make it easy & fun to do it ourselves, and to each other.

Folks, I'm sorry that I'm not yet responding to the most current posts.  You're inspiring me to a lot of thought, which means that by the time I'm ready to respond to something it's been passed by.  I hope you'll forgive me.  Also, I was scheduled to run PTA, so I mulled this during the game.  PTA is, in fact, a really good game to mull this during.

I've seen a lot of people make characters with their necessary pain and failure in the past (the artist who has suffered, the slave who has overcome, the scientist who unleashed a terrible plague) in backstory, where they have the confidence that they can create both the failures and successes necessary to convey their vision.  This phenomenon seems (to me) very much like what Vincent, I think, termed "destructive preplay". 

In classic destructive preplay, you've got this incredibly juicy scene, and you don't yet trust the game to help you make it work.  So, to make sure that it's treated well, you deal with it all outside of the game system, discussing what the scene will turn out to be in play, rather than simply playing it and finding out.

In character creation you've often got this incredibly juicy transformation (the man was enslaved, and now he's free!) but you don't trust the game to let you productively seek all of the things that you need (failure along with success) to make that work for you.  To make sure that it's treated well, you deal with it outside of the game system entirely, just writing the past in by fiat, rather than making it the present and working the issue out in play.

So, yeah, I think there are a lot of good stories of transformation to be told:  rather than pinning them down to a character history, I think we should be playing them.

[Kynn]

Here's what I wrote in Wandering Monsters High School:

The most important part of student enrollment is not buying your grades or choosing your classes; it's setting your goals.  Why?  Because this is what you're going to play out in the game.  You're not really playing this game just to simulate taking tests or playing in the marching band; that's just window dressing.  The real point is to advance toward your goals.

You'll notice that it says "advance toward" and not "achieve."  This is because achieving your goals is actually pretty useless in WMHS; all it means is that you have to choose another goal, and keep playing.

Here's how it works.  You choose one primary goal for your student – something like "I want to find a girlfriend before the end of the term."  And you roleplay your student as trying to achieve that goal.  You also choose a backup goal.  "I want to make the swim team," for example.  You don't actually play out the backup goal – it's just there in reserve.

If you ever do get a girlfriend – thus completing your goal – you cross it off your list goals, and your backup becomes your primary goal.  And you've got to choose a new backup goal now.  See?  You've just made more work for yourself.  It was easier back when you were just trying to reach your goal, because at least you knew what it was.

If this gives you the impression that maybe you should actually try to sabotage your student whenever she's getting close to meeting her goals...well, you've got the right idea.  See "Plots and Complications" later in the rules for more on this notion.

I need to develop this further in the post-24h rewrite, I'm sure.  But basically it's, "okay, you did that goal, now you just made extra work for yourself, genius, and you've gotta come up with something new to do."

--Kynn