Can someone explain the true reason behind "traits" (PtA style) to me?
Callan S.:
Glad you got something, Markus. BTW, do you have a web page or blog I could check out - I sent a PM asking a week back, but I'm not sure your checking them.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Markus,
You're being overly modest. No one has ever asked the questions you're asking about traits. You've opened up a key issue in game play and game design which has been central to the revolution in the past 10 years, but also unacknowledged and uncritiqued. This is not a time to claim that you're just a nobody whose ideas or questions have already been addressed sufficiently.
I'll begin what I hope will be a multi-participant, multi-point discussion with a couple of older concepts that are probably relevant.
1. What is a character?
In The class issue, we broke it into four distinct levels:
- a way for the player to act relative to the other players
- a way to affect the emerging events-of-play
- a contrast or support or any other specific interaction for other characters
- a particular batch of details and capabilities
2. What are the components of character game mechanics?
I identified three fundamentals for a character in game terms: effectiveness, resource, and positioning (Chapter 4, GNS and other matters of role-playing theory; positioning used to be called "metagame"). My point here is that saying "trait" doesn't help us much without specifying what it does in a particular system. I suggest that part of the problems with traits is that that's not always clear, or rather, that how they're used in one system can often be 'ported inappropriately over to another.
I think that your questions can be addressed best with reference to the above concepts.
I will now present some thoughts about each set of questions you raised, but I want to say this is a starting point for discussion, not an ending, and I do not really think I've provided any answers. I hope we can see some emerge over time.
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- What is a 'trait'? Is it true that anything goes? It depends a lot on when you write your PC up. If you write your PC after the GM has prepared the situation (and you play with non-shared setting authorities) then traits could interphere in a non predictable way.
The word has been used for a lot of different things, as I tried to indicate in my reply to Christopher. So it's better to define it by your usage, for purposes of this discussion. If you don't mind me trying to paraphrase you, you're talking about a simple descriptive word or phrase which operates in addition to the "basic" resolution mechanics.
Whether "anything goes" is a good question. I think even a little bit of definition can make a big difference in play. In Dust Devils, for instance, there's "used to be" and "is now." In Polaris, Aspects are associated with specific quadrants on the sheet. PTA splits them between Edges and Connections. In The Path of Journeys, there's a trade-off between range and depth. In My Life with Master, they're constructed in a complex way with More Than Human and Less Than Human.
The Pool seems to have the most "anything goes" traits, but as I see it, a great deal about The Pool gives you enough rope to hang yourself. In other words, if you want to choose traits that are (a) applicable all the time and (b) carry no particular interesting thematic weight or contrast, and (c) you aren't playing the character in a thematically interesting way, well, you're the one hanging yourself, and you had all the opportunity in the world to use the rope better. Perhaps it's a matter of Callan's point - The Pool is a hand-crafted invention produced for fellow practitioners, not a marketed object for all and sundry.
(As a side point, all of this has its roots in Champions, long before it became the Hero System. Until Champions, all such material was subsumed in the concept of character class. The change was to break out specific disadvantageous bits of Effectiveness, Resource, and (especially) Positioning into point-based bonuses for character construction. Adding the converse, that is, an equally nuanced advantageous list of items that cost points, was quickly added during the period when Champions/Hero and GURPS influenced one another's design through series of publication stages. This design paradigm was itself revolutionary at the time, but recent design trends have stepped away from it. 3:16 illustrates a very productive "return" to it.)
Burning Wheel: increases Effectiveness in any specific possible way for any other feature of resolution - this is the most general and the most traditional of the designs on this list. What such a design does is create two levels of understanding one's character: the normal resolution mechanics and the particular profile or cocktail of how your character's traits affect timing, order, speed, resources of all kinds, chance to succeed, degree of success, and various defenses, some of them pre-emptive.
Dogs in the Vineyard: increases Effectiveness in terms of chance for success (adds dice), as well as degree of effect; also, with Relationships, permits some Content Authority
Dust Devils: increases Effectiveness in terms of chance for success (adds cards), as well as degree of effect
The Pool: increases Effectiveness in terms of chance for success (adds dice), but not degree of effect
PTA: increases Effectiveness in terms of chance for success (adds cards), but not degree of effect
Polaris: increases the combination of Resource and Effectiveness by permitting certain phrases to be used more often
The Path of Journeys: increases Effectiveness in terms of degree of effect (game term: "SR"), but not chance for success
My Life with Master: in the case of More Than Human, increases Effectivenss in terms of degree of success (in fact, negates roll), but interestingly, does not negate the need for some kind of roll in the scene
Sorcerer? Mayyyybe - specifically Cover, or Past as it's called in Sorcerer & Sword, which is often utilized as a preliminary roll to enhance the dice of a roll using Stamina, Will, or Lore; the same idea applies to a broadly-named ability in Hero Wars / HeroQuest, which is more often utilized to augment (a technical game term) the target numbers of other, more specialized abilities than rolled "on its own." All of these can be considered sort-of-traits by the definition above.
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- What type of effect can be employed with the trait mechanics, *depending on how you write the traits*? Examples of similar traits that I think are radically different in real use: "swordplay", "swordplayer", "my sword", "a found weapon", "trained in the X fence academy", "I like to cut people's guts", "killer". In play, who provides the relevant color and when?
That's related to my point about the game-term components of a character. Some game systems are very clear about what type of effect can be employed, and therefore the phrasing of the trait really doesn't matter except in terms of when it applies. What I think is missing in some systems is the concept of some time when it wouldn't apply. That can either be in terms of not having permission on the basis of the SIS, or in terms of running out of points or some other restriction.
I remember a really interesting design discussion in First Thoughts a while ago, which brought this issue into sharp focus. I'll have to hunt for it.
Are you interested in any comments on the Boba Fett's daughter trait? I think this is the key issue from your actual play account. When can she use it? What does it do? Does the slight reduction in total traits justify the increased power (2 dice) of this one?
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- What does it mean to 'use' a trait? Do you have to simply name it, do you have to add a bit of color based on it, etc. etc... Who does 'play' the NPCs created by the 'connection traits'?
This is probably the core issue for traits in RPG design. It's also often unconstructed, which in practice means that "the GM" (in his or her mushiest, authority + leader + narrator + rules combination) decided at all times. This was a big problem with Dependent NPCs in Champions, who were very often utilized for points, and then a kind of power-struggle would ensue during play whether the NPC would be involved, whether or how they would be in danger, what they might do or say, and whether the hero was "supposed" to care.
When I was GMing Hero Wars, a character had been badly beaten and was relatively helpless before an enemy in a burning forest. I suggested that the player was permitted to roll the character's Relationship ability (a specific NPC), with the in-game effect being that the NPC has just found the two combatants and hurls himself at the enemy. This is definitely not in the rules text, which pretty much assumes that the character is already established to be in a scene in order to utilize the roll, and typically, it's an augmenting roll that boosts some ability of the player-character's rather than a direct attack.
I described this to Greg Stafford at the time, and he praised it as a great improvisational use of the rule, but again, that only underscores the fact that no one really knows how these things are to be used. (Incidentally, that play-event and conversation inspired the Relationship rules in Trollbabe.)
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- Why should be scores attached to traits? Why should the system reward mechanically more the use of one trait over the others?
That's a very good question. Traditionally, it's a matter of if you have fewer, they're more powerful, and if you have more, they're less powerful. This goes right back to the origin of all point-buy character creation systems, The Fantasy Trip.
However, it also raises the spectre of "game balance," a term which invokes so many various and sometimes contradictory concepts that it's not useful. I think if we set aside concerns of characters being more or less powerful than one another, what remains is a matter of aesthetic taste at the moment. Sometimes you might like playing focused powerful characters, and other times you might like playing spread-out characters. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with that, although it opens up design pitfalls.
(Side note: My own experience with those pitfalls is so painful that I simply abandoned such things; that's the reason why, in Sorcerer, Stamina dice are classified ("described"), but the score itself is not limited to the description's application alone. The exception is found in the demonic abilities, in part because I wanted those abilities to be potential pitfalls.)
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- Why should the system reward mechanically the players for 'using' (see above) these traits he/she selected during PC creation, instead of choosing other courses of action/ other types of color/ other NPCs etc etc?
As I see it, when a system does this (Sorcerer does not, for instance), then my choices as a player about how my character falls out into those four levels are being validated - and in fact, expressed through the medium of game mechanics. I agree with you that the dichotomy between "do what's on my sheet" and "work with what's immediately available in the fiction" often has a poor boundary - either too ironclad or too unconstructed. This is a design consideration that the games I listed above have all wrestled with, and to which they provide various solutions. My claim is that they do provide solutions.
Best, Ron
FredGarber:
Hi! Welcome to delurking- I'm a big fan of lurking, and I usually wait a few days or so, because whatever point I want to make, someone else usually makes it better and more clearly than I do, faster. But this time, there's something in the feel of PtA (and in your Bob Fett's daughter) story that I think others have missed. I'll try to quote where I can, but I don't know if I can keep straight WHO said what, so I apologize for that.
1. I'll go with the music metaphor from earlier. In this example, one of the assumptions was that all the players knew how to play their instruments. That they knew the difference between, say, "funk" and "rock" and the "blues." In my version of this metaphor, PtA style-traits (meaning, a way for a player to increase the chance of success, but not degree of effect) are the instruments that the players are playing. But not every player is skilled at their instrument. Not everyone likes/tells the same sort of story. Now, when the time came around for your player to play, she blew on her Boba Fett Daughter Trumpet as loud as she could. And it hurt your ears. You and she weren't playing the same sort of music. You wanted a slow build, and she wanted a big blast, and the conflict was resolved by you taking "Game Master" authority and saying "this is how I think you should roleplay" (*)
2. PtA, in representing itself as a television story, emphasizes Actions over Introspections. When's the last time you watched a TV show where the characters sat around thinking about their problems for more than a quick montage? Film is a visual medium of moving pictures, so even in Gilmore Girls, the epitome of "talky" shows, where and why and who the characters were talking to was the set of the stage ) So when a player wants to do something in the story, they act. And if they really want to succeed, they'll do it in a way that brings their trait into it.
3. A key point in playing PTA successfully, by the way, is that she should activate it by saying something like "Well, I'm Boba Fett's Daughter, so I think those thugs don't want to mess with me!" Then, it's not her job to say whether or not Boba Fett saves her, or someone recognizes her, or HOW something else happens. It's up to the Narrator. I think it is crucial for PtA to not decide what's going to happen before the cards/dice hit the table. If she won narration, then Boba Fett can swoop down and smush those thugs. If you won Narration, then you can decide that she takes up a particular fighting stance, and the thugs realize that "only Boba Fett's daughter would use Bending Cricket style kung fu! We better run before we attract his attention!"
3b. A house rule of mine when playing PtA is that I give players index cards for each trait, and that's an easy way for them to keep track of how many times this episode they have that trait, and also a way for players to feel that they're using the trait. The best part is that the Narrator is encouraged to use all the cards played as factors in their narration of how the conflict was resolved. So if Heather uses her "Secret Agent" trait to resolve a conflict over who gets the information from the library, it is easier for the Narrator to see how that would be different than if she uses her "Research Queen" trait. Or if Janet uses her "Goth Powers of Darkness" in the conflict, there's more and more for the Narrator to work with to craft an interesting resolution.
4. Why should the system reward them for a choice they made at PC creation? Because they Made the Choice. In taking that trait +2, she indicated that she really wanted a focus of her character to be that relationship with her dad. It's her tool to help create the story, and to emphasize what her character is all about. She only gets as many of those as her screen presence that episode, and if she uses him in every scene she's in, then she'll find herself in trouble before long. Maybe that's the kind of story she wants to tell, of a girl who uses up her safety net and gets in trouble deep! Maybe she's testing to see how much control she has over the game storyline.
In summary, I think that traits, in PtA, have the following "true reason:" (this is only my opinion)
>> In the beginning, they are a tool for a player to influence the mechanics resolution. The outcome of a situation will end up more often in the PC's favor, not just random Fortune, because the PCs get an extra card(**).
>> As a player gets more experienced (either with PtA, or with the character, or with the group, or whatever), the useage of traits will shift, and a player will begin to use their traits to indicate to the Narrator that this conflict is important to the character. The extra benefit isn't so much about I want to win the conflict, but I want to win THIS conflict.
By then, players should have Fan Mail as a secondary method of just getting an extra card. By the way, Fan Mail also helps guide the group's theme: if everybody else appreciates when she narrates subtle conflict resolution, then she'll only get Fan Mail when acting subtly.
>> Finally, the most subtle reason for traits exists. That's not to say it's the most advanced: My wife jumped right to this stage in her second conflict ever. The last reason is that the player wants to let another character use that aspect of the character to help or hinder the story. The odds never get much better than 50/50 that a player will win Narration: putting that trait out there is a way for the player who wins Narration to tell a more interesting story, by having more colorful elements to play with. So, win or lose, Heather is deciding that this conflict over who gets to drive the car to the community swimming pool is more interesting if she brings her Secret Agent powers into it, rather than just be a normal conflict over "team leadership."
Why do traits exist in general? Because they quantify how and to what level a player can control the shared imaginary space. Some games make it difficult for players, not GMs, to control the space. Some distribute the power automatically.
-Fred
(*) Whoops, that was a very insulting sentence up there. Since you are not a primary English speaker, I'm willing to let that go as what you wrote was not quite what you meant to say. I'm also not intending to get into an argument about GM Authority taken and what your motives might have been. I don't know, I wasn't there, and I apologize if that sentence sounded insulting :)
(**) I'm going with the 2nd ed, there. If you are playing with dice, then it's a plus to the role. Both are just :influencing the Fortune mechanic for their benefit"
Moreno R.:
Hi!
There is another use for traits in some games (like PTA, for example) that was touched in the recent discussion about narrative authorities in PTA. In some games, traits can be used to mark a dramatic plot point, by changing them. During, or at the end of the spotlight episode, the player can change a trait. re-defining that part of the character.
Markus:
Wow guys, thanks a lot for the input. I'm starting to review all the older stuff Ron linked, and I'm finding lots of things that seem to resonate with the my questions. Oh and as always unfortunately, this reply took *ages* to write... sorry about the sedated pace of this discussion. Anyway, I'll arrange my observations in order of size (from macro to micro):
-----------------(1) Side-note: a general problem?
So my main problem seems to boil down to the disconnect between (a) what RPG designers *actually play* (in terms of exact procedures and mechanisms, whether stated or not, and recognized as such or not by designers themselves) and (b) what they later *write* in their books, which becomes the best approximation of the former for anyone who does not have a direct connection to the author. In many, many ways the RPG books I own have their share of this problem, in different amounts of course. I'd say that the full spectrum goes to the almost 100% premise-->system-->written text coherence of Trollbabe, to the almost 0% of ThePool (remember that I'm talking about *the actual, written words* that are considered to be 'ThePool', not an optimized way of playing with the few described procedures, developed via years of experience). To use again to the musical genres analogy, it's like trying to explaining to a classical musician how to improvise on a jazz standard: "So, look, it's quite simple: here is the harmonic progression, these are the time signature & tempo, ok? And then... and then... hmm, why, then you improvise!"
This inevitably leads, IMHO, to games that are played somewhat fuzzily and a bit differently by each group. I don't want to criticize games that I don't understand fully yet, but how many times have I read the phrase "The key point in playing PTA is..." (btw, it also showed up in this very thread)? My opinion is that that key point, if it is indeed a key point, should be there in the text for everyone to grasp. Provocation for any game designers reading this: are your games really *written* so that they can be picked up and played by any person (as opposed to any former rpg player, or even any former indie-rpg player)? And, (perhaps most importantly for constructive discussion) if it's not the case: why?
-----------------(2) Traits: how can I contribute?
So according to my understanding of how this forum works, I'm currently thinking hard about how I can contribute to an useful discussion regarding traits. Let me begin by confirming that as Ron correctly interpolated, I'm "talking about a simple descriptive word or phrase which operates in addition to the basic resolution mechanics". My goals for this discussion are: (a) understanding how people use traits in their games; specifically in the almost 'anything goes' games. By 'use' I mean the words spoken at the table during play that later get riassumed with 'player X used trait Y'. Based on the previous point, I'd hope to compile a sort of list of (b) all the possible types of traits and (c) all the possible ways to 'use' them (well, 'all' is a big word in both cases, but you get the idea), both with respect to existing games and not-yet-existant ones. My hope is that in doing this, I will understand how to use traits effectively in the games I already know, and, perhaps, someone else will get new ideas on how to design games based on any new stuff coming up.
It's a bit of a daunting task, I know, but anyway, I'll start by putting on the table everything I have to offer right now.
(a) How is a trait 'activated'?
- by simply stating that you're going to use it, without any restriction or any necessity for consensus at the table.
- by stating that the trait has some sort of relevance to the current conflict, based on internal coherence of the fiction up to this point.
- by providing a bit of pertinent color, with respect to the current situation, the invoked trait, and probably *one specified stance*.
- by committing your PC to a specific course of action, usually with significant thematic consequences (e.g "I shoot him")
(b) How many traits can you invoke for one 'mechanical resolution quantum' (nerdly generalized version of what is usually 'one conflict')
- any number is fine
- number depends on specific circumstances (whether in terms of the fiction or mechanically)
- only one at a time
(c) How do you judge if the requirements to activate a trait (if any) were satisfied or not?
- one person decides (e.g. the GM)
- the group decides by reaching a social consensus, whether formal (e.g. voting) or not (e.g. "that's cool")
- the rules provide inequivocable ("decidable", sorry for the math-geek jargon) requirements on how you can invoke a trait
- the invoker does not have to meet any requirements, but rather, they are 'passed on' to the narrator (if applicable)
(d) How do you choose which trait to use, among the list of those your PC possess?
- I'm trying to obtain maximum (mechanical) effectiveness
- I'm trying try to reveal something new about my PC
- I'm trying to bring to the table the theme/issue that I hardwired to my PC by choosing this trait
- I'm trying to choose the trait that preserves the most stringent consequentiality/coherence of the fiction
(e) What type of traits are permitted?
- descriptor traits: my character has this [quality/characteristic/personality trait]
- object traits: my character [possess/has a special connection with] this object
- connections/social descriptors: my character [knows/has emotive connection/is a member of] this group of people or individual
- ethical statement traits: my character likes/dislikes doing this action
- [possibly?] 'meta-traits' (find a better name plz): my character *will* [have this impact on the story/receive this amount of spotlight time/have this destiny]
(f) What mechanical effects does the use of traits imply?
- I'll have more narrational power
- my character will have an higher effectiveness (many shades are possible, as Ron evidenced with the chance/degree of success examples)
- it allows to 'control' trait-connected NPCs (many shades of 'control' are possible of course)
(g) Why does this system have traits?
- they are an occasion for player/player or player/GM exchange of 'flags'
- they are an occasion for the player to exert a bit of authorial power on the situation/setting prior to play
(h) Why does this sytem have trait-linked *mechanics*? (usually equavalent to: Why does this system reward the use of traits chosen at chargen? and, this also includes: Why does this system use different scores attached to different traits?)
- because they allow the player to make mechanically-consequential statements about his/her character
- they are there to 'guide' play towards a sub-set of pre-determined, preferred courses of action/events
One problem that jumped to my eyes while I was compiling the above list is that some games (I could be wrong!) allow for more 'freedom' (but consequently, blurrier focus) than is needed in specific areas outlined above, and I cannot say which *desirable* effect this was intended to create. I'm referring in particular to point (h) above.
-----------------(3) Micro problem: my actual play report
Well, of course I'm also interested in any specific opinion/suggestions that any of you has to offer on my actual play outline... Don't pull your punches please, I'm here to learn something new!
-----------------(4) Conclusion:
Now that I'm re-reading this post prior to hitting this 'post reply' button I'm seeing all my hubris... it's really something huge, and wanting to address it in a single thread is probably just madness. My hope is that someone will find all this useful. I certainly look forward to replies!
bye
M
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