Hi, my name's Joel, sometime Forge lurker and varyingly credulous Big Model neophyte. I was away from studying the Theory for awhile, but it worked its way back into my brain (just in time for the Theory forums to close!), so I'm trying to get into more actively posting, that I might better understand the theoretical concepts, my own play, what I want and how to get it, et al.

So, I thought I'd solicit some analysis/advice on a recent play incident. I've been running an Over the Edge campaign for some time now, and I've got this particular player who from day one has been hard to work with. He's playing, as he tends to, a real jackass, and I'm not saying a jerk can't be a cool or viable character, but his particular brand of asshat is so. . .one-note. I partially blame the tradition of D&D alignment, which I've found promotes a very tunnel-vision, "your character must always and ever behave in this manner and NO OTHER" mentality. Certainly with this guy, at any rate.

The big difficulty is not merely that I don't like, aesthetically, his character portrayal (though I don't, for sure), it's that he seems to engage in disruptive play purposefully and regularly. He makes unlikeable characters and puts them at odds with others, not out of any kind of meaningful conflict, just sheer cussedness and impishness on both a character and player level. His enjoyment of the game seems to be derived from "messing with" everyone, whether through all-out "PVP," or non-combat belligerence, or a kind of practical joking style of play, kind of hard to describe. If you try to talk to him about it, he kind of throws up his hands in innocent denial, or else falls back to the old staple "That's just what my character would do."

His adversarial play style also has a defensive side, a kind of suspicious "you're trying to put one over on me but I won't let you" stance which ranges from "You want to impress me with that chool character or bit of plot or whatever, but it won't work, I'll just be apathetic and like 'eh'" to a paranoid "ooh, this new plot element MUST be a trick." Which is my main problem in this instance of play. SO enough with this longwinded introduction. :)

His character is a sneak thief who's come to the game's fictional island nation in search of the other half of a mysterious multifaceted stone he nicked, and I've been trying to give him lots of intrigue as he conducts his investigation. He's a "work for the highest bidder" kind of guy, so I got him hired by a minor mafioso. Meanwhile, Starwalk, an agent of a society of sewer-dwellers called Lurkers, has been courting his allegiance, stepping out of the shadows to talk to him, getting him out of a number of tight scrapes, etc. But in the absence of much actual "buying power," she's had limited success, and with the player's "can't drop my veneer of cool by actually enjoying something you portray" attitude, I have a had time telling if the character actually likes Starwalk or not.

Well, I accelerated the plotline a bit, and brought the thief, Gaelinar, to this "High Council of the Lurkers" where the course for their underground nation being decided. I'd decided Gaelinar's stone has significance to the Lurkers, which is why Starwalk's so convinced he can/must help them. Also the Lurkers, being smelly Mole People, need liasons of some sort to wield power in the surface society. So three views pwer presented: Isolationists, who want to stay, well, lurking in the shadows because it's evil and scary out there (these people, I decided, were driven underground when facists--the current ones--took over the island 60 years ago), Integrationists, who've been out and about and insist it's really not so bad anymore, and we should come out into the light, and Militarists, who say they've been trampled and persecuted too long, now it's our day to grab a piece of the pie. Starwalk is an Integrationist. Gaelinar was brought forth as a possible ally, and offered rich reward by the Lurker King and Queen, and decided tentatively to support Starwalk.

So far so good. What I was really hoping to do was present a moral delimma. I don't pretend to have a complete graps of the Theory, but I have been able to recognize my own play goals as mostly Narrativist, and wondered how I can move in that direction in my games. I thought I'd try a real "what does this say about my character" poser, an "I want both but can only choose one" type scenario. So him siding with Starwalk initially is just what I hoped for. Now he's affirmed some degree of friendship tie or at least the comradeship of a business arrangement. He's staked his loyalty here, he's chosen a side. I hoped to create some tension within his character premise of "I work for whoever offers the greatest benefit/reward."

So I had the militarist leader approach him, offer greater reward if he will betray Starwalk, direct their planned shadow war against surface society, and assist in the planned coup against the lurker leadership. I figured I was speaking Gaelinar's language, i'e' dollar signs, plus his character's a vicious killer and all-around remorseless bastard. So NOW we see what he's made of. Will he stab Starwalk, who's done nothing but help him (out of death or imprisonment, no less), who's put her trust in him, who believes he can be something good and noble, in the back? Just how far is he willing to go in the pursuit of "lookin' out for number one?"

Well, he turned down the guy. Without blinking. Not because he was too loyal to his friend, but because he considered the guy incompetent. He got the impression, quite contrary to my intention, that the dude was simply gonna storm the Surface, march on D'aubainne manor, the Streets Will Flow with the Blood of the Infidels, etc. etc. Totally deflated me. I was quite prepared for him to take either side, based on his character's values. But this just killed the dilemma. I tried to explain, through the militarist character, that that wasn't the plan at all, that they intended to wage a shadow war and needed Gaelinar to do it (since ostensibly, he's a super-proficient thief, though his player runs him about as subtle as a sledgehammer in the face). I even had him demonstrate his group's power and ability, at a hand-signal a score of people in the gathering slipped forward and returned the secret salute, then elted back into the crowd. But Gaelinar and his player weren't biting. I let it drop and ended the session. But I'm just so disappointed. I wanted to do this cool thing, and now it's been reduced to our usual thing, that is, me spewing out plot hook after plot hook, and the players reacting in a fairly deterministic or tactical way, fairly divorced from their characters status as rounded human beings.

So I'm not sure what to do. Do I just let it go and ride it out the way Gaelinar's player called it? What a waste. I've been running this campaign for years, and been largely dissatisfied with it for a variety of reasons, and I was hoping for something new. I considered having the Militarist and one of his stone cold, scary-cool goons (who can psychically mask herself to slip around unnoticed) appear in his hotel or something, approach him in his sleep, do the whole "I could have killed you just now" routine, just to show that they're savvy and competent. But like I said this player is way defensive, if he feels that I'm trying to push a course of action (or even just push my oen intended vision of events) he'll likely retreat further. I talked it over with another player and he suggested I continue with the "shadow war" without Gaelinar's help, and let Gaelinar start to see the signs--important people disappearing, mysterious murders that seem to bear traces of the Lurkers, and so on, then see if he changes his tune. This feels pretty elegant and cool, but also slow. . .I've already waited so long for some fulfilling play out of this game, I don't know how much longer I want to put it off. Plus I'm kind of wavering on whether (or how) I want to continue the campaign, considering making a big push to resolve a bunch of stuff that's in the air right now, and put it to bed.

The other option I can see is to talk to the player and try to explain that he's misinterpreted my intended portrayal, and kind of clue him in on what I was going for. But this, like the first option above, might just put him on the defensive and he'll throw up a wall--"The GM's trying to talk me into playing my character HIS way. Well, fuck that." Also, it feels pretty inartistic and crude to come out and say it--"hey, I'm setting up a moral delimma for your character here, so step up and make the choicr right, OK?"

I think part of the problem is that our group as a whole has been pretty communicatively dysfunctional. There's always been an unwritten rule that you don't EVER break from the in-game, in-character mindset to address (e.g.) "I like what's going on," or "I don't like what's going on," as a player. A player once felt that our D&D Gm was overly shepherding our characters and always deus ex machina-ing us from death. Rather than talk to her about it, he simply detonated a fireball at his feet with two players in the blast radius. People with a problem gripe to someone else afterwards (like I did with my fellow player), and if a chronic problem persists, we MIGHT have a private chat or a kind of "intervention." But saying, mid-session, or post-session, "hey, that's not what I was going for, I think we should play it this way". . .unthinkable. So it's hard to just up and say "hey, wait a minute. this guy's not supposed to be incompetent. The scene only works if he is competent."

So I guess I'm looking for some advice on how to proceed, as well as general analysis of the gameplay described and critique of GMing decisions on my end. . .whether there's any flaws in my thinking or the way I implemented it. I apologize for the length; I'm pretty verbose and I'm having a hard time determining what might be relevant.

Peace,

Hi Joel,

I've got some concerns about bothering to pursue this player. But I'll get onto the account;

I don't think he wanted to see the dilemma. And while he doesn't want to see it, he wont, regardless of how much you do.

One suggestion is to simply do less. One technique (I got from a roleplay tips newsletter), was the passive encounter. Typically, GM's put the player ON the sinking boat. But what if you put them on the safe boat, but another boat near them is sinking. Will they put their lives in danger?

The most notable thing is, even if they do nothing, it's a narrativist statement.

Don't do massive build ups or anything - just cook up a bunch of issues like these and sprinkle them through play.

Another suggestion is to simply adopt the stakes he set and say it out loud "So he wouldn't betray Starwalk, but not because he's so loyal to him. He sticks with Starwalk simply because of competance issues."

He might argue that isn't the case, several times. Try to REALLY listen to him each time, understand and show your understanding by stating what you think is his characters statement. Show him your really trying to understand.

Because there's a thin possiblity he's being a jack ass so as to, by force, earn himself the right to make just the statement he wants to make.

He makes unlikeable characters and puts them at odds with others, not out of any kind of meaningful conflict

Thanks for the reply, Callan. A lot of what you say makes sense. I do think that the player seems to have a blind spot regarding what I'm trying to do. And from past history, I know that even if I talk to him, I'm likely to get a lot of "mm-hmm," "Oh yeah," "of course," then go back to play and watch him do the same damn thing he was before, leaving my jaw dropped, thinking "what did we JUST talk about?"

One thing I should probably make clear. Our group by NO means has a clear stated goal of Narrativist play. We don't have any sort of stated goal actually, there's a lot of dysfunction and cross-purposes at a lot of levels. After finding the Forge and reading up on the Theory, I had some reservations about a lot of concepts but basically overall felt "This goes a long way toward explaining why I'm dissatisfied with our play." So what I'm trying to do, rather than sit everyone down for a GNS talk and probably get a lot of fidgeting and blank stares, is look for ways to introduce Narrativist style play and see how people take to it. Not to force anyone or "trick" them into playing Narrativist, but do something dynamic like character-driven dilemmas and see what happens, as opposed to the "dicker around Exploring and wait for the veeeerry occasional 'cool stuff' to happen" approach that we've been mainly doing for the last 5 or 6 years. (actually, that's just one facet of our play,there's a strong Gamist element as well, which just leaves my desired CA unrepresented. Yeah, I know Gam and Narr aren't supposed to be able to coexist, but in a wierd way, in our group I think they do.)

I don't know if I did right by trying to work the elements in without explicitly consulting or explaining to the players; I just know that most of these folks haven't heard of the Theory and probably wouldn't grok it in so many words. I've talked to one player who I have a pretty good vibe with (my brother) and he's read some of Ron's esays, and he not only disagrees with a lot of what he's heard/read, but I think he's having trouble understanding me when I try to explain what I see that's desirable in it. But I believe that everyone does of course have something they want out of play (and there's at least a few members that I think might really take to Narr) even if they don't articulate it in theory terms, so I decided to try offering narr-type situations in a non-railroady fashion, and see how it goes. This was the inaugral attempt. I'm also planning to implement Vincent Baker's "So what you're trying to do is. . ." and "So the danger is that. . ." questions for player's actions.

Callan wrote:
Don't do massive build ups or anything - just cook up a bunch of issues like these and sprinkle them through play.

Callan wrote:
Another suggestion is to simply adopt the stakes he set and say it out loud "So he wouldn't betray Starwalk, but not because he's so loyal to him. He sticks with Starwalk simply because of competance issues."

Callan wrote:
It's possible he wants to make a statement with these actions and to him, they are meaningful conflicts. But if your not willing to see that, to read into his actions some sort of meaning, then your killing the dilemmas he's creating. It's like the kid who bullies other kids, because he's aching for understanding but so resentful no one reaches out to him (since he bullies, but never mind that cycle for now).

Callan wrote:
I've got some concerns about bothering to pursue this player.

Joel,

Here's where my red flags popped up:

The other option I can see is to talk to the player and try to explain that he's misinterpreted my intended portrayal, and kind of clue him in on what I was going for. But this, like the first option above, might just put him on the defensive and he'll throw up a wall--"The GM's trying to talk me into playing my character HIS way. Well, fuck that." Also, it feels pretty inartistic and crude to come out and say it--"hey, I'm setting up a moral delimma for your character here, so step up and make the choicr right, OK?"

Hey Joel,

I think you should check out this recent actual play account ( Trollbabe (kinda): Turtle turns heart-ripping seducer ). I think the player is similar to yours, just ignore how the demenour is the opposite. What's shared, IMO, is the muteness.

Yes, I know my statements probably sounded pretty judgmental, but I really would like to see if there's something under the veneer

Hi Joel,

I'm Jon, a new member of the Forge, but a fairly long-time lurker.

I wanted to point out a small piece of your write up. 

Melinglor wrote:
I've been running this campaign for years, and been largely dissatisfied with it for a variety of reasons, and I was hoping for something new.

Hello, everyone.

Abzu,

It wasn't so much that he took the "wrong" choice. I wasn't trying to present only one option. it was really more a matrter of him shifting the ground of the choice, i.e. from moral to practical. And I'm not necessarily saying he did "wrong" to do so. I'm just saying that the result was very dissatisfying to me, and I'm tryong to explore why and what to do about it.

I think the biggest "why" is that he essentially (not necessarily intentionally) rejected my input to the SIS. I tried to introduce "Competant person who offers a chance to betray for reward" and he said "no, incompetant," and made a choice based on that. Which left me kind of high and dry. Now the cause of his rejection of "competant" is worth exploring. It could be that he actually wanted to short-circuit my intented contribution, but I don't think that's the case. . .it could be that I flat-out failed in attempting to present him as competant, or it could be that we simply got our wires crossed, and adequate portrayal or not, he still got an impression of incompetance--or saw room for potetial incompetance, and asserted it.

As for "what to do about it," first let me point out that I haven't done anything yet--I didn't "break" the scene, we simply ended the session and haven't reconvened with thatgame yet. And I haven't badgered or pestered or whined--not yet at least. I kept my disappointment to myself, to mull over how I feel and what to do (and subsequently brought it here). Now, you raise some good points. There is a railroading danger in some of my proposals; I think that's one of the questions I'm trying to answer here; how far can/should I push this without it becoming railroading. Again, though, I'm not saying "you have to make THIS choice," my feeling is more like, "I want us to be clear on what moral territory we're covering here, whatever you decide." But that doesn't mean "No, because competance" is out of bounds--I'm still contemplating, with you guys' help.

Your suggested consequences are all good, and some I have considered and plan to use. I guess what still sticks in my craw is that we don't seem to be on the same wavelength as far as what these choices mean, so even if I proceed with the aftermath of his choice, he'll be oblivious to the "actions and consequences" angle and just be thinking "oh, this is just more stuff the GM is throwing at me" and the game will proceed as it always has. And that might not even be the case, because we haven't talked about any of this, so I don't know, I'm just guessing. I'm just not sure how to bring it up, I guess.

Callan,

Your insights into the social and psychological backdrop of this case are getting downright spooky, man. I'd swear you know this guy. "I think, by the way he acts, he's afraid you wont hold up your end and he'll look silly, uncool and you might hold that over him somehow." Very true. And this: "he'll just shrug it off "Aww, don't get so emotional" or some other shit that lets him be mute and perhaps some pseudo social advantage over you  ("You showed weakness before me! I am leet!")" is right on the nail, he maintains a generalstance of "I'm not going to be impressed by anything you do," so where you might whip up a cool adversary or supporting character and other players might be "hey, neat," he's more like "yeah, whatever." It's very frustrating, especially since it tends to provoke an emotional response in me of "OK, I'll just try HARDER," as if coming up with the character or situation that impresses this player is the holy Grail of our gaming. He baits me (intentionally or no) and I fall for it, basically.

The trollbabe thread was very interesting. And yeah, I can look past the surface disparity and see the similarities. I should say, though, that Gaelinar's player reallyonly turtles on the "emotional stuff;" in combat, especiallyPvP-type situations, he's insanely aggressive.

In any case, I think the best next step is to, as you've been saying, verbally confirm the "So you're saying, no, because competance not loyalty" with him.

Glendower,

I didn't list the reasons because I was trying to keep an already horribly-long lost as brief as possible. But we could definitelydiscuss them. I think it'll have to be a post for another day, though.

Peace,

Hey Joel,

I'm going to focus on this character, instead of your session, since you aren't interested in talking about the details of the session.  That's fine, I understand you want to keep this focused.  Let's talk about this paragraph from your initial message.

Melinglor wrote:
The big difficulty is not merely that I don't like, aesthetically, his character portrayal (though I don't, for sure), it's that he seems to engage in disruptive play purposefully and regularly. He makes unlikeable characters and puts them at odds with others, not out of any kind of meaningful conflict, just sheer cussedness and impishness on both a character and player level. His enjoyment of the game seems to be derived from "messing with" everyone, whether through all-out "PVP," or non-combat belligerence, or a kind of practical joking style of play, kind of hard to describe. If you try to talk to him about it, he kind of throws up his hands in innocent denial, or else falls back to the old staple "That's just what my character would do."

Lots of smart folks are posting in this thread already, so I'll make a few brief comments and then pipe down. 

1) In my experience, it's really hard to switch gears in mid-game to a strongly Narrativist approach -- especially if your gaming group has an unspoken rule about not talking OOC about the game.  Your attempts to set up and frame a dilemma are probably looking a lot like railroading to the player, and he's getting defensive about it.   

2) Building off of the "there are no characters" quote last post, it seems to me that this part of your original post is absolutely key.  I'm highlighting the word I changed. 

But in the absence of much actual "buying power," she's had limited success, and with the player's "can't drop my veneer of cool by actually enjoying something you portray" attitude, I have a had time telling if the player actually likes Starwalk or not.

I think Dan's nailed it. If the player isn't biting on your plot hook, then he isn't going to choose to make it a big deal for his character.

Given that this is an OtE game, I assume that there are several layers of weird-ass sh*t going on? Has the player nibbled on any of them? For example, has he been trying to find out more about Karla Sommers or score some MDMA or been wondering how Giovanni makes his cabbies so loyal? Whatever it is he's hooked by, that's what the Lurkers should be doing, if you really want the Shadow war to be the Big Plot.
Might be too late to go that route, as he's already seen what the Lurkers are or aren't up to, to an extent at least, but presumably the character has some motivation? Was the mystical gem his idea or yours? If it his, what has he said about it? What does he expect or assume to happen as he looks for the other half? And if he's a great sneak thief, wouldn't Al Amarja be a great place to work? Is he casing any joints or being made any job offers based on his Traits?

If, on the other hand, the player has coasted around and let you lay out the plot, only acting to stymie it by refusing to bite any hooks, then maybe you would be better off playing something different with him; OtE doesn't really work all that well, in my experience, if the players aren't at least willing to act curious.

Glendower,

Glendower wrote:
I'm going to focus on this character, instead of your session, since you aren't interested in talking about the details of the session.

Glendower wrote:
As for what to do about it, I would recommend writing down a few instances of this behaviour, and then go for lunch with this guy.  Just you and him talk about it, try to be positive in terms of dealing with this behaviour.  Talk about how it makes you feel when he does x or y.  Make a connection, and see if maybe you can see if he opens up about why he does x or y.  If you can't talk about it, if he just shuts down, then consider that your honest effort, pull out the cutting knife, and pare away this player from the gaming group.

Danny_K wrote:
The real question in my mind is, "Is the player engaged by the whole Lurker subplot?"  It's no reflection on you if he isn't.  Maybe he just can't take Mole People seriously, or something.  But it sounds to me like you've been grabbing this part of the setting and bringing it forward for the character to interact with, even having Starwalk appear in unrelated scenes, and the player still isn't nibbling at the bait.

Melinglor wrote:
As far as cutting him from the group, I definitely appreciate the principle that you should find compatible people to game with rather than bang your head against a wall, but the fact is that this campaign has been running for a number of years and I kinda feel like it would be pretylow now to just up and say "see ya." Like, if I was going to take that step, I should've taken it a long time ago. I dunno. I'm actuallytrying to look at the whole campaign and bring it to some kind of satisfying conclusion so I can move on to other games. And anyway, I'm not the only one who runs games in our group, so I wouldn't have the only say on his status in our group. Though he HAS been on thin ice with other players too at times.

Melinglor wrote:
Glendower,

the fact is that this campaign has been running for a number of years and I kinda feel like it would be pretylow now to just up and say "see ya." Like, if I was going to take that step, I should've taken it a long time ago.

One thing I wanted to add:

Melinglor wrote:
He started out asking everyone and his uncle about his mysterious stone, then things just kinda dried up. . .

The Mystical Gem was his idea. He left it up to me what its significance is, so I've been trying to come up with something cool since day one, and kind of stalling unhtil I do.

I think you should get him to say what it does.

You could even get him to say it in play. Scene frame to some dangerous scene full of baddies and nasty crap. Then say the stone starts glowing. Just as he looks at you (in his jaded way) to see what happens, you say...

"Tell me, what does the stone do!?"

This will be a leap of faith for you...he'll be in charge. But, you've just snookered him...he can not be jaded about his own contribution to the game! The only thing he can do, is add something to the game that he thinks is cool!

Hot damn, I like the way you think, Callan. Actually, you folks have all had a lot of cool ideas. . .hell, even aside from the player-level dysfunction issues we've been discussing, I've got a whole menu of delicious plot twists to choose from. :)

So yeah, the consensus seems clear, and I agree it's the best way to proceed, to talk to him about my issues--perhaps I should, as people have implied, focus directly on how I feel in these situations, which is an approach I stangely haven't really tried. I tend to approach the discussion in a dispassionate tone, y'know, all about the good of the game. "Cause, feelings are, likefor wimps and normies with dates on Friday night. Perhaps if I'm more vulnerable I'll better communicate my plight.

I have tried to give players an out, on a couple of occasions where my frustration was at a peak, a group suggestion that they not play if they're not enjoying the campaign, just continue with our other GM's two running games, OtE isn't for everyone, etc.  (That's our social contract regarding inclusion, I guess: you can't fire someone, just ask them to resign.) No one bit. I dunno if it'll be any different one on one.

Glendower, about the inference RE: campaign enjoyment, you're half right, It's been sorta fun and sorta frustrating over the years. OK, scratch that. it's been alternately LOTS of fun and VERY frustrating, with little middle ground (that i remember anyway, I may just be fixating on the extremes). So for every hair-pulling bit, there;s been a wow, cool moment, 6though if I had to rate them, completely unscientifically, I'd say the hair-pulling comes out slightly on top in degree and frequency. A lot of this is player frustration, some is definitely Gm inadequacy, and a big chunck is my lack of clear articulation to myself or anyone else of my play goals

So it's kind of like (if it's analogies you want) trying to get into shape after sittig on a couch eating twinkies for 6 or 7 years. i'm trying to figure out how to get what I want now that I have a better idea of what it is. I have an interest in determining if the OtE game is salvageable, and while there's definitely a fair chunk of "prior investment fallacy" involved in that thinking, I'm also looking at the old clunker and seeing a lot that IS salvageable, or at least worth salvaging.

Another factor in my desire to wrap up OtE and have done with it, is the glacial nature of our gaming; not only does our group get little done in a typical session, but we've been rotating between something like three separate games under different GMs. So we've been playing a loooong time, and progressed little. Makes me tired of it and at the same time a little voice says "nooooo! There's so much more to be done!"

But this is getting rather digress=y. I think the thread is nearly played out. it all comes down to the fact that I just gotta bite the bullet and deal with this shit person to person.

Peace,