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A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7581118" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I've never had a player decide that his/her PC was a noble during the course of play.</p><p></p><p>But I have had a player do something similar. At the start of the campaign we thought his PC was an animal (fox) that had been able (through meditation and other appropriate practices) to transform itself into a human (inspired by the movie Green Snake). At the start of the campaign the character was living in a monastery, where he had been taken by the monks when they found him dazed and confused in the nearby forest.</p><p></p><p>(The system was Rolemaster and, mechanically, the character was a human with variant stat modifiers and access to the Control Lycanthropy skill, which he could use to turn into a fox.)</p><p></p><p>But some time into the campaign (maybe a year or so?) the player decided that his PC was really an animal lord who had been banished to earth from Heaven, and stripped of memories and power, for some transgression. This revelation was authored by the player between sessions, and presented in the form of a written reflection by the abbot of the monastery, expressing doubt that an ordinary fox could really, no matter how diligently it tried, turn itself into a human having the full capabilities (which included mentalism spellcasting) that this person had.</p><p></p><p>This is c 20 years ago now, and so I can't remember the details of what the player established at that time, and how much of the PC's backstory came out subsequently during play - the campaign involved a significant animal lords arc (derived from the module OA7 Test of the Samurai) and that certainly drove some of this. The change of backstory certainly gave me material from which to establish ingame situations, like attempts by Constables of Hell to capture the PC and take him back to Heaven to be tried for his wrongful violation of the terms of his banishment (ie by living as a human rather than a fox).</p><p></p><p>This didn't cause problems. It propelled the game forward. As did other elements of the PCs in that game, like the social connections and obligations of the two noble PCs, and the affair that their retainer was having with a daughter of a powerful dragon family. (Which also had soap-operatic connections to one of the animal lords.)</p><p></p><p>As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread, there is a Gygaxian/Arnesonian tradition of PCs as "a small guy without any special place in the world", rootless wanderers with no motivations other than entering dungeons to beat traps and collect loot, and no social connections other than the NPCs they meet in the dungeon and, perhaps, the armies they establish when they reach name level (turning the game from a RPG in the stricter sense into a combination of wargame and Diplomacy).</p><p></p><p>But that's not the only possible approach, and games won't break if players play more socially and cosmologically grounded characters. I didn't need to bring any new RPG tech to Rolemaster to make the campaign I've described work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7581118, member: 42582"] I've never had a player decide that his/her PC was a noble during the course of play. But I have had a player do something similar. At the start of the campaign we thought his PC was an animal (fox) that had been able (through meditation and other appropriate practices) to transform itself into a human (inspired by the movie Green Snake). At the start of the campaign the character was living in a monastery, where he had been taken by the monks when they found him dazed and confused in the nearby forest. (The system was Rolemaster and, mechanically, the character was a human with variant stat modifiers and access to the Control Lycanthropy skill, which he could use to turn into a fox.) But some time into the campaign (maybe a year or so?) the player decided that his PC was really an animal lord who had been banished to earth from Heaven, and stripped of memories and power, for some transgression. This revelation was authored by the player between sessions, and presented in the form of a written reflection by the abbot of the monastery, expressing doubt that an ordinary fox could really, no matter how diligently it tried, turn itself into a human having the full capabilities (which included mentalism spellcasting) that this person had. This is c 20 years ago now, and so I can't remember the details of what the player established at that time, and how much of the PC's backstory came out subsequently during play - the campaign involved a significant animal lords arc (derived from the module OA7 Test of the Samurai) and that certainly drove some of this. The change of backstory certainly gave me material from which to establish ingame situations, like attempts by Constables of Hell to capture the PC and take him back to Heaven to be tried for his wrongful violation of the terms of his banishment (ie by living as a human rather than a fox). This didn't cause problems. It propelled the game forward. As did other elements of the PCs in that game, like the social connections and obligations of the two noble PCs, and the affair that their retainer was having with a daughter of a powerful dragon family. (Which also had soap-operatic connections to one of the animal lords.) As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread, there is a Gygaxian/Arnesonian tradition of PCs as "a small guy without any special place in the world", rootless wanderers with no motivations other than entering dungeons to beat traps and collect loot, and no social connections other than the NPCs they meet in the dungeon and, perhaps, the armies they establish when they reach name level (turning the game from a RPG in the stricter sense into a combination of wargame and Diplomacy). But that's not the only possible approach, and games won't break if players play more socially and cosmologically grounded characters. I didn't need to bring any new RPG tech to Rolemaster to make the campaign I've described work. [/QUOTE]
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