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Quote from: lumpleyCheck this out: Is play really collaborative if it contaminates character integrity?

What we're collaborating on is character integrity.

Quote from: Paul CzegeWhen I create my guy, I have a vision for him. Maybe I envision him as really edgy. But when we roleplay dialogue, that never comes through. The other player characters are never on eggshells around him like they should be. So yeah, that's contamination. My vision is more satisfying than my dude is in play.

Those quotes are from the Adventures in Improvised System thread, and they got me thinking. This is perhaps the most prominent issue when it comes to unsatisfying play experience. It's not obnoxious like the "my guy" attitude. Wanting to fully realize your character in play certainly isn't an unreasonable desire. But how can two or more people realize their character visions when those visions are contradictory?

Pulling an example from Paul's quote, what right does Paul have to inflict his character's "edgy-ness" on the other player characters? What kind of trade-offs might be engineered that would allow Paul to realize the edgy nature of his character without compromising the integrity of the other players' visions of their characters?

Quote from: lumpley"No. But what if -- what if what we just played out isn't necessarily what actually happened, but is how the story spreads through the covenant?"

"...Okay, yes!" Meg says.

"I like that a lot," Emily says. "Some servant watching..."

"Yeah," I say.

So who knows what really happened between my guy and Meg's. All we know is that something did, and this is how the covenant comes to understand it.

That illustrates one way in which Vincent's group handled a situation where character integrity was jeopardized. It's perfectly fine, and rather interesting if used sparingly, but there will be occasions where the players will want or perhaps even need to know what actually happened. Vincent, Emily, and Meg seem to handle this mostly through pure desire to help each other realize their character visions. When character integrity seems to be compromised they tailor a method of keeping that integrity intact. That's wonderful, but it's difficult to export to just any group of people. It requires a certain chemistry and understanding among the participants.

Quote from: Paul CzegeHow do you get the foils you need in your games?

That's a damn good question.

So, what would be grand is a discussion of various methods of handling the maintenance of character integrity in circumstances where the player characters have contradictory goals and ways to formalize those methods within a game system, either mechanically or by rule statements.

-Chris

I hadn't picked up on Paul's comment in the previous thread, but all I could think was "Is dialogue the only way he's communicating the edginess?" That kind of thing could be better communicated through writer stance description than actor dialogue / direct action. Sure, if the actor stnace performance blows that description, you've wasted the description, but it gives some colour for the other palyers to work with.

I was reading some articles on writing recently (displacement activity: I pretend I'm writing by reading about it), where the author rails at the discipline of "show not tell," one of the golden rules of fiction writing. His (hers? I can't find the link now) point was that, especially in a short story, half a page describing fiddling fingers and darting glances can be cut out and replaced with the phrase "Jan was nervous that day," and we can get on with the story itself.

So that's my take on that particular problem: if your idea of the impression that a character creates depends on the reactions of other players, you need to flag that to other players somehow. Their play will be informed by your wishes, their interpretation of their characters, possibly mechanical system construct (intimidate rolls, etc), but it's out in the open, and you don't get the feeling that the other guys don't "get" your guy. They might still not "get" him, put it's a whole different power struggle now.

Which, by a large threadjack, birngs me to the point: creative collboration. When the rubber meets the road, "my guy" will only become fully realised when interacting with everything else in the game, characters, mechanics, setting, players, the whole shooting match. In my writings, as in my games, the characters in the simulated reality often develop in ways I never intended at the outset. In writing, I can go back and rewrite earlier stuff to better support the direction I intended originally, or I can see wheere the new direction is going. As a default, most RPG's don't allow this retconning, the moving fingers writes, and having writ moves on; never mind that it's written different things inside the players headds. Cognitive dissonance between the versions of the game as perceived by the different players have to be resolved by ad hoc systems, as seen here. And, doubtless, in most cases it leads to dysfunction, as this is exactly the "bang, you're dead" argument that rpg rules allegedly avoid.

In my experience, the solutions have been:

Shouting Match, until one side grudgingly accepts the other's interpretation, or
GM as Judge, jury and executioner, either selecting one version over another or imposing a third version[/list:u]

Neither of which seem much good in the fun stakes.

Now, we have another solution, of negotiation and retconning, with players as equals with the best game for all being the stated preferred outcome. Which is about as solid gold as you can get, but perhaps not always attainable.

In games where the creation of the story is the game (Universalis, Baron Munchausen, Pantheon), virtually the whole of the mechanics are concerned with resolving this kind of dispute. Games with metagame currency (drama points in Buffy, Dramatic Editing in Adventure!) have mechanics that can be used to much the same end. It's already been suggested elsewhere that hero points in HeroQuest can be used to gain authorial rights, and can be used for resolving this kind of dispute.

But engaging in a collaborative medium demands that character integrity be broken repeatedly, in various ways. The mechanics, by definition, impose limits on the expression and abilities of the character. The integrity of the other characters limits the ability of the playre to dictate their character's imposition on the game world (Paul character can certainly be flagged as "edgy" to other players, but that doesn't demand that others walk on eggshells, just that they may be advised to do so given the possible consequences).

As I should have made clear above, the problem isn't so much contradictory character goals (conflict illustrates character, character creates conflict*), but contradictory player perceptions, and the management of those is a fascinating area, if only because most game systems claim they deal with this through their mechanics. But they only deal with managing actions through, usually, ability resolution mechanics, rather than the more subtle engineering of, in Sim terms, keeping the dream consistent between players.

Guys, this is a scales form my eyes moment for me, I'm just realising that this is at the heart of the problems i have with most conventional rules. I must to my mountain retreat and meditate on this.

Or possibly do some work before the boss notices.

*"NEED MORE CHARACTER! WHAT CREATES CHARACTER?"
"fonflift!"

OK, I'm going to start of with a negative to ground where I'm coming from here...

Let's say I have this idea for a poem, it's an incredibly sad, moving poem.  When I write it down, and people read it, they're not moved, in fact they don't even think it's sad.  But the thing is the poem I thought I was writing was more satisfying to me than the poem people actually read.

The fact that the other players are not only your collaborators but also your audience means that your character 'integrity' is also going to be limited by your talent to express that character.

Which means in turn that the techniques used need to enxtend and enhance your own talents in this area.  Let's see, I can think of two games with rules of this sort.  Adventure! has a rule where, if your character has a high Wits score, you can give the GM feed lines he must use during the game - to which you deliver your prepared witty response.  The other example is Dying Earth's taglines - which again give the player the chance to improve on their normal verbal abilities.

Now this kind of "prep before play" may work fine for quips and quotes but it may not work for more mood-led things.  OK, what about this.

Let's start from Paul's example of his 'edgy' character.  Let's say another character in the group is 'unflappable'.  OK - who get's their way.  Let's posit a metagame currency.  If Paul wants the unflappable character to be flapped by his characters edginess, he can buy it from the other player.  The other player can then use the accumulated currency to buy moments for his character, or just convert them to standard task bonuses, or whatever dependant upon the style of the game.  Who gets their way with their character depends on who is willing to pay more for it.

(further, it might be possible to buy out-of-character moments from NPC - the careful villain leaves a clue or whatever - you could even have NPCs be fixed price while PCs are of negotiable affections)

In traditional GM-Party gaming, I think it's left to the GM (if he's so-minded) to do a lot via NPCs, the enviroment and backstory to support what the Player is trying to do with their character. Basically, if you and the GM agree on your goal, I think it has a much better chance of being accepted by the other Players. That's my experience, anyway.

Of course, this becomes a farce if you as Player are writing checks that you can't cash with your Character.

This brings me to Ian Charvill's poem analogy. I think maybe the most you should have is rough goals and possible directions for a character. Only Actual Play and the interaction with the group will show what your Character "really" is and what people in the world think of him.

Now, back to the farce...

If, for example, you keep making "smooth con men" Characters, but continue to make social blunders and generally make them look like oafs in-game, the group's gonna be less likely to buy those kind of Characters coming from you.

But, if you play those Characters well, you get "con man cred" and can probably get the benefit of the doubt and get by with more in the future with less work when playing those kind of Characters.

So, maybe really seeing your goals for you Character come to fruition is a game in itself? Maybe the only way to do it well, is to roll up your sleeves and get to work?

Cool!

Here in the Actual Play thread is the bulk of my response.  Feel free to pull quotes from there if you want.

Quote from: ChrisPulling an example from Paul's quote, what right does Paul have to inflict his character's "edgy-ness" on the other player characters? What kind of trade-offs might be engineered that would allow Paul to realize the edgy nature of his character without compromising the integrity of the other players' visions of their characters?

I think the leap we have to make is that all our visions of Paul's character are that he's edgy.  Otherwise, there's no possible solution.

Universalis' solution, which is to reward everybody who makes use of Paul's character's edginess, really is brilliant.

-Vincent

(We're talking about one of the things that's required for "protagonism", right?)  

Step One - everyone has to know that Paul's character is edgy.  

Problem 1)  Just saying "my guy is edgy" (or the equivalent, e.g., as play progreses, saying my guy is deeply upset by x event) is not to the taste of some folks.  For these folks, alternative ways to communicate the fact that this guy is edgy are *required*.

Problem 2)  Even if you do say it, that doesn't necessarily mean that  the other people understand it in the same way you do.  What is "edgy"?  An over-used adjective used to glorify a social misfit?  An apt description of a very scary guy?  Interestingly, alternative ways to communicate can sometimes help clarify things, and sometime only make things murkier.

But in the absence of a focus on communicating the nature of the character outward somehow, you're not going to sucede.

Step Two is about continuing that process, reinforcing it, adding embellishments and alterations as needed/desired - and that's where I think Vincent's comments about reward systems and Universalis kick in big-time.

Nothing new there, I guess - but breaking it down that way was helpful for my understanding.

Gordon

Quote from: pete_darbyAs I should have made clear above, the problem isn't so much contradictory character goals (conflict illustrates character, character creates conflict*), but contradictory player perceptions, and the management of those is a fascinating area, if only because most game systems claim they deal with this through their mechanics.

Oh, they deal with them alright. Usually by allowing those perceptions to be trod over by another participant's dice roll. But yes, player perception is what we're dealing with here. The "holy grail" is managing those perceptions and having any change to them be entirely voluntary on the player's part. In this case "voluntary" can mean that the decision to allow changes to that vision was made in order to garner some sort of game system reward.

Quote from: lumpleyI think the leap we have to make is that all our visions of Paul's character are that he's edgy. Otherwise, there's no possible solution.

I think that is the perfect solution, Vincent. Unfortunately, for various reasons that solution is often out of reach. What we need are solutions that are the next best thing, like Universalis' solution which, as you point out, is brilliant. As you also point out in the other thread (excellent post btw), systemic support is necessary to make collaborative efforts effective. The problem is that the vast majority of games don't have that kind of support and most groups of gamers can't effectively manage collaboration to the degree we're discussing without pre-engineered system based support to guide them. What you, Emily, and Meg do is awesome, but out of reach for many gamers.

So, do we have any more examples of existing games that handle collaboration and player perception of character effectively? Are there specific types of rewards or reward systems that might be more effective than others in this regard?

Quote from: Gordan C. LandisBut in the absence of a focus on communicating the nature of the character outward somehow, you're not going to sucede.

I agree, and I also think that outward communication is just the first step. Concrete system based support is the next step. It's also likely that the two work best when they are closely integrated with each other.

-Chris

I almost forgot Fang's Sine Qua Non concept from Scattershot as an example of how to maintain and regulate character integrity in collaborative play.

-Chris

Seems like there are a lot of options here. The easiest I can think of is to have each character have their, as Fang would call them, Sin Non Qua characteristics, and then have a reward system for playing to them. The simplest would be if players could "appeal" to one of these characteristics and get a SNQ point for their character. The GM hands these out if appropriate.

For example, your character has an "intimidating" SNQ. I play my character as intimidated when he sees yours. I point this out to the GM who agrees and gives me a SNQ point.

Trade in 10 SNQ points to get another SNQ for your character.

Seems pretty straightforward, very similar to Ed Heil's Topos system. Probably would get all sorts of tweaked depending on the particular system that it was involved with (and would have to have other system linkages to avoid the problem that I see with Topos), but could go into a lot of games just as written above.

Mike

P.S. crossposted with Chris. Seems that Primitive Minds think alike. :-)