Players Against Player Authorship
Mason:
I've heard the term before, they're things your character can't ignore, right? Something important to the player about the character.
On the one hand, my players are capable of plotting a character's class progression and linked emotional growth from 1st-20th level (in fact, I read one character summation this morning for a 20th level progression that tracked a mechanical and emotional journey from attempting to escape his destiny to ultimately surrendering to it and I thought, Wow, you don't even have to role-play it. Its built-in.) On the other, you ask them what's important to the character and more often than not you get some combination of a blank stare and "Oh, you know, whatever you want to run is fine."
Nobody wants to make a decision that makes the GM's job harder, so no one ends up making any decisions. And I'm left running a game for a table of furitive cyphers.
I think if my players (who are also mostly my GM's) simply were not interested in these elements of the game, I'd be okay with it. I wouldn't be able to change their minds, because people like what they like. But the way I see our games fail most often is due to apathy, either the GM gets bored and calls it, or the group gets bored and calls it. We'll play a game we're not excited about for 2 or 3 months, and then it grinds to a halt. Our games end with a whimper, I can't think of the last one to end with a bang. And the reason by a wide margin is, people aren't invested in the story.
greyorm:
Quote from: Mason on February 20, 2008, 10:29:07 AM
I've heard the term before, they're things your character can't ignore, right? Something important to the player about the character.
Sort of. "Flags" are things on the character sheet that the GM can use to run with ("...things your character can't ignore" sounds more like a Kicker or Bang). Example: the warrior takes three ranks of "Cooking" as one of his skill choices. That's a Flag. The wizard character has a brother listed on her sheet. That's a Flag.
Here's a link to Chris' excellent article on Flag Framing, salvaged from archive.org, and the follow-up to it on Conflict Webs. Hopefully the observations and techniques will prove to be of some use.
Greis:
Quote from: greyorm on February 20, 2008, 04:53:04 PM
Sort of. "Flags" are things on the character sheet that the GM can use to run with ("...things your character can't ignore" sounds more like a Kicker or Bang). Example: the warrior takes three ranks of "Cooking" as one of his skill choices. That's a Flag. The wizard character has a brother listed on her sheet. That's a Flag.
Exactly. One function of the system I suggested is that it let the PC's add details to the setting and their characters. These details often ends up functioning af flags. By seizing the themes, the fluff and the NPC's introduced in these small scenes or descriptions you can build the events in the scenario around your PC's. E.g. instead of introducing "a distant uncle from your character's past", you'll instead use the NPC already introduced by the player in a flashbackscene.
By the way I forgot to mention that you can disguise this houserule in D&D as an expanded version of the "Aid Another"-option. Originally you get to apply a +2 bonus to your fellow PC in combat, but now you get to apply it to skillchecks, if you play/describe a scene or a flashback scene with an NPC, that possesses the relevant skill.
So as Geryorm and Wolfen says: Flags. Go look for 'em.
I like to introduce houserules that support the introduction of flags in the game and rewards the player in doing so. Consider my above suggestion a houserule to introduce NPC-flags and in the former post, there were backstory and setting flags. Well loosely defined flags at least.
Paul T:
There are also indirect methods of player authorship. You know how, in Donjon, you can try to do something, and if you roll well, you just changed something about the gameworld?
You can do that with any kind of conflict resolution system where a player must state their desired goal upfront.
For instance, try playing The Pool with the folks:
http://www.randomordercreations.com/rpg.htm
If they're not into narrating outcomes, you can still get the effect, because with each action, a player _must_ decide:
A) What they are trying to achieve, a concrete goal for their character, and
B) How difficult it will be to achieve. (Allocating dice to a roll is the same thing, in a sense, as setting a low difficulty for that action--your chances of success are high.)
When a player says "I want to achieve X", and then sets a difficulty for that action, and succeeds, he or she has just changed something about the world in a way that you, as the GM, cannot stop or prevent. You'll often get surprises this way, even while to the players it just seems like they're doing the logical thing.
The narration option is neat, but you can still get this effect without it. Just have any successful roll add a die to a player's pool, and ignore the "take a MoV" option.
Just another suggestion! They may rebel against that, too, for all I know.
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