Mike Holmes wrote:

StalkingBlue wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote:
What's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.

Examples would be much appreciated. :)

That's a whole 'nother post as well. Check out "Bangs" under Sorcerer. Or start the thread, and I'll get to it when my typing fingers have recuperated.

Mike

Actually, it's a technique first introduced in the Sorcerer RPG.

A Bang is when a scene is introduced which requires a choice from one or more of the players. Often, this means that the character's response to a Bang will provide one possible answer to the unasked question posed by the situation (and perhaps a personal answer to the "question" that lies behind the whole campaign).

"You're a holy knight, and you just met a pack of gnolls looking for a fight" is not a Bang.

"You're a holy knight, and the pack of gnolls you're chasing splits up, one group carrying away your church's holiest reliquary, the other group leading a chain of slaves that includes your sister..." That's a Bang.

Yep, Bangs are an important idea. Basically, in every sort of play, there has to be some punchy moment for the player in terms of decision-making. Simply "playing the character" in terms of making up it's dialog really isn't enough to play out a game. Depending on what the player wants from a game, there are different ways to deliver these moments of choice to them.

Gamism: the player has some choice or choices that affect how well their character does. So the character's success is the player's success.
Simulationism: the player has some choice that makes the world seem more "real." That might be chosing which path to take, and discovering A and not discovering B.
Narrativism: the player has some choice to make that either alters their character, or at least the player's understanding of the character, and which takes the story in a new direction therefore.

Bangs are designed to deliver those moments that support Narrativism. Note that the character is not actually forced to change, just the player understanding of the character. For example, if we have a character who is known to be brave, and his bravery is called into question, and he remains brave, then that's not a bang. That's just playing the character correctly, which is always required by plausibility. If, however, the character has to choose between bravery and family, as in Doyce's example, then after the decision is made, we know which is more important to the character at that point.

It also means that the character can change, however. So if the character is loyal, and is given a choice between loyalty and greed, and he is disloyal to go for the greed option, that's cool, too. An important thing to avoid is players feeling that they have to stick with pre-defined character ideas of what the character is like. This is for two reasons. First, it's not realistic or dramatic for people not to change. Rather, it's both realistic and dramatic for people to change. Happens all the time that people betray their own principles. Secondly, this is the stuff of great stories. Boromir is a noble fellow, but then he tries to steal the ring from it's bearer, uncharacteristically. Sure we can blame the ring to some extent. But it's the fact that he's going against what we know of him that's interesting.

HQ allows character change, because nowhere in the rules does it say anything like, "If the character acts against their Psych Lims, the GM can veto that action." Or worse, "The GM should dock the player EXP if they act out of their alignment."

The only "punishment" in HQ for acting against a character's type is that they don't get the augments that they otherwise would get. But, since we know that augments are simply a display of the character, this is merely another just as interesting display of the character. He's acting against what makes him himself normally, so he's not as powerful, so this makes the statement all the more interesting and meaningful.

And given that they might be getting augments from the other side of their own house, well, this is just the character choosing his priorities. All fun stuff for the player to get to do (asssuming they're into narrativism, which is pretty safe; that's not the same as saying that they're not into other modes).

So, yes, Bangs, Bangs, Bangs.


But how do you find Bangs? Well, that's the real subject of this thread. One very consistent way to find Bangs is to create very human situations. To do this requires humans, or good surrogates. Yes, even the baby kobolds count, as long as they're not worth any EXP dead.

The point is that in setting up situation, the best tool you have are NPCs who have certain qualities. First, they have to have strong motives, something that they're willing to act to get. Second, and more importantly, they have to need the PCs to get these things. Thirdly, and most difficultly, the things that they need the PCs to do to get what they want, have to have Bang potential.

Remember, and this is key - the NPCs do not exist to tell a story of their own, but to create situation wherin the PCs are the story. Hamlet is the center of the story, not his stepfather. The king character exists to give Hamlet something to "be indecisive" about, and nothing more. The Queen, his mother, exists to make the situation all the more greusome and pitfall laden. Polonius exists to be killed by Hamlet, so that Ophelia will kill herself, which is all to make Hamlet's life more complicated.

The PCs are Hamlet, and the NPCs are everyone else. Yeah, they're interesting characters, but they don't have a story, they're simply there to be discarded as need be by the needs of the PC to be the center of an interesting set of dilemmas. "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead" is the best example I can think of. No die roll by Shakespeare there to see if they survive. No caring that the story of these characters has been cut short without any sort of closure. Just GM Fiat to build the PCs drama.

Often the best way to create these NPCs is to work backwards from the PCs. The process works like this:
1. Find a PC issue.
2. Find a situation that would be good to make a Bang out of the issue.
3. Find a motive that would create that situation.
4. Create an NPC who would have that motive.

For example, we have Doyce's example above:
1. We see that the character could have a conflict over family vs order loyalty.
2. A good situation would be to have something important to the order stolen, along with the PCs sister.
3. A motive that would get the PC into this situation would be for somebody in the order to command him to go after the relic.
4. So we create the leader of the order who informs the character of the theft, and who can command him to go after it.

So we have our NPC and Bang. Master Negarias comes to the PC and says get that relic, or you'll be out of the order! We know that the character is dedicated to the order and will do anything to protect it. The character is formed from the requirements of the PC.

Now, the problem at this point is that we can do this all day, but it's difficult, because you have to always be finding a new issue or whatever. This is where NPC mapping becomes important. That is, once you have one or two ideas for NPCs, a good idea is to find some ways in which they all interact.

Ron's "Relationship Map" is an example of this, and one which points out specifically that amongs other ways, a very effective tool for linking NPCs is via them being related either by blood or by sexual relations. Family, basically. You'll note that if the character kidnapped in the example above is just some man from the village, then there's instantly much less pressure to go after him. If you even make the NPC a female, a potential mate, that suddenly she's more important to save. And if she's family, well, then it becomes critical.

There are other ways to make characters important to each other, of course. So just make sure that the map has strong connections between the characters involved.

Now this doesn't mean that all of the characters have to be related this way, or even related to the PCs. You can, in fact, create entire NPC maps that the PCs don't even know before play starts, or use more than one isolated map. The key is to have each PC have some connection to the map in terms of that strong NPC motivation we mentioned before. Either the PC is strongly related, or the NPC has to have a real need for the PC in some way that brings him "onto the map."

Once hooked, what happens is that all the GM has to do is put stress on the connections between the NPC to alter things to create new motives and thus new ways to tap into NPC issues. For example, if the PC is a friend of a married man on the map, and this man's wife turns out to be cheating on him, the NPC in question might come to the PC and ask him to get rid of the other man. By putting pressure on the NPCs relationship, you create a new motive. Put into action, that motive can become a bang. The PC having a relationship with the NPC has a reason to help him, but we'll assume for the example that he's moral and doesn't want to kill somebody. So he has a choice.

A good NPC map can keep play going for a long time this way. Once many of the NPC issues are resolved (often because they're dead, interestingly), then it's time to introduce a new map.

Questions? I've been brief (yeah, this could have been a lot longer), so I hope I didn't make anything unclear.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Questions? I've been brief (yeah, this could have been a lot longer), so I hope I didn't make anything unclear.

Fantastic post, Mike. I feel compelled to illustrate your point with an example from the game you ran last night, because I'm still thinking about it. It was one of those defining moments -- the first time I'd experienced a good Bang as a *player* rather than a GM:

Bangs are designed to deliver those moments that support Narrativism. Note that the character is not actually forced to change, just the player understanding of the character.

Often the best way to create these NPCs is to work backwards from the PCs. The process works like this:
1. Find a PC issue.
2. Find a situation that would be good to make a Bang out of the issue.
3. Find a motive that would create that situation.
4. Create an NPC who would have that motive.

Doyce wrote: That's a Bang. Mike may not have realized it, but it was a pretty BIG bang for me, as the PLAYER, because, as he said above, it changed how I saw the character.

The thing is, *I* didn't realize it quickly. It took thought and introspection on my part, but I came away with a much clearer image of my character -- the Bang brought things more into focus for me. It doesn't even matter if he actually steals the idol, now, because the important thing is that now I understand that he *would*.

4. The sly, shifty quartermaster (who, granted, already existed) is drafted into service, and approaches Gennadi about doing the job.

It was great stuff -- really kind of amazing. In the game, it took very little time and very little introspection, but for the player... OOooh, there was a lot of thinking going on.

First, my apologies for the delay in posting again to this thread. I'm getting lots of useful advice here, so I'm grateful. Work and looking for a new home has been interfering with my life a lot recently, so the time I can spend here is kinda limited.

Doyce wrote: "You're a holy knight, and the pack of gnolls you're chasing splits up, one group carrying away your church's holiest reliquary, the other group leading a chain of slaves that includes your sister..." That's a Bang.

StalkingBlue wrote: Thanks for the example. I have a hazy grasp of what a Bang is in theory, but the more specific examples and concrete advice on creating them I can get the better.

Mike Holmes wrote: It also means that the character can change, however. ... An important thing to avoid is players feeling that they have to stick with pre-defined character ideas of what the character is like. This is for two reasons. First, it's not realistic or dramatic for people not to change. ... Secondly, this is the stuff of great stories.

HQ allows character change, because nowhere in the rules does it say anything like, "If the character acts against their Psych Lims, the GM can veto that action." Or worse, "The GM should dock the player EXP if they act out of their alignment."

The only "punishment" in HQ for acting against a character's type is that they don't get the augments that they otherwise would get. But, since we know that augments are simply a display of the character, this is merely another just as interesting display of the character. He's acting against what makes him himself normally, so he's not as powerful, so this makes the statement all the more interesting and meaningful.

And given that they might be getting augments from the other side of their own house, well, this is just the character choosing his priorities.

All fun stuff for the player to get to do (asssuming they're into narrativism, which is pretty safe; that's not the same as saying that they're not into other modes).

One very consistent way to find Bangs is to create very human situations. To do this requires humans, or good surrogates. Yes, even the baby kobolds count, as long as they're not worth any EXP dead.

The point is that in setting up situation, the best tool you have are NPCs who have certain qualities. First, they have to have strong motives, something that they're willing to act to get. Second, and more importantly, they have to need the PCs to get these things. Thirdly, and most difficultly, the things that they need the PCs to do to get what they want, have to have Bang potential.

Remember, and this is key - the NPCs do not exist to tell a story of their own, but to create situation wherin the PCs are the story.

Often the best way to create these NPCs is to work backwards from the PCs. The process works like this:
1. Find a PC issue.
2. Find a situation that would be good to make a Bang out of the issue.
3. Find a motive that would create that situation.
4. Create an NPC who would have that motive.

Now, the problem at this point is that we can do this all day, but it's difficult, because you have to always be finding a new issue or whatever. This is where NPC mapping becomes important. That is, once you have one or two ideas for NPCs, a good idea is to find some ways in which they all interact.

Ron's "Relationship Map" is an example of this, and one which points out specifically that amongs other ways, a very effective tool for linking NPCs is via them being related either by blood or by sexual relations. Family, basically.

You can, in fact, create entire NPC maps that the PCs don't even know before play starts, or use more than one isolated map.

The key is to have each PC have some connection to the map in terms of that strong NPC motivation we mentioned before. Either the PC is strongly related, or the NPC has to have a real need for the PC in some way that brings him "onto the map."

Questions? I've been brief (yeah, this could have been a lot longer), so I hope I didn't make anything unclear.

Mike

Doyce wrote: Anyway: someone comes up and says "Hey, you can come and go as you like in the tribe's camp, and they have this great silver idol in their shrine, and I'd like you to steal it and I'll sell it and we'll both make quite a bit of money."

That's a Bang. Mike may not have realized it, but it was a pretty BIG bang for me, as the PLAYER, because, as he said above, it changed how I saw the character.
...

Seen from that point of view, it was a simple decision, and I certainly made it quickly, once I realized that. The thing is, *I* didn't realize it quickly. It took thought and introspection on my part, but I came away with a much clearer image of my character -- the Bang brought things more into focus for me. It doesn't even matter if he actually steals the idol, now, because the important thing is that now I understand that he *would*.

It was great stuff -- really kind of amazing. In the game, it took very little time and very little introspection, but for the player... OOooh, there was a lot of thinking going on.

Mike Holmes wrote: In fact, I'm finding more and more that just working off of keywords as generalizations about the character is what works best. Hitting specific abilities is harder, and really can't be repeated often.

4. The sly, shifty quartermaster (who, granted, already existed) is drafted into service, and approaches Gennadi about doing the job.

This is, in fact, how Speckler was created. Very precisely. Think about it, what other Bangs has he created? What other relationship stressors has he been a part of?

Here I'll note that I've thrown a few Bangs at Gennadi so far (not many, really), and this is the only one that's worked as intended. This is the nature of Bangs, and why you have several of them prepared. In fact, the Bang in question I had shoved down to third on my list, because it didn't seem as good as the other ones. It's hard to predict what'll turn a player on.

For example, last night, Fred had his character make a pass at Adrienne's. This is the simplest most direct, and most fecund, Bang there is. It always works.

It's like all I have to do is have them cross paths, like I'm throwing ingredients in a pot, and stirring gently, and story just happens.

Brand_Robins wrote: Once upon a time on RPG.net there was a threat titled "you Kick, we Bang" in which people would give sample PCs in hypothetical situations, and the rest of the forum would come up with bangs for them.

Perhaps something like that would be useful?

StalkingBlue wrote: I'll really have to edit my sense of who my NPCs are in this game. Too many of them "died" creatively when "their" PC passed out of play and remained there as hollow shells, as "the camp's disillusioned, underestimated healer" or "the camp's grizzly, constantly overworked commander" and such. Ok colour and and an ok consistent base for players to come back to, but no creative leverage for me.

Now how do I get better at identifying PC issues? I suspect HQ will be a great help. In HQ, reading the char sheet actually helps me in my work.

Ah yes, of course, that's why the R-map is so useful in keeping the game focussed! It draws all the threads together in ways people can recognise intuitively. I had used R-maps a few times in dreamtravel scenarios and always noticed that the game felt more "centred" than when I didn't. It was as if the game moved around a focal point, almost like a complicated dance around a fire rather than wild uncertain hopping all over the place.

I understand why. I've used the "blood or sex" limit on my first R-maps without knowing what it was there for, and found it gives everyone at the table a very quick grasp of the situation and evokes tons of cultural and personal dimensions and connotations. No other ties have quite the same effect.

You can, in fact, create entire NPC maps that the PCs don't even know before play starts, or use more than one isolated map.

Great. I have isolated maps for various dream-place-times in the game, and I was worrying that with switching over to HQ those scenarios will become much less cool because the PCs aren't tied into the new cast of NPCs (although their NPC "hosts" are, it isn't the same thing).

The key is to have each PC have some connection to the map in terms of that strong NPC motivation we mentioned before. Either the PC is strongly related, or the NPC has to have a real need for the PC in some way that brings him "onto the map."

NPC needs that bring PCs on the map? You mean examples that first help tie the PC in? Do you have examples? That's one of the (not so few) things I'm lacking.

Posting right after the above...

StalkingBlue wrote: Oh, a fantastic example. It shows me another angle on Bangs that I've felt insecure about without quite being aware of what it was: half of whether something is or isn't a Bang is in the mind of the player.

I've felt kind of an obligation to come up with ideas that would be "good enough" to count as Bangs, and have been secretly frustrated when they didn't seem to work as Bangs because the player in question "simply" decided and moved on,

...or conversely I've been mystified-and-delighted when something turned into a character-defining moment when I hadn't anticipated that it might.

So maybe I've been doing something right already, and I can just get to it and practice to become more confident.

Why don't any roleplaying books tell you that?

Not even Sorcerer does, or not in a language I can understand.

With my limited experience trying to use Bangs, I've mostly had a easier time playing off general player expectations and situations than with specifics players had created, say, as part of a character background. "Bangs" have tended to fall flat when I was catering to a player's expectations, and worked (or created themselves, almost) at times when we suddenly found an issue that no one had ever looked at too closely before.

Heh, cool. (Also cool that you don't have a group where players cringe at the first hint of romantic interaction. Or maybe because it's online, cringing in front of a screen here and there doesn't show...)

Mike Holmes wrote: Want to do something really fun? Have one of these characters also be a bard or something like it. He's remembered all these dead, and has composed beautiful laments to their names that are deeply moving. Heroes who listen to the bard's stories can take relationships to the dead in question. So the players can link their new characters to any dead ones that they like. Thus giving more meaning to some of the deaths. They can become avengers of the fallen. Thus the dead lend strength to the living.

What's less obvious, but just as fruitful ground, is that you as narrator can create issues from any value that the character has. And that's almost anything on the character sheet. For example, all relationships and personality traits are easy targets. Take two characters with whom the hero has relationships, and have them at odds with each other, and suddenly the character has an issue.

HQ abilities establish identity. So you can have a character who is a warrior by occupation, but who's people have surrendered, and are requiring him not to fight.

If you want to have this continue in the game, then you should immediately give the players a free, and rather strong, "Member of Team" relationship right off the bat that pretty much functions whenever more than one team-member is around and helping in the slightest.

There are other centralizing methods as well, but these are the two best known.

If you have only on PC "contact" the new map, he might get sucked into it, and away from everyone else. Try to introduce the map only when you can hit several heroes with it at once. Not in an implausible way - don't have them appear out of the woodwork separately all looking for different PCs. Instead have them encounter a family at a get-together, where it's plausible to have the NPCs come at different heroes.

See how suddenly the PC is "grabbed" by the map. That's the phrasology that Ron and Paul Czege use for this stuff (amongst others), you want the map to be "grabby". As opposed to "hooky." That is, the player should feel compelled to give some sort of response to the characters on the map because it's interesting, not because the system tells him that his character "would" respond to the situation. That is, a "grab" grabs the player and says, "This is fun!" Wheras a "hook" hooks the player in and say, "You have to do this!"

Note that grabbing can be quite forceful, actually. In fact, it can look like railroading to a player who's not interested in the situation. It's only got to provide multiple avenues for the player in question.

Mike Holmes wrote:

StalkingBlue wrote: Oh, a fantastic example. It shows me another angle on Bangs that I've felt insecure about without quite being aware of what it was: half of whether something is or isn't a Bang is in the mind of the player.

Incorrect. Whether or not something is a Bang is 100% in the mind of the player. Only he is concerned with railroading and such concerns - the character is oblivious.

I've felt kind of an obligation to come up with ideas that would be "good enough" to count as Bangs, and have been secretly frustrated when they didn't seem to work as Bangs because the player in question "simply" decided and moved on,

Well, this sounds like a mode problem. For the "sim" player, it's no different a decision than any other - he only has to consider what his vision of the character says, and not what he himself thinks about the situation.

...or conversely I've been mystified-and-delighted when something turned into a character-defining moment when I hadn't anticipated that it might.

And this will continue. But hopefully it'll be a tad more emphasized in that everyone will "get" that these are big, fun moments.

Why don't any roleplaying books tell you that?

Not even Sorcerer does, or not in a language I can understand.

Because even Ron didn't understand all of this when it was produced. I'm mostly reiterating his development on the ideas in Sorcerer over the past few years since it's publication. These ideas are cutting edge.

With my limited experience trying to use Bangs, I've mostly had a easier time playing off general player expectations and situations than with specifics players had created, say, as part of a character background. "Bangs" have tended to fall flat when I was catering to a player's expectations, and worked (or created themselves, almost) at times when we suddenly found an issue that no one had ever looked at too closely before.

Hmm. This is as likely to be wrong as it is right, but that, combined with other things you've said before, sounds like "battered player syndrome." That is, some GM or GMs used lots of hooks to railroad the characters in previous games, and so they're cautious about their characters being "hookable." They bought into the campaign issues implicitly when they decided to play it, so they're not being hooked by those issues.

Again, in this case, a player responding in a "well of course he does X" manner is saying that they don't want to allow the GM the power to hook their character. They'll do whatever "My Guy" would do.

Another symptom is "turtling" where the player resists all attempts to involve the character in any meaninngful way. Got any of those players?

Heh, think that I could feel Adrienne cringing even through the computer screen - though only she can say for sure. But Fred was adult about it, and the scene ended very interestingly.

Again, narrativism is about player reactions - 100%. So the players are exposing themselves to each other in some ways. And that can be uncomfortable at times. But I'd say that handled well, that uncomfortableness is actually healthy for the game.

Yep, that's classic. Consider that there's a hidden "Sex" Keyword on each character's sheet - we've been over this on the rules list. So all issues of maleness, or femaleness (including pregnancy) are automatically valid for all characters.

StalkingBlue wrote: D'oh. This is so easy it shouldn't be allowed.

There are other centralizing methods as well, but these are the two best known.

Hm... Do I dare ask for more methods? If you like to post more, I'm still avid. :-)

The maps I've used in time/dream scenarios were tiny - no more than half a dozen NPCs with a few simple ties, some obvious, others not so much. We never played for long enough to fully exploit any map, but the players usually had a strong sense of what mission they wanted their PCs to be on and would treat the NPCs like supporting cast in, say, Star Trek shows: to be involved with for one episode, then to fade away again.

Unfortunately, one player was so attracted to the dream/time places that he insisted to have a new PC come from one of them. He played the PC only for two sessions and had a lot of trouble finding his way into the Team the group has formed. He gave up during our character conversion session on Thursday.

Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed the character. (I told him about my concerns, but when he insisted and seemed really enthusiastic, I let it go.)

Or simply states, "Follow Line at End of Hook to Find Interesting Adventure." With (if it gets really bad) an implied threat that if you refuse the hook, you'll sit around bored for the rest of the night.

Note that grabbing can be quite forceful, actually. In fact, it can look like railroading to a player who's not interested in the situation. It's only got to provide multiple avenues for the player in question.

Railroading?

I've done that quite a bit in traditional linear games with no Bangs - sprung an ambush, sent spies or assassins after PCs, put PCs in the middle of a violent event without asking etc.

It wasn't the player-PC divide I was thinking of, it was the player-GM divide, in the sense that a large part of the reasons of whether a Bang will work is inside the mind of the player alone and not accessible to the GM because it has never come up in play before and never been talked about by the player and GM.

On the whole that GM didn't do himself a favour when he circulated the book around his group - the majority of the players hated it and if anything, grew more resistant to mode and style changes than they might otherwise have been.

(All that hasn't stopped me from buying all the Sorcerer books for the brilliant ideas in them; but I'll know better than to hand them out to people to read - and that is what frustrates me a bit. These ideas deserve much wider access than a few determined GMs are able to provide to their own groups, I think.)

One player on Thursday finally told us that he tended to stay away from NPC relationships (and make sure that an NPCs and family in his background were dead) because of that GM he'd had who'd always kill them off.

The saddest thing about this is that it is such a commonly used GMing technique in games like DnD; and I suspect the reason can be a good one: the GM may be trying to involve the players in the game emotionally and to make the game more fun and interesting and meaningful.

That makes my arm hairs bristle. What I'd want to know in this situation is what Adrienne felt the whole thing. Male players having their male PC hit on a female player's female PC is very common in roleplaying games, and I've seen too many situations in which this was clearly dysfunctional because it made the female player uncomfortable (usually unnoticed by male players/GMs) to be quite comfortable here.

Mike Holmes wrote: Yes, even a shared "Loves Adventuring with These Guys" can work, creating the classic "party." The advantage is that with HQ, there's a numerical committment to this concept that represents something in-game. And it's something that can then be challenged in-game as well, so you never have the case where play is "shaped" unnaturally to avoid such conflict. It's an interesting concept when you play with it right.

The maps I've used in time/dream scenarios were tiny - no more than half a dozen NPCs with a few simple ties, some obvious, others not so much. We never played for long enough to fully exploit any map, but the players usually had a strong sense of what mission they wanted their PCs to be on and would treat the NPCs like supporting cast in, say, Star Trek shows: to be involved with for one episode, then to fade away again.

Well, this all sounds pretty positive in terms of getting people in touch with the R-map. Was there some problem you were pointing out here?

This seems like a whole new concern. I would have allowed the character in an instant. I'm not sure what the problem here is. That he didn't get onto the team?

The whole point of what I've been saying about teams and such are that players can have their characters walk away at any time if they like. So you have to be prepared with something else to keep them linked with the other PCs.

Hmm. That's the first I've heard of that happening. Seems to me that if the ideas are good that the books should be a fine way of getting the message across. I dunno.

The problem is that the player isn't really "compensated" for their loss. That is, they're out an NPC that they care about, and all they get for it is an excuse to kill orcs. Which doesn't resolve anything about the death of the NPC, really.

So, unless the player uses a lot of Pawn stance, they're likely to find NPC death this way to be abusive.

I’d had some hazy idea of bangs before reading this. This thread however….opened my eyes. Or ears. Or some unamed sense, or something. By happenstance, in the first character interaction of my first HQ game (just starting in PByahogroup--oh how long have I been waiting!).......bang happened. Deep and tangled family ties versus multiple personality traits of the type responsible, reliable, wise, and patient. Does he rush off to try and intercept whatever it is approaching the village, or stay with the warrior’s patrol which is going to go more slowly but probably deal with whatever it is properly? There we were in the equivalent of the first five minutes of playing, and I had an essential decision to make about the character.

And it felt SO GOOD!

In the end I used his flaw “doubts own competence” to break the tie in favor of staying with the patrol, and for sure there will be long term implications of this decision.

Having had the experience, then reading the theory, makes it all come into focus.

But it occurs to me that as a player, you can do a LOT to make a hero more “bangable.” I’ve always thought of this as giving the narrator “handles” to be able to get a grip on the character, but now I’m looking back to see how those handles can be positioned to make bangs easy.

Wow, it is like a door was just opened in my mind, with a whole room full of possibilities behind it that I hadn’t even realized were there. Not quite as cool as first learning calculus, but up there on the scale of “new mental tools that let me do things I couldn’t reliably do before.”

Thanks a ton, Mike, and the others in this thread too.

--Bryan

Bryan_T wrote: And it felt SO GOOD!

But it occurs to me that as a player, you can do a LOT to make a hero more “bangable.” I’ve always thought of this as giving the narrator “handles” to be able to get a grip on the character, but now I’m looking back to see how those handles can be positioned to make bangs easy.

By linking character power to abilities that have to be meaningful in play given the system, HQ ensures that it's always possible to "bang" a character. Now, it doesn't make it so that such Bangs are automatic. The GM still has to look. But they're always there.

Bryan_T wrote: Anyway, I'd agree, HQ by it very nature tends to build in certain conflicts. But as a player, by making concious decisions, I can focus these where I want them, and help influence the theme of things