Re: Interview with Vincent and me
Marshall Burns:
Ron, Vincent, and anyone else,
Ok, I got to listen to it now (thanks again, Clyde), and here's something I'd like to talk about. It was mentioned that, in DitV, if someone makes a lethal-force move against your character, you can "Give" and take the bullet between the eyes and just die. Self-authored character death? That is fan-frickin'-tastic!
Now, maybe people are looking at me like I'm crazy at this point, so I'll explain where I'm coming from. Why would I voluntarily let my character die? Simple: for the sake of the emotional and aesthetic impact of the story that is being created through play.
I'm trying to get this kind of dynamic into one of my own games (The Rustbelt), to even a radical degree as one of my design goals: I want to see at least one PC die in every session. Not because of bad rolls or "rocks fall and everyone dies," but because it benefits the story so that the players let it happen. I'm beating my head against the wall trying to figure out ways to encourage this. I've come up with a resolution system in which you roll not against a difficulty but a "Price," such that your rate of success is determined ultimately by how much character is willing to pay for it in blood, sweat, tears, and humanity. (And that "willing" is explicitly provided entirely by the player, as blatant, pretense-free Author Stance). If the Price is high enough, it means death, but accepting that death also means accomplishing whatever the goal in question was.
But I worry that this isn't enough. There's a trait I've seen among many, many roleplayers I've met, that I think of as the "My Guy mentality," where they become attached to their character as something beyond a tool for achieving the aim of play. You can tell these people from the way they say "My Guy slew a dragon" or "My Guy became the king"; they really say it with capital letters. It seems that most of the time the character is an extension of their ego and adolescent-like power fantasies -- which disturbs me. Maybe there's nothing wrong with it, but it disturbs me.
Then there's also this strange mental tautology I keep seeing: "Death = Ultimate Failure." I don't get it. Maybe it's because I'm largely ignorant of the history of the hobby, but I just don't get it. Especially in the Story Now mode of play. I mean, consider ANY of Shakespeare's tragedies, and the role that protagonist death plays in them. Now, who in their right mind would say that those deaths are failures on Shakespeare's part? And, of course, in Story Now the players are in Shakespeare's position, sitting in the author's chair.
I get the impression that though voluntary PC death is mechanically possible in DitV, it doesn't happen very often, if at all. I'm guessing that it's related to those two things I mentioned above, but there might be more to this. Which is what I want to discuss: why people are reluctant to do this, and how can a game encourage them to break through that reluctance?
-Marshall
Eero Tuovinen:
Speaking of story-game mode, as you put it, my experience is that people will throw their characters off a cliff if that's what the story is about. Simple as that. You don't get it often in DiV because it's not really worked up as a tragedy, but try Polaris; I haven't yet heard of a Polaris campaign arc that didn't involve one or more characters dying horribly and wholly with player-authorization.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Marshall,
Your points about self-authored character death and My Guy (spoken of as a “syndrome”) are foundational here. These were two seminal insights which helped the original creation of the community which is now informally thought of as “the Forge” as distinct from the physical website. The third related insight dealt with multiple-person contribution to the situations and descriptions of play.
Key members of that discussion included Scott Knipe, Mike Holmes, Paul Czege, Jared Sorensen, Mark J. Young, Josh Neff, Dav Harnish, and a few others; key games were Soap (Ferry Bazelmans), InSpectres (Jared Sorensen), Sorcerer (me), Schism (a supplement for Sorcerer, Jared Sorensen), Wuthering Heights (Philippe Tromeur), and The Pool (James V. West). Key events included GenCon, Origins, and DemonCon during 2001. Dust Devils, Universalis, and My Life with Master were not yet a-born, and Vincent Baker was not yet a part of the discourse community.
All of which is to say: “Yes!” You’re gonna like this place more and more …
Regarding the gamer-culture baggage of character death = failure, I think the answer lies quite clearly in one procedural feature and in one aspect of the historical context of early role-playing. The procedural feature is that, if your character dies, you cease to play. So that’s pretty un-fun, case closed … unless you want to cease to play, based on intrinsic satisfaction (Sorcerer’s Kickers are designed for this). However, now for the historical context: the tourney D&D game, in which dozens if not hundreds of people are scattered, twelve to a group, across a sea of tables, each with a staff GM who runs precisely the same tactical challenge at them, and they are all scored upon how many characters live, how many foes are defeated, and how much treasure was gained (this is the origin of classic experience points). In which case, character death is a dead loss in Gamist terms.
Taken together, it’s fascinating how hard it stuck – even for games like Champions, which was exemplary in how it abandoned hundreds of assumptions of pre-existing games, but which could not manage to deal with character death in ways that superheroes or supervillains “die” (i.e. not die) in comics, without relying on what-rules-GM-says-so.
Alternatives vary quite widely. Here are just a few, in order of publication date.
- The Castle Falkenstein way: characters typically cannot die due to resolved outcomes, but on occasion, if failure seems like it would have to be lethal to the GM, he makes it clear that character death is now “on the table.” The game is a little bit unclear about whether and how the player can opt not to enter that particular zone of play, once announced.
- The Elfs way: a modification of the above way, the GM designates a particular situation as lethal well before any rolls or actions occur; note that only players roll in Elfs, and usually their announced actions signal rolls to the GM, rather than the other way around.
- The Soap way: characters are immune to death as long as their Secrets haven’t been guessed, but after that, they freaking die all the time, whenever anyone says! However, notice that a big part of Soap is screwing with others’ characters situation, so you keep playing perfectly fine after your character bites the big one.
- The Schism way: characters have a score which can go up or down due to various things (all ultimately under player’s authority, if not total control in detail); when it hits 0, that character’s next scene of play must kill the character, regardless of any dice outcomes.
- The Universalis way: all game components, characters included, are measured in “coins” spent to buy them and to increase their value. If a character is narrated as dead, it can mean either (a) the player has spent enough coins to buy the component out of play forever, or (b) the player has spent a coin or more on adding “deadness” to that character. In the latter case, the component is still a consequential and usable piece of play, it’s just that you have to include the deadness. (E.g., the character may be quite influential as a memory.)
- The Trollbabe way: players have the option to move characters further and further along a line of repeated tries, but incurring increasing risk culminating in character death. If you don’t want your character to risk dying, just don’t move far enough along that axis.
- The Mountain Witch way: when a character dies, the player continues to play the character as a memory or other influence, perhaps even a ghost most literally but least interestingly. Nearly all the rules are preserved just as they are for that player, as the only things affected are the details of narration. It’s kind of fun to have your character automatically be in every scene. (I’ve always wanted to see the situation in which only one ronin is left alive, but effectively haunted by the memories of his fallen comrades.)
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why people are reluctant to do this, and how can a game encourage them to break through that reluctance?
Eero's right! A lot of people aren't reluctant; they simply have never seen it before or never conceived that such a thing could be part of what they think of as role-playing.
I’m currently composing a post for Joel’s (Melinglor) actual play thread, and my answer here is related to the same issue. The answer isn’t actually much fun to say or to receive: you must abandon your goal as it’s currently stated. The game can facilitate and provide means, but it cannot provide the ends, i.e., the desire to do it. The most it can do is make the options/techniques available for people who want to do it, and would love doing it, but don’t realize it yet.
My advice to you is not to write Rustbelt to encourage or educate people who don’t want to do it, or who never heard of it, or who can’t see it. Write it for you, and for me: people who love the idea upon hitting upon it themselves or hearing about it from others. There’s a hell of a lot of us, and we’ll all “get it,” and we’ll all enjoy playing the game.
I also recommend reading the discussion The Fruitful Void, based on my phrase and illustrated in a variety of neat ways by Vincent. His Role-playing theory hardcore also has stuff you’ll enjoy.
Best, Ron
edited to fix link format
Marshall Burns:
Wow. I don't know what to say except that all of this is quite heartening, and also a tad stunning. Thanks.
-Marshall
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 21, 2008, 09:23:33 AM
note that only players roll in Elfs, and usually their announced actions signal rolls to the GM, rather than the other way around.
Hey Ron,
Can you clarify that? I mean, what is "the other way around?" See, the way I've always done things is this: the players announce their actions, and the GM (usually me) says, "Okay, you've got to make a Response roll vs. X difficulty for that to succeed; if you fail, (blank) might happen," and then the player rolls their dice. How else is it done?
-Marshall
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