[Exalted] Spectating replacing interaction?
intorporeal:
Kinch,
when you ran your game in the West, did all the characters begin the game knowing each other, and having a reason to be together? Or did they start out separate and came together for the first time in the game?
In my experience, games which begin with the players separate and joins them in the intro session are more likely to have party tension (not necessarily a bad thing) and party splitting (in my experience, usually a bad thing). The players have more freedom to create their characters when they aren't forced to begin the game as a preformed cohesive group (or, at least, they appear to have more freedom), but it seems like that freedom is often the cause of party conflict.
masqueradeball:
The idea that White Wolf games have a lot of party disunity is strange. I would say RAW there's a heavy expectation that players will ignore that there's a possibility of not working together and that every single game has a in-fiction "pack" that the player characters are suppose to belong to. From Coteries in Vampire to Troupes in Changeling. If there's anything in Exalted that lends itself to the type of dysfunctional play Intorporeal is describing, I would say it's what might be called textual weight. There's a chapter on storytelling in nearly every book and each one of them offers advice and techniques to specifically not do what your ST is doing, but, if I'm seeing it right, there's a shit ton more text about the fictional setting and its inhabitants than there is STing advice. Why would this have the effect that it had in your game (if it really is the culprit)? Because the ST has invested a lot of real world time into learning about the setting and wants to do something with that knowledge, so he does so with these elaborate preplanned scenes and significant focus on non-player character action. The same holds true if the town and the spirits were original creations. The ST spent a lot of time creating them and really wants to use them and probably doesn't know how to do so in a way that doesn't force the players to take the back seat.
Suggestions for dealing with it: Call the ST out and hold him accountable for letting you play, be more proactive as a player and less careful with what you think the ST wants/would expect you to do, try highlighting the rules for Virtues and Limit Breaks as well as Stunts and other things that focus on character specific rewards. The Exalted text makes a big deal about protagonism, and if your playing Exalted, I would guess thats something you value in a game, so tell the ST so and help him find techniques to deal with it while at the time attempting to frame your characters actions and decisions to support group cohesion and to highlight the players... even when you might not otherwise make those decisions.
oculusverit:
Brad,
Actually the characters met in game in the first session, I set up a situation that involved all of them in different ways from different paths and had them meet mid-situation with all of them pursuing a common goal (they were on a ship for different reasons, two of them had a reason to hate the captain and one of them was neutral) and then I had the ship come under attack and start sinking. Nothing like survival instincts and the fact that the neutral person wanted to save the slaves that were on the ship per their Motivation to get people working together. After that, the whole working together thing became a habit, I guess. There were still party tensions, but they were resolved through RP on all occasions. Maybe I was just blessed with good players.
Nolan,
I think you're right on about Exalted when it comes to setting vs. storytelling text, but I have to say that games like Vampire or Mage don't really have impetus to work together so clearly defined... I ran a Vampire game for two years, too, with the same players, and in that storyline they spent the entire time betraying each other and working against each other for the most part.
masqueradeball:
Sorry if this is belaboring the point, and countless LARPs have shown me how much Vampire can be a game of Backstaber: The Jerkening, but one of the things your suppose to figure out before you play is why the Coterie is working together. For neonate Vampires the assumption is because they are the only neonates in the city and that the various "ages" (neonate, ancillae, elder) naturally group together to protect themselves against the other groups. This takes a lot of framing and cooperation from the ST in particular and the group as a whole, because the factionalism in each of the games is such a heavily emphasised setting element, though I would say competition, in general, is less of an issue in Mage than an Vampire, because unless your running a very strange Mage game, all the PCs should be on the same side in an on going war (if were talking 1st or 2nd ed. Ascension).
masqueradeball:
Sorry if that was too tangential to the main point. I will refrain from talking about games other than Exalted from now on, unless I'm making a basic point on spectator v/active player discussion.
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