RPG quiz for new players
DWB
people you have met down at the local gaming store?
Generally, one tries to select people whose personality seems compatible,
however things don;t always turn out so well. There are so many things that
it would be useful to get out in the open before gaming starts and a group
understanding of social contract might avoid annoyance and disappointment on
the part of some players.
What if a GM were to compose a list of questions. The questions would be
designed to probe where each player stands on many of the issues that lead
to heated discussions on this newsgroup. The quiz would hopefully be
something that the group does together perhaps even before character
creation and would be designed to inspire discussion.
Once everybody is aware of everybody else's stance on a number of issues,
you will have already have taken the first few steps down the road to having
a solid gaming group.
So, if anybody would like to contribute to the discussion with suggestions
for questions or categories for questions, please do...
Let's get the ball rolling>
A VALUES AND THE THREEFOLD MODEL
A1 Rate from 1 to 6 what you deem to be more important in role-playing to
you, 1 being most important:
a) Having fun without respect to from what source the fun comes even
if the game degenerates into 2 hours of Monty Python Jokes.
b) Having an immersive experience much like a movie or a good book
where you get caught up in the story. You felt like you were actually
there - though the evening was probably filled with as much dread as
elation.
c) Having an intense competative experience, whether against the GM
or other players. You triumph over adversity through wits, sound planning
and grim determination - or go down with a hard fight.
d) Patricipate in developing a character or world full of subtle
detail and intelligent design which is artisticly satisfying.
e) Faithfully reproduce a character or world as accurate and
"realistic" as the genre conventions would allow. When playing a character,
you are always looking to think, "what does he know?" "what does he feel
here?".
f) Have a adventurous romp where your heroes perform acts of derring
do, driving thier enemies before them and get the girl (or big pile of
treasure - or both) in the end.
g) Have a relaxing evening with friends, casually frittering away
the time like one may do with Bridge or Charades.
A2 Choose the option which best reflects how seriously you take your
gaming.
a) Your a casual player at best. You either will not or can not
commit to a regular weekly game. You are there to have a little fun or hang
out with your geeky friends who never stopped gaming after college. :-)
b) You are what might be termed a "Beer and Pretzels gamer". You
like to play often, but missing the odd session is no biggie. You would just
as soon play Call of Cthulhu one week, an old fashioned dungeon crawl the
next and Monopoly the following week.
c) You love gaming and look forward to your weekly session. You will
rarely miss a session and then usually for family, work or health reasons.
You don't mind one shot adventures but also like longer campaigns of a few
months duration.
d) Gaming is officially you hobby. You put in a lot of effort into
it, whether its developing your character's history, building the next
adventure, a whole world or just collecting stacks of games that you will
never play - "for ideas". You never miss sessions unless you are incapable
of attending and when other players miss, you are seriously irritated.
e) Fan-boy! That's you. I have been playing since I was 6, I have
read my copy of Vampire 24 times cover to cover not counting looking up
rules or generating characters. I have officially applied to change my last
name to Gygax and yesterday I had an interview Steve Jackson Games to be
used as a study subject for thier game "Chez Geek". :-)
Disclaimer: I am a geek too. Don't anybody take offense at my references to
geekiness.
Darren
Mary K. Kuhner
>Has anyone here ever tried to get a gaming campaign going with a bunch of
>people you have met down at the local gaming store?
I was president of a student gaming club in Berkeley, which had about
the same effect; pot luck of the players who happened to come. It's
...hard. We usually shook out about 2/3 of the players we took in.
The one good thing is that because there's no pre-existing friendship,
you can just tell someone that it isn't working and ask them to
leave, and not worry about having lost a friend over it.
>What if a GM were to compose a list of questions. The questions would be
>designed to probe where each player stands on many of the issues that lead
>to heated discussions on this newsgroup. The quiz would hopefully be
>something that the group does together perhaps even before character
>creation and would be designed to inspire discussion.
I like the idea myself, and would be happy with this as a player.
However, a lot of people (mostly but not entirely younger ones) are
really embarrassed and uncomfortable about this approach, and in such
cases you'll have trouble using it.
You'll also want to watch out for the Tigger Syndrome. Tigger, you
may recall, said he would eat anything. Then, when people started
offering him food, they found that he really had very strong preferences
that he just couldn't/wouldn't articulate. In fact, he only ate
extract of malt. Tiggers are pretty common among players in my
experience, and I have no idea what to do about that.
(The term is not original with me. I think the original essay is on
rpgnet.)
> a) Having fun without respect to from what source the fun comes even
>if the game degenerates into 2 hours of Monty Python Jokes.
> b) Having an immersive experience much like a movie or a good book
>where you get caught up in the story. You felt like you were actually
>there - though the evening was probably filled with as much dread as
>elation.
> c) Having an intense competative experience, whether against the GM
>or other players. You triumph over adversity through wits, sound planning
>and grim determination - or go down with a hard fight.
> d) Patricipate in developing a character or world full of subtle
>detail and intelligent design which is artisticly satisfying.
> e) Faithfully reproduce a character or world as accurate and
>"realistic" as the genre conventions would allow. When playing a character,
>you are always looking to think, "what does he know?" "what does he feel
>here?".
> f) Have a adventurous romp where your heroes perform acts of derring
>do, driving thier enemies before them and get the girl (or big pile of
>treasure - or both) in the end.
> g) Have a relaxing evening with friends, casually frittering away
>the time like one may do with Bridge or Charades.
I think you're stacking the deck badly here by using negative terms like
"degenerates" and "frittering". If I were a player wanting to get in,
I certainly wouldn't pick those options!
I'd make the options a lot simpler, too. Something like:
--I game to have fun socializing with my friends.
--I game to have a hard, fair challenge, pitting my wits
against the GM or other players.
--I game to lose myself in my character and the ongoing
action.
(etc)
>A2 Choose the option which best reflects how seriously you take your
>gaming.
> a) Your a casual player at best. You either will not or can not
>commit to a regular weekly game. You are there to have a little fun or hang
>out with your geeky friends who never stopped gaming after college. :-)
> b) You are what might be termed a "Beer and Pretzels gamer". You
>like to play often, but missing the odd session is no biggie. You would just
>as soon play Call of Cthulhu one week, an old fashioned dungeon crawl the
>next and Monopoly the following week.
> c) You love gaming and look forward to your weekly session. You will
>rarely miss a session and then usually for family, work or health reasons.
>You don't mind one shot adventures but also like longer campaigns of a few
>months duration.
> d) Gaming is officially you hobby. You put in a lot of effort into
>it, whether its developing your character's history, building the next
>adventure, a whole world or just collecting stacks of games that you will
>never play - "for ideas". You never miss sessions unless you are incapable
>of attending and when other players miss, you are seriously irritated.
> e) Fan-boy! That's you. I have been playing since I was 6, I have
>read my copy of Vampire 24 times cover to cover not counting looking up
>rules or generating characters. I have officially applied to change my last
>name to Gygax and yesterday I had an interview Steve Jackson Games to be
>used as a study subject for thier game "Chez Geek". :-)
I couldn't really answer this one at all. I think it conflates at
least three different questions: how often can you play, how geeky
are you, and do you like long campaigns or short ones?
I'd just ask the separate questions:
1) How much commitment can you make to the game? Would you be a
casual player who comes for some sessions and not others, or a
core player who comes to every session unless there's a pressing
reason not to?
2) Do you like one-shot and short games, or long campaigns? Do you
like to change systems and genres a lot, or stick with one?
3) How seriously do you take roleplaying? Is it casual or a big
deal? How much work are you likely to put in, and how much stake
are you likely to have in the game working out well? [This is a
hard question to get honest answers to.]
I think I'm a fan-girl, but I couldn't answer yes to your last
option because the details are all wrong. So I wouldn't get quite
that cute with the descriptions.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Charlton Wilbur
I haven't seen DMB's original article here, so I'm going to reply to
both DMB and Mary Kuhner's reply at the same time....
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
> In article <abtphr$s64$1...@horsefly.nf.net>, DWB <dba...@provair.com> wrote:
> >Has anyone here ever tried to get a gaming campaign going with a bunch of
> >people you have met down at the local gaming store?
I've tried. It can work for light things; it doesn't always work if
you want to get intense. I've had *much* better luck finding people
that I liked and introducing them to RPGs than I have had finding
people who were into RPGs and then picking out the ones I liked.
What I've had the most luck with is playing a light game at the game
shop, and then inviting people who fit in back to my personal game.
> You'll also want to watch out for the Tigger Syndrome. Tigger, you
> may recall, said he would eat anything. Then, when people started
> offering him food, they found that he really had very strong preferences
> that he just couldn't/wouldn't articulate. In fact, he only ate
> extract of malt. Tiggers are pretty common among players in my
> experience, and I have no idea what to do about that.
I like the metaphor, though I hadn't seen it before.
I have a couple different sets of preferences, myself; I like a number
of disparate things, and I actively dislike a lot of the things that
some people might see as a compromise.
> >A2 Choose the option which best reflects how seriously you take your
> >gaming.
> > a) You're a casual player at best.[...]
> > b) You are what might be termed a "Beer and Pretzels gamer". [...]
> > c) You love gaming and look forward to your weekly session. [...]
> > d) Gaming is officially you hobby. [...]
> > e) Fan-boy! That's you. [...]
I don't fit into any of these cleanly, and there's enough that I find
negative in each description (which I snipped for brevity) that I
doubt I'd opt for any of them.
> I couldn't really answer this one at all. I think it conflates at
> least three different questions: how often can you play, how geeky
> are you, and do you like long campaigns or short ones?
>
> I'd just ask the separate questions:
>
> 1) How much commitment can you make to the game? Would you be a
> casual player who comes for some sessions and not others, or a
> core player who comes to every session unless there's a pressing
> reason not to?
>
> 2) Do you like one-shot and short games, or long campaigns? Do you
> like to change systems and genres a lot, or stick with one?
I find that I can't answer this question, short of saying "Yes!" to it
all. I like one shots, I like short games, I like long campaigns, I
like trying new systems, and I like old familiar systems.
> 3) How seriously do you take roleplaying? Is it casual or a big
> deal? How much work are you likely to put in, and how much stake
> are you likely to have in the game working out well? [This is a
> hard question to get honest answers to.]
When I do something, I do it seriously. I'll put in as much work as I
see positive results from; if it doesn't improve the game when I write
a character journal, I won't do it, for instance. I've learned not to
take the game more seriously than the other players do, because that
way lies recrimination and annoyance.
When I organize a game, I try to lay out what I expect from the
participants. In college, when we all had umpty-seven demands on our
time, they were explicit: show up at 7pm, play until 11, academic
events or things that couldn't be rescheduled took priority. A couple
of the players in the games I ran appreciated the structure and
organization, but there was one time I wound up uninviting a friend:
he had spent the weekend playing ping-pong, touch football, and
volleyball, and waited until the Monday night game session to decide
that he had a paper to write.
But returning to the topic at hand -- it seems like the questionnaire
is much too wordy on the one hand and doesn't really get at the meat
of the issue on the other hand. There are also a lot of other
concerns which make a player a match or not; one's group's obnoxious
rules lawyer can fit right in with another group.
So here's a proposed revision, incorporating Mary's suggestions:
1. What's most important to you about a session of roleplaying?
__ Hanging out with my friends, doing something fun
__ "Being" my character for 4 hours or so
__ Solving puzzles and pitting my skills against opponents
__ Having good stories to tell afterwards
2. How committed can you be? If you need to miss a session, will you
be able to let us know the session before? Do you have other
commitments that are likely to prevent you from making it to every
session, or even most sessions?
3. Do you have strong preferences about system or campaign length?
Do you like learning new systems? Do you prefer one-shots, short
campaigns, or long campaigns?
4. How deeply into roleplaying are you? How committed can you be to
making the game work, for yourself and the other players? (This
is not the same as making the party succeed.)
5. Which one of these matches your opinion most closely?
__ The GM must stick to the rules in the rulebooks, or house
rules announced ahead of time; that's what rules are for.
__ The GM should interpret the rules, and make rulings in the
spirit of the rules, but if the rule produces a bad result,
the GM should throw it out.
__ The GM should make sure that everyone is having a good
time. What she does with rules doesn't matter.
6. Which one of these matches your feelings more closely?
__ I want my character to win. If something stands in my
character's way, I want it to be challenging but not
impossible to defeat.
__ I want to enjoy the world. My character doesn't always
have to get what he wants, but at the same time I don't
enjoy being frustrated.
7. Which one of these matches your feelings more closely?
__ The GM, the other players, and I are all collaborating to
make sure that everyone has fun.
__ It's the players against the GM; we're all friends, but
it's the GM's job to play against all of us.
I'm sure that a couple dozen more questions could be added; #5, #6,
and #7 come from personal experience. I've had real problems with
players who had problems because they wanted their characters to *win*
(and my reaction to that was, dear god, this is *VAMPIRE*! Nobody
wins!), and I've had problems with players who clearly expected an
adversarial game when it wasn't what I had in mind at all.
I've also had a couple of other problems that I wish I could detect
with a simple question; unfortunately, some problems only reveal
themselves over time.
Finally, I think it's very important to phrase the questions in such a
way as to *not* bias people towards the style of play you want. If
the "right answer" is always the first on the list, or you use
positive words with the right answer and words like "frittering" and
"silly" with the wrong answer, you're going to find a high number of
people answering the right answer so that they can get into the game.
Also, in many cases, there isn't a universal *right* answer; the
person who likes one-shots that play strictly by the rules where the
characters win may fit in perfectly with another group.
Charlton
Russell Wallace
>What if a GM were to compose a list of questions. The questions would be
>designed to probe where each player stands on many of the issues that lead
>to heated discussions on this newsgroup.
In addition to the points others have raised, I will offer the
following caveat: Many roleplayers are unaware of their preferences on
some issues, and many who are aware will lie about them.
For example:
GMs often won't admit to providing strong script immunity, though most
of them (the ones who are above the level of hack n slash AD&D at
least) do so. Similarly, many players won't admit to wanting strong
script immunity.
Many GMs won't admit "This aspect of my game world doesn't make
logical sense, but it's there anyway because I think it makes for a
better game world." Similarly, many players won't admit "I don't care
whether logic or the rulebook says X should happen, I want it to
happen anyway."
Few people will admit their characters hold a view on some topic
because they themselves do.
Few people will admit the game is for them a low-priority activity, to
be attended only when they can't find anything better to do. (I notice
your questions so far are mostly about "how seriously do you take the
game" - I think you'll need to phrase that very carefully if you want
honest answers.)
Few people will admit to preferring pure hack n slash gaming with most
of the session spent rolling combat dice, yet this is a preference a
significant number hold.
So I think you need to take into account that what people provide as
answers to a list of questions won't necessarily represent their true
preferences.
--
"Mercy to the guilty is treachery to the innocent."
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace
mail:rw(at)eircom(dot)net
Mary K. Kuhner
>GMs often won't admit to providing strong script immunity, though most
>of them (the ones who are above the level of hack n slash AD&D at
>least) do so. Similarly, many players won't admit to wanting strong
>script immunity.
This one is a toughy, because in the short term, script immunity is more
esthetically pleasing and less harmful if the players don't know it's there.
I have given up on that, however, because it's a ticking time
bomb waiting to destroy the campaign in the long run.
The common case in my experience is where the GM is providing strong
script immunity but hasn't said so to the players. The players are
initially happy about their successes, but then they start to wonder:
are these successes real? They may try playing sub-optimally
to find out. If the GM continues to enforce strong script immunity,
the game ends up weirdly bent out of shape as the players try harder
and harder to find the limits. (In the case I am thinking of, it
ended up with near-suicidal PC behavior and the poor GM had to work
really hard to 'salvage' the situation--and then hear from her players
that she'd destroyed her campaign. We felt she'd lied to us.)
Another problem visible in the same campaign was that knowing you have
script immunity may make certain kinds of railroading seem more acceptable.
The GM had a tendency to pose challenges too hard for the PCs. She
felt this was a minor problem, because she knew there was strong script
immunity. Her players thought it was a *huge* problem that was going to
kill the PCs any moment now. We really resented being railroaded into
too-hard challenges. I think it would have gone more smoothly had we
known--though not perfectly smoothly, because the too-hard challenges were
a vicious strain on the script immunity's plausibility.
In my hands, strong script immunity works best when it is collaborative.
The players contract to do some metagame work to avoid having the PCs
embark on hopelessly risky ventures. The GM contracts to do some metagame
work to avoid having circumstances suddenly become lethal. The damage
to plausibility is generally a lot less this way than when only one
side is working on the problem, and the other side is either ignoring it
or, worse, actively sabotaging it.
Conversely, the total absence of script immunity goes over a lot better
if the players know about it in advance. Expecting script immunity and
not getting it makes many players (me included) angry and upset
with the GM. If I know my PC will very probably die, I may want a different
PC, and will almost certainly want a different mindset toward him.
I don't like finding this out mid-campaign.
But a lot of groups aren't willing to accept the short term loss of
disclosure. They may feel--perhaps rightly--that the game won't last long
enough for the time bomb to go off anyway. Or they may be willing to
gamble that everyone is on the same page even without negotiation.
I think these are bad gambles, but I've gotten more willing to negotiate
as I've gotten older, and maybe I'd have disagreed at 20.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Russell Wallace
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
[script immunity]
>But a lot of groups aren't willing to accept the short term loss of
>disclosure. They may feel--perhaps rightly--that the game won't last long
>enough for the time bomb to go off anyway. Or they may be willing to
>gamble that everyone is on the same page even without negotiation.
Remember the scene in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy where
there's a pause while the narrator informs us not to worry, because
the deadly nuclear attack about to be launched will _not_ in fact hit
the ship, and nobody will be killed or maimed (except for the whale
and the bowl of petunias)?
This is funny because of course, we all know the protagonists aren't
going to get wiped out halfway through the story, but narrators don't
normally tell us this up front. In fact, they usually go to great
lengths to make it _seem_ as if the heroes are in real danger. Why?
Presumably because it's more exciting, seems more meaningful, if we
can pretend there's danger involved.
My guess is that a GM who said up front "There'll be strong script
immunity, I won't kill off your characters without your permission" to
a typical gaming group would get the same annoyed response as a
narrator who announced at the start of a movie or novel "Don't worry,
none of the heroes will be killed or maimed in this story, even though
it might look like they're in danger".
There's also the factor of wanting to look tough (this shows up most
strongly when GURPS and Call of Cthulhu enthusiasts describe those
systems), that probably accounts for some of it (plus some of the
simulationism issues).
Mary K. Kuhner
>My guess is that a GM who said up front "There'll be strong script
>immunity, I won't kill off your characters without your permission" to
>a typical gaming group would get the same annoyed response as a
>narrator who announced at the start of a movie or novel "Don't worry,
>none of the heroes will be killed or maimed in this story, even though
>it might look like they're in danger".
It's true, but it's one of those dangerous analogies between
passive media and RPGs.
The reader of a story doesn't necessarily have to make risk assessments.
She can "take the characters' word for it" as to which things are
dangerous and how dangerous they are. The characters can be blind
to their repeated survival of extreme risks.
It's a lot harder in an RPG, where the player *is* called on to
make risk assessments. It would be one thing if the GM expected
the players to behave exactly as if they had no script immunity, but
in my experience this is almost never the case. The GM doesn't want
the PCs to behave as if they're invulnerable, but he doesn't want
them to "turtle" or to behave realistically either. He usually
wants them to take a certain level of risks, not too much more, not
too much less. If you can't talk about this, though, it doesn't
always happen....
A homogeneous gaming culture may not need to have this conversation.
I've never encountered one that homogeneous, though. In my experience
if you pick 10 random players you have at least one that expects
rock-solid immunity and one that expects no immunity at all.
I have not found _Radiant_ to be lacking in tension, even though it
is unlikely for the PCs to be killed. (The GM has once said flat
out, 'No script immunity for this set of actions--it's not reasonable.'
But no one died, as it happens.) There is, for me, some tension about
whether the PCs will survive, even though I know they actually will;
there is a lot more tension about whether they can succeed, since
success is not guaranteed and in fact they have failed several times.
One does want to avoid the combination of strong script immunity
and succeed-or-die plans and situations. A fairness issue arises in
script-immunity games when one PC is a daredevil and another is more
careful. It is hard to make the first PC fail without killing him.
A tempting but unfair resolution is to make the second one fail instead,
since she can survive it. Long-term this forces all the PCs into
the daredevil mode. It's better to look for ways for the daredevil
to fail after all, even if he is going over Niagra Falls in a barrel....
>There's also the factor of wanting to look tough (this shows up most
>strongly when GURPS and Call of Cthulhu enthusiasts describe those
>systems), that probably accounts for some of it (plus some of the
>simulationism issues).
Yes, definitely. Saying that one uses script immunity in public
sometimes provokes contempt or insults. (I've seen it on the
newsgroups.)
But I think that if the group really finds script immunity
contemptible, secret script immunity is still a time bomb. When it
goes off, not only will it be hard to continue the game forward,
past accomplishments will seem tarnished. It may be better for
such a group not to have script immunity at all--in fact, I'd
recommend starting the campaign with a high-risk situation,
hoping to kill a PC (though not conspiring to do so). It can
be very liberating for the GM to demonstrate that there is
unquestionably no script immunity in this game.
I don't know what to do with players who find script immunity
contemptible, but want it anyway. This seems to put an impossible
burden on the GM in the long run. Luckily I've only known one
or two such players.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Hal
>I don't know what to do with players who find script immunity
>contemptible, but want it anyway. This seems to put an impossible
>burden on the GM in the long run.
Sometimes the problem 'merely' is that a player
intellectually (and genuinely!) approves of 'no script
immunity', but is still emotionally upset at the time when
one of his characters dies.
I've seen an outspoken 'no immunity' player subconsciously
trying to manipulate the GM when his character was in acute
danger (e.g. by loudly announcing the character's
dangerously low hit points). When he caught himself, he
stopped and gave the GM the go-ahead.
[Somewhat akward, but it did clear things up.]
But on the whole this is indeed such an emotionally-charged
issue that sometimes people cannot be trusted to say - or
even know - what they want.
Regards,
Hal
DWB
"Charlton Wilbur" <cwi...@mithril.apartment.cj> wrote in message
news:87adr11...@mithril.apartment.cj...
>
> I haven't seen DMB's original article here, so I'm going to reply to
> both DMB and Mary Kuhner's reply at the same time....
>
>
> mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) writes:
>
> > In article <abtphr$s64$1...@horsefly.nf.net>, DWB <dba...@provair.com>
wrote:
>
> > >Has anyone here ever tried to get a gaming campaign going with a bunch
of
> > >people you have met down at the local gaming store?
>
> I've tried. It can work for light things; it doesn't always work if
> you want to get intense. I've had *much* better luck finding people
> that I liked and introducing them to RPGs than I have had finding
> people who were into RPGs and then picking out the ones I liked.
>
> What I've had the most luck with is playing a light game at the game
> shop, and then inviting people who fit in back to my personal game.
Yeah, usually the invitation is preceeded by a few conversations where
you discuss comparing game systems or genres or tell old war stories.
However, sometimes people are recommended third party or you yourself are
not GMing so you don't get to interview each person.
>
> > You'll also want to watch out for the Tigger Syndrome. Tigger, you
> > may recall, said he would eat anything. Then, when people started
> > offering him food, they found that he really had very strong preferences
> > that he just couldn't/wouldn't articulate. In fact, he only ate
> > extract of malt. Tiggers are pretty common among players in my
> > experience, and I have no idea what to do about that.
>
> I like the metaphor, though I hadn't seen it before.
Yeah, there is some of that. That is why I stated that I hoped to spawn
discussion. Usually, if a Tigger is pressed at length, you will detect
inconsistencies. Have everybody relate a "Time I really enjoyed roleplaying"
experience or a "Time I was really annoyed/dissastified by roleplaying"
experience. A Savvy GM will detect holes in time.
>
> I have a couple different sets of preferences, myself; I like a number
> of disparate things, and I actively dislike a lot of the things that
> some people might see as a compromise.
>
> > >A2 Choose the option which best reflects how seriously you take your
> > >gaming.
> > > a) You're a casual player at best.[...]
> > > b) You are what might be termed a "Beer and Pretzels gamer".
[...]
> > > c) You love gaming and look forward to your weekly session.
[...]
> > > d) Gaming is officially you hobby. [...]
> > > e) Fan-boy! That's you. [...]
>
> I don't fit into any of these cleanly, and there's enough that I find
> negative in each description (which I snipped for brevity) that I
> doubt I'd opt for any of them.
You and Mary are correct, these categories are probably very hard to
answer. They were intended to all include some negative element. If the
questions were easy to answer, then each player would go into exam mode and
sit silently while doing the quiz. The desired result, as I stated was to
encourage people to discuss thier metagame preconceptions so that they are
brought into the open.
The question probably could use some polish to be sure, however it
should not be too easy to answer them
>
> > I couldn't really answer this one at all. I think it conflates at
> > least three different questions: how often can you play, how geeky
> > are you, and do you like long campaigns or short ones?
> >
> > I'd just ask the separate questions:
> >
> > 1) How much commitment can you make to the game? Would you be a
> > casual player who comes for some sessions and not others, or a
> > core player who comes to every session unless there's a pressing
> > reason not to?
> >
> > 2) Do you like one-shot and short games, or long campaigns? Do you
> > like to change systems and genres a lot, or stick with one?
>
> I find that I can't answer this question, short of saying "Yes!" to it
> all. I like one shots, I like short games, I like long campaigns, I
> like trying new systems, and I like old familiar systems.
Well, maybe "All of teh Above should also be an option, although it
wouldn't really tell us much - it would encourage Tigger syndrome.
As with all such quizes, you are expected to answer with the mindeset
"If I had to choose just one, which one is most agreeable to me?" Plus you
can always comment.
>
> > 3) How seriously do you take roleplaying? Is it casual or a big
> > deal? How much work are you likely to put in, and how much stake
> > are you likely to have in the game working out well? [This is a
> > hard question to get honest answers to.]
>
> When I do something, I do it seriously. I'll put in as much work as I
> see positive results from; if it doesn't improve the game when I write
> a character journal, I won't do it, for instance. I've learned not to
> take the game more seriously than the other players do, because that
> way lies recrimination and annoyance.
In some ways everybody is like that... do as much as is necessary to
get the most benefit. However, effort is a negative for everybody so each
person has a different balance point. I think the wording suggested is
pretty good.
>
> When I organize a game, I try to lay out what I expect from the
> participants. In college, when we all had umpty-seven demands on our
> time, they were explicit: show up at 7pm, play until 11, academic
> events or things that couldn't be rescheduled took priority. A couple
> of the players in the games I ran appreciated the structure and
> organization, but there was one time I wound up uninviting a friend:
> he had spent the weekend playing ping-pong, touch football, and
> volleyball, and waited until the Monday night game session to decide
> that he had a paper to write.
>
> But returning to the topic at hand -- it seems like the questionnaire
> is much too wordy on the one hand and doesn't really get at the meat
> of the issue on the other hand. There are also a lot of other
> concerns which make a player a match or not; one's group's obnoxious
> rules lawyer can fit right in with another group.
In my experience only with a group of other obnoxious rules lawyers.
Behavior which to one group is Obnoxious rules lawyering to another is
merely standing up for one's rights. Its all relative I suppose.
Yeah, everyone pointed that out. In my efforts to be "cute" as Mary
put it, I probably introduced a bit of a bias.
>
> Charlton
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Wayne Shaw
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>I don't know what to do with players who find script immunity
>contemptible, but want it anyway. This seems to put an impossible
>burden on the GM in the long run. Luckily I've only known one
>or two such players.
I think this is an exaggerated version of what you describe as the
Tigger Syndrome: someone doesn't really know what they want, and what
they think they want on an intellectual level is out of sync with what
feels right in the game.
Charlton Wilbur
> Sometimes the problem 'merely' is that a player
> intellectually (and genuinely!) approves of 'no script
> immunity', but is still emotionally upset at the time when
> one of his characters dies.
I think I fall into this category, with some characters. The trick
here is to trust what I say; sure, I'll be upset if a character I'm
attached to dies. But, *especially* if the character knew the risks
he was taking, that death can be justified, and script immunity is the
wrong thing.
I was playing a character once -- the first one I ever wound up
playing Immersively. He had started out as a completely amoral
looking-out-for-number-one character, but because of the risks he
took, he wound up owing his life to every one of his friends at least
once. At one point things had gone all pear-shaped, and *someone*
needed to save two members of the party from the bad guys.
Well, there was a great combat, and he wound up failing. He was
fighting two opponents, trying like hell to give the two prisoners a
chance to escape, and one of the opponents had a gun. He disarmed the
guy with the gun and managed to dispatch him, then went after the
other one. Unfortunately, he lost track of the gun while his opponent
didn't. Net result: he lay on the floor bleeding out, with the two
prisoners still in captivity.
But he was such a total change from the character I had started with
-- especially since I fully expected him to look into the jail, decide
that there was no way he could take out two people, and go home. He
surprised me, he almost intentionally sacrificed himself for his
friends. It was the *perfect* death, even though I didn't really
sleep well for a couple of days afterwards.
The GM sensed that I was upset. So he offered me a way out -- we had
ended with Jeff lying on the floor of the jail, bleeding and slipping
in and out of consciousness. Probably so that the GM could figure out
what the heck to do to get the party back together. He offered me a
way out -- make a Luck roll, and a critical success meant he'd find a
way out for Jeff. I rolled, and lo and behold, critical success.
That was a mistake. I played Jeff for one more session, and he was an
unplayable bundle of guilt and self-recrimination. He should have
seen the gun; instead, he was so badly wounded that the party couldn't
move quickly, and he didn't even save the two prisoners into the
bargain. And I really wasn't prepared to be channeling that level of
self-hatred -- and the only way I could play Jeff was Immersively. In
the end, the fact that the party had split killed the campaign, but if
it had continued, I think I would have retired Jeff.
Charlton
Mary K. Kuhner
I think you're right, but my question is not where they come from,
but what do I do with them?
Trying to provide script immunity without ever letting the players
know that you're doing so is a juggling act. Sooner or later I
always drop a plate. (Usually sooner--I'm not good at this.)
I don't think I have ever seen a GM pull it off without dropping
hints sooner or later, because the lifestyle of most PCs is such
that realistically, some of them ought to die.
In Berkeley I tended to kill off new PCs, marginal PCs (those who
belonged to marginal players or otherwise weren't working out)
and NPCs, as a stand-in for killing off the core PCs. I did let core
PCs die (en masse!) once, as a result of PC/PC violence where
I could not honorably intervene. Two more died at the very end
of the campaign; one, again, at PC hands, and the other in a way that
could not reasonably have been avoided.
I thought I was being subtle, but when I put this to the players,
a couple of years down the road, they laughed at me. In a nice way,
but they laughed. "You were trying really hard not to kill the
core PCs, Mary. That's okay--it's pretty much what we wanted. But
don't kid yourself we didn't notice. You were sweating blood
every single battle scene. Remember the time when....?"
I had one player who never forgave me the PC/PC violence in mid-
campaign. (It was fairly well founded in the nature of the PCs
involved--not just a bored player shooting off--or I would have
tried to intervene.) I had one player who was consistently unhappy
that there was any script immunity at all. I *think* I hit the
right level for the others, but we weren't talking about it so
I've never been sure.
If I tried to run such a campaign now I think I'd talk about it,
despite the risks.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Russell Wallace
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
[what to do about the issue of script immunity]
>If I tried to run such a campaign now I think I'd talk about it,
>despite the risks.
My strategy is as follows:
- Don't raise the issue in conversation (though be willing to discuss
it honestly if a player asks about it).
- Only kill PCs if:
o The player has indicated he wants the PC to die.
o I want rid of the player.
o The PC is doing something that has to kill him or wreck suspension
of disbelief, _and_ he's ignored a direct warning from the GM to this
effect.
I've found almost all players are reasonably happy with this (except
for the ones who fall into the second subcategory above, and even
there, giving their PC his Darwin award and declining an offer of a
replacement, is the least contentious way to disinvite them from the
campaign).
If your players differ from the ones I've encountered, such that the
above strategy won't work for you, here's what I'd try instead:
- Raise the issue beforehand and ask the players their preferences.
- If they say they want script immunity, take their word for it.
- If they say they don't, take that with a hefty dose of sodium
chloride, keep an eye on things like whether their actions suggest
they expect SI anyway, and make sure the first time a PC dies it's
pretty damn cut and dried. (And ideally retconnable to 'down and
bleeding but saveable' without much disruption, if you turn out to
have a group of Tiggers after all :))
John Kim
Russell Wallace <sp...@devnull.com> wrote:
>My strategy is as follows:
>- Don't raise the issue in conversation (though be willing to discuss
> it honestly if a player asks about it).
>- Only kill PCs if:
> o The player has indicated he wants the PC to die.
> o I want rid of the player.
> o The PC is doing something that has to kill him or wreck suspension
> of disbelief, _and_ he's ignored a direct warning from the GM to
> this effect.
>
>I've found almost all players are reasonably happy with this (except
>for the ones who fall into the second subcategory above, and even there,
>giving their PC his Darwin award and declining an offer of a replacement,
>is the least contentious way to disinvite them from the campaign).
>
>If your players differ from the ones I've encountered, such that the
>above strategy won't work for you,
Well, there is another possibility that you could have players
who are more-or-less the same, but the strategy above doesn't work
because the GM isn't happy with getting rid of what for you are
category 2 players (i.e. players who want a random chance of death,
most likely).
I certainly prefer a random chance of death in some more
serious campaigns. I find that even if each narrow escape is in itself
believable and sustains suspension-of-disbelief, having a number of
them is a big strain. It makes in-character risk assessment very
difficult, since the GM is making obvious meta-game cues which you
are expected to pick up on.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>here's what I'd try instead:
>
>- Raise the issue beforehand and ask the players their preferences.
>- If they say they want script immunity, take their word for it.
>- If they say they don't, take that with a hefty dose of sodium
> chloride, keep an eye on things like whether their actions suggest
> they expect SI anyway, and make sure the first time a PC dies it's
> pretty damn cut and dried. (And ideally retconnable to 'down and
> bleeding but saveable' without much disruption, if you turn out to
> have a group of Tiggers after all :))
The above seems to suggest that the players all want pretty
much the same level of script immunity. My experience is that the
biggest problem is when players differ on how much (if any) script
immunity they want.
For example, the group of players say they do not want
script immunity. One of them, however, is actually ambivalent but
doesn't want to break with the group on it. When her character gets
killed, though, she is pretty upset (moreso than she expected).
Hal
Wallace) wrote:
[script immunity]
>My strategy is as follows:
>
>- Don't raise the issue in conversation (though be willing to discuss
>it honestly if a player asks about it).
>- Only kill PCs if:
[...]
>o I want rid of the player.
Frankly, I don't see any advantage to this approach.
I can see why one would want to go for an underhanded
approach *if this spared someone's feelings*.
(E.g. letting a campaign die and creating a new one away
from the problem player or with no slot left for him).
The truth may be a bitter pill to swallow (and administer) -
even if worded carefully (i.e., "our play styles aren't
compatible" rather than "you don't fit in") -, so one might
want to avoid such a confrontation altogether.
However, with the approach you suggest, you do not spare the
player's feelings: the moment he wants to create a new
character, you still have to come out and say you don't want
him in your group.
[Like some others on this board, I generally frown upon
dealing with player-level problems with in-game tactics.]
*-*-*
On a different note, I think that a PC's death is almost
universally an unpleasant event - even for 'no immunity'
advocates.
It's just that some people are willing to pay this
particular price - steep as it is - from time to time for
the benefits it garners (i.e., more tension and realism).
Hence, if you're interested in maintaining a certain
*minimum standard* of entertainment *for every session*, you
should probably go for script immunity.
Also, you probably ought to avoid red herrings, dead-ends
and anti-climax as well, as these rarely make for a good
session when they occur. (They can sweeten the rest of the
campaign, though.)
Regards,
Hal
Robert Scott Clark
wrote:
>On 16 May 2002 19:37:23 GMT, mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu
>(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>
>[what to do about the issue of script immunity]
>
>>If I tried to run such a campaign now I think I'd talk about it,
>>despite the risks.
>
>My strategy is as follows:
>
>- Don't raise the issue in conversation (though be willing to discuss
>it honestly if a player asks about it).
>- Only kill PCs if:
>o The player has indicated he wants the PC to die.
>o I want rid of the player.
That is rude and dishonest. There is this new invention called
"talking to people" that you should try out. If you don't have the
balls to face up to someone and tell them that you don't wish to play
with them, then I can only conclude that any problem between you two
is your fault, not theirs.
Robert Scott Clark
Kim) wrote:
> It makes in-character risk assessment very
>difficult, since the GM is making obvious meta-game cues which you
>are expected to pick up on.
"Pick up on"?
I will repeat again, there is a wonderful new invention called
conversation that some people might want to do some research on - see
if it works for ya'.
Charlton Wilbur
> The truth may be a bitter pill to swallow (and administer) -
> even if worded carefully (i.e., "our play styles aren't
> compatible" rather than "you don't fit in") -, so one might
> want to avoid such a confrontation altogether.
>
> However, with the approach you suggest, you do not spare the
> player's feelings: the moment he wants to create a new
> character, you still have to come out and say you don't want
> him in your group.
It depends on the situation, somewhat.
I was involved in a game that was quite good in parts and would have
been great, except that half of the players, a boyfriend and
girlfriend, seemed to have their own personal game contract. The
boyfriend, whom I will call J, was a reasonably good gamer in a larger
group; the girlfriend, whom I will call C, was self-centered in the
worst way, and was new to the group.
By self-centered, I mean that she created a character with *nothing in
common* with the other characters, and actively resisted every
plausible hook that she could have used to give her character a reason
to hang out with the rest of the party. This became problematic when
the other characters became involved in planning some defenses against
the barbarians and she decided her character was Just Not Interested.
In addition, she created a character who was useless in battle; this
is not generally a problem, but the only time she insisted that her
character accompany the others was when combat was likely.
In the end, the barbarians did attack, and there was a great battle.
My character wound up dying (mainly because I decided to go charging
into battle heroically, so it was at least a well-earned death). The
GM was my housemate, and after that session, she turned to me and
said, "You know, C didn't roll over 7 once this session, and I didn't
see any of the rolls." This was GURPS, where all the rolls were on
3d6, and we had made several dozen attack and defense rolls in the
course of the session. At that point we resolved that I would be too
bothered by the death of my character to want to play in that game for
a couple of weeks, and we'd find a tactful way to not invite C to the
next game. Unfortunately, this meant not inviting J either.
Charlton
Hal
<cwi...@mithril.apartment.cj> wrote:
>In addition, she created a character who was useless in battle; this
>is not generally a problem, but the only time she insisted that her
>character accompany the others was when combat was likely.
Hmm. Unless the others have to spend ressources to keep her
alive, she can't really hurt the party's combat performance,
can she?
>The
>GM was my housemate, and after that session, she turned to me and
>said, "You know, C didn't roll over 7 once this session, and I didn't
>see any of the rolls." This was GURPS, where all the rolls were on
>3d6, and we had made several dozen attack and defense rolls in the
>course of the session.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here - are you
suggesting C faked her rolls to be low, so as to get the
others killed? (But if her character was useless in combat
anyway, that would make no difference.)
>At that point we resolved that I would be too
>bothered by the death of my character to want to play in that game for
>a couple of weeks, and we'd find a tactful way to not invite C to the
>next game. Unfortunately, this meant not inviting J either.
It's still not quite clear to me what happened - did you put
the game on hold (inventing a reason) and then gave C+J the
impression that it never started again?
(Which is a possible solution, of course. It's dishonest,
but does indeed spare others' feeling. I've seen enough ugly
confrontations over RPGs - including the end of long-time
friendships - not to scoff at such a strategy.)
In any case, that sounds like an ugly situation. Sorry to
hear about it.
Regards,
Hal
Considering all the anger and frustration games have caused
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>On Fri, 17 May 2002 01:09:36 GMT, sp...@devnull.com (Russell
>Wallace) wrote:
>
>>- Only kill PCs if:
>
>[...]
>
>>o I want rid of the player.
>
>Frankly, I don't see any advantage to this approach.
Heh, I thought that one might be controversial...
>I can see why one would want to go for an underhanded
>approach *if this spared someone's feelings*.
>
>(E.g. letting a campaign die and creating a new one away
>from the problem player or with no slot left for him).
So, respond to a bad player's actions by trashing the campaign the
good players are enjoying? If I was going to do that, I wouldn't
bother starting up any campaigns in the first place. I'd _far_ rather
hurt the feelings of the person I'm pissed off with, than spoil the
enjoyment of the people who haven't done anything wrong.
>The truth may be a bitter pill to swallow (and administer) -
>even if worded carefully (i.e., "our play styles aren't
>compatible" rather than "you don't fit in") -, so one might
>want to avoid such a confrontation altogether.
Pretty much. I've found that, with the one exception noted here, no
matter how it's phrased, people take a request to leave the campaign
as a personal insult. I'm willing to do it anyway if I have to, but if
there's a way to do it without leaving the player feeling insulted
(and without messing things up for innocent parties, i.e. the other
players) I'd rather take that way.
>However, with the approach you suggest, you do not spare the
>player's feelings: the moment he wants to create a new
>character, you still have to come out and say you don't want
>him in your group.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? At least based on a priori reasoning.
The peculiar thing is, empirically I've found it doesn't happen like
that.
Here's how I've seen it go in practice:
Me: (thinks) . o O (Joe is acting like a dickhead and messing things
up for everyone. I've tried talking to him about it, but it hasn't had
any effect.)
Joe: "I go over and attack the squad of armed policemen!" (That's what
happened in the particular example I'm thinking of. More generally, in
my experience, 90% of problem players can be counted on to try for
their Darwin award sooner rather than later. The remaining 10%, fine,
I'll resign myself to hurting their feelings.)
Me: . o O (Well, I wasn't going to drop a meteorite on his character's
head, but I sure as heck don't see any reason to give him script
immunity.)
*roll, roll. bang, bang.*
Joe's character: (dies)
Joe: "Okay, my character's twin brother comes along!"
Me: "Uh, no he doesn't. Sorry."
Joe: "Oh. Uh. Bye then."
Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
>[Like some others on this board, I generally frown upon
>dealing with player-level problems with in-game tactics.]
>
>*-*-*
>
>On a different note, I think that a PC's death is almost
>universally an unpleasant event - even for 'no immunity'
>advocates.
>
>It's just that some people are willing to pay this
>particular price - steep as it is - from time to time for
>the benefits it garners (i.e., more tension and realism).
I think so too.
>Hence, if you're interested in maintaining a certain
>*minimum standard* of entertainment *for every session*, you
>should probably go for script immunity.
That's not my reason for wanting script immunity; I don't mind the
entertainment level faltering for one session. A PC dying, however,
tends to have bad effects that last much longer than that.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>On Fri, 17 May 2002 16:15:05 GMT, Charlton Wilbur
><cwi...@mithril.apartment.cj> wrote:
>
>>In addition, she created a character who was useless in battle; this
>>is not generally a problem, but the only time she insisted that her
>>character accompany the others was when combat was likely.
>
>Hmm. Unless the others have to spend ressources to keep her
>alive, she can't really hurt the party's combat performance,
>can she?
Well, suppose one PC says to another, "Why are we bringing this person
along when she has no combat training and there's about to be a
desperate battle?"
A good player will try to make sure there's a reasonable IC answer to
that question, by coming up with a character who'll be helpful in
other ways. Otherwise, the rest of the players are damaging their
characters' consistency in order to let that one player participate -
and she's not contributing anything in return.
>>The
>>GM was my housemate, and after that session, she turned to me and
>>said, "You know, C didn't roll over 7 once this session, and I didn't
>>see any of the rolls." This was GURPS, where all the rolls were on
>>3d6, and we had made several dozen attack and defense rolls in the
>>course of the session.
>
>I'm not sure what you're getting at here - are you
>suggesting C faked her rolls to be low, so as to get the
>others killed? (But if her character was useless in combat
>anyway, that would make no difference.)
Perhaps it was the principle of the thing? If I were the GM I'd be
annoyed: "not only is this player not contributing anything, she's
cheating as well, which messes up my policy of trusting all players to
report their rolls honestly".
>>At that point we resolved that I would be too
>>bothered by the death of my character to want to play in that game for
>>a couple of weeks, and we'd find a tactful way to not invite C to the
>>next game. Unfortunately, this meant not inviting J either.
Sympathies. Given the situation, I can't think of a better way of
handling that case.
Robert Scott Clark
wrote:
>
>>The
>>GM was my housemate, and after that session, she turned to me and
>>said, "You know, C didn't roll over 7 once this session, and I didn't
>>see any of the rolls." This was GURPS, where all the rolls were on
>>3d6, and we had made several dozen attack and defense rolls in the
>>course of the session.
>
>I'm not sure what you're getting at here - are you
>suggesting C faked her rolls to be low, so as to get the
>others killed? (But if her character was useless in combat
>anyway, that would make no difference.)
In GURPS, lower is better, so he is implying she cheated.
Robert Scott Clark
wrote:
>*roll, roll. bang, bang.*
>Joe's character: (dies)
>Joe: "Okay, my character's twin brother comes along!"
>Me: "Uh, no he doesn't. Sorry."
>Joe: "Oh. Uh. Bye then."
>
>Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
Yes.
I also don't see Joe not asking why he wasn't allowed a new character.
And I REALLY don't see Joe not having his feelings hurt in the above
example.
Mary K. Kuhner
Russell Wallace <sp...@devnull.com> wrote:
>Here's how I've seen it go in practice:
>Joe's character: (dies)
>Joe: "Okay, my character's twin brother comes along!"
>Me: "Uh, no he doesn't. Sorry."
>Joe: "Oh. Uh. Bye then."
>Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
While I dislike this idea in principle, I have to say that this
*exact* story happened to me in Berkeley, twice. And it did
seem to be the most elegant way to deal with the situation. The
only difference between my experience and yours was that in one
of the two cases, the other players said, in chorus, "Uh, no
he doesn't" so I didn't have to.
I think Darwin Award players may in fact be looking for a face-
saving way to resign from the game. I don't know why "This is
no fun, I'm outta here" is not a face-saving way, but apparently
for some players it isn't. In such cases you are doing exactly
the wrong thing for all parties concerned if you make efforts to
keep them in the game.
I'd distinguish this from players who really want to be in the
game, but are unacceptable. Killing off such a player's PC is
not going to gentle the blow of throwing him out.
>That's not my reason for wanting script immunity; I don't mind the
>entertainment level faltering for one session. A PC dying, however,
>tends to have bad effects that last much longer than that.
The curse of our in-house play style (one player, multiple PCs)
is that the web of PC interconnections tends to become a "character"
in its own right, and the loss of a PC can mangle that web horribly.
One also gets to run an entire stable of grief-stricken fellow
PCs, which if one is inclined toward immersion may be no fun at all.
We've found that death of a core PC often ends the campaign. This
is a pretty major-league "bad effect".
My main reason for wanting script immunity, though, is the guaranteed
game-killer (if you define the game as involving a specific PC party)
of having the entire party die. In most of the systems we have
played, situations bad enough to kill one PC often kill all of them.
(It would be different in a system with severe crits or highly
random combat.) In _Paradisio_ and _Sun in Splendor_ we went through
periods where the party was wiped out every 5-10 sessions. We would
use retcons or other fixes to try to retrieve the game, but the emotional
cost was exorbitant.
The pressure was on the player to play in a way that avoided this.
The player tended to respond by "turtling". If the turtle wasn't
enough to avoid party death there were massive recriminations. Also,
both player and GM tended to get frustrated with the lack of
progress--PCs go into shell, stay in shell, nothing happens.
Script immunity puts at least half the pressure on the GM. (We
require the player to cooperate, even up to accepting metagame
direction if absolutely necessary: as Jon once had to say, "If you
do that I will have to withdraw script immunity, there's just no
way to make sure the PCs survive it.") We've found this leads to
fewer recriminations.
A theoretical alternative would be script immunity for the *party*,
but in practice we have found this to be very hard and artificial
to arrange. If one PC somehow escapes you get "rescue scenes" where
player and GM know that the situation has metagame constraints--
it's supposed to work, otherwise the script immunity contract has
been broken--with all the problems that entails. Similarly with
"the NPCs save you and coerce you into service" scenes. If the
PCs would actually resist and die, it's a mess.
In Shadowrun, particularly, we found that to change the outcome of
a fight you had to intervene really early. Intervening later was
practically impossible, since because of the Death Spiral fights
became more and more unbalanced as they neared the end. It was
better to intervene early to save a PC than to intervene later to
try to save all the PCs.
I know that Warren deals with party death by not defining the
campaign as being equivalent to the party. I can't do this, though:
for me new PCs in a related situation means a new campaign, not
a continuation of the old, and I very likely won't even want to
do this (I'd rather change genre after a major campaign folds).
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Russell Wallace
<cla...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 17 May 2002 16:34:25 GMT, sp...@devnull.com (Russell Wallace)
>wrote:
>
>>Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
>
>Yes.
What would you have done, then?
>I also don't see Joe not asking why he wasn't allowed a new character.
*shrug* As it happened, he didn't.
>And I REALLY don't see Joe not having his feelings hurt in the above
>example.
How would you have avoided hurting his feelings?
Russell Wallace
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>I think Darwin Award players may in fact be looking for a face-
>saving way to resign from the game. I don't know why "This is
>no fun, I'm outta here" is not a face-saving way, but apparently
>for some players it isn't. In such cases you are doing exactly
>the wrong thing for all parties concerned if you make efforts to
>keep them in the game.
I think you're right.
>I'd distinguish this from players who really want to be in the
>game, but are unacceptable. Killing off such a player's PC is
>not going to gentle the blow of throwing him out.
Yeah, in some cases there's no alternative but to bite the bullet and
say "Sorry, but I don't think our styles are compatible".
>My main reason for wanting script immunity, though, is the guaranteed
>game-killer (if you define the game as involving a specific PC party)
>of having the entire party die.
*nod* I can definitely see that.
Interesting, my experience has been slightly different: *all* GMs
*always* give script immunity to the party as a whole, I've *never*
seen one wipe out the whole party (except in one-shots where the game
was ending anyway, and even then it's rare). [1]
This means that failing to give script immunity to individual PCs has
an undesirable side-effect in addition to the ones already discussed:
it means an important survival strategy is "don't stick your neck
out".
This is unrealistic - in real life, you'd be worried about your
teammates' safety; even if you were amoral, if you were also smart
you'd realize your survival depended on theirs. In a low script
immunity game, however, the team's survival is assured - but that of
the hero who takes risks to protect his comrades, is not.
The upshot of this: unless you
- don't mind ending up with a party of cowardly "look out for number
one" types
- don't mind having what most people would define as the campaign
ending (by killing off the whole party)
- or have players who don't mind their characters dying heroic deaths
then script immunity has yet another advantage.
[1] I'm referring only to multi-player parties; I've never tried
playing a whole party in a one-on-one, I'm not able to properly
roleplay that many characters at once.
Warren J. Dew
Interesting, my experience has been slightly different:
*all* GMs *always* give script immunity to the party as
a whole, I've *never* seen one wipe out the whole party
(except in one-shots where the game was ending anyway,
and even then it's rare).
I've wiped out entire parties on several occasions in my Laratoa campaign.
Mary's definition of "the game as involving a specific PC party" doesn't really
work for Laratoa, though: established players generally have multiple
characters, only a fraction of which are on any given party. For that matter,
parties have traditionally been ad hoc affairs formed based on which players
are available to play.
More recently, there have been some parties with fairly stable makeups. These
parties have been strong enough, though, that there's little chance of their
being wiped out entirely. Even if one of them were, I think the focus of the
campaign would just move to another set of characters.
failing to give script immunity to individual PCs has an
undesirable side-effect in addition to the ones already
discussed: it means an important survival strategy is
"don't stick your neck out".
This is unrealistic ...
I see this side effect as realistic and therefore desirable.
It's far more common for the likely outcome to be that a party will win, but
lose a character or two, than that the party's survival depends on everyone
pulling together. In the former case, it's quite realistic for individuals in
the party to try to take on less than their share of the risk. This happens
all the time in the player world.
The result in Laratoa has been that some characters are, as you put it,
cowardly "look out for number one" types, others are better team players, and
the latter have reputations as better people to adventure with, and better
people in general. I think having this kind of diversity and these kinds of
social consequences are good things.
True heroism involves taking more than your share of the risk for the sake of
the rest of the party. One of the high points in the Laratoa campaign was when
one character sacrificed himself to help the rest of the party survive. That
couldn't have happened with script immunity for either the party or for
individuals.
Warren J. Dew
Powderhouse Software
Charlton Wilbur
> On Fri, 17 May 2002 16:15:05 GMT, Charlton Wilbur
> <cwi...@mithril.apartment.cj> wrote:
>
> >In addition, she created a character who was useless in battle; this
> >is not generally a problem, but the only time she insisted that her
> >character accompany the others was when combat was likely.
>
> Hmm. Unless the others have to spend ressources to keep her
> alive, she can't really hurt the party's combat performance,
> can she?
She was *completely* useless in combat, and insisted on facing it
head-on. Which meant that the other players had two choices: protect
C's character from almost-certain death, or face in-game and
out-of-game recriminations, since we all *knew* how useless she was in
combat.
My reading of the situation is that C wanted to be the center of the
game. I have seen people become the center of the game by being good
at enabling *other* people to roleplay well, and I value such
experiences; C, however, seemed intent on being the center of the
game by requiring all participants -- GM and players -- to take her
specific preferences into account.
> I'm not sure what you're getting at here - are you
> suggesting C faked her rolls to be low, so as to get the
> others killed? (But if her character was useless in combat
> anyway, that would make no difference.)
No - she faked her rolls so as to survive. Either that, or she was
fantastically lucky (consider the odds of rolling 3d6 two dozen times,
and getting 7 or lower each time). I don't know for sure; the only
person who saw her rolls was her.
> >At that point we resolved that I would be too
> >bothered by the death of my character to want to play in that game for
> >a couple of weeks, and we'd find a tactful way to not invite C to the
> >next game. Unfortunately, this meant not inviting J either.
>
> It's still not quite clear to me what happened - did you put
> the game on hold (inventing a reason) and then gave C+J the
> impression that it never started again?
>
> (Which is a possible solution, of course. It's dishonest,
> but does indeed spare others' feeling. I've seen enough ugly
> confrontations over RPGs - including the end of long-time
> friendships - not to scoff at such a strategy.)
We put the game on indefinite hold and played boardgames for a few
weeks. The summer LARP season started up, and we wound up never
getting back to the game. Which was unfortunate, because there was a
lot of potential in the backplot.
Charlton
Mary K. Kuhner
Russell Wallace <sp...@devnull.com> wrote:
>Interesting, my experience has been slightly different: *all* GMs
>*always* give script immunity to the party as a whole, I've *never*
>seen one wipe out the whole party (except in one-shots where the game
>was ending anyway, and even then it's rare). [1]
I've seen this tried, but gosh, it was lame. The enemies who
were good enough to put down several of the PCs suddenly couldn't
seem to finish the job at the end, when odds were very much more
in their favor. Or they came up with feeble excuses why they
didn't kill us. (My worst experience with that was the dragon whose
lair we invaded, and who inexplicably decided not only not to kill
us, but to *raise* the ones he'd already killed.)
Jon won't do it. I don't think I'd be happy if he tried. We
deal with everybody-dies disasters with retcons instead.
Admittedly, he's the only GM I've ever seen do it. Though I nearly had
to in _Sunrise War_--the conflict was among PCs, and I really
felt I couldn't intervene at all. (It wasn't a player dispute,
but a series of bad decisions by both PC factions that left both
of them certain a pre-emptive strike was their only chance to
survive.) As it happened two PCs lived out of, I think, six, but
they could easily all have died.
Mm, no, I forgot about _Ravenloft_. I was GMing that one. At the
point where there seemed to be just too many wraiths for the PCs
to deal with, and I was casting around wildly for a way to prevent
a party-killing massacre, the lead PC took the whole problem out
of my hands with a fireball at ground zero. ("I'm not going to
turn into a wraith, damn it.")
One of the Berkeley GMs at least three times had party-killer situations
and then found a way to recover the PCs afterwards. I was of
mixed minds about this--the sudden disasters did add to the sense
that the danger was real, and he was very good at finding
reasons for the recovery, but it's not something that should happen
often. I think he might have been served better by a rules system
with less all-or-nothing saving throws, since the most objectionable
of the incidents had to do with a save none of the key PCs could
make.
Incidentally, we once tried the "one-shot where the game is ending
anyway" thing. The GM and players agreed that we'd do exactly
four sessions with the players playing evil insect spirits trying to
rescue their Queen, and it would end with the PCs all dying. The
first three sessions were pretty interesting, in an edgy upsetting
way (our sympathies tended to be with the victims, especially that
one girl who nearly got away). The fourth session was a long
chase/fight that went from bad to worse until all the PCs were dead.
What did we expect? We absolutely knew that the PCs would die.
Some of the players (including me, I must say) were still upset. I
realized that I hated the GM running a fight he knew we couldn't win; I
wanted him to cut to the end, and I instinctively read his choice to
do the fight in detail as an indication that the PCs had a chance.
It had sounded like a good idea on paper, but it was no fun
whatsoever to do that long, tactically demanding, bookkeeping-heavy,
hopeless fight. It didn't provide the kind of catharsis that
reading or watching a story of that kind might have.
On the other hand, my husband didn't mind it, and found the effect
somewhat interesting. This is a much more reasonable reaction, but
I just couldn't share it.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Charlton Wilbur
> Well, suppose one PC says to another, "Why are we bringing this person
> along when she has no combat training and there's about to be a
> desperate battle?"
>
> A good player will try to make sure there's a reasonable IC answer to
> that question, by coming up with a character who'll be helpful in
> other ways. Otherwise, the rest of the players are damaging their
> characters' consistency in order to let that one player participate -
> and she's not contributing anything in return.
That was the core of the problem. If we had been playing completely
in-game, she would have been left back with the villagers who had no
combat training or experience; the rest of the PCs were with the
defenders, who were those villagers with combat training and
experience. We weren't sure exactly what to expect, but we knew it
was dangerous, and that some people wouldn't be coming back.
This was a recurring problem for the entire campaign; as soon as C's
character expressed interest in something, the GM tried to find a way
to use it to give her a reason to associate with the other characters.
She ignored every attempt. The *only* thing that consistently
interested her was combat.
As you say, a good player will make sure there's a reasonable IC
answer to "why are these people staying together?" She didn't. Now,
in my older, grouchier days, I'd probably say something like, hey, C,
you made a character that just doesn't fit. Figure out why our
characters should associate with her, or make a new character, but
don't stay on this road.
> Perhaps it was the principle of the thing? If I were the GM I'd be
> annoyed: "not only is this player not contributing anything, she's
> cheating as well, which messes up my policy of trusting all players to
> report their rolls honestly".
The GM and I came from the same college roleplaying group, which had
long-standing traditions of cooperative play and of valuing play
styles that other groups might consider suboptimal. As a result, we
got accustomed to a play style where a player might legitimately
think, "Well, obviously, the smart thing to do is X, but my character
has no experience with tactics, so I'm going to advocate a frontal
assault; this will let Q's character, who does have experience with
tactics, have some spotlight time as we discuss it, and maybe N will
get some remarks about chivalry and honor in."
But like most instances of cooperative play, it only works well if
everyone's cooperating. I think C was out to dominate the game,
intentionally or no.
Charlton
Russell Wallace
>I've wiped out entire parties on several occasions in my Laratoa campaign.
*nod* I gathered that; that's why I was careful to qualify my
statements with "in my experience" and "what most people would
define..." :)
>It's far more common for the likely outcome to be that a party will win, but
>lose a character or two, than that the party's survival depends on everyone
>pulling together. In the former case, it's quite realistic for individuals in
>the party to try to take on less than their share of the risk. This happens
>all the time in the player world.
I suspect there are two reasons for our differences on this particular
point:
- I perhaps think real-world soldiers etc. have more unit cohesion
than you do.
- I'm pretty sure your players are much more willing to have their
characters die than most of the people I've gamed with. (Note, I did
mention this as a possibility in my previous message :))
Russell Wallace
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <3ce54ddb...@news.eircom.net>,
>Russell Wallace <sp...@devnull.com> wrote:
>
>>Interesting, my experience has been slightly different: *all* GMs
>>*always* give script immunity to the party as a whole, I've *never*
>>seen one wipe out the whole party (except in one-shots where the game
>>was ending anyway, and even then it's rare). [1]
>
>I've seen this tried, but gosh, it was lame. The enemies who
>were good enough to put down several of the PCs suddenly couldn't
>seem to finish the job at the end, when odds were very much more
>in their favor. Or they came up with feeble excuses why they
>didn't kill us. (My worst experience with that was the dragon whose
>lair we invaded, and who inexplicably decided not only not to kill
>us, but to *raise* the ones he'd already killed.)
Hmm...
...I was about to say my experience with such is better than yours,
but then I did a reality check - I'm playing with a GM at the moment
who doesn't give individual script immunity, but is skilled at making
sure he doesn't throw any opposition at us that the whole party can't
handle. (That or he's _very_ skilled at covering his tracks :)) So far
in that campaign, two PCs have died - the only two Good-aligned ones -
in fights the party went on to win. (I helped win both those fights,
by throwing some effective spells at the bad guys _after_ I was at
least semi-assured of personal safety :))
However, he's pretty nearly the only GM these last many years I've
played with who doesn't give individual script immunity. When I cast
my mind back through the fog of memory, some really rather
embarrassingly bad scenes come up. Huge monsters who were kicking ass
suddenly keeling over to a couple of sword whacks as soon as the party
are in bad trouble, that sort of thing.
So I guess the most I'll say in disagreement with you is that it _can_
be done well.
>Jon won't do it. I don't think I'd be happy if he tried. We
>deal with everybody-dies disasters with retcons instead.
Probably the best way for your group's style.
>Admittedly, he's the only GM I've ever seen do it. Though I nearly had
>to in _Sunrise War_--the conflict was among PCs, and I really
>felt I couldn't intervene at all.
I had one of those - the largest PC mortality I've ever GMed, I think
- it was a campaign whose theme might be described as "Under what
circumstances is it right to take up arms in the defense of liberty?"
I knew which side I favored, but I tried to balance the issue as well
as I could, and I must have done something right, because the PCs
split down the middle and ended up fighting over it :) I tried to
adjudicate the combat as impartially as I could, and afterwards I
gathered the losing side (who were wiped out) agreed it had been fair.
(The winners went on to play out the rest of the scenario.)
>Mm, no, I forgot about _Ravenloft_. I was GMing that one. At the
>point where there seemed to be just too many wraiths for the PCs
>to deal with, and I was casting around wildly for a way to prevent
>a party-killing massacre, the lead PC took the whole problem out
>of my hands with a fireball at ground zero. ("I'm not going to
>turn into a wraith, damn it.")
Heh, that's what I'd probably have done.
>One of the Berkeley GMs at least three times had party-killer situations
>and then found a way to recover the PCs afterwards. I was of
>mixed minds about this--the sudden disasters did add to the sense
>that the danger was real, and he was very good at finding
>reasons for the recovery, but it's not something that should happen
>often. I think he might have been served better by a rules system
>with less all-or-nothing saving throws, since the most objectionable
>of the incidents had to do with a save none of the key PCs could
>make.
Or let the PCs have more continual defenses plus more aces up their
sleeves - those are the two things I always go for when I get an AD&D
character to the point where it's worth trying for custom spells, I
find those are worth far more for survivability than an extra
incremenet of raw combat power.
>Incidentally, we once tried the "one-shot where the game is ending
>anyway" thing. The GM and players agreed that we'd do exactly
>four sessions with the players playing evil insect spirits trying to
>rescue their Queen, and it would end with the PCs all dying.
[description snipped]
*ick, shudder*
>On the other hand, my husband didn't mind it, and found the effect
>somewhat interesting. This is a much more reasonable reaction, but
>I just couldn't share it.
If I'd played in that campaign, which I wouldn't have, my reaction to
the PCs' deaths would have been "thank God that's over!" :)
Warren J. Dew
to take extra risk:
- I perhaps think real-world soldiers etc. have more unit
cohesion than you do.
Soldiers, yes. In the games I'm familiar with, though, the player characters
are not part of a highly disciplined organization. One of the ways the
military avoids that kind of behavior is by having everyone obey the orders of
the unit commander; individuals don't get choices about what their shares of
the job are. Individual player characters, in my experience, want to make
their own decisions; is it often different in the games you have played?
Hal
Wallace) wrote:
[Letting a campaign die and creating a new one away from the
problem player or with no slot left for him.]
>So, respond to a bad player's actions by trashing the campaign the
>good players are enjoying? If I was going to do that, I wouldn't
>bother starting up any campaigns in the first place. I'd _far_ rather
>hurt the feelings of the person I'm pissed off with, than spoil the
>enjoyment of the people who haven't done anything wrong.
Hmm. I'd generally value the *feelings* of a person higher
than the *enjoyment* of a few people.
Obviously, there are limits - killing a long-standing,
well-loved campaign would create a lot of frustration and an
acute sense of loss for the rest of the group, i.e. hurt
*their* feelings.
But under many circumstances, I'm willing to sacrifice a few
evenings of entertainment if I can spare someone the
ugliness of explicitly being expelled from a group (not
least because I tend to pity problem players, btw).
This might seem to be an unworkable approach if one is
regularly looking for new players on a trial-and-error basis
(as in a gaming club etc.), but in such a situation, I'd
strongly recommend checking out any newcomers before
inviting them to a campaign anyway.
For instance, one could schedule a one-shot game first, or
merely offer a temporally limited slot for starters ("we
want to approach this particular adventure with a bigger
than usual party - interested in joining us for a few
sessions?").
>>The truth may be a bitter pill to swallow (and administer) -
>>even if worded carefully (i.e., "our play styles aren't
>>compatible" rather than "you don't fit in") -, so one might
>>want to avoid such a confrontation altogether.
>
>Pretty much. I've found that, with the one exception noted here, no
>matter how it's phrased, people take a request to leave the campaign
>as a personal insult.
That's usually how it is, yes.
(This situation is often exacerbated as problem players tend
to be particularly enthusiastic about the game.)
[snip example]
>Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
This sounds more like a case of what you described as "the
player has indicated he wants the PC to die".
If a player has an obvious death wish for his character,
that's one thing. But with your original wording, you seemed
to suggest killing a PC as a strategy to get rid of a player
(death wish or no, and regardless of whether the player
would like to stay in the game or not).
>>Hence, if you're interested in maintaining a certain
>>*minimum standard* of entertainment *for every session*, you
>>should probably go for script immunity.
>
>That's not my reason for wanting script immunity; I don't mind the
>entertainment level faltering for one session. A PC dying, however,
>tends to have bad effects that last much longer than that.
Hmm. I wonder if this has to do with the develop-in-play vs.
develop-at-start preferences:
A dead PC certainly tends to leave quite a hole where ties
with (N)PCs, plot developments and such are concerned.
This is probably less of a problem for a DAS player: in a
well-established campaign, such a player should be able to
*establish* a complex PC, ties and all.
To a DIP player, such ties would have nowhere near the same
quality as any developed in actual play.
Regards,
Hal
John Kim
>> It makes in-character risk assessment very difficult, since the GM is
>> making obvious meta-game cues which you are expected to pick up on.
>
>"Pick up on"?
>
>I will repeat again, there is a wonderful new invention called
>conversation that some people might want to do some research on - see
>if it works for ya'.
Robert, there is also an invention called "reading".
The above is my criticism of the suggestion to *not* discuss script
immunity with the players, but instead just apply script immunity as
long as it is vaguely plausible and provide warnings if it is not.
I pointed out problems with this, one of them being the above -- i.e.
that the warnings are meta-game cues which have to be picked up on
but which are not openly discussed.
I tend to prefer open discussion, though in many cases I just
go with tacit agreement because the players/GM don't like having
much meta-discussion (this is especially the case with newbies).
Russell Wallace
Kim) wrote:
>The above is my criticism of the suggestion to *not* discuss script
>immunity with the players, but instead just apply script immunity as
>long as it is vaguely plausible and provide warnings if it is not.
>I pointed out problems with this, one of them being the above -- i.e.
>that the warnings are meta-game cues which have to be picked up on
>but which are not openly discussed.
When I'm warning a player his character is liable to get killed, I
don't rely on the player to pick up subtle cues, I do it explicitly,
with something along the lines of "Are you sure? You realize the bomb
is likely to explode if it's moved," or whatever. (One GM has a
variant: "From his grave, Darwin smiles evilly." It worked, too :))
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>If a player has an obvious death wish for his character,
>that's one thing. But with your original wording, you seemed
>to suggest killing a PC as a strategy to get rid of a player
>(death wish or no, and regardless of whether the player
>would like to stay in the game or not).
*nod* I'm not proposing saying "a meteorite falls on your head and
kills you" to a player who doesn't want to leave the game, just not
lifting a finger to stop a problem player from getting his character
killed off.
>>That's not my reason for wanting script immunity; I don't mind the
>>entertainment level faltering for one session. A PC dying, however,
>>tends to have bad effects that last much longer than that.
>
>Hmm. I wonder if this has to do with the develop-in-play vs.
>develop-at-start preferences:
>
>A dead PC certainly tends to leave quite a hole where ties
>with (N)PCs, plot developments and such are concerned.
>
>This is probably less of a problem for a DAS player: in a
>well-established campaign, such a player should be able to
>*establish* a complex PC, ties and all.
Yes, but this is still a big investment of emotional energy (bigger
for the first few sessions, even, than is the case for a DIP player)
and DAS players might still reasonably be upset about having to write
it off.
Robert Scott Clark
Kim) wrote:
>
>Robert Scott Clark <cla...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>John Kim <jh...@darkshire.org> wrote:
>>> It makes in-character risk assessment very difficult, since the GM is
>>> making obvious meta-game cues which you are expected to pick up on.
>>
>>"Pick up on"?
>>
>>I will repeat again, there is a wonderful new invention called
>>conversation that some people might want to do some research on - see
>>if it works for ya'.
>
> Robert, there is also an invention called "reading".
>The above is my criticism of the suggestion to *not* discuss script
>immunity with the players, but instead just apply script immunity as
>long as it is vaguely plausible and provide warnings if it is not.
>I pointed out problems with this, one of them being the above -- i.e.
>that the warnings are meta-game cues which have to be picked up on
>but which are not openly discussed.
Which is only a problem if the "meta-game cues" are vague. If the
meta-game cue is "hey Bob, do that and your character might actually
die", it's pretty hard to not pick up on it.
>
> I tend to prefer open discussion, though in many cases I just
>go with tacit agreement because the players/GM don't like having
>much meta-discussion (this is especially the case with newbies).
And a habit they should be broken of as soon as possible.
>
Nis Haller Baggesen
>
<Snip stuff bout getting rid of players, by killing their characters>
>
> On a different note, I think that a PC's death is almost
> universally an unpleasant event - even for 'no immunity'
> advocates.
>
> It's just that some people are willing to pay this
> particular price - steep as it is - from time to time for
> the benefits it garners (i.e., more tension and realism).
>
my roleplaying experience, have involved valiantly sacrifising my
character. True, this is different from being killed at random. But it
can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
immunity, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
of the player and the GM. In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
mvh
Nis
Russell Wallace
<n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>I don't fully agree. Some of the most memorable and enjoyable events in
>my roleplaying experience, have involved valiantly sacrifising my
>character. True, this is different from being killed at random. But it
>can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
>immunity, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
>of the player and the GM. In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
>since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
Hmm, I'll admit one of my most memorable roleplaying moments involved
one of my characters dying in the successful defense of her home
planet... I think I would have preferred it if she'd survived the
experience though (as she was trying to do, the dice just weren't with
me that day); not least because it marked the end, in session 1, of
what might otherwise have turned into an extended campaign :)
Timothy Little
>ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
I was thinking about your post for a while. I'm not so sure this part
is really true. I've played in a few games where there was script
immunity. Not a large fraction of my games, but some.
In one session, there was a scene where there was a gateway to a
rather nasty place that could only be closed from the other side.
Now, it's possible that the player could have had his character stay
behind to close the gate, but be unwilling to have him die. It would
have been possible due to script immunity even though the environment
there was considered to be lethal to his form of life.
However, this would not have lessened the sacrifice -- he was still
doomed to remain trapped on the other side essentially forever, and he
knew it. The only other choice was to allow the gate to remain open,
and face the terrible effects that would wreak on his homeland.
In this case, I think there is no way you could call the sacrifice a
suicide. Script immunity or no, the only way that gate was going to
be closed was if someone did so from the wrong side, with the
consequences (living or dead) that entailed for that person. It could
have been an NPC, but that would have seemed either very contrived in
the circumstances, or damaging.
True, the death was strictly speaking unnecessary in an out of
character sense. However, loss of life was only a small part of the
sacrifice the character made.
- Tim
Hal
PCs do not die". Some points to consider:
- the PCs are not maimed (to the point of having to give up
their career),
- the PCs are not traumatized (e.g. by rape),
- the PCs are not eternally imprisoned (or mind-controlled,
enslaved, banned etc.).
Furthermore, I've often seen script immunity extended to
include the PCs' familiars, families and even reputations
(i.e., if they're framed for a crime, they're *eventually*
able to clear themselves).
Basically, Really Bad Things (TM) do not happen to the PCs.
(Obviously, views on what is 'really bad' will differ. Also,
all kinds of exceptions are possible - by campaign or by
indiviudual -, such as a noble sacrifice etc.)
Regards,
Hal
Nis Haller Baggesen
>
> On Tue, 21 May 2002 09:55:34 +0200, Nis Haller Baggesen
> <n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>
> >I don't fully agree. Some of the most memorable and enjoyable events in
> >my roleplaying experience, have involved valiantly sacrifising my
> >character. True, this is different from being killed at random. But it
> >can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
> >immunity, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
> >of the player and the GM. In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
> >since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
>
> Hmm, I'll admit one of my most memorable roleplaying moments involved
> one of my characters dying in the successful defense of her home
> planet... I think I would have preferred it if she'd survived the
> experience though (as she was trying to do, the dice just weren't with
> me that day); not least because it marked the end, in session 1, of
> what might otherwise have turned into an extended campaign :)
I wasn't trying to say that it would be true for everybody. I was just
pointing out that some of us actually enjoy having the freedom to let
our characters die one way or the other, without having to break the
game contract or otherwise have to think of it before hand. I don't do
much immersion of any kind - I'm much more of an actor/storyteller type
- so I don't feel a loss if a character is killed for the good of the
story. Part of it might be that I do a lot of gamemastering - NPCs are
'sacrificed' for the story all the time, so why should it be different
for player characters.
Anyway, I was just pointing out that character death need not be a
negative experience. Not for everybody at least.
Robert Scott Clark
<n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>Hal wrote:
>>
><Snip stuff bout getting rid of players, by killing their characters>
>>
>> On a different note, I think that a PC's death is almost
>> universally an unpleasant event - even for 'no immunity'
>> advocates.
>>
>> It's just that some people are willing to pay this
>> particular price - steep as it is - from time to time for
>> the benefits it garners (i.e., more tension and realism).
>>
>I don't fully agree. Some of the most memorable and enjoyable events in
>my roleplaying experience, have involved valiantly sacrifising my
>character. True, this is different from being killed at random. But it
>can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
>immunity
Why would that be?
>, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
>of the player and the GM.
Why would that be?
>In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
>since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
Only if you have trouble differentiating the character from the
player.
>
>mvh
>
>Nis
Russell Wallace
<n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>I wasn't trying to say that it would be true for everybody. I was just
>pointing out that some of us actually enjoy having the freedom to let
>our characters die one way or the other, without having to break the
>game contract or otherwise have to think of it before hand.
Yep. I did point out earlier that many of the reasons for script
immunity go away if the players genuinely don't mind their characters
dying :)
Warren J. Dew
In one session, there was a scene where there was a gateway
to a rather nasty place that could only be closed from the
other side. Now, it's possible that the player could have
had his character stay behind to close the gate, but be
unwilling to have him die....
In this case, I think there is no way you could call the
sacrifice a suicide.
The sacrifice of staying behind would not itself be a suicide, if knowledge of
the character were cut off at that point. Actually playing out the character
on the far side of the door and having it die would still seem like a suicide
to me.
Nis Haller Baggesen
>
> On Tue, 21 May 2002 09:55:34 +0200, Nis Haller Baggesen
> <n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>
> >Hal wrote:
> >>
> ><Snip stuff bout getting rid of players, by killing their characters>
> >>
> >> On a different note, I think that a PC's death is almost
> >> universally an unpleasant event - even for 'no immunity'
> >> advocates.
> >>
> >> It's just that some people are willing to pay this
> >> particular price - steep as it is - from time to time for
> >> the benefits it garners (i.e., more tension and realism).
> >>
> >I don't fully agree. Some of the most memorable and enjoyable events in
> >my roleplaying experience, have involved valiantly sacrifising my
> >character. True, this is different from being killed at random. But it
> >can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
> >immunity
>
> Why would that be?
Because the GM wil do his best to keep me alive, as script immunity is
part of the game contract.
>
> >, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
> >of the player and the GM.
>
> Why would that be?
Because you have to 'rewrite' the game contract briefly, to allow for
the death of a PC.
>
> >In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
> >since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
>
> Only if you have trouble differentiating the character from the
> player.
>
This is a non-sequitur to me. I don't see how the statement above has
any bearing on this problem. True, you can say the character wil not
know that his act was meaningless, but then I don't play from a
charatcer stance, but from an actor stance. And it is not about the
character having fun, it is about me - as a player - having fun. What
the character feels is quite beside the point - I (The player) want to
feel that what the character does is meaningful.
Robert Scott Clark
<n...@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>But it
>> >can be hard to accomplish a good sacrifice in a campaign with script
>> >immunity
>>
>> Why would that be?
>
>Because the GM wil do his best to keep me alive, as script immunity is
>part of the game contract.
Then you should learn to talk to the GM and tell him when the
situation has changed (ie. when you no longer wish to be kept alive)
>>
>> >, as it requires preplanning and premeditation on both the part
>> >of the player and the GM.
>>
>> Why would that be?
>
>Because you have to 'rewrite' the game contract briefly, to allow for
>the death of a PC.
And this requires more effort than blinking why?
>>
>> >In a way the sacrifice becomes a suicide,
>> >since the script immunity ensured that the sacrifice was unnecessary.
>>
>> Only if you have trouble differentiating the character from the
>> player.
>>
>This is a non-sequitur to me. I don't see how the statement above has
>any bearing on this problem. True, you can say the character wil not
>know that his act was meaningless, but then I don't play from a
>charatcer stance, but from an actor stance. And it is not about the
>character having fun, it is about me - as a player - having fun. What
>the character feels is quite beside the point - I (The player) want to
>feel that what the character does is meaningful.
What the character does can only be meaningful from the character's
point of view. EVERYTHING the character does is meaningless from a
player perspective, as the character and his world do not actually
exist.
But back to my comment about it not being suicide. The word "suicide"
implies, in the situation, a choice to die when other options would
have produced the same or similar results without need for the death,
and the one who died knew this.
Well, you as a player did not die, and the character did not know the
act was futile, so, my statement stands - it's only suicide if you
cannot differentiate between the player and the character, as both
conditions of it being "suicide" are not present in the same
individual.
James Alexander
"Mary K. Kuhner" wrote:
> In article <3ce52ce...@news.eircom.net>,
> Russell Wallace <sp...@devnull.com> wrote:
>
> >Here's how I've seen it go in practice:
>
> >Joe's character: (dies)
> >Joe: "Okay, my character's twin brother comes along!"
> >Me: "Uh, no he doesn't. Sorry."
> >Joe: "Oh. Uh. Bye then."
>
> >Still think my actions in that case were so unreasonable?
>
> While I dislike this idea in principle, I have to say that this
> *exact* story happened to me in Berkeley, twice. And it did
> seem to be the most elegant way to deal with the situation. The
> only difference between my experience and yours was that in one
> of the two cases, the other players said, in chorus, "Uh, no
> he doesn't" so I didn't have to.
>
> I think Darwin Award players may in fact be looking for a face-
> saving way to resign from the game. I don't know why "This is
> no fun, I'm outta here" is not a face-saving way, but apparently
> for some players it isn't. In such cases you are doing exactly
> the wrong thing for all parties concerned if you make efforts to
> keep them in the game.
>
> I'd distinguish this from players who really want to be in the
> game, but are unacceptable. Killing off such a player's PC is
> not going to gentle the blow of throwing him out.
Sorry for responding so late. I just got into this newsgroup. But I had a
similar experience as a GM several years ago at a convention. Of course it
was no surprise to me that I didnt know any of the players I ended up with
previously. But what did surprise me the whole group were darwin award
candidates. I'd created a short adventure that required stealth instead of a
frontal assault. I even went as far in the inutroduction to say outright it
was a covert operation. They knew going in that a straight out assault would
get everyone killed in short order.
A half hour into the game one character quickly decided that he wanted to be
the center of attention. He even went as far as threatening to kill off the
other PC's if they disagreed with him. Needless to say the other players were
less than pleased. At the first "washroom break" an hour into the scenario
the other players hung back and told me they were gonna, in their own words,
"frag the fruitloop". I didnt like being in that position at all. To make a
long story short, I had an ambush written into the scenario, I did some
quick re-arranging to write the biggest problem player out of the game in
short order. Thats exactly what I did, but I didn't enjoy doing it, it was
more an excercise in total frustration.
If that wasnt enough it didnt end there. The remaining players when they
reached their objective, which they were supposed to infultrate and gather
inelligence on, instead resorted to a frontal attack. Even after I asked them
"you are outnumbered 100 to 1 and massively outgunned, are you really sure?".
Needless to say you can guess their answer. The convention awarded small
prizes for the events that year, but that event had no winner.