In both instances the characters are completely flat and transparent, they are simply a tool for the players to act in the reality of the game. They have no personnal motivations other than "win" the scenario by solving the mystery or accomplishing the mission. Nowadays I realize why this has been so: our scenarii are so tightly planned before the game cession that only flat characters will work well with them. We have uncounsciously flattened the characters to avoid disturbing the scenario.

This is all fine and good, and actually when I ask some people why they like to play the game, "solving the puzzle" is an answear that comes up. But my problem is that I can't stand anymore to play superficial characters. I would really like to "feel" a character I interpret (this is called ROLE playing, after all, not Cluedo), and not simply have a collection of numbers that enable me to play the game.

This has happened to me recently regarding NPCs. While I love GMing, I tend to get increasingly bored when interpreting NPCs. What´s worse, not only does the 7th Sea "canon" have a lot of interesting NPCs to boot, each and every entry includes a "How to roleplay XXX" which gives some useful pointers on representing said character. Still, they feel boring to me.

I believe it has to do with what Mike says. I think my NPCs have become another gear in the plot in past sessions, and that´s what "flattens" them. My current (actually, let´s hope prior...) style of play made it very difficult for me to drive this characters "motivation-wise" but instead promoted a "plot-wise" management of NPCs. I think my players have sensed this too, as they tend to see NPCs for what their contribution to the plot rather than for their motivations & passions.

Yep, if you want to bring an NPC to life in play, have them change thier minds about something important, and (this is key) in a way that completely goes along with some other aspect of their personality.

NPC: "You know, I really do hate the idea of killing peasants...but if it'll hurt the duke...well, I hate the duke, so I'm in!"

Remember that players create potential bangs all the time for NPCs. If you really want to convince a player that you're letting an NPC go any which way is interesting, have them make the decision for the NPC.

This all said, beware always of making the NPCs protagonists in their own rights. If/when they do prove dynamic, immediately have them help a PC prove he's dynamic.

NPC: "Hmm, actually I'm not sure whether it's worth hurting the Duke. How about you let me have that other sword of yours if I help?"

Mike

What you're looking for, I believe, is for the characters to be what's refered to in literature theory as "Dynamic" correct?

it's a mistake to assume that dynamic means that the character must change

I ran HQ Falkenstein last year, and it didn't go all that well in terms of enabling characters to be dynamic. The problem is that Falkenstein, because of it's nature, requires a "plot." No, not in terms of a direction for the narrative, but in terms of some NPCs having a plan to do something bad to the good guys. This assumes, of course, that you use the central conceit of the game that the characters are all agents for the Bavarian Crown. What happened in my case, was that players assumed that their only job was to stop the plot. That is, despite the fact that I was constantly trying to throw bangs at them, they were always looking for the "right" answer that would lead them to the solution of the mystery.

I think it can be done, and with the right players it would be easier. But just beware that the apparent format can lead to play that's reminiscent of CoC play.

Mike

What happened in my case, was that players assumed that their only job was to stop the plot.

the characters are all agents for the Bavarian Crown

the apparent format can lead to play that's reminiscent of CoC play

Alexandre wrote:
I see what you mean. In our case we plan to say from the start that there IS NO PLOT from the GM, so that should be a start.

What I have suggested so far is that all the PCs will be from an aristocratic family which, after an (yet undefined) tragedy, lost most of its position (an uniting Fallen House theme). This should help the PCs to have reasons to stick together and cooperate. We also suggested that we give a list of themes that we want our PCs to explore, and that only after those themes have been discussed and agreed, we would really create the characters, to take them into account (in my case I would be interested in a theme about what it means to be human nor non-human, what are the borders of both conditions, etc).

That's the typical mission style of games that I am used to play. The PCs are "soldiers on a mission". Defenitely not the best to encourage too much soul-expression ("You have a mission, now go soldier!").

Hi, Alexander and Mike!

Now the success of this endeavour relies on convincing the players to stop playing mission-style scenarios, and switch to character-centered scenarios. We'll se if we manage...

But I still wonder if the "evil plot" part of things won't sink in. I mean there's a whole section in the book on how to develop the evil plot, and how it's crucial to the feel of play. Just going to ignore that?

That's kinda where I tried to go, Arturo. Thing is, as soon as the players got a whiff of the plot, it was all focus on ferreting it out until it's done. Which meant, for one thing, that these plots didn't last as long as you would want to fit the genre. The more convoluted the plot you made in order to make it take longer to play out, the more the players felt informed that they were supposed to be doing nothing but ferreting out the plot. Viscious circle.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that I had difficulty doing it. That shouldn't stop anyone from trying the method, I mess up all the time.

Note that this is somewhat similar to what I'm trying to do in my IRC game, where I play against the metaplot background, and try to not get overwhelmed by the metaplot. I've had a lot more success in that vein.

Mike

One of the greatest resources for this style of play is Dogs in the Vineyard.  The instructions to GM's in this book basically consist of:

* Decide on "what's wrong" without deciding on "what's right"
* Focus "what's wrong" on characters with motivations
* Actively reveal what's wrong in play
* Make NPC's care about what the PC's do
* Drive play towards conflict

Indeed, I was having in mind lessons learned from DitV when writting the previous post.

Mike, I see the problem. I have the same feelings many times.
I think it is not easy to make it fully work, but the key is to clearly associate the situation and the evil-plot, and the active exposition of the evil-plot by interactions with the NPCs, which in most cases derive in more conflict.

Thing is, as soon as the players got a whiff of the plot, it was all focus on ferreting it out until it's done. Which meant, for one thing, that these plots didn't last as long as you would want to fit the genre. The more convoluted the plot you made in order to make it take longer to play out, the more the players felt informed that they were supposed to be doing nothing but ferreting out the plot.

Hi Arturo and Vaxalon!

Mike wrote: I'm wondering what the attraction of the Falkenstein background was, then? Why not historical Europe, for instance, or just a regular fantasy world?

Mike wrote: But I still wonder if the "evil plot" part of things won't sink in. I mean there's a whole section in the book on how to develop the evil plot, and how it's crucial to the feel of play. Just going to ignore that?

Mike wrote: will the game become "Family Mission" style? :-)

Arturo wrote: Anything not directly related with the situation/plot is not really interesting, and the players naturally focus in what seems interesting to them. They are doing it right.

Arturo wrote: I discover myself sometimes protecting the plot to avoid the players discover things to early. This is exactly what works wrong.

Vaxalon wrote:
One of the greatest resources for this style of play is Dogs in the Vineyard.

One of the ways that Dogs supports that style of play is to give the players AUTHORITY.  That's very important.

I'm definitely working that into the game that I'm putting together right now.

Vaxalon wrote:
One of the ways that Dogs supports that style of play is to give the players AUTHORITY.  That's very important.

Both.

The in-character authority is a metaphor for the out-of-character authority held by the players.  When the players say that the actions of their Dogs are the will of the King of Life, then it IS.  It's all linked.

Indeed, I think Alexandre is thinking in a kind of play really centered in the material created by the players, and giving the players some authority during play to bring their concerns to play.

It should work fine as far as the investment done by the players in their characters and backgrounds is not too much. And it should not be done by each one alone. I mean, creating too complex backgrounds for a character limits somehow the choices during play. Moreover, if everyone comes to the table with a very fixed idea of what she wants for her character, the GM may find impossible to make happy everyone at the same time.

I would suggest to work the characters together while you discuss the kind of play you expect. And leave enough undefined aspects in the characters to be free to explore them during actual play.

Arturo

I'm writing up material for a campaign that I hope will become a long-term game.  It centers around a save-the-world prophesy.

Before we start making characters, I'm going to ask the players to name some elements to work into the prophesy.

Alexandre wrote:
Hi Arturo and Vaxalon!

The reasons we are interested in Falkenstein instead of historical Europe or pure fantasy is that we would like to play grander than life and flamboyant characters. Characters that experience Love and Passion, that have Honor and all kinds of capitalized adjectives. Also, the free for all mix of fantasy, magic, mad science and steampunk tech was a plus to federate the players. Using an purely historical setting would have made our play more serious and restricted by all kinds of historical constraints that we don't care to take into account.

Vaxalon wrote: The in-character authority is a metaphor for the out-of-character authority held by the players.  When the players say that the actions of their Dogs are the will of the King of Life, then it IS.  It's all linked.

Arturo wrote: I would suggest to work the characters together while you discuss the kind of play you expect. And leave enough undefined aspects in the characters to be free to explore them during actual play.

Bryan_T wrote: Just a quick thought--have you read the "Well of Souls" [narrativisist] adventure written for Heroquest?

To re-emphasize what Arturo said, if you decide too much about a character before the game starts, what's to discover in play? Even in a PC-centric game, if you've already exploited the internal conflicts in the character before play, then what's left for play? For example, it's better to have the character in the midst of a conflict between him and his brother over a girl, than to have killed his brother over the girl years ago. Or you can have him start just having killed his brother, if the conflict that's interesting to you is between the character and his father. But don't say that this is all history, unless you've got some other conflict that it highlights.

Put another way, if it's not about the character's current issues, then it's probably not going to help play to note it as background. And any such background may, in fact, make the character less interesting to play.

The family as central structure is, to my mind, a bit over-rated. Do you live with your family? How often do you see them? Do they depend upon you? Sure these things could all be true. But what if a character decides to move to another village to marry someone there? Plausible, surely, but now the character is out of contact with the rest. Players want to make "adventurous" characters, not homebodies.

That's not to say that you can't use the family as the center of some conflict, however. Let's say that the family has just lost the father, and the question now is who will take over farming the stead? Now we have a centralizing conflict.

Still, the problem there is that it may become, if I might use the term, too incestuous. That is, with the PCs being the entirity of the center of the conflict, it'll probably resolve too quickly. The situation doesn't have enough "depth" in terms of other NPCs with other motives to mix things up and keep the situation fresh for a while. So the family needs to have perhaps a relative who is a gold-digger looking to cash-in. And gossipy aunts with their own agendas and axes to grind. And a local baron who has his eye on the father-figure's prize boars. Etc, etc.

Family centralizing often devolves into "party play" where the conceit is that we'll all subjugate looking at our characters' interests by saying that we have to look out for the family first. Or players play it more realistically, and it all spins out of control with characters going off everywhere.

Relationships between PCs are not neccessarily a situation that will centralize play. In fact, I find that, if relied upon, they tend to have precisely the same problems that one finds in party play. In fact, in most party play, if you ask the player why his character is there, he'll say that it's because his character relies on the other, or leads the others, or is "Close Friends with Party." This doesn't allow the sort of flexibility that you want for players to have, the sort of flexibility you get by thrusting them instead into a situation where the players are free to demonstrate what the characters are about with respect to the evolving situation.

See how this all goes together? If you want to make sure that characters aren't flat, make sure that we don't know everything about them, and then give the character room to grow in terms of how the player addresses the situation with the character. The more you pre-plan the character, the more you try to set up situations that force players to "play along" the less character development you'll encounter in play.

Mike