I was running my first game with the All Kinds of Awesome setting I'm talking about in the Indie Game Design section and using the Tri-Stat d6 rules. Because none of the players had any experience with the rules system, I tried something I never did before: During the introductory session, I told the players about how the setting works and encouraged them to come up with a character concept and path, before they knew how any of the rules worked. I then wrote their character sheets for them and began teaching them the rules during actual play in the second session. Here's how it worked out.

I was assuming that the players were going to be private investigators/negotiators in Glass City, unless the players' ideas took me in another direction.

Two of the four players wanted to be necromancers, which I thought was great, since they took two opposite approaches. One of them was from Stone City, where the "black arts" have a certain mystique and ability to frighten, and the other was from the Black Barony, where necromancy is just a common tool. The Stone City native dressed herself in black robes and other scary accessories, while the Black Barony native wanted to "go native" in Glass City as much as possible, actually discarding his own black robes in favor of what he could find in a thrift store. I'm really proud of the way I got them to play off each other, and the character sheets I wrote for them reflected their different approaches to the same path (a small number of flashy effects versus a broader, humbler understanding of how creepy-crawlies work.)

One of the players was dead-set on being a halfling. Behold! Halflings suddenly exist in the Modular World. This was my experiment in being a super-permissive GM and making my default answer to requests "yes" instead of "no." He probably came up with the most novel path to power of any of the players: owning a pipe that keeps him from aging and collecting exotic strains of tobacco that give him various supernatural powers when he smokes them.

The other player was indecisive for most of the chargen session, but eventually settled on an archetype that excited him - an objectivist superhero that was raised by more collectivist vigilantes in Concrete City, but went off on his own after deciding that their reservations against killing are too restrictive. Sort of the opposite of what hapens in Batman Begins.

After the first session, the sheets required some serious tweaking. The flashy necromancer loved the ability to summon Lovecraftian Tentacle Beasties, but also wanted to construct horrific composite zombies. The low-profile necromancer and the tobacconist seemed a little underpowered in a game that turned out to be really combat-heavy, so I came up with some general improvements and gave the Tobacconist a new tobacco so awesome I should have thought of it from the start - some snuff that, when used as a "foreign substance" on a baseball or baseball-sized object, turns it into a deadly magical curveball. After the whole run of four sessions, nobody complained about not having enough control over their characters, but I still have my reservations. My worries were compounded by the realization that some of my NPCs probably had too much agency in the plot.

Does anyone else have experience with something similar to this or tips on how it might work better?

Bill

You ran a character creation negociation and allowed the process to continue as the game progressed. This gave you the room to tweak the characters so they could be functional in the game world. Sounds like a solid idea - and as you said, no one complained and appeared to have a good time. No problem there.

You said you were concerned about the Character generation and an NPC having too much control over the plot. I think these are different issues. With character generation you let go of the old D+D idea that characters are "made" and then only change when they gain "experience". You and your player's rule was - sure we can change things if that's what it takes to make the game fun. You gave up power to do this because the written rules are a voice of authority that backs GMs up. The next step is to let go of some of your power over the NPCs. This lets the players generate plot as the game is played by using NPCs as tools. Which breaks another D+D idea - The GM controls everyone else.

I think you've got the chargen down. The next question is how do you give up/share power over the NPCs?

What techniques have you used in the past? What have you heard other people do? What feels comfortable to you?

A personal example - When I was in grad school twenty years ago (Oh God...I'm old) I tried running Champions. In that system players can make whatever character they can afford to buy with their points. I found that I could use the same points and make villains that could kill my players real easy. It was a very ticklish system. If not balanced well, combats were - BANG! You're dead. Covertly I essentially did a negociation with my players. Their character's were geared to fight certain types of villains. I responded by making those types of villains.

Year's later when I had fully moved into playing Engle Matrix Games (where players make things happen by making an argument saying what happens next - negociations do get more overt than that!) I had players make pre role play game arguments about what weird things they heard about that week. The games followed those leads. I would make up a lot of it - but occassionally during play I would give players arguments to settle things for me. Every time I gave them arguments I was passing authority to create in the shared imagined space (what they call the lumpley principle on the Forge). It ususally worked.

Sharing power though falls appart when players want to be passive regarding the story. Giving them control does not aid their goal, if they just want monsters put in front of them.

Good post - I'm sorry you've not got more feedback. Actual play posts go by so very fast.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Game