Hey,

On the A Connecticut Narrativist in King Arthur's Simulation thread in GNS Model Discussion, Skippy wrote:

I have a current player who always plays a mage. ALWAYS....Kelly has been dissatisfied with his games for quite some time. Not enough to go actively seeking something else, but enough that he was tired of the system limitations he'd seen.

When my friend Tom ran Theatrix this past summer, he very much wanted the personal subplots of the characters to eclipse his main plotline, the way Berkman says they should in the rulebook. He'd send emails prior to the game sessions, asking the players to tell him scenes they wanted to have. He didn't get much in response.

Maybe four sessions into a game that wrapped itself up in eight sessions, we had a phone conversation about the subplots issue, and the lack of input from the players. I told him that the real issue isn't that the players don't want to see certain things for their characters, to have a specific kind of story emerge, it's that they don't consciously know what those things are well enough to be able to tell him. Think about it. People generally know what they really like when they see it. Everyone has favorite movies and favorite lines and characters and scenes from movies. When a player creates a character, he definitely has ideas about what he thinks is a cool character, and unconscious preferences for what kinds of stories he'd like to see for the character.

It's just that the average person doesn't psychoanalyze himself to the point where he knows the real patterns of his likes and dislikes, the patterns that cross genre and medium. So when I talked to Tom, I psychologized what I knew about the other players. "Remember how much Jim liked the Edward Norton character in Fight Club. He couldn't stop talking about it. And remember how quick his character was to make friends with the Pa'sion character in my Everway game? Remember how much gratitude he roleplayed when his character met mine, and he thanked me for the climbing shoes? And think about how into the Japanese culture of formalized respect he is."

I told Tom that I was convinced that Jim very much had a pattern of appreciation for characters who have a friendship or mentor relationship with a more significant and powerful character, and advised him to create opportunities for that kind of thing in Jim's subplots.

I did the same psychoanalysis of the other players.

And subsequent sessions of the game proved that I was dead on.

So why does a gamer create the same character over and over, the way Kelly does, and the way Joe's friend Gordon does? Because consistently, in each and every game, the character fails to emerge from gameplay with a story that satisfies the player's unconscious preferences. Just because the player can't articulate their preferences doesn't mean they don't have any. The player gets trapped in the RPG equivalent of the woman who consistently goes back to her alcoholic, abusive husband. It's too important to her psychology to give up on the chance of overcoming the specific set of relationship issues she has with him.

Vampire, Mage, and AD&D, to name just a very few, consistently deprotagonize player characters. The suave character botches a seduction roll and the game or the GM assigns an outcome that undermines the character concept. The fierce character whiffs and stumbles through combat sequences. A great deal of table humor during RPG sessions comes from the system undermining the characters. Well, I'm sorry to say, but that's the textbook understanding of dysfunctional. And we're not even talking about railroading here. If system + railroading consistently create story outcomes that aren't satisfying to the unconscious story preferences embedded by the player in the character, you see the player creating the same character over and over again.

Cops hate domestic disturbance calls. The wife is black and blue from the beating she's taken, but she lunges at the cop when he tries to cuff the husband. Players similarly defend the systems that are killing them. And they go back for another slap, again and again.

That's why I suggested WYRD to Joe. It delivers authorial and directorial power to the player. I think he'll find that once Gordon works out the story that's been bottlenecked inside of him, to his satisfaction, that he'll be all over the map in terms of the characters he creates for games.

Paul

Because consistently, in each and every game, the character fails to emerge from gameplay with a story that satisfies the player's unconscious preferences.

On 2001-12-28 17:29, Laurel wrote:
I think another reason that relates somewhat to all of this is that we have players who are "fixiated" upon being a mage/fighter/vampire/whatever because there there is something about the specific archetype they are re-living over and over again that represents to them something lacking in their own lives ... These people aren't really roleplaying for pleasure as a primary motivation; they are roleplaying for escape from the reality of their own limitations.

Couldn't just be that the outcomes of playing that character type are so apreciated that they want to see them again and again? Just like I keep going to see HK action flicks knowing exactly what the plot will be every time? Or have I somehow deluded myself into thinking that I'm enjoying myself?

I play mages 'cause I like magic.

Sometimes, Paul, a cigar is just a cigar. Not to say that the cigar might not be something else for you, however...

:wink:

Mike

Hey Mike,

Sometimes, Paul, a cigar is just a cigar.

When a cigar presents itself to you, it's just a cigar. When you choose a cigar, you've got a reason.

Paul

What does that mean?

Yep, I choose cigars (mostly Punch and Arturo Fuentes if you must know). My reason is that I like the taste of cigars.

Or do you mean to imply that all cigar smokers do so for sublimated reasons?

OK, enough with the cigars. My point still stands. From a psychological POV I could as easily accuse you, Paul, of projection. I'm sure that if we discovered that you were playing the same character over and over, that your diagnosis would stand. All I'm saying is that, for some (probably legitamate non-narrativists), your diagnosis may just be confusing a predeliction for a problem.

Or am I really that deluded? Well, at least I'm happily deluded. I think. :smile:

Mike

Thak like Fire! Fire warm!

Okay, assuming I'm competent enough to understand what's been said,

1) As Ron pointed out in that other thread, who am I to psychoanalyze my players? -and- (more importantly)

2) Am I qualified?

My wife worked for a psychiatrist for five years. Brilliant man, lots of fun, even if he is a Forty-niners fan. He doesn't presume to know about Quality Assurance anymore than I presume to understand his specialty.

There's an anecdote that I believe involved Hemmingway. He was approached by a surgeon at a party, who told the author that he planned to write when he retired from medicine. Hemmingway responded by saying when he retired, he planned to operate.

If you are qualified, more power to you. I would feel very uncomfortable performing this exercise.

My friend that runs our Vampire game has often said that roleplaying is about wish fullfillment. I think he's right for the most part. I know I definately like his games. :wink:

Ryan

Heya Skip,

who am I to psychoanalyze my players? -and- (more importantly)...Am I qualified?

I wasn't suggesting that GM's should feel an obligation to psychoanalyze their players. In fact, despite having had a little success at it the one time, with a few guys I know pretty damn well, I think it's generally an impossible task. The solution isn't to analyze the player, but to deliver authorial and directorial power to the player such that they exert enough influence over game events that the story preferences they have embedded in their character can emerge. You can't expect to psychologize the player and know specifically what his story preferences are, so you can make them happen, and he probably can't tell you what they are, but they'll be reflected in the choices he makes with his authorial and directorial power.

Paul

Hey guys,

Paul's most recent comment cuts to the very heart of what makes directorial/authorial power so damned cool.

If you're playing a game with someone, and you're approaching it from the traditional player/GM relationship (i.e., primarily actor stance), the GM might hit the cues he's supposed to. I repeat, he might. But even if he's good friends with someone and he has a reasonable understanding of the things that person likes, he's still going to be lucky to play into their wants and needs about half the time. Because we're not psychoanalysts, just like everyone is saying here on this thread. We can't know what the player wants all the time, and when we get it right, it's most often a lucky stab in the dark. And the end result of this floundering in the dark is, too often, an experience that just doesn't hang together the way the player had envisioned it.

Now deliver that player some extremely powerful directorial and/or authorial power and stand back.

Why?

Because the player can not be wrong.

He simply can't be.

Take care,
Moose

[ This Message was edited by: hardcoremoose on 2001-12-29 02:30 ]

Hi there,

Paul's opening post on this thread is strong stuff, and he and I have been kicking it around in private communication for a while.

One thing that ought to be clarified is what constitutes "sameness" among the characters played by a given person. It is nothing so simple as "always playing a mage," in game terms. It is instead, as was described earlier about the person who always played the paladin personality, about bringing in particular issues and standards of play, no matter what other context is involved. In many cases, the in-game description and role of the character is similarly repeated, as a kind of marker for these issues and standards.

I want to address Mike's basic comment: "Must repeated play of a character be dysfunctional?" To extend the relationship metaphor, that is much like asking, "Must any marriage be considered codependent abuse?"

I think the metaphor holds. The abusive marriages that Paul refers to are a subset of marriages. The (for lack of a better word) neurotic version of repetitive-character play is a subset of repetitive character-play.

One might be "working out neat stuff," psychologically and artistically speaking, through role-playing. Or one might just like elf babes and thus always plays one. Fine and cool. That is not what Paul is talking about. He is talking about unhappy players, and thus the discussion starts there.

I have nothing to say about "all" examples of repetitive character-play. I do know that Paul's description is borne out in many examples. When I started my current run of games, in which the same group plays a given game/system for a while, then shelves it and moves to another, I saw that people would play the "same person" over and over, and then, later, branch into more diverse character creation. The sense of "Ah! Finally got it right," was extremely strong in all cases.

I think Paul's point is dead-on correct. I also think it is easily misinterpreted, unless we understand that, before all else, we are talking about unhappy role-players. If you're not unhappy, then the point doesn't apply to you no matter how repetitive your characters are.

Best,
Ron

A player once explicitly told me that he likes to play "incompetent" characters because he has to be hyper-competent in the office all the time. This came about after I had tried empowering his character for, as I saw it, balance; I found he would actively resist these attempts (not that I should have been doing them anyway). The result was a conversation in which this emerged quite specifically, and helped me cater to his style.

As I mentioned on another thread about characters not too long ago, I definately feel that many of my characters, probably the ones I am most at home in, are essentially an extention, or exploration, or tangent, to my own personality. I think this is necessarily the case, given the extent to which we quite shamelessly make up a character for ourselves out of whole cloth with "super powers" and the works. Or perhaps not really out of whole cloth, in that the range of character types that can be incorporated in a setting varies (although often these are just archetypal reinterpretations).

I think the idea is worth exploring even for the "non-clinical" cases in that I think that if a player is typecasting themselves, its probably the case that they are not playing at their best; quite possibly if they got to do what they always wanted to do with this sort of character, everyone would have more fun. I definately agree about the extension of authorial powers and so forth. I noticed that one of the ways sorcerer is structured to facilitate authorialismn is player-generation of individual demons which are one of the characters primary mechanisms for acting in the world. One might reasonably expect that preciesly because the player knows that they are constructing two characters, almost, which will be closely related, that they would tend to build in some appropriate sort of trope or theme or whatever that they would want to get out of the game. Thus, the player brings to ther able, I would hope, quite a lot of self expression in terms of how they are going to interact with the world.

We're definately just talking about people who are unhappy here; they keep repeating a cycle and not enjoying themselves, but also unwilling or unable to break the cycle. My suggestion is this isn't a good thing, because RPG success= players' happiness, right? So if you are a GM, and you have a player who's unhappy, because he's constantly a mage but no game anyone runs, regardless of system, regardless of G/N/S approach, satisfies him... then if this person is your friend, maybe its time to help him figure out what it is he -really- wants from playing a mage. That might not work either, but it will help you realize that his dissatisfaction is a personal issue, and not your fault.

Laurel

A little side-topic which probably warrants detailed discussion at some point...

Do GMs (that is, people who GM a lot) tend to vary their characters more than players (ie, people who don't GM so much)?

In my experience... probably. I think I've been conscious of my fondness for characters who are specialists, for example. Since noticing that, I've experimented a little and played generalist characters.

That said, that could be down to how I'm introspective at the best of times, and like analysing RPing. I'm *here*, after all.

Joe.

Hi Joe,

I am primarily a GM, rather than player. Speaking only for myself, my "character profile" ended up looking like multiple takes on a narrow range of issues. It wasn't as if I were playing the very same person over and over, but the motifs and the issues did get raised over and over, in different ways.

The highlights of the 80s:
Asrovak d'Ursini - sinister shadow-mage with snake familiar (Rolemaster)
Vivianne - undead sorceress with shadowy-dark scary spells (GURPS; setting Cynosure)
Rico - kick-butt latino speed freak, with venomed fingertips (Cyberpunk)
Serpentine - sexy snake-powers babe, with narcotics-powers + kicking butt (Champions)
Nocturne - shadowy occult superhero, lots of darkness and intangibility and magical scariness (Champions)

Most importantly, to turn to theme rather than motif, all of these characters had terrifically dysfunctional family backgrounds, often being related to major villains in the game, often exiled/detached from family.

This pattern changed a few years ago, and since then my character creation has become much more diverse in terms of both motifs and themes, and I've been willing to entertain a wider range of in-play outcomes for characters as well.

Based only on observation of personal acquaintances, I've found that GMs actually show more tendency to play "similar stuff" from game to game. I suspect it has a lot to do, in the specific people I'm talking about, with the same reason they are mainly GMing in the first place - frustrated Narrativism.

Best,
Ron

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-12-30 21:44 ]

And my experiences run counter to Ron's, as a (primarily) GM only occasionally being a player.

Now granted, I get to flex my muscles a bit more as a GM, and I get to play so many more people. The reason I got into GM'ing in the first place, however, was because I was disappointed with the stories that were being generated. Transparent plots, heavy-handed railroading, zero-deviation from module, that sort of thing.

The characters I played were fairly diverse, I think. Other than being smart-asses, the only thing they shared was me. Naturally, there were elements of me in all of them, or should I say that there are elements of all of them in me.

But to the central theme:
1) A GM should have a trust with his players, and should ask (as frequently as necessary) if they are satisfied with the story.
2) Players, too, have a responsibility for expressing themselves. This goes back to the contract idea.
3) Both sides should feel comfortable expressing dissatisfaction, and requesting a change in pattern, pace, story, whatever. Dialogue should be open.

Beyond this, isn't anything more an intrusion? Isn't it a violation of trust to begin delving into the psyche of even an unhappy player?

Now, I think it is perfectly acceptable to have discussions about HOW the player's observable behavior is affecting others, or his apparent unhappiness with a game or character. It's the WHY that concerns me, or rather, shouldn't concern me.

If you are friends with the players, it is likely that you have an opportunity to observe them outside of the game setting. If there is a recurrent character personality, it likely is the same one that goes to the movies or out to dinner with you. My Paladin friend was the same way IRL as in the games: impossible standards of self and others. Constantly disappointed with people who were human.

Maybe I'm just afraid to delve into the minds of players. God knows I don't want to know what goes on in the mind of my perpetual mage-player. Other than establishing the dialogue as I mentioned, the burden should be shared equally.

Hey Skip,

Read my third post to this thread. It starts with, "Hey Skip."

1) A GM should have a trust with his players, and should ask (as frequently as necessary) if they are satisfied with the story.
2) Players, too, have a responsibility for expressing themselves. This goes back to the contract idea.
3) Both sides should feel comfortable expressing dissatisfaction, and requesting a change in pattern, pace, story, whatever. Dialogue should be open.

It was this exact situation that provoked the psychoanalysis I described in my first post to the thread. The GM had asked for input from the players, multiple times, and had not received much beyond vague assurances, assurances that didn't have the ring of truth to them because players had consistently failed to address and resolve subplots, something that's essential in Theatrix because it's how the player earns plot points. The GM resorted to psychoanalysis only when requests for input had repeatedly failed.

The problem is that players will know they're not exactly satisfied, but they probably don't recognize what unconscious story preferences they have that are going unmet. And even if they do, they probably don't know how to present those preferences to the GM in a functional way, so that story emerges from play. The player I described in my first post ultimately did decide on what he wanted from his subplots. And he worked with the GM outside of the game to essentially script out key scenes. But that isn't roleplay. And it came through in the delivery. Despite orchestrated conflict and tension in the scenes, they were painfully boring to sit through for the other players.

Isn't it a violation of trust to begin delving into the psyche of even an unhappy player?

You absolutely don't have to if you deliver meaningful authorial/directorial power to the player.

Interestingly, I think a lot of GM's who achieve local renown, among gamers at the same college or whatever, for being one of the "good" GM's, actually have somewhat more than average skill in perceiving what's important to someone, what they really want, and an ability to make that available to the player within the context of a game, perhaps through fudging, or just mastery of system. To say it's a violation of trust to make an effort to perceive what a player's real narrative interests are, and to accommodate them through play, is to deliver a criticism to the common notion of what a "good" GM is.

Paul

Hmm. Interesting points. I don't think our opinions are that divergent, just a slight difference in perspective.

I do admit to having skimmed your third post, and didn't pause to absorb the text. I probably wouldn't have posted the last time.

I don't believe that one has to discount the entire notion of what it means to be a good GM, just because one doesn't practice pop psychology.

I don't know when it became the burden of the GM to be not only plot author, setting, and characters, but also parent, teacher, and counselor to his players. In the strictest sense, the GM is just one of the players. Isn't there room for him to relax and enjoy the game as well? As it stands, the GM is largely (in the real, non perfect world of RPG's) responsible for metaplot, main story, setting, pacing, arbitration, rules interpretations, all interactive characters, continuity, fair play, trust, fun, and all the nuances thereof. He shouldn't have to drag players by the scruff to an understanding of their character.

I appreciate the clarifications, and the narrowed focus, but my three points hold. The player's authorial and directorial power is a defined ingredient in the trust and contract. It should be a given, with a good GM. My point was that the players have an equal responsibility to step up to the plate, and take on those mantles of power.

I agree with a majority of the statements on this thread, and I think the language that I disagreed so strongly with has been left behind. So with best wishes, peace, and a Happy New Year.

Skippy

Hi, all.

I've been thinking about my characters. Not every one I've ever played, just the favorites. I've noticed that while the names, descriptions, powers, and so on vary, there are a few character themes that hold steady.

First, the characters are omni-competent. Not masters of all skills, or sorcerers supreme or supermen or what have you. Rather, they're intended to be the kind of people who don't have minor problems. No little fights with the significant others ruining the day. No spells failing because they forgot to light the red candle. Never stuck somewhere without cab fare.

Really, what I'm talking about are pulp-style heros, larger than life and ready to stand up to whatever it dishes out. This may seem redundant -- after all, aren't most RPG heroes cast in the pulp mode? -- but I'm looking at it from the perspective of having played under a lot of people who either strictly enforce "if you didn't pay points for it, you don't have the skill" or love to use minor gaffes of the PCs as comic relief. Both of those frustrate me to no end.

Second, the characters are almost always outsiders of some kind. Either dark-and-shadowy or exiles or members of some fringe subculture.

Oh, I understand the whys and wherefors of all this. The first is escapism, trying to shed the workaday, detail -oriented cares of life. The second comes from being a geek in a small town growing up, wanting to be strong and cool despite being pushed away by my peers.

So, yeah, for me at least the characters I play do serve a psychological purpose for me. Or at least the kinds of characters I prefer reveal the stuff in life I'm trying to escape from.

Insofar as being a GM who all too rarely plays, I tend to play variations on my favorite NPCs. Right now, I'm in an Everway PBEM, and I'm playing an incarnation of Sebastian Warfield, a reccurring NPC who I've spoken about before, here and on GO.

Lon

Hi, I'm new here -- a new convert to Sorcerer thinking (but unsure whether my players could get their heads round the out-of-the-box thinking of Narrativism or Authorial stance). I possibly haven't lurked enough to get the tone of this board quite right; I hope the following doesn't come across as too indulgently anecdotal. *I* certainly think it's relevant. :wink:


I have a player who always plays characters that are very different on paper, but identical in execution. I don't just mean that his turn of phrase or mode of relating to the rest of the group around the table are unavoidably constant, but his characters' underlying attitudes are always the same. (I try not to condemn, but he seems just plain Gamist/Pawn Stance: he wants to beat the bad guys, score XP and accumulate wealth. When I challenge his character with a moral dilemma he breezes through doing whatever it takes to 'win', always simply proclaiming that the ends justify the means.)

I don't totally give up, but I don't know how much more time I can devote to clever ways of getting him to engage in any other way.

The key thing I thought I could add here is that with players like this, you really DON'T want to go having any significant level of player death. The more 'different clones' this guy puts through my game, the more blatant the monotony would become. By keeping the number of characters to a minimum, at least the rest of us can play as though the trait is the characters' rather than the player's.


I have another player who always creates happy-go-lucky charmers, which is more recognisable as wish fulfillment along the lines of the guy who (potentially) thinks magic users are cool because they're in control, or the wimpy geek who wants to be more physically able and popular. (I don't know whether he's like Razir and wants to get laid a lot, without quite admitting it to his GM.) He's not obviously dissatisfied with his gaming, but there is that parallel with the reincarnationist philosophy that we're in this life to learn/experience something specific, and if it doesn't happen in one life, we have to come back again and again until it does.

The shortcoming is that he has all these high social stats on paper, but when the party wheels him forward to impress the significant NPC he always roleplays his speeches in an articulate but diffident and, well, less than charming way. The dice come up that he's won everyone over, but the escapist experience of it hasn't really occurred.


Back when I myself played more than GMed, I eventually identified a certain intangible saminess to the characters I portrayed. I experimented with using a Tarot deck to helpl myself generate a character containing elements that I wouldn't necessarily have included straight out of my own head. The result, after the things I couldn't do convincingly had been winnowed out, was an excellent character. But more significantly, I gained a fascinating insight into several personality traits of my own that I hadn't even recognised myself as having! I'd tried and failed to get away from playing myself, but the exercise had been an extremely valuable one.

A similar thing happened online on GarouMUSH, in which I played a character who was essentially a foil. (My simulationist soul insisted that someone in that community represent a character type that was meant to be commonplace, but which no one else seemed to want to do.) It was in this medium, liberated from the requirement to meet the gaze of the people I was RPing with, and knowing that I was being a deliberate foil rather than investing too much personal identification in my creation, I finally managed to break the mould.

I now think I do really well on the rare occasions I get to play a PC. I'm not sure how anyone who only plays face-to-face for years with a single group can get outside the box.

Cheers all!
Os.
(aka Neville Percy)

All this talk from people who are primarily GMs with more limited player experience reminds me of something: As easy as it is to say Players and GMs are one group, they really are a little different with different considerations. It's gratifying to see this sort of discussion emerge.

Osric,

My first thought when you said that your monotonous player seems to refuse to engage on any other level is, "ditch him." If the GM isn't having fun, why should s/he keep on doing all that work?

Then again, is there some way you can meet him on his own level? IMHO, trying to behavior-modify players against their will causes more problems than it solves, if it solves any. So, if you can't or don't wish to ditch him, is there some way you can cater to his desires without compromising your own enjoyment?

The second issue (the player whose character is a charmer but who can't seem to play it) is a little thornier.

On the one hand, I'm not about to penalize a player for not knowing real, useful fencing tactics when his or her character gets into a swordfight. Just like I'm not going to disallow character acrobatics because the player is in a wheelchair. So why expect someone to be as suave as his character when you know he's not (and that's his reason for playing suave characters).

On the other, I know that we're dealing in a verbal medium, and inability to charm in a talking scene stands out much more than inability to fence in a fighting scene. It's a greater disruption to suspension of disbelief.

Have you considered rewarding successful Charm (or whatever) rolls with, not instant success, but telling the player what angel to approach the character on? Instead of "Well, you scored a success on your Charm. Dick tells you what you want to know, " it would work more like, "You scored a success with your Charm skill. You can tell that Dick is very vain. Maybe you can flatter the information out of him." This gives the player something to work with, and would do very well with someone who has a problem knowing what to say.

Lon