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Ronin Storm
Joined: 13 Jan 2004
Articles: 5
Comments: 0
Location: York, UK |
| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2004 12:44 pm |
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Introduction
A friend of mine sent me some links to a site for writers, in particular to some articles there on writing scripts for blockbuster movies. He stated that he felt that there were lessons to be learnt for roleplaying games in the design of blockbuster films. I disagreed.
This article is not a treatise on the problems of using methods for one media in another. Instead it is my analysis of problems arising from the common (near-ubiquitous) design method used by my local play-groups, but one I also guess arises in plenty of other places too.
The focus here is on tabletop games (aka pen and paper games) but many of the concepts could be used online as well even if the methods would need altering.
~*~
Abstract
How do you decide whether you want to play a particular roleplaying game or not? There are many factors involved, ranging from the players in the play-group to the particular choice of setting or game premise. All other factors being even and desirable, however, a key factor is what writers might call the "high concept" - the quick description of the game that captures your imagination and sweeps you up into the world.
There has been a tradition, in my local play-groups, of accompanying that high concept with a quick outline of the acceptable types of characters and the starting conditions of the game. This assumes that the game accepts characters designed by the players and is not intending to use pre-generated characters.
So, imagine you've been invited to play a game by a friend. The game's high concept might read:
| Quote: | | "A space opera set in a far distant galaxy, with elements of horror and intense action." |
That might even be enough. Other concepts might come down to "it's a Vampire game" or "it's based in the Star Wars universe". Simple things. You can usually tell if that sort of thing interests you. The accompanying information might read:
| Quote: | | "A game for three to five players. Characters must all be human or near-human, preferably young and able. No military genius' or super-hackers. Real-world physics will give way for dramatic effect, when necessary." |
That'd be a reasonable starting position, I guess. Some games provide more than this (and some provide much more).
Traditionally, prospective players have then been asked to go away, write some background for their characters and submit that information to the Games Master. It then has become the GM's job to bind these characters together into some form of group (if necessary) and then write twists into their game in order that the players find the game interesting and engaging.
Over the past decade or so there has been a move from games with relatively straight forward linear concepts, such as the dungeon hack (Dungeons & Dragons style) to having games with overarching stories and interwoven plots (Vampire: the Masquerade style).
My local play-group has been trying to combine two facets together over that same period - they want to be deeper in character and they also want to feel integrally part of a great story. A variety of techniques have been used over the years to attempt to bring these about - detailed written character biographies, carefully selected game music, agreements to cut out of character chatter to a minimum and so on. The key element, however, has been the heavy introduction of a story arc through the game.
At first the story arc seems a great idea. The GM is provided characters that he then weaves into a story arc so that they are integrally involved with each event as it occurs. The theory is that if the characters are deeply involved in the story of the game then the players will have more fun.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. I've seen between 25 and 33 percent of locally run tabletop games fail in the past eight years amongst GMs with between one and two decades of experience. The failures are put down to the game "just failing to come together" but I think the problems run much deeper than that. I've been listening to the comments of local players over the past two years very carefully. There are whole sections of even the successful games that individual players find dissatisfying, perhaps even actively aggravating.
I think, for the most part, we'd all agree that we play roleplaying games to have fun. So something is wrong when probably two thirds of all games that have happened, locally, have had some fundamental issues at some point during their life, at least for a subset of their players. Personally, I've not played any tabletop games locally for two years because I have substantial differences of opinion on method with my local GMs.
Well, if something is not working to that extent then there must be something that can be done to fix it.
This article is both an investigation of the problems in the design and operation of these games and also a look at the basics of solutions that can be applied to resolve these problems. I'll go into more depth on solutions for this in another article.
~*~
The Story of the Game, a Problem in Four Parts
I believe that the key issue in these games is based in their very basic precept - a game with a good story is a good game, or even that a game requires a good story to be a good game. After all, a good fiction book requires a good story, as does a good movie. Surely that works for games too?
It doesn't. This is because the very nature of the media are different. Books and movies are a passive media - their audience simply consumes what someone else has already produced, with no chance to affect the outcome of the story. Roleplaying games are an active media where the "audience", aka the players, require that they are able to affect the flow of the story to whatever end they are interested in reaching.
However, in creating "the story of the game", or "the plot" as it may be better known, the progression of the game becomes fixed to a particular road - the characters will go from A to D, via either B or C, ending the game with a climatic finale at E. This method appears to create choices - characters can reach D from A by choosing one of B or C. However, what if characters choose Q or R or, in fact, anything that wasn't planned for?
It's an old problem. So old that there is a maxim that surrounds it - "Any plot will not survive first contact with the player characters". It is in the very nature of players to be inventive and that inventiveness leads them to make choices that the game designer felt were irrational or simply unavailable. The cold hard fact is that players will choose things for their characters that the GM and/or game designer cannot predict.
But the GM has spent all that time on making this wonderful story for their game, with finale and all... does he just throw it all away? Traditionally, an encounter that the character's ignored just went back in the pile of "things that I can use in future". More recently I have seen an incredible rise of other techniques to "prevent" this wastage.
Let's take a very simple scenario:
| Quote: | | The characters are stood at a crossroads in the middle of a wide open expanse of land. The sign post at this crossroads indicates the cities down each road. Where do the characters choose to go? The obvious routes are to pick one of the cities down each of the roads, but perhaps only one or two of the cities are actually part of the plot. |
So how do you help the characters reach the plot (as undetailed cities can feel like cardboard cutouts unless your GM is good at ad-libbing)?
1) Narrow the Options - So, on this crossroads there are four directions. However, three roads are suddenly swept away in a flash flood leaving only one choice. The players could have chosen any but by circumstance they are forced into choosing the "right" one to get them to the plot. Alternatively, the characters could have been told that the other cities are full of plague that is virulent and dangerous. Anything to get them going to where the plot is waiting as any other option would be "stupid".
2) Fiddle the Characters - While considering which way to go, the players are told that their characters feel an irresistable urge to head towards one of the cities. Or perhaps one of the characters suddenly starts walking in the direction of one of the cities, as if controlled by some unseen force.
3) Fiddle the World - Even though there appear to be four roads leading to four separate places all the roads actually lead through some sort of portal that takes the characters to the city where the plot is.
Limited use of the first and third options I find to be acceptable. Personally, I find the use of the second option distasteful, but I'll come back to that. When these techniques become used with any regularity they work towards the first of my key issues.
~*~
Issue 1 - The Railroad
No matter what the players choose their characters always seem to end up doing what the GM wants. Options are presented but either they all actually end up being the same thing or the "wrong" options end up being deadends.
However, players, in my experience, love having their characters fighting uphill. Given the flash floods they'll build rafts. Given the plagues they'll go there to help find a cure. Given the irresistable urge they'll resist as hard as they damn well can or knock out the character who is walking off like an automaton. Given the portal they'll work to figure out the "rules" of the portal to find the way to work around it, as clearly its some sort of trap. Players are endlessly inventive and this must be encouraged.
The railroad works against inventiveness as it tells the player that no matter the choice they make for their character it'll end up being what the GM wants in the end.
~*~
Let's move on by looking at another possible scenario:
| Quote: | | In the group of characters there is the last of the dragon slayers. The premise of the game is the the Age of Dragons is coming to an end. During the course of the game the characters learn that the last of the dragons are gathering for a final fight. The last dragon slayer steps forward to handle the dragons. Does he win? |
It's a classic story setup. The odds are grim and the only hero steps forward to do what he must and fight to save the day. But if there's nothing on the line then the heroism is flat and uninteresting. The character has to be at direct risk for heroism to mean anything. No character consequences leads to no player involvement, emotionally.
The two classic methods of handling this:
1) Die by the Dice - One of the primary uses of dice have been to put an element of chance into any encounter. You know that statistically the dragon slayer has a good chance against a dragon, but it is not an inevitable victory. That chance of loss is then scaled to make the risk higher or lower and thereby let the player know that something real is at risk here - their character.
2) GM Brutality - Just every so often the GM decides that a character dies. Just like that. They don't see it coming but the dragons descended and ate a player character without so much as a by-your-leave. Or perhaps there was a warning, but the player character is still down-dead. There's a risk - the risk that the GM is going to be brutal and have your character killed because "it's the right time" or some such. This method is often reserved for diceless and systemless games.
Use of either one of them can and often will lead to a player losing a treasured character that they may not yet have played in the ways they want. Basically, killing characters is rather like kicking someone's sandcastle down - if they're happy for it to be kicked in then that's fine, but if they're still building it then they're unhappy. But avoiding these options leads my second key issue.
~*~
Issue 2 - Plot Invulnerability
We see this all the time in books and films - the character that just can't die. How can a triology called "Thrud the Last Dragon Slayer" have Thrud die mid-way in book two when dragons are still flying the skies? It can't. He's invulnerable. Players know this too. The player of that dragon slayer knows that the final fight is brewing and the Age of Dragons is coming to an end. He also knows that the GM is a softie and doesn't kill characters. So, in fact, his character fighting those dragons is not at risk. At all. No risk, no consequence. No consequence, no heroism. So our hero is just some guy now... and that's just boring.
One immediate answer to this is to reduce the focus on single-character heroic acts, which I have some sympathy for, but ultimately that is just cutting down the types of games we can play to avoid the issue rather than actually addressing the issue. If the story calls for a character to survive, they survive. Otherwise they're at risk... so it's almost as if the lack of story puts characters at risk and lets their actions have consequences. That's not the whole of it, but it's a definite thread.
Another flavour of this issue is "Maxing for the GM". That is to say making a character that you just know the GM will love so that you either attain plot invulnerability or more than your fair share of "camera time".
~*~
For my final and most serious issue I'll return to the first scenario and the concept of character fiddling by the GM. Having characters have a geas to walk in a particular direction is a blatant misuse of GM power - it breaks a basic rule, for me.
The player owns their character, period. The GM does not. Therefore the GM is not allowed to make characters do anything. That can only be the player's responsibility and remit. So use of GM "power" to make a character do something for the sake of the story is just abuse on that character's player.
Knowing that players don't stand for that sort of thing, for the most part, GMs have started to use more subtle subversion to get their way. Roll on my next key issue...
~*~
Issue 3 - Surprise! You're Not Who You Thought!
The characters look at the options and don't want to go to the city on the only remaining road, after those flash floods. So they build a raft. However, the GM doesn't want them to even try to go across that river. So, he fiddles the characters - they've all got an obscure form of rabies that kicks in as they approach the water. The characters foam at the mouth and roll around on the floor until they can crawl away from the flood waters.
Seem too blatant? Try this one. Your characters are actually all from the future and there's a chemical in the water that you're allergic to. As the spray of the flood waters touches each characters' skin they blister badly. Or maybe the characters are all from the future, sent back through some time travel device, that suddenly kicks in to send them a message on their neural commlinks to tell them "Go to the unflooded city, fools!".
Oh how crap. And yet, to one extent or other, I've seen a rise in this over the past years. So much so that I no longer play locally.
"But why is it included?", I hear you ask. All in the name of surprise. Stories contain surprises and twists. Therefore a good game story must also contain surprises and twists. What better way to get the story to turn out the way a GM wants than by making the characters from the "wrong" characters into the "right" characters with a good bit of GM background and/or concept fiddle.
Try another one... your character starts receiving visions showing them images of monsters in the flood water, and in these visions all the characters die. Do you now cross the flood waters? Do you hell! But your character has never had visions before, nor do you, as a player, find visions interesting play material. So why does your character have visions, again? Character fiddle. Surprise, you're not who you thought you were.
What better way to irritate a player than to make their character something other than their character without their permission first.
~*~
Ever been in a game that started out in one direction and midway through took a tangent off into being a completely different game? Y'know, the game that's set in modern day New York City but in session two the characters are all sucked through a time portal into The Future after the apocalypse. Ever been left thinking, "Uh, but what happened to all the history my character had in NYC?"
It's a common movie subject - taking modern day characters and dropping them into a different environment and seeing what they do (or bringing future or past characters to the modern day). Any time a movie does it a game tries to replicate it, forgetting that characters are not only built for a particular environment but may actually only be interesting for a particular player to play in that environment. Let's have another scenario:
| Quote: | | A player chooses to play a dentist who enjoys golfing and researching the arcane in his spare time. The player is looking forward to a game spent discussing arcane magics and ancient rituals with his weirdo buddies. Maybe they'll find out there are vampires in the real world or something? |
So roll on the plot twist. The characters are all teleported back to medieval times and are forced to use their knowledge of arcane magic to fight the rising evil. That'll be the next issue then.
~*~
Issue 4 - Surprise! We've Just Moved Location!
All in the name of that cunning plot twist all your carefully crafted character background, or perhaps that research you did on the location or period of history, all go in the trash. Good story? Perhaps. Good to play? Only if you don't give a damn about what the player really wanted out of the game or the player was just intended to a mostly passive consumer of the game.
So our dentist come arcane enthusiast stops being this bookish guy and needs to become some sort of hero in order to be involved in this story of fighting the evil. Okay, it might be possible to keep what you'd been hoping to do in this game with this character but more often than not compromises must be made and it's mostly that your character is compromised "for the sake of the game".
These problems also occur in mystery games (games where you're not told anything but the bear minimum about the content of the game), though they're offset somewhat by the initial understanding that anything might change.
~*~
These issues arise because of the necessity for the GM to tell some sort of story that they decided upon. To be clear, I don't find a problem with stories in a general sense, in or out of roleplaying games. Story, in a general sense, is a great thing. The question comes down to whose story is actually being told in a game - the story of the characters or story of the game? The former I find desirable. The latter is the core of these issues.
~*~
The Basics for Any Solution - Ownership, Negotiation and Game Contract
I feel that the issues around game stories arise because of unclear ownership of game elements (such as game world and characters) and a lack of appreciation for the different wishes and needs of different participants in a particular roleplaying game. Further, these are exacerbated lack of appreciation for the need to come to some sort of agreement on how the game will be played by all participants - players and the GM.
So let's lay some ground rules for these.
~*~
Ownership
1) Players own their characters.
2) The GM owns the setting and NPCs.
They're pretty simple, really. I think these should be manifesto-style rights.
You, as a player, own your characters thoughts and internals. That's just the way it is. If the GM wants to make changes to your character he must negotiate with you over it. The GM states what he feels needs changing and why. The player then decides whether he wishes to accept those changes. Bear in mind that some characters may require changes to fit into a particular setting - Darth Vader has no place in Tokugowa Period Japan.
The GM owns the setting, including its NPCs. A grey area exists around NPCs described in a player character's background. Suffice to say that an understanding can be reached on that quite easily. The reason for this statement is not to say that players can't be involved in changing the nature of the setting during the game but merely an acknowledgement that players rarely acquire a complete picture of the setting and so this overall picture is best managed by the GM. In cases where players do have an excellent understanding of the setting then this could be relaxed.
The key here is that a player's character is sacrosanct. The GM can request, advise and suggest all sorts of things, but he can't force a character to do or be anything. Ever. With that in place we address "Issue 3 - Surprise! You're Not Who You Thought!" in its entirety.
~*~
Game Contract
Before the game begins the player and GM come together and agree how the game will be played. The formation of a good game contract is subject matter for an entire other article so I'll not go into any great depth here. Briefly, it needs to cover matters including:
1) How "secret" information is distributed between players (a Partition of Knowledge issue).
2) What level of out-of-character chatter is acceptable (a roleplaying immersion issue).
3) Game direction (to address "Issue 4 - Surprise! We've Just Moved Location!").
4) Character death (to partly address "Issue 2 - Plot Invulnerability").
5) Types of game content (so participants get things they want in the game).
6) Undesirable content (so participants get to avoid things they don't want in the game).
7) Practicalities, such as play location, session times and days, food and drink, toilets, etc.
8) Acceptable character types and character interactions (to prevent "I'm a Drow.", but "I'm a Drow Hater!").
The game contract is critical. This prevents those times when three sessions in a player realises that he doesn't actually enjoy investigation games and this is clearly one of those. It's aim is clarity for all the participants. You should write it down and give a copy to every participant. I'm not kidding. That way this agreement might actually have weight and has a chance of being referred back to from time to time. Don't even try to write it in legalese - it's a friendly agreement and can be written in conversational language but you write it down as a helpful reminder.
Now this may seem exceptionally formal and perhaps even scary to some roleplayers, especially if they're just starting out. For the newer players, the GM and more experience players should take the time to help them consider what they are hoping for out of the game. Also, remember that the aim here isn't to be complete or to create some set of laws to abide by - the aim here to create enough definition that all participants feel they can safely throw themselves into the game and world without fearing treading on toes or having their creativity pulled out from under them.
~*~
Negotiation
Implicit in every game contract should also be the understanding that the contract can be renegotiated. The contract may have an agreement that the game is going to be entirely set in NYC, but the characters are coming to a point where they want to travel to Moscow. Don't just do it and assume everyone will be okay with it. Ask. Renegotiate the contract. Consider what it means to remove the characters from the setting you'd originally agreed. A Forest Ranger may have nothing to do in the city. Similarly a Office Clerk probably has no wish to be in the wilderness.
This is not the job of the GM alone. This is the job of all participants. The GM's job here is to help keep things moving around the negotations. If a game is relatively short then a single draft of a contract should suffice. Longer games will need to consider their contract a few times during the full arc of the game, unless the participants managed to scope it all just right at the beginning of the game.
Again, this may seem over formal but, in my experience, people would rather keep their mouths shut than tell a GM that they're not enjoying a game. Make the negotiation explicit and honest and then some of this suffering-in-silence should go away.
~*~
Summary, but not Conclusion
By establishing a game contract and the core principle that a player's character is absolutely owned by that player then some key problems can be avoided and, it is possible, no further action need be taken.
However, this is not a complete solution. The next steps of solution can be found in the way the game is designed and through understanding the roles interacting when playing a game. If a game is not based around the story that the GM defines then it must be about the story that the player characters build. I believe there are design precepts for the GM that are not merely compatible with player character stories but, in fact, exceptionally beneficial.
I'll come back to game design and role definition in another article. For now, I welcome all questions and feedback. |
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Tychus
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Joined: 12 Jan 2004
Articles: 1
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| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2004 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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I suspect every gamer has had to deal with GM abuse of power (or at least perceived abuse) at some point. Setting the bounaries between player and GM domains is a process, and those boundaries won't always fall in the same place in different groups. I certainly remember my own college gaming days with a GM who was very fond of all the techniques outlined above (not because he had any particular story to tell - he just seemed to like the power).
I've been tossing around the idea of starting a thread discussing the differences between Robin Laws' two types of roleplayers (the Method Actor and the Storyteller), and how (or if) they can successfully play together. It sounds like Ronin's recent experiences are a result of differing expectations based on the combination of these two player types.
My own recent experiences have been almost the exact opposite of Ronin's. In a few cases, instead of the GM having a specific story he's trying to tell, there seems to be no plot at all. It starts off with "I'm going to start a new campaign. What kind of character do you want to play?" Well, I don't know, tell me a little more about what the game's about. "Well, that depends on what the party wants to do." I find this just as frustrating as being railroaded. I need some direction.
I like the idea of a contract to resolve these differing expectations up front. After all, playing an RPG is a significant time investment, and it doesn't make sense to invest that time into a game that you're not going to enjoy. It can also help identify how committed each person is to the game (I hate starting a game with who are excited to play but don't make it a priority and frequently miss sessions), and what to do about no-shows (i.e. do you cancel the session, does the GM or another player play the character, or do they get left behind?).
Good idea, Ronin. I'm going to use it for my next game. |
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Ronin Storm
Joined: 13 Jan 2004
Articles: 5
Comments: 0
Location: York, UK |
| Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I find this just as frustrating as being railroaded. I need some direction. |
I can really sympathise with this. I spent around 18 months trying to make games that were, I thought, player-focused, but in fact were merely a GM-level abdication of direction. I've realised my mistake now, hence this work.
A complete lack of direction can, I feel, work when all participants have a strong familiarity with the setting and each other's play-styles. Then the players can form the direction themselves. However, this does make for a very different style of game than we are used to.
I'll get to working on that other article. The one above took me a good three/four hours so it might wait until next week when I'm on holiday. ;) |
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