[Ronin Storm]

Player Empowerment in Roleplaying

Preamble

This was originally written in order to describe to the Darkness List, a one-time centre for interesting roleplaying theory discussion, a relatively fringe theory on how players can and should take more responsibility for the flow and content of a roleplaying game. It was received badly by the Darkness List, partly because I'd gone after a part of the game that most of them felt was a sacred cow or some such and partly because I was deliberately trying to antagonism them into realising that they'd closed themselves off by making a set of structured assumptions in their games.

The theory, loosely, is about decentralising the authority of the games master and allowing players to control their own scene time and interactions. It was never meant to be a theory for all players or all game types. However, I hoped to address some of the roleplaying game fragmentation partly caused by an overloaded/inaccessible gamesmaster. It was also intended to address the tabletop roleplaying medium but you may find some crossover here and there.

Since writing this my ideas have mellowed some, yet this theory still contains a number of key concepts for my current working method. As always, I appreciate feedback and, if you're interested, I'll try to highlight what I'd change in this now. Some may appreciate the original raw copy though...

Premise

Roleplaying is meant as entertainment and thereby must be fun and interesting or shouldn’t be done. I think anyone would accept that your entertainment should always be fun and interesting. If we got together and played any form of team game, barring injury and “too many players”, all the players can play all the time they want within the agreed rules of the game. Roleplaying need be no different. Players of roleplaying games should be able to play all the time they want within the agreed rules of that game.

However, players have barriers between them and their play time in roleplaying games. This is where the analogy with many team games breaks down. Many team games are played within a set of rules to an agreed set of conditions. These conditions are, most often, win or lose. Roleplaying games are not about winning or losing. They are just about the playing and having fun in the playing.

Almost every published roleplaying game states this somewhere near the beginning of their book then proceeds to define sequences of events that have win/lose conditions. In roleplaying, the only “lose” condition is the unsatisfactory termination of the game for a player. In roleplaying, the “win” condition is the continuing fun of the player.

To continue, we need some more definition.

What is roleplaying?

At the very basic level, we can break this into its two constituent words and work with those. A “role” is taken by the player who then “plays” in a fictional world (accepting that this is not real life). In this instance, a “role” may also be referred to as the character. “Plays” must take a little more explanation.

In order to adequately play, we need other people. While we can happily play by ourselves, inventing ideas and interactions in our own head, this can hardly be called roleplaying. This is simple imagination, and, while part of roleplaying, it is not sufficient to be roleplaying in its own right. By having other people we create interaction. The interaction we are interested in, for the purposes of roleplaying, is the “play” between the “roles”. So, “play” in this instance actually refers to interaction.

Ultimately, to roleplay, we need a group of people (however large that might be) who wish to interact as their chosen roles in a fictional world.

Now I’m going to keep going with this question - response method of answering how this makes a difference and how it addresses and affects current situations.

How does this definition of roleplaying help me have fun?

It shows the constituent parts of roleplaying and highlights the truly important parts. Interaction between roles is the central concept and the fun and interest is derived primarily from those. If we can concentrate on increasing and improving those interactions to be more frequent and more fun and interesting we can improve the fun and interest overall.

So where does the “games master” / “dungeon master” / “referee” come into this?

Perhaps he doesn’t. A fictional world requires a writer. The concept of “games master” or “referee” are only required where there is mediation. Mediation is only required when there is a necessity to win or when secrets are kept from the players so that the players’ information is insufficient to interact with the world as they see it. In all other circumstances, consent between players is all that required for their roles to interact.

It’s the games master’s job to know what the players’ want from the game.

No it isn’t. Just because I played a noble Paladin type in the last interaction it doesn’t mean that this time I want the same. The games master does not have responsibility for the characters that are played by the players (to distinguish them from the characters played by the writer). A player’s ideas may change by the session, as a player, as to what I want, and the games master should not be expected to keep up with those changes. That’s the players’ responsibility.

And besides, who is the games master to decide how a player can or can’t play, or indeed how he will have most fun in this particular game?

But players don’t take responsibility for their characters.

This one’s simple. That play group does not have the maturity (in roleplaying terms) to take responsibility for their own creations. In any team game it is expected that you will handle your part (your role, indeed). Roleplaying is no different. New players may need a helping hand through this, but ultimately we want them to fly on their own.

Without a top down view of how the game world works there can be no consistency. We need a games master to mediate on his world.

So if the players have a question on the world then they ask the writer. Simple. And besides, we only need to deal with the parts of the world that are in the agreed scope of our game. There are games that do not even have a writer and just play on consent in, say, an author’s world (we could all agree to play on Babylon 5, for example).

But this doesn’t avoid the problem. If we take your example and play on Babylon 5 then, even if we assume that none of the events of the series have happened and none of the lead characters of the series are present we still don’t have a central agreement on how Babylon 5 actually is.

How much does this matter to you? If consistency is the be all and end all then I’d want to see maps, written documents, character profiles and more. I’d want to see a session where, with four players, each player gets forty five minutes with the referee in private conference and then the referee has two hours to describe how all this fits together consistently. That’s consistency.

You’ve just taken it out of context.

Fair. It’s both sides of the coin. We’re dealing with the player’s seemless immersion in the game world as their role. I think this has flaws to start with, but I’ll come back to those later. If the key is interaction and in most circumstances we are consistent (which, by prior-to-game agreement, we can be) then we get on perfectly well by removing this top down view. The writer can help out and if occasionally we hit a consistency flaw (“but we were there at that time too!”) then we can often work around or (“but we blew that building up just yesterday”) improve our communication between the players.

Misunderstandings happen and having this single point of “all knowledge” just hides those misunderstandings in the game rather than removing them.

I still don’t agree.

Read on. We’ve yet to get to my comments on player immersion in the game.

But I want to be surprised by a roleplaying game. If there’s no mediation to maintain secrecy I can’t be surprised.

That’s not true. A role has plenty of opportunity to surprise you. On the subject of the fictional world, however, there should be the opportunity for anyone to know anything about it. This is not to say that they must be told, but if they wish to know they must be allowed to know. How else can interaction between the roles best be served? Where there is secrecy, there are the opportunity for “win conditions”: this is to say that one player, or the writer, hold the cards and can laud their omnipotence. This is unnecessary. It hails back to the wargaming / strategic links that roleplaying has come from. We do not need to win. We just want to play.

Surprise is a core aspect of roleplaying for me. You mean to say that I’m doing it wrong?

No. This is not about “right way” or “wrong way”. This is simply about increasing and improving the parts of the game that I believe truly matter. I argue only that it is obstructive to interaction. I guess the counter-argument is that it improves the “quality” of that interaction, either on an emotional level for the player or on a “right things in the right way” level. That is to say that the player either connects better with their character (thereby getting that emotional feedback) or that they are better able to play their character (in that they only have to hand the information their character has).

The first is dependent highly on the player, and some players don’t even state that as a reason for roleplaying. The second we’ll look at next.

That’s it. If I only know what my character knows then I can make the decisions my character would make untainted by knowledge that my character doesn’t have.

Fair, but fundamentally flawed. You are not your character. You play your character. If you don’t agree with that then there is nothing here for you. There has been a movement, recently, for players to physically play their character over the table top. This fails, because it relies on a player’s perceptions to interpret another player’s representation of their character. In the game, however, it is the character trying to understand their interaction with another character. In order for this to work, players’ need to describe their characters’ actions not play them to the other players.

But this breaks my immersion in the world! If there are no secrets and there is no representing my character to the players then the fun of roleplaying has been removed for me.

Why does it? Is this because you want more secrets than the others? For roles to interact most frequently and most efficiently then the players must know the “rules” of their environment. They must be able to explore their interactions without a fatherly (read: games masterly) hand telling them that this interaction is inappropriate. If you can’t know for certain that your roles’s interaction can take place then you can’t interact without mediation. Remove the writer’s secrets and this barrier disappears.

Additionally, why should your character be bound by the limitations of the player? A blind person should be able to play because they can still hear the descriptions and (hopefully) build a picture in their head of what is being described.

But my role can’t know where the other roles are. How can I interact with them?

Basically the same point. Because you are not your character. The player negotiates with the other player to arrange a roleplayed interaction. If both players think that the interaction wouldn’t take place, then it doesn’t. If they feel it might or they want to allow it (read: consent to allow it) then they can.

But what if this damages the plot of the game?

Great. We had to get here eventually. Throw the plot away. In fact, don’t write a plot in the first place. Plot was designed for books and films where the audience wants to be surprised. They are a lone person interacting with a predefined media (books and films are written end to end before the audience can interact with them). Roleplaying is an interactive media and deserves to make best use of that fluidity.

But without a plot, how will the roles / players acquire any focus? Won’t they just bimble about?

Players are responsible for playing their roles. And as with any team game, if a player is sat quiet without any involvement other players can seek to help them become involved (again, providing this quiet player consents to it). Still, if we’re concerned about focus as a player group then we can define this in advance of the game. And we can continue to discuss this as suits us through the game.

Summary and Conclusion

I believe I’ve covered the angles here and allowed players to take control of the game to maximise and strengthen their interactions as their roles with other roles in the game world, and allowed them to do this with confidence.Still, if your aim is player immersion in an unreal world then this may not work for you. If you demand that you never realise that there are gaps in the pseudo-reality that is the game world you will require a games master who is prepared to lie to you as a player to keep those holes hidden. There are those who represent that camp, but I can’t agree that this is the way that games should proceed.

You can even run investigation games in this fashion. The writer comes up with a situation that he agrees with the players he’ll reveal piecemeal and in confusing fashions. But the ultimate overriding power to ask and know the real answer still lies with the players, with regards to the world. It may be agreed that a first question on the subject will always receive an answer that could be disguised in some way. However, if questioning continues the writer agrees that he’ll provide the truth to the situation.

Fine, it is open to abuse. But the abuses of the concept are pretty obvious. To make this work it expects and requires that players and writers communicate freely and in adult fashion and that players are trusted to play their characters true to the agreed scope of the game (we agree we’ll play kids in a modern day, real world playground, then someone turns up claiming to be a killer robot - the problems are obvious).

The aim here is also not to discredit or undermine the current convention for roleplaying. By this, I mean an environment where the games master mediates the world and its contents and often provides a filter for the players to help them see only what their characters see. The aim here is provide an alternative that maximises players ability to play (see: interaction) as their roles for the most time in the ways they want to without obstruction (games master tell you that isn’t possible or you couldn’t be there), mediation (games master decides whether what you’d like to happen does happen) or control (games master tells you that your character is doing or thinking something).

I’ve not even tried to cover concepts of players playing multiple roles through the same game, though with a little more work that wouldn’t be hard to include.

[Taka Taka Mu Taka]

This is a great article Ronin.

It's got me thinking about what I want out of Role Playing. And now I'm confused about my own preconceptions. I think originally I was part of the group who wanted complete immersion into the world, with very little OOC planning to occur. Of course, I see the value of consent, but I was hoping that wouldn't be required too often. That situations, meetings, or dialouges could just happen organically, without really planning ahead of time. But maybe I was simply ignorant to how some of the best role playing works.

You might slap me for saying "best role playing." I meant, though, how I could get the most out of my role playing experience.

I'm so new to MMORPG's and I haven't really attempted too much in the line of Role Playing in-game yet. So, reading all these theories and essays gives me something to base my desires and structure my concepts. I'm really appreciative.

But I have to admit, I'm still confused when trying to implement this into action. It's like acting to me. I love thinking about it, but actually putting all that thought into a role becomes difficult. I'm guessing it will get better with time and experience.

[someguy]

The fundamental flaw I see in this dissertation in regards to my own gaming experience is that the term isn't simple "Roleplay", which anyone can do with no need for assistance, but "Roleplay Game".

The above doesn't take the word "Game" into account.

While I believe firmly in player empowerment, I also greatly enjoy the game behind the roleplay. I enjoy the elements of strategy games, of guessing and puzzle games, of whatever games I can find that provoke my interest and can be expressed while roleplaying.

I feel an enjoyable game, particularly one that appeals to a wider audience, requires these aspects and, therefore, requires someone responsible for them - a GM, for example - who, by design, would hold the cards the players wouldn't be immediately empowered to see. While the players should give the other players consent, they should also trust the GM to hold mysteries.

Additionally, while a roleplaying utopia might contain a number of players who are consistently able to interact with grace, consent, and trust, experience has shown most (if not all) of us that without some form of control, these things are eventually lost or mangled beyond recognition. The easiest way to ruin a game - or a story - is to invite people to participate in it. I hold that rules and moderation - control - are necessary because of human nature if for no other reason.

That said, I have had some very valuable and enjoyable experiences in roleplaying utilizing a round-robin storytelling format - no GM, no rules, nothing but empowered players adding to a story. But none of them have compared to the enjoyment and challenge I've had, both as a player and a character, while I'm in the dark and vulnerable to a good GM.

[Ronin Storm]

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

Specifically addressing some comments:

[someguy]

[Tychus]

[Demiglot]

[Ronin Storm]

[Demiglot]

[Ronin Storm]