Players

What sort of a player are you? What do you bring to the table, and what are you looking to get out of the activity of roleplaying? What makes a good player?

I asked this on one of Google Plus' RPG forums and the general consensus was mostly 'don't be a dick'.  Whilst I think this is sound advice, even if I also think that we've all skirted dick territory in our time, usually without meaning to; I do feel it's a little unfocused.

World of Darkness and the Laundry provide 'how to be a good player' sections in their core books, whilst games like FATE and Microscope embrace the potential of sitting everyone down and talking through what you want, ruling plot elements in or out. These games start from a different point to others, it seems less show and tell and more editorial meetings hopped up on Sunny Delight and too much sugar. They drive at player empowerment and the shifting in the balance of power between GM and player. It may be that they can do this because they run on more flexible systems, they don't have a clear GM figure; in Microscope you're all players and in FATE the advancement system means that its easy for the role of GM to shift about. This, theoretically, bakes a more level playing field into the game, which then encourages you to talk about what everyone wants from the game, and to define goals, before you start generating characters.

Does this mean the role of the player is changing, or that a new type of game is emerging? I'm not so sure, but I do feel that it puts a slightly different spin on things. Historically roleplaying doesn't work this way. There's always been a presumption of how games play, right back to Dungeons and Dragons and this is fine for games that have a role and a goal inherent in their design. In D&D, you may well be going down into a dungeon to fight dragons, and even if you aren't there won't be a huge amount of variation in what you do. It's plucky adventurers out to line their pockets all the way down. That's part of the attraction of Fantasy as a genre, you know what you're getting, almost irrespective of system, unless the GM pulls out Reign or Exalted.

Call of Cthulhu, Chill and a number of other horror games also work this way, the assumption of investigation and unremitting horror when you discover what's going on is implicit, and it works. Within a simple set up like this you don't need much of an input from the players into campaign structure, and you should know them well enough to know what will work. If Bob is a hack and slasher you put fighting in, if Sue likes powerful magic items you give her those, and so on. Perhaps things alter with World of Darkness or other games what the player characters do isn't so clear cut, but despite appearances, WoD and its fellow travellers seems to be a minor stakeholder within the hobby now. Perhaps it was ever thus, or perhaps the pendulum has swung away from that sort of almost story game as the hobby has matured.

Other games and genres seem as likely to create problems in this regard. Superheroes can cover almost anything from an Avengers type set up to the adventures of the Inferior Five. There are lots of different tones too; and you can find misunderstandings here. My sole attempt to run Mutants and Masterminds was pitched to be a neo Silver Age, no killing, prisoners escaping and so on. At character gen it seemed like everyone was on the same page and it was only when we started playing that it became clear that a couple of players weren't on board and would prefer to take more... terminal steps against the villains. That, along with issues with the system, led me to shut the game down after about six weeks. I felt then, as I do now, that none of us were going to be happy and it was best to move onto something else. If someone had said they weren't happy before we'd started playing, we could have shifted things to a set up that suited everyone. A friend is running M&M now and has set his game up so that the planet is undergoing a 'Year One' situation with superpowers emerging. At the pitch everyone agreed to play, its only now that he's wondering if they expected something more four colour.

As a player I've found that this sort of miscommunication can be quite common. It's assumed that you'll know what a game of whatever will look like, or the pitch has been something of a fait accompli with little explanation of what's actually expected. Usually no input has been invited, but equally none has been offered.  No wonder GMs get accused of being wannabe novelists if they don't consult their players. It's a perfect circle of no communication, you might as well mime the whole game out; the effect would be much the same.

If the players are all adults, surely they have an equal responsibility to put forward what they want in the game, even if it takes the form of a 'pretty cool'. So, 'hey could we do a casino heist, that'd be pretty cool', or 'could we do something with a cannibal cult, that'd be pretty cool', 'hey could we shamelessly rip off Firefly, because I love that show'. All of these are valid examples of 'pretty cools', and all are examples of players directly contributing to the game, without the interface of their character getting between them and their desires.The nice thing about this is that you can offer them at any time, during character gen, partway through a game, or whenever.

One might argue that's true of almost anything in game, from whether the game is boring to whether you want it to go in a certain direction. It's definitely true if you're feel freaked out because a game is too scary or it's become a trigger for something you're uncomfortable with. This isn't to say you should drop the game but expressing your concerns is surely the mark of a good player? There must surely be give and take between GM and the players?

From where I'm standing, the GM has a duty to at least pitch the game, at a level where players can input, and players have a duty to be honest about what they want. If you don't want to shamelessly rip off Firefly, then say you're not interested and either offer to run something yourself, ask if the GM has a different game they could pitch, or sit out until something more to their taste comes around. The point is that players should never, ever, go into a game with a half arsed nod and an 'okay'. That's not a recipe for success, but for the game to fall over in six weeks. Unless you're really dealing with players who actually will play anything (fat chance frankly), or you're running the most vanilla game imaginable, you're bound to trip over something that puts your players out... and which they should have talked to you about.

But... unless you're lucky and have that special group... its probably best to stick to 'don't be a dick' and hope.

To Me My Minions!

Hello and welcome to Hastur's Hamster, the home of the Great Old One's pet (yeah he doesn't like to talk about it).

This blog is spinning off my RPG related posts away from Shores of Night (my main blog). I'm going to be writing in a similar vein to my pieces there, about group dynamics, the way that games set out to achieve their aims and about my quest to find a new gaming group. 

I'll also put up some 'one sheet' pieces, where I try to give a quick overview of campaign ideas that can be taken and used by anyone. This could be anything from a setting inspired by a mixture of Global Frequency and Future Foundation (where the characters are busy fighting the threats that might arise from Science! in an increasingly unstable world), or something that's part Pern, part Neolithic Society/stone age and part post apocalypse where squatter civilisations are guided by the voices of AIs, and techno shamans follow rituals they barely understand to commune with their 'gods'. In addition to that I'll post links to Sharoban, my fantasy setting which is long overdue being taken out of its mothballs, and to an as yet unnamed Supers setting which is all about corporate heroes and tries to apply some real world stuff to the genre (more 'you'll be burned out in ten years unless you want experimental cyborg kneecaps' than 'Superman couldn't catch Lois Lane because he'd turn her into chunky salsa').

Coming up you can look forward to, if that's the right way of putting it, some pieces about the player's role; how do we define it, and is 'don't be a dick' enough of a mantra for good play? I'll also be looking at the question of how ambitious games should be, is it wise to plan for a multi year epic or should short, tight plotting be the norm?

I hope you'll join me. 

Now... I'm just going to for a run on my wheel and cause the doom of an alien civilisation. 

Cheers