Trollbabe-ish setup lacking drama
Ron Edwards:
Hi Paul,
I am concerned with a number of your phrases which suggest to me that you are not seeing the genuine issue. I can only address them as a whole by saying, "There is no trick involved." I don't think that what you're looking for is achieved by leading or tricking or influencing players. I think that entire viewpoint should be abandoned by you, and I don't know if you even know you're holding it.
Let me lay out this line of dialogue.
A: "My players didn't do anything and artfully dodged all my NPCs' actions and pleas to get them to do something."
B: "Ah, that's easy: have the NPCs stick guns in their faces and make them do something."
or B': "Ah, that's easy: have the NPCs express points of view which tap right into the players' personal needs and therefore the players will have no emotional choice except to take action."
I am suggesting that both B and B' are buying into A's already-flawed outlook, and that their solutions only dig deeper into a hole. The flaw lies in what I tried to articulate briefly in my first post: that if you are GMing with the assumption, or plan, that you are going to make or lead the players into doing things, then you are already engaged in a power struggle with no real good outcome. I mean, even if they are made or led into doing stuff, so what? Are you really interested in GMing like a hand-puppeteer forever? Are they really "your" players? I suggest that they are not; they are their own players, and so are you.
C: "Keep playing your NPCs to the hilt for their own reasons and interests and have what happens, happen."
Funny, this goes all the way back to your old threads, [Unknown Armies] Am I driving with Bangs? and Is this Forcing? Maybe those are due for a re-read, if you can get past some of the static of the various posts in the latter.
If you truly let go of trying to make or lead, then you also have to let go of the idea that you are the Fun God of the session. If they have the option to do 'do nothing' and skulk about strategizing forever and a day, then two legitimate outcomes are possible which are best described as Sucks to Be You. (i) The NPCs go ahead and take action of their own, up to and including shooting the player-characters in the head. (ii) Nothing particularly interesting happens in regard to the player-characters and the NPCs settle their issues among one another while the player-characters continue to bob and weave.
In other words, if you play your character "no fun" wise, then it's not my responsibility to fucking hand you Protagonized Fun on a silver platter. The player says, "Hey, this was kind of boring or weird, I felt uninvolved," and I say, "Yeah, you started uninvolved and you remained uninvolved, and I got tired of holding your dick waiting for you to piss."
I occasionally run into a version of this issue when GMing Sorcerer. A player may think that he or she can simply run about being weird and more or less doing nothing, or doing spastic things off the cuff, which is pretty much nothing with an accent. The obvious consequence is that his or her demon rebels and finds someone else worth being bound to, often in such a way which leaves the sorcerer quite badly off. "Hey, that's funny, I felt deprotagonized," - and I say, "Hey, that's funny, you played a psychotic idiot from the git-go."
A related issue is ignoring your own needs and limitations. You were tired. It wasn't firing on all cylinders for you. I strongly suspect that you were not particularly enjoying yourself. Why not, after an hour of the players skulking about, simply saying, "Hey guys, I'm whipped. Let's stop and play for real later." This is related to the first point because the Fun God is also the Fun Martyr when he gets the chance, and letting go of the first means the second goes too.
A final point: as you said yourself, this isn't a Trollbabe thread. You weren't playing Trollbabe nor are you familiar with the rules. I don't see any point in discussing that game here at all. I'm glad you posted the rules to the homebrew, though, because I can see the single and most significant deviation from Otherkind staring me in the face: no negative consequences embedded in the roll. In Otherkind, a lot of the time, I have to choose what undesired outcome will have to occur. In this, I don't. When I roll, I have the choice of an ice cream sundae, a bubble bath, or a massage from someone sexy. Can you see how this was clearly related to the issues you've brought up here?
Best, Ron
jburneko:
I wanted to say that this thread has been very helpful and enlightening to me. It really gets at something I've been struggling with in my gaming over maybe the past 5 years or so. I've the issue being discussed here most strongly in my Dogs in the Vineyard games (which also features outsiders being drawn into complex NPC affairs). My Dogs play has been very uneven. Some Towns have rocked and others have felt flat and I've been hard pressed to figure out the difference.
However, after reading this and thinking back I realized that the towns that really rocked generally featured at least one highly motivated NPC who was running around *doing* stuff and the towns that fell flat generally featured a bunch of NPCs standing around in a circle pointing at one another waiting for the Dogs to pick sides. I think the problem is that there still this kind of nervous response that if the NPCs start taking action, especially criminal action such as violence or theft then the "moral choices" that the game is ostensibly about become "too easy." He attacked first therefore that absolve me of all moral responsibility. This ties into the issue ties in to what I was talking about in that thread about my current Sorcerer & Sword game. I brought up the Dogs in the Vineyard meta-physics issue you get with some players who simply think, "he throws lightening bolts, he's a sorcerer, therefore he's evil, therefore I shoot him; no questions asked." (I don't have this problem but some players do).
Ron, rightfully turned that discussion around to the specific points regarding my abilities to throw meaningful antagonism at the players. And I think that's something I've struggled with since day one at The Forge. What is *meaningful* antagonism. If two guys come through the door with guns, what separates two guys who add suspense and drama from 2d6 hobgoblins off the random encounter table. I think it's related to the idea that there's something more at stake than just the danger itself. I also know it when I see it but it's really hard to articulate as a simple principle.
But what this thread has thrown into sharp relief is that it's not all on me (something I've known but frequently forget or get tripped up by on gut level). If I throw a punch and the player's flinch, that's not my problem or responsibility. In my other thread CK brought up the idea of Kickers in Sorcerer presenting opportunities. I realized I've been shying away from opportunity Kickers because I feel like it sets me up as GM to be accused of railroading. The Kicker says the character wants this thing so I throw opposition between the character and that thing. Then the player just has the character shrug and go, "Eh, not worth it after all" and not in a cool thematic emotional reversal kind of way. Then I feel like I'm railroading because I "needed" the player to stick to his investment. I'm a bad GM because I can't properly antagonize apathy. But I suppose there's a difference between railroading and expecting basic commitment to the character and game.
Don't know if that wandered around the topic or not but that's what all this made me think of.
Jesse
Noclue:
Jesse, I have comments but then the thread would really start spinning out of control and away from the topic.
Paul, I went back and read the OP and noticed something interesting (at least to me). The situation you set up posits that the PCs destabilize things by there very presence. That's what you said. Merely, showing up causes destabilization. But, that is not what you created. You created a situation in which the PCs could destabilize things if they chose to act.
Arturo G.:
Reading this thread I got a click in my head. Something similar as Jesse, I think.
I'm running a little TSoY game, two very short sessions already. I prepared some NPCs in a conflict situation. But some of them are not really working on play. Even one of the PCs which is more related to them is still somehow wandering around.
And of course. The ones which are making the PCs thrill and react, are the ones with real agendas or interests. The ones doing things, for good or bad. The ones reacting to the situation and the PCs presence. Sometimes even just trying to ignore their presence to make the situation evolve on their way. Now I recognize that my other NPCs were just there to show information (which I naively expected to be shocking and a motivation for the players to act), and asking the players to do their stuff. Lame.
Now I know what I should do with those NPCs.
Oh! As soon as I have started to think on them as more proactive, I have realized how are they going to be useful to throw cool stuff on the players faces.
Thanks for this thread.
-- Arturo
Ron Edwards:
Paul,
My previous post reads a lot harsher than I'd thought.
I notice also that I didn't stay too consistent with "I" and "you" were, so figure whoever the GM is in the particular paragraph, is you-Paul, whether it's expressed as "I" or "you." I think it'll be clearer that I wrote the post with a sense of being on your side, with the harshness directed toward the other players in question (speaking abstractly, not the real persons you played with).
I'm interested in your thoughts on the content. Arturo and Jesse are being all insighted and thankful-like, but on the other hand, they are accustomed to me storming around and snarling obscenities as I make points.
Best, Ron
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