Making the transition from mission based play?
JB:
Just a short note to say I haven't dropped this thread entirely, but I've had too much other stuff going on to make any kind of considered replies. Some good advice here, some of which I plan to implement in our games if possible, and some of which we're already doing, which makes me feel like we're on the right track.
Thanks to everyone who's contributed so far,
JB
JB:
So the main thing I’m getting here is “To get more character driven play, the GM has to stop ‘bringing the plot to the players’ and let the players bring the plot to the GM.” This approach is, of course, dependent of the players to bring enough to the table for a game.
It is possible, however, that players may be ‘willing but unable’ in this regard, ie, lacking the skills and/or structures to construct characters that facilitate this approach.
I think this may be part of our problem in getting away from mission based play. I’ve attempted to run games using a similar approach to what Paul T describes, but have had problems making those games ‘pop’ because the players didn’t provide their bits to make that work, and so we fell back on the ‘mission’ thing.
Let me stress that I don’t feel like the players aren’t providing these bits because they don’t want to, but because they can’t identify these bits consistently enough to provide them. Also let me say that this doesn’t apply only to the games I’ve GMed; I see this happening in games I’m playing in as well.
So how does one approach learning to craft characters for this type of game, or teaching others how to do so?
(I personally think studying narrative construction in general is helpful, but some people may question the validity of applying this sort of thing to RPGs specifically, and in any case, reading Egri or what have you is going to be too much like homework for some people, so I’m looking for something that's a little more concise and can be implemented more quickly.)
JB:
Related to the above, I think it’s important to draw a distinction between creating characters and statting characters, or between ‘elements of the character’ and ‘mechanical representation of those elements’. The division isn’t so clear cut in most games chargen procedures, often involving working back and forth between the two, and either can serve as the antecedent to the other as well. (For a very simple example, take ‘built like a brick shithouse’ and ‘high Strength and Body stats’. Which of these comes first in the chargen process depends on the game, and to an extent, the player. Also note that ‘built like a brick shithouse’ likely requires ‘high Strength and Body stats’, but ‘high Strength and Body stats’ could be described in a variety of ways.)
From some of the statements made earlier in this thread, I’m coming to see that there are two different approaches to statting characters; One school of thought attempts to comprehensively model every element of the character with some kind of mechanical representation, the other emphasizes certain elements by giving them mechanical weight. I'm also seeing these approaches as the ends of a scale rather than wholly separate and discrete practices, with individual players gravitating towards a given point in the spectrum 'by default'.
(There’s likely some kind of correlation to creative agendas here as well, but I’d leave exploration of that idea for another time and thread.)
Also realize that some games make no provision for mechanically representing certain elements, but don’t necessarily prohibit or deny the elements themselves. (eg, There are no ‘Contacts’ in D&D; that doesn’t mean the players can never establish PC/NPC relationships that they can tap for favors, etc...)
Recognizing that there are two approaches to statting character elements goes a long way towards understanding why taking a ‘use everything on the sheet’ sometimes causes more problems than it solves. For the player who’s taken a completist approach, ‘I’m gonna use everything on the sheet’ is usually (and often justifiably) taken as a GM screw-over; For the GM attempting to do so, these are the characters with ‘lots of detail, but no focus’.
On the other side of the fence, there’s the attitude of ‘if it’s not on your character sheet, it doesn’t exist.’ So in the case of our hypothetical ‘guy with the kids (but this story isn’t about the kids)’, if the player doesn’t take ‘NPC Dependents/5’, does the character even have kids?
Finally, most of the methods I’m familiar with for ‘fleshing out a character’ generate a lot more of these kind of background character details than will ever be shared with ‘the audience’. RPGs confuse the issue though, both with the ‘collaborative authorship’ thing and the players (GM included) acting as both author and audience simultaneously.
Whether this is helpful to anyone else I can’t say, but for me it goes a long way towards explaining some of the problems I’ve seen in games in this regard.
Judd:
Quote from: JB on April 18, 2010, 09:59:03 AM
So the main thing I’m getting here is “To get more character driven play, the GM has to stop ‘bringing the plot to the players’ and let the players bring the plot to the GM.” This approach is, of course, dependent of the players to bring enough to the table for a game.
I think this is a really dangerous misconception about player-driven play, or perhaps I mean more character-driven play. The idea that because the action is centered, not so much on the mission, but on the character's NPC's, goals and such, means that the GM can be lazy with prep and/or scene-framing is entirely untrue.
What it means is that the scenes are primarily about what the player has said is important about the character and the mission is secondary. For an indicator of what is important we look at:
The descriptors and back of the sheet for Sorcerer
Beliefs, Instincts, Traits, Relationships, Affiliations and Reputations for Burning Wheel
Aspects for Spirit of the Century
Using these items to drive the campaign does not mean the GM can stop bringing-the-mission to the player but it does mean that if there is a mission, it should be crafted in such a way to intersect and weave in the above player-authored elements, to challenge them and address them.
I think Dogs is a really interesting example because it is entirely mission-based but how the mission is resolved is up to the players through their judgment. The mission becomes personal, certainly and after a half a dozen to a dozen towns, the characters will be changed through engaging the system and gaining fall-out.
JB:
Judd, no offense, but I think you've missed what I was getting at.
All that stuff you mention - the back of the Sorcerer character sheet, BW's BITs, SotCs Aspects? That's what we're depending on the players to bring to the table for the game. When I say the players have to bring enough of it, what's 'enough' is sufficient quality and/or quantity of the indicators of what's important to the player that the GM can "[use] these items to drive the campaign."
If you don't have sufficient quality and/or quantity of the indicators, it's damned hard to use those items to drive the campaign.
In that scenario, you can either:
A) Opt for a play style that's not so dependent on player indicators.
B) Figure out ways to improve the quality and/or quantity of player indicators.
What I've been calling 'mission based play' is one way of doing A). We're trying to accomplish B).
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