The Forge Archives

OK, I'm starting a new thread on this, because I think it doesn't really have to do with observations of new gamers.  I'm discussing a style which Walt  Freitag describes in the thread on http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=89364&highlight=#89364">Non-gamers say the darnest things.  

I recognize most of elements of the style that Walt describes, but I had overwhelmingly positive experience from it.  I, too, encountered such gamers first on my college campus (U of Chicago in '87 in my case).  The gamers I met match with much of Walt's experience -- various post-college gamers, thick wad of game-world notes, etc.  

In particular, I'd like to look at the question of player authorship in such games.  

Quote from: Walt FreitagPlayer authorship was a totally alien concept for all concerned, but any form of GM authorship during play was also frowned upon, being either railroading if a plotline for the upcoming adventure were in any way pre-planned, or "making it up as you go along," the epitome of GM inadequacy and buffoonery, if the GM were forced to do any creating on the fly.  

This seems like a funny definition of authorship to me.  The players define the focus characters, their interactions, the goal that they are trying to accomplish, and how they attempt to do so.  In static narratives, that is unquestionably authorship and in fact a much bigger part of the story than what the background is or what the antagonists are like.  IMO, character and character development is the heart of any story.  

To me, it was pretty revolutionary to have responsibility for the plot turned over to the players in this way.  It was also kind of tough, though.  If I didn't make an interesting character and set goals, then there was no story.  That is a natural consequence of giving the players that much responsibility for story, I think.  It was a learning experience, though, as well.  My first few characters were a bit weak, but later ones were very strongly motivated and interesting.  

I guess what I'm saying is that open-ended mission selection is a tool for  protagonization.  It's not to everyone'e taste, but it definitely puts choice and responsibility in the hands of the player.

As a GM, I've had huge success with allowing players to select missions, only I did make up most of the scenarios as I went along.

In one campaign in particular, the main PC was a vigilante, and I simply let him name goals.  "Is there a notorious drug dealer around?" he's ask.  I'd think.  "Sure, Marco Esperanza over on the east side," I'd reply, pulling it all out of the air.  Then, the next three sessions, he'd go after the guy.

Now, mission selection was never much of an issue here because I always tailored the adventure to the characters levels (or whatever measure of effectiveness the system used).  For example, one group wanted to rob a bank.  "Sure," I said, "but you won't have a chance at one of the big fancy ones with your skills and equipment.  However, you know of a little branch bank in the suburbs that got robbed last year because they have an old-fashioned safe."  I might also add something like "Robbing banks is pretty high profile, you know.  If you accidentally leave clues behind, the cops will be spending a lot of time following them."

I did run into some of the same problems as you John, especially regarding uninteresting characters.  More than once, I got a group of turtles (players who have their characters avoid anything dangerous so as to "win" by surviving) who would literally rather sit around saying "No, sounds like that might be dangerous" to every idea I threw at them.  But most people latched onto the concept very quickly and enjoyed themselves to such a degree that I had complete strangers in high school asking me if I'd run games for their group.

I think Walt's experience must have been in a fairly hard core gamist setting...

Quote from: John KimI recognize most of elements of the style that Walt describes, but I had overwhelmingly positive experience from it.

As did I. I didn't mean to imply that this was bad play in any general way. It's just that I noticed that non-players were often totally put off by it when they attempted to play, apparently because they came in with different expectations. (This eventually led me to explore styles of play that fit those expectations by breaking conventions that at the time were all but universally accepted as fundamental to "good" role playing.)

QuoteIn particular, I'd like to look at the question of player authorship in such games... The players define the focus characters, their interactions, the goal that they are trying to accomplish, and how they attempt to do so.  In static narratives, that is unquestionably authorship and in fact a much bigger part of the story than what the background is or what the antagonists are like.  IMO, character and character development is the heart of any story.

I agree that the player is doing all those things (defining the character's focus and goals, etc.). So, the question is, why don't I consider that "authorship?" It's a good question and one that I've wrestled with myself -- in fact. I've been on the other side of this argument at times. There are also important related questions. If this is player authorship, is it not also GM authorship (not because the GM designed the world, but because the the GM engages the world, via NPC characters, in the same terms the players do)? And if so, is it not the Impossible Thing achieved? We can also ask, in real life don't we "author" our own lives?

I answer "no" to all of these questions, for the simple reason that answering "yes" to any of them (which logically implies answering "yes" to all of them) broadens the idea of authorship enough to make it far less useful. It's a slippery-slope argument. If making all decisions about character goals and behavior is player authorship in a vast rich setting, is it not also player authorship in a dungeon, which is exactly the same play dynamic but with more constraints? One might argue that in a dungeon crawl you don't have real freedom of choice about your character's goals because if your goal isn't to kill monsters and take their stuff the game won't work. But in the wider-world game if your goal isn't to go travelling and have adventures the game won't work either. There's only a difference of degree.

What determines whether you have authorship isn't just the range of choices you get to make, it's what you get to make choices about. Authorship is your ability to make choices about the outcome with authority to make those choices stick.

Here's another thought experiment to underscore that point. Suppose in a game of the type under discussion, the GM decides that henceforth he will do all the dice rolling for all the players. Would that make a difference in whether or not the players have authorship? I would say no. The dice are random, it doesn't really matter who rolls them. (It's probably less fun for players this way, but that's beside the point.) Then the GM decides that the dice rolling will be done in secret; he'll tell you (fairly and honestly) what numbers come up. Again, no real difference as far as authorship is concerned. Then the GM stops being honest; he ignores the actual results of the die rolls and just declares that the roll is whatever numbers he feels like making up. So in effect, he's deciding your character's fate by fiat at every turn. Do you feel that you now have authorship? It certainly doesn't seem that way. But at what point did you lose it? You didn't have any control over the results of a dice roll when they were random, and you still don't after the GM takes over. What's the difference from an authorship point of view? I'd say, none. Well, not quite. The GM might, depending on how he chooses the numbers, now be able to exercise authorship he didn't before. But if so, it's not because he took it from you. You didn't lose it. You never had it to begin with.

The thought experiment aside, in the kind of play we're talking about I'm not saying that player authorship is absent because the greedy GM has usurped it from them. I'm saying that neither side is authoring. The play style doesn't require it. In play, the GM cedes his authority over the outcome to the pre-prepared facts of the setting and to the system.

But in the end, so what? Player authorship by my definition is by no means a requirement for fun, functional, successful role playing. Nor is GM authorship, as dungeon module play and old school vast-setting play demonstrates. Preferences can go either way.

QuoteTo me, it was pretty revolutionary to have responsibility for the plot turned over to the players in this way.  It was also kind of tough, though.  If I didn't make an interesting character and set goals, then there was no story.  That is a natural consequence of giving the players that much responsibility for story, I think.  It was a learning experience, though, as well.  My first few characters were a bit weak, but later ones were very strongly motivated and interesting.  

I guess what I'm saying is that open-ended mission selection is a tool for  protagonization.  It's not to everyone'e taste, but it definitely puts choice and responsibility in the hands of the player.

In general, I agree with most of that. Only two points of disagreement: one, I never saw this style of play as revolutionary because to me it appeared as a straightforward expansion in scope from ordinary map-based (free of planned plot) dungeon crawl adventures. The second is calling it protagonization, which I prefer a more limited definition of along the lines of my more limited definition of authorship. But that the play techniques we're discussing put choice and responsibility in the hands of the player, definitely.

- Walt

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what this "mission selection" thing actually is. Anyone care to throw out a definition?

Quote from: Walt FreitagWhat determines whether you have authorship isn't just the range of choices you get to make, it's what you get to make choices about. Authorship is your ability to make choices about the outcome with authority to make those choices stick.
(...)
In the kind of play we're talking about I'm not saying that player authorship is absent because the greedy GM has usurped it from them. I'm saying that neither side is authoring. The play style doesn't require it. In play, the GM cedes his authority over the outcome to the pre-prepared facts of the setting and to the system.  

It seems that by the "outcome" here, you are talking about the outcome of an external task or conflict -- i.e. who wins a fight.  There should be a term for control over such outcomes, but I think "authorship" is totally inappropriate.  The problem is that this implies that the story is about who wins the fight -- not about who the characters are or what they believe.  I completely disagree with that.  

In my view of stories, the story is primarily about the focus characters and more specifically how their beliefs change (their "dramatic arc").  You are saying that authorship has nothing to do with these, though.  

Quote from: Walt Freitag

Quote from: John KimThe players define the focus characters, their interactions, the goal that they are trying to accomplish, and how they attempt to do so.  In static narratives, that is unquestionably authorship and in fact a much bigger part of the story than what the background is or what the antagonists are like.  IMO, character and character development is the heart of any story.

If making all decisions about character goals and behavior is player authorship in a vast rich setting, is it not also player authorship in a dungeon, which is exactly the same play dynamic but with more constraints?

I disagree that it is neccessarily the same play dynamic.  In fact, I don't see that whether the setting is above-ground or below-ground has anything to do with this.  A dungeon module can be designed very linearly -- essentially a single sequence of challenges, where there are at best a few times when the players can vary the order.  I recall these particularly from tournament dungeon designs.  On the other hand, there are dungeons which are varied environments where the players have open-ended choice of goals.  They can, say, decide to ally with one group of inhabitants and work to bring about a stable, lawful community, or try to sow chaos, or attempt to convert it into a defensible base of operations, etc.

A varied environment can allow open-ended possibilities for missions.  Let me give an example from an old campaign.  It was a superhero campaign set in the near future where most of the world was under the rule of an oppressive world government, but there were a bunch of superheroes who held a free community in Hawaii.  

Now, I think that the GM had originally imagined that we would take part in missions for the free superhero community.  However, I decided to make a character who fanatically hated the government (with good reason, I would add).  He saw the Hawaiin community was being free without helping the rest of the world, and he decided to try to instigate open war.  He secretly attacked both sides in various guises to provoke war.  Regardless of whether he succeeded or failed, his mission determined what the story of the game was about.  In story terms, the difference between "fanatic tries to instigate war and dies trying" and "fanatic tries to instigate war and succeeds" is fairly minor -- compared to, say, a story about a peaceful telepath who is slowly provoked into action.  

Quote from: Walt FreitagThen the GM stops being honest; he ignores the actual results of the die rolls and just declares that the roll is whatever numbers he feels like making up. So in effect, he's deciding your character's fate by fiat at every turn. Do you feel that you now have authorship? It certainly doesn't seem that way.  

Why not?  Let's try the reverse -- suppose that the player found a way to cheat and can determine the results of all the die rolls.  Does this give him control over the story?  I'd say that it's not a primary determinant.  If she wants to, the GM can still beat the players and/or control their options regardless of the rolls.  On the other hand, the GM can let the players determine what the story will be.

It's funny how this thread comes from a post about people just gaming. Yet when we try and agree on what a term like 'authoring' is, it seems to get really complicated. No one can agree except what those guys, sitting there gaming, are doing. Except that they are doing what their doing.

Perhaps we shouldn't be so exact about definitions.

Edit: BTW, doesn't an onion skin design in terms of difficulty solve the 'what the hell can my character do without becoming a dumbass' problem?

Eg, the newbie wants to go slay the dragon. While traveling there he first runs into goblins (easy), latter on some orcs (medium?) then latter on some owlbears (ouch).

Instead of running into instant death, they run into an increasingly difficult set of challenges. All of which can have hooks to other, perhaps more appropriate stories elsewhere.

Quote from: JephI'm having a bit of trouble understanding what this "mission selection" thing actually is. Anyone care to throw out a definition?

Basically, it's allowing players to choose the goals of scenarios or campaigns.

For example, I had a group of characters arrives on a new planet, so I wrote newspaper excerpts that caught their eye.  They saw:
- someone offering a bounty to anyone who could kill pesky giant spiders eating people's livestock
- an expose on a casino owner and his alleged links to the underworld, including drugs, money laundering and a certain politician's career.
- a report on another rape at a school for savants (sort of magic types in my game, who are generally feared and distrusted).  This makes three, and the cops still don't seem to care
- a report on a terrorist organization blowing up a military headquarters.  Also, an interview with the insane (and therefore committed to an asylum) religious leader who (thanks to modern psychiatry) no longer thinks he's the messiah, but the zealot terrorists won't believe he was just delusional before and threaten more killings if he isn't released to them.

Obviously, any of these would make for an interesting adventure.  Each focuses on different issues and would require different skills.  And the characters can really only do one of them at a time.  Presumably, they pick the adventure that's appropriate to their skills and general capabilities as well as being the most interesting.

You can also take mission selection further by letting players come up with their own options instead of selecting them from a list.  It's just usually harder on the GM that way.