Creating a Community
Reithan:
Sorry, was just worried it'd fall off the first page and thus be lost to the 'no-posty-zone' before anything was resolved.
Ron Edwards:
Yeah, um ... well, here's the thing. If that happens, it's not for you to restore it. That's called "bumping" and it often happens at other forum sites, but you shouldn't do it here. Actually, check out a recent thread in Site Discussion all about this very issue, and you'll see my suggestions for when posting to your own thread, especially after your own post, can be done constructively.
Let's get back to the community discussion now. It's a great topic. I'll weigh in after I manage to catch up on my backlog of threads I want to post to.
Best, Ron
Web_Weaver:
Hey Reithan,
I have had some similar experiences in the past, and I have even noticed the same withdrawing from NPC interactions in my own play on occasion, and I think it has a lot to do with trust.
Take this instance:
Our GM for this game had taken great pains to ensure we all created characters that fit in with the tribal community that served as the backdrop of our game, (Gloranthan HeroQuest) and the character creation system also supports this community focus. However, due to the player's character preferences and the initial direction of the campaign the sense of community investment was lost quite quickly.
So the GM asked us all for details of who we considered parent figures in our community. A simple request but one that rang alarm bells in my head, and I think in the heads of a few of my fellow players. The reason for this alarm was purely due to the fear that the GM was just trying to gain some kind of leverage or angle against all of us as a group by using back-story. This reflex is based on years of playing the kind of game where close relationships are basically of two types, character owned resources or contacts, which are relied upon by the player and the GM as sources of information, and quick scenario hooks which drive the game towards a fairly linear adventure i.e. your brother has been kidnapped by the clan next door.
Now in this instance the GM had nothing of the kind in mind, and purely wanted to introduce an elderly and slightly strange NPC that had a good memory of all of our characters lives and those of their parents. It was partly colour, partly an introduction to a new resource, and mainly a reminder that we had all lived here for most of our lives and we had connections with them regardless of our disparate characters. But, the fact that I had this reaction indicates a suspicion on my part as to the GMs intentions, which was born out of many years of adventurous-party play which had nothing to do with such issues.
Interestingly, I cant see many other ways for the GM to calm these reactions apart from demonstration. The kind of assurances I would need would be purely based on how such situations were used by the GM in the long term. You could lay down some rules over how such things are handled but the real test would be if these rules were adhered to.
So my best suggestion is to discuss the issues from the angle of trust and player investment, and discuss the kinds of situations that could arise if the PCs did become close to NPCs with an eye to who would be in control in those situations.
TonyLB:
Short answer: Give different NPCs different levels of involvement in the community. An asocial hermit does as much to make the structure of a community dramatically explicit as does the totally connected mover/shaker.
Long answer: I have a friend who was in Peace Corps, and she related to me another corps-member's strategy for coming into a new place and immediately finding the person most intimately connected throughout the whole community: Ask for something impossible. "I want a light-purifying system from the school, so our light doesn't get so dirty ... who would I talk to about that?" Apparently (I get second-hand) this strategy would consistenty have whole communities pointing at one guy in their midst, saying "Oh, go see Mbeke ... he'll be able to help you out," and that guy (often of low social status) turned out to be the most central member of the whole social network. Isn't that neat?
My intuition is that simulating some of that feeling ... the idea that there are people who act as lynchpins to the whole social structure, would both make it easier to present the community in a sane amount of time and effort and would make the community seem more real and convincing.
Great topic!
Reithan:
Web: I do think a lot of their reluctance may have to do with trust. They sort of seem to expect a certain adversarily relationship with their GM/DM/ST.
That begin said, I try to remain fair and objective and just present events and stories that will be compelling, not ones designed to "test the characters." However, this being a horror-themed setting a lof of these encounters do "test the characters" anyway. I mean, it is the "World of Darkness" not the world of friends and ponies.
Tony: For the short answer, I think I do somewhat have this set up already. I mean, there are NPCs in varying degrees of political power, NPCs with varying degrees of actual competance, and many varied personalities and drives among those NPCs.
I like the insight in your Long Answer, but I'm not sure how I could use that outside of just giving that tip to my players and subsequently exploiting it.
I think what you're trying to say is the create a sort of "community liason" NPC. There has been this NPC at times, in the player's herald NPC - however he was killed and has yet to be successfully replaced (one of the players killed his successor [another player] in a duel). So - this position may be filled again in the future, but for very in-character reasons the position's beginning to be looked on as somewhat 'cursed.'
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