But all this can be done either in pre-play prep, or in the context of an AP via narration/NPC interaction. I'm not the biggest fan of AP play, but it doesn't have to involve lots and lots of investigatory activity as the GM gradually parcels out the important backstory. The backstory can be downloaded pretty quickly to the players, so that they can start making choices/declaring actions to get things moving.
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You're doing what? Surprising the DM
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Hussar
Legend
N'raac said:
Not if the DM has done his job.
Granted, you're right. There are no guarantees. But, I do know that if you force players to play out situations that they have specifically told you that they don't want to play out, they aren't going to be happy and, speaking for myself, I'm going to far more likely to think that you're simply roadblocking.
OTOH, if the DM has done his homework and knows what the motivations of the players and the PC's actually are, it shouldn't be too difficult to wrap those motivations around complications that engage the players. Now, if you fail to do so and the complication doesn't engage the players, then skip it. Go on to the next thing. Try again.
Instead of ramming complications down the throats of players because it "makes sense for the world", try framing complications that play off what the players tell you they want to do. Don't force players to play out extended RP interactions with NPC's when the players tell you they really don't want to do that. OTOH, if they do start engaging with some NPC, run with it. And, after the session, ask yourself why the players had no problems talking to that kobold prisoner for an hour but bitched after talking to that hireling for ten minutes. What is the difference between those situations? Why did one hook them and the other didn't.
Self examination goes a long way to making sure that scenes will actually carry emotional engagement with the players. I think the biggest problem for me comes when the DM feels that his setting is more important than the players. ((Not the PC's, the actual flesh and blood players at the table)) X happens because it makes sense for the setting is not compelling to me. I don't care. X happens because Bob there has Y in his background that has been established at the table? Fantastic.
So, assuming Bob has not chosen to share full details of his background with the other players, how do we know whether X is happening due to the setting, or due to Bob's background? Is Bob not permitted to have elements of his background that are not public domain? That's just another restriction on player choice. If Bobis highly engaged and you are not, we have established that you believe we should skip forward anyway, so does that give you veto power over Bob's background?
All of this 100%.
In the sort of play that Hussar and I are advocating, backgrounds aren't secret, for the obvious reason that this makes the approach we're talking about unworkable.
[MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] made a similar point upthread, when he commented on the use of secret notes in your time-travelling wizard example upthread.
Correct. (Of course Bob's PC can have secrets from the other PCs. We're talking about the real world of players, here, not the imagined world of PCs.)
That's not to say everything must be public all at once - it can be parcelled out for dramatic effect! But background that is secret generally isn't going to play a big role in driving the game; and, conversely, if it does play a big role than it's not going to be secret for very long. For instance, in my own game one player has some semi-secret background about his PC's connection to various cosmological forces - but given that these are soon going to be put under pressure in the game, they're not going to remain unknown by the other players (nor, probably, by the other PCs).
Hussar
Legend
Thus, group templates. Why would Bob not have chosen to share enough of his background with the group so that we know why X is happening? If Bob has chosen to keep something entirely secret from the group, Bob should not expect the group to want to have anything to do with whatever that secret is.
And, we're right back to the wizard highjacking the game. In your example, the wizard wanted to explore something and someone else in the group absolutely didn't want to. The wizard player then highjacks the game, against the express wishes of the other players, and forces everyone at the table to play what he wants to play.
In my games, this just would not happen. I would know that Bob is highly engaged in X because we sat down, as a group and made our characters together.
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Is it a restriction on player choice? Perhaps. But, these restrictions are done before the game even starts, so, it's not a big deal. I've seen way too many games flushed down the toilet because of some player's "secret background" to have any real interest in this anymore.
Then this is a resriction on player agency. The characters cannot have deep, dark secets which they strive to maintain. All must be out in the open. Is this also the case for the GM? Are there mysteries kept from the players (ie the GM does, indeed, have more control than the players) or is full disclosure required here as well?
It isn't a "better" or a "worse" restriction than any other we have discussed - it cant be measured objectively. But it is a restriction, and one I would consider significant, at least as much as any other resriction on player agency cited in these 113 pages!
As a player, I prefer to minimize the information that I have, but my character does not. Having Bob say "well, Karnak the Kind has a terrible secret that his father is the Unspeakable Tyrant, and he was raised to commit acts of unspeakable cruelty, and now he seeks to redeem his own heinous acts, while keeping them secret due to his shame, and to defeat his father's evil aspiraions, so that's why he's being so secretive". I prefer to see what Karnak does, not have a lengthy PC backstory narative outside the game.
Again, until and unless there is a reveal to the PC's, I don't want a reveal to me, the player. I'm fully OK with Bob's character deciding that he has enough faith in Tony's character (but not the rest of the team) to reveal his dark secret, or Fred's PC ferretting the secret out and using it to blackmail Bob's character, without my character OR ME knowing the secret. That is,in fact, my preference.
If it comes out in play, that's great. If Bob is able to maintain the secret, or Tony helps him do so, that's terrific as well. No, we don't know why Karnak is so fired up to take down the Unspeakable Tyrant, but he IS, and Bob's PC has earned my PC's friendship and loyalty and/or my PC also believes in feedom and liberty, so that's enough for my PC to participate. Or it isn't, and we play out where that goes. I don't need to see behin the curtain - if anything, it diminishes the game, at least for me.
And I don't need to know Darth Vader is Luke's father, or that Leia is Luke's sister, to play Han Solo or Chewbacca (or, for that mater, Luke or Leia) - I know what is in my background, I know I left holes in it. Let's PLAY!
Because mysteries can be fun. Mysteries for both the PC's and the players. Would a dungeon crawl be enhanced or diminished if we just toss the whole map on the table, labelled neatly, and say "OK players, where do you want your PC's, who don't know any of this, to go?" Would the original Star Wars trilogy have been enhanced if the opening verbiage in E IV included "Ben Kenobi, former master of Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader and father of Luke and Leia, alhough neither of the three are aware of this, has spent many years on Tattooine secetly watching young Luke grow to manhood, while Yoda the Jedi Master waits in the Dagobah system"?
How does that make what Bob wants to do any more engaging to me? Regardless of whether we made our characters together, or whether I know that Bob's engagement springs from some element of his background, dark secret or open book, I can clearly see Bob is engaged. You have clearly noted that the fact Bob is clearly engaged does not mean you cannot be disengaged/bored to tears. The rest of the table may well be at various levels along that continuum - whether they know this links to Bob's background, or it just caught his fancy.
It is not "perhaps" a restriction. It is as much or more a restriction in the Player Agency you are demanding as being "required" to play through the desert if you want whatever waits on the other side, or even being plotted to "want" what is on the other side, forcing you to traverse the desert. To players who want control over their characters, I think this may well be deal just as big, or bigger.
I've played lots of great games that were enhanced as PC background elements came to the forefront to the surprise of the other players, rather than "well ho hum, we've known that since character creation". A boring scenaio comes to an end. Boring PC's stick around month after month.
Recalling a D&D Session Past, I recall Sedric. Sedric was a fighter with, to my mind, delusions of grandeur. He refered to himself in the third person, constantly. "Sedric the Hero; Sedric the Brave; Sedric the Strong; Sedric the Mighty" His background told the bigger story. It emerged in play, and the manner in which it emerged in play made Sedric a much more interesting character than if we were handed a dossier at the start of the campaign, and made the rest of our characters in their reactions, more interesting as well. As I think on it, I can't recall any scenario I directly link with that specific game, nor many of the other characters. But I remember Sedric, and I remember "Sedric moments" that linked to the campaign and, I'm sure, arose from long-forgotten campaign events. Knowing everything up front wouldn't just fail to enhance that game - it would have made it far less enjoyable and much less memorable!
Funny - I remember that after many years, but not scenes that bored or disengaged me. I think I prefer having those memories to negative memories against "bad GM's" (for me or in general). Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce! I would much rather have had Sedric along than some nameless, cardboard warrior who thought only in terms of the best tactics for defeating this monster, and served only as a featureless sword arm. Even if he would only appear once, and never be seen again.
Do some characters, some backgrounds, some secrets fall flat? Sure. So pick up and move on. But I find far more have made characters memorable to their players, even if not to the group as a whole, made for richer PC's, and made for a richer dynamic between the PC's. From my perspective, perhaps all the other PC's are just as much sacenery as the NPC's, albeit scenery my PC interacts with to a much greater extent. Just like the setting and those NPC's, I like them to be fleshed out indivdiuals with strengths and weaknesses, that can be discovered over time.
I neither need to, nor want to, see the other PC character sheets, backgrounds, etc. - let it come out in play!
He's not a L5 Fighter with +1 Plate Mail and a +2 Sword. He's Sedric. Sedric the Hero! Not Sedric the Psychoanalyzed Heap of Game Mechanics.
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Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
I have games where the backgrounds are only for the GM to read. There are others where we share some, if not all, of the information - which the PCs still don't know, of course. The players use each others' info to frame some cool scenes - yes players may do that in most of the games I am in. For example, someone might describe the bar maid he's had a fling with the night before as fitting to the description of a lost relative, and the other player might pick up on it and have the PC race off to find her. Spontaneous additions to backstories might happen.
Both works.
Both works.
Lwaxy
Cute but dangerous
This. Totally. It happened to several games in the beginning. Hence, groups now usually make their PCs together, or they agree to not insist on a possible plot line.
If we have a bunch of PCs with sheets only for the GM, the GM makes a list of possible plot themes (without really telling a lot of course) and depending on what the group likes, some PCs have their backgrounds matter, others might not. And that's just fine, too.
Right. Stuff that happens before play isn't a restriction on agency during play. It's in the same general category as deciding what sort of genre or setting to play.
The characters can have deep, dark secrets. But the players are sharing.
And it's not really a restriction on player agency. It doesn't contrain what a player can do in play. But you are correct that it changes the aesthetics of play.
That's fine. Your preferences aren't under attack, here. But you did ask how a GM, or the group more generally, is meant to know what the players want if the game is meant to go the sort of way that Hussar and I have talked about. And we're answering that question. No one is asking you to play that way.
I'm a little less confident now in speaking for [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], because I don't use his style of "group template".
But in my preferred approach, what comes out in play is not background, but new developments and responses to past background. So the reveals in play are about character transformations, not character histories. This has actually become a topic of discussion in the current "So what's wrong with restrictions for paladins?" thread.
The GM's role in dispensing information is interesting and important. It was discussed quite a bit upthread, particularly by [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]. My own approach is to reveal enough backstory to allow the playes to integrate their PCs and to make significant choices, but also to leave room for reveals.
Of course not. But the medium is different. A movie doesn't have the audience also as authors. Whereas the sort of RPGing I enjoy does.
Hussar
Legend
N'raac said:
Let me try this example. We'll keep Bob, because we like Bob.
In your group, Bob makes his character with a secret. He's on the run from some cult. The specifics aren't really important. During play, every so often, NPC's show up and attack the group, trying to capture Bob. Bob remains silent and doesn't reveal his secret. The other players don't have any idea what's going on, just that, from time to time, these NPC's that are completely unrelated to anything they are doing, show up and attack them.
Now, the other players have no investment in this. They have no idea why this is happening. They try to find out, but, because Bob isn't telling, and because they aren't willing to hold Bob's toes over the coals, the rest of the group has to contend with these attacks.
Why would any of the other players possibly care here? What's in it for them?
Now, in my group, this is how this works. When we sit down to make our characters, Bob announces to the group that he wants his character to be on the run from some cult. At least two of the other characters, by the end of character generation, will have some connection either directly to Bob or to the cult. If you've ever looked at the FATE chargen rules, you'll see how that works. I use a somewhat different mini-game, but, the end result is largely the same. At least two other players will have direct connections to Bob and/or Bob's problem.
So, when the cultists show up to capture Bob, the entire group is already engaged. Three of the players (at least) at the table are invested in this plot. And, the other players will be tangentially invested because the other players will be connected to at least two of the three directly engaged characters. ((It might only be one of the three, but, typically it will be two))
So, there is no disconnect. When the cultists show up, everyone gets their game face on because the cultists are important to the table. Everyone is already invested in this. Which speaks to your point about Bob being engaged while I'm not. It won't happen at my table. Well, it won't happen unless I, the DM, have seriously screwed up and totally botched the scenario. But, barring catastrophe, everyone will be invested in the action before the action shows up.
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