Beginning to Doubt That RPG Play Can Be Substantively "Character-Driven"

Umbran said:

Um...

2nd Edition AD&D came out in 1989.

White Wolf games was founded in 1991, and Vampire: The Masquerade came out that year, 1991.

Did someone from TSR travel ahead a couple years in time, to co-opt rules that hadn't been published yet?

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Haven't read anymore of the thread yet (and likely won't be able to this evening...which may portend my getting behind and losing interest in the thread).

But come on man. I don't want to make this thread take a left turn, so I won't belabor this too much. But you had to know the point of my post wasn't about whether White Wolf co-opted AD&D 2e or AD&D 2e co-opted White Wolf. Its completely irrelevant to the point. The point is, these two systems came out 30 years ago at roughly the same time (which is why I can't recall the exact year that they came out without looking it up).

The point is, roughly 30 years ago, a textual analysis shows that Zeb Cook's DMG had a marked departure from the disposition of fair and neutral refereeing (with consistent rulings and extreme care in consistent mediation and adjudication and certainly care and openness in changing rules) that came before it...to an ethos that coincides markedly with White Wolf's Golden Rule; GM as storyteller and entertainer and changing/reinterpreting the rules at any time and/or fudging your application of them for the sake of (the GM's perception of) compelling storytelling and entertainment is a virtue. And canonical modules during that period (specifically the Dragonlance modules) presuppose this GMing ethos.

The point was simple; a TTRPGing culture accreted around these things in the late 80s early 90s...and that culture has become a major (the major?) orthodoxy of TTRPGing culture, though it is a clear departure from an ethos of neutral, fair, consistent refereeing, following the rules, making neutral/consistent/fair/transparent rulings of corner cases (not rulings in the interest of promoting specific outcomes that produce the type of storytelling and entertainment that the GM is mandated to push toward), and integrity of outcomes as a byproduct of all of the former. Mentzer's guidance goes so far as to tell GMs its not fair to change the rules until everyone agrees with the change (putting the GM in a first among equals environment)!

89 vs 91, who co-opted whom...it doesn't matter. Storytelling and entertainment suddenly have primacy over fairness and neutrality...and that shift has implications on play.

chaochou said:

The only way to talk about character-driven play is to seperate it clearly from GM-driven play, and that means highlighting where play is GM driven. The fact that a lot GM-driven play doesn't want to admit what it is, isn't my problem.

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I think this is pretty fundamental.

To requote some of the OP:

innerdude said:

I continue have a sense of lack, or dissatisfaction with one particular aspect of my play experiences---namely, I have found it to be nigh impossible to drift into what I would consider a true "character-driven" style of play.

<snip>

in my experience, even the best of these character "hooks" or inputs don't seem to make a difference in driving an in-play narrative of substantive character change---i.e., the experience of watching a character materially change in ways that are fundamental to their place in the fiction.

<snip>

the actual mechanical interplay of rules in a typical roleplaying game experience does almost nothing to promote the kind of self-reflexivity that is necessary for the kind of deep-rooted emotional resonance found in literature.

<snip>

though I find "Railroad GM-ing" to be highly distasteful and generally anathema to the types of RPG experiences I personally would enjoy, I can begin to glimpse why a GM might try to use specific GM Force©™ in a campaign---because they think that the application of force to the "story" is a means to getting to some of that emotional resonance. It's a recognition on the part of the GM that emotional resonance is possible through a "story focus" that leads to potential meaning. Unfortunately, it seems that the application of GM Force runs counter to both endpoints---it detracts from the aspects of player freedom and choice, while only minimally (if at all) leading to the resonance made possible through the act of "pure creation" of fiction whole cloth.

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The OP has clearly addressed the generation of emotional resonance by means of the creation of fiction out of whole cloth. And he has made it clear that this is not what he is looking for. He is looking for emotional resonance generated by the actual mechanical interplay of rules that produces material changes to a character that are fundamental to that character's place in the fiction.

@Sadras's example is an examle of the creation of fiction out of whole cloth - by players rather than GM, which is (as best I can tell) why it was a "subplot" that other participants barely noticed until the players performed their pre-arranged climactic scene. Given that (to quote Sadras) "I and the other player present did nothing but watched in awe as this all played out in a game of D&D. No rolls were needed" I can only assume that this performance didn't take place during some moment of crisis in the "main arc" but rather was insulated from the main arc in terms of its occurrence and its consequences.

I'm happy to take Sadras's word that this was a terrific experience for that group. But I think it's clear that it's not an example of what the OP is looking for, and is certainly not a counterexample to the claim that a necessary condition of getting what the OP wants is to drop the notion of "the adventure" or "the main story" that is authored by the GM.

Moving away from GM-driven play, though necessary, is not sufficient. My current Classic Traveller game is not GM-driven - it's driven by a mixture of random determination (Classic Traveller is a very dice-driven game) and framing in response to player cues. But those cues aren't the sort of character-based ones that will produce the sort of play the OP is looking for. To allude to Hamlet's Hit Points (which I think was mentioned upthread) the game is much closer to James Bond, or perhaps Alien, than to Casablanca, or Blade Runner.

To actually address the OP;s concerns - ie to discuss approaches and techniques and systems that will allow what he is interested in to happen in a RPG - requires being honest about what we ourselves are doing in our play, and what sorts of experiences it is producing.

pemerton said:

To give a simple (simplistic?) example: in a fairly light fantasy-ish game, you might have a kinght or paladin who, via class/playbook-type choice plus evident trope is all about honour, justice, upholding the right, etc. And that character might make a friend. And then it turns out that friend is a heathen, or assassin, or something similar that a knight or paladin would typically hate and oppose. Now the player, in playing their character, has to choose between abstract values and concrete friendship. That could produce the sort of thing the OP talks about.

I say all this because it lets me beat my drum again: more than formalised devices like Beliefs, Aspects etc, I think that the sort of play the OP describes depends upon robust action resolution, so that consequences can be bindingly established in the fiction in ways beyond table consensus or GM fiat. For instance, in the example I just gave we are going to need mechanics to adjudicate what happens when the PC confronts his/her friend, so that definite fallout of some form or other is generated that the player can't just ignore.

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Here I think it's up to the player of the knight to, thinking as the knight would think, decide what to do; whether to value friendship above values, or values above friendship, or try to somehow balance both. The rest of the table, the GM, and the game system: none of these need be involved in resolving that decision - if in fact it's to be resolved right now; maybe the knight instead finds a way of (or an excuse for) punting the decision down the road a ways - it's all down to the knight's player.

Even more fun if this friend is in fact another PC.

(You can see that I'm a bit obsessed by the centrality of establishing and building on consequences as the key to all this. Which is also where I see risk being a real thing.)

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Consequences are important, no doubt there. However the presence or absence of risk (and of all the possible consequences) might not be apparent until it's too late; and even then consequences can be malleable depending on the situation:

You try to persuade the Duke to give you his son's hand in marriage [benefit: marry into nobility; risk: make an ass of yourself and get laughed out of court] but you (for whatever reason) botch the roleplay so badly that the last thing you hear is "Off with her head!" from the Duke [unforeseen consequence!] as you're hauled off to the dungeon after having unforgivably insulted his forebears.

So now you're up against it. But maybe the Duke has a change of heart during the night and decides head-lopping is too harsh a punishment for merely talking like a drunken peasant, so he instead decides to make you what he sees you as - a peasant - and just strips you of all titles, status and land [altered consequence] and punts you out in the street. [from here this story could go all over the place, entirely dependent on what you-as-player do next]

Umbran said:

With respect, I think that's backwards. The extent that the player puts the character at risk to the game mechanics, that is the game driving the character.

Character driven play is where the nature of the character determines what happens in play, not the other way around.

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Ok, I've sifted through some posts briefly and this caught my attention. I guess its Umbran and Manbearcat disagree night, because I disagree with this.

Its both. Its:

Character driven play is where the nature of the character determines what happens in play (relevant conflict-framing) and what happens in play reveals the nature of the character (the fiction that emerges post-conflict).

Rinse, repeat

Put another way: The character:game relationship is synergistic and reciprocal.

Feels odd to have this dispute with someone who is a big fan of Fate.

Ovinomancer said:

I'm not sure I agree. I think that Force can be present and still have arcs. In other words, I can see (and have played) a game where some of it is the GM's plotline while other parts have room for player directed play. Sometimes, these line up and you get character arcs. But, as with anything ad hoc, it's not predictable.

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I'm trying to organize my thoughts in another fashion that may tease out or disagreement.

Let me go to another arena; Mixed Martial Arts.

No clue if you're a martial artist or a fan of the sport.

Last Saturday Dominick Reyes and Jon Jones fought for the Light Heavyweight Championship in the UFC.

The State Athletic Commissions provide the judges for these events. This particular event took place in Texas (which has had relatively few events).

One of the judges the TSAC provided was a huge problem for 3 fights (I am the last person in the world to buy into Conspiracy Theories, but combat sports have been riddled with corruption for a century...so this level of gross incompetence is...questionable).

The Championship fight is a 5 rounder.

The overwhelming consensus among everyone watching (and the overwhelming % of professional mixed martial artists) was that Reyes, the Challenger, won the first 3 rounds (and pretty handily), while Jones won the last 2 (when Reyes faded). That should trivially yield a 48-47 decision for (new Champion) Reyes.

Reyes had more Output, landed more Significant Strikes, and Stuffed 2 Takedowns/and repelled attempted Clinches in the 2nd and 3rd round (that Jones had to try to initiate because he was losing on his feet and was dinged).

Yet...somehow...somehow that judge scored TWO of those first three rounds for Jones.

Ultimately, the judges completely stole that outcome from Reyes and inexplicably handed the decision to Jones.

---

So what I'm trying to convey with this is, yes, Reyes was able to "characterize his PC" in the span of those 5 rounds...but the "Force" of the judges utterly overwhelmed the gamestate and their "metaplot" basically subordinated Reyes' agency, dictating the outcome, despite the fact that his work should have cast him as the protagonist.

Instead, he becomes just another "also-ran" in the legacy of Jon Jones (DMPC?).

I guess my sense of it is that, like judging in an MMA bout or referees on a football field, Force is a zero-sum game. Whatever the outcome was going to be without Force we will never know...because ultimately, it radically changed the gamestate at its moment of deployment and therefore forever perturbed the trajectory of play, those effects rippling from that point forward.

Its a pretty harsh purity test, I admit. Because of the inherent imbalance of power at the table, GM-driven or character-driven is binary, not a continuum. If a GM can subvert the gamestate to his/her will once, the participants know it can (and surely will) happen again at any point. That is the psychology that looms like a Sword of Damocles over the table. This is why we have the "Murderhobo" legacy in D&D. Play degenerates to (a) players always engaging in violence as the arena of dispute-settlement because that is the only arena that is (mostly) "Force-proof" and (b) players willfully making no relationships/ties/laying down roots and (c) willfully not engaging with content that the GM is trying to impose upon them.

EDIT - and to reiterate, games that feature Force/Illusionism as a gamestate-dictating/fiction-generating technique is a feature, not a bug, to the "Storyteller and Entertainer" ethos of games. Players who participate in those games want/expect that.

Manbearcat said:

Character driven play is where the nature of the character determines what happens in play (relevant conflict-framing) and what happens in play reveals the nature of the character (the fiction that emerges post-conflict).

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Back in the beginning of the thread, I noted these two as separate processes, not necessarily linked. A game can have one, the other, or both.

Feels odd to have this dispute with someone who is a big fan of Fate.

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As noted - in Fate, these are separate processes.

Though, let us note - in Fate, scene framing is not strongly determined by the character's nature - that comes in during resolution, as the characters invoke aspects, and they are compelled. The original framing may have nothing to do with the character, but the nature of the character seeps into the scene. I find this to be a major bonus for the GM - they don't have to structure and frame everything with the characters specifically in mind, because the game will insert those things as they go. Indiana Jones runs into snakes not because the GM thought ahead and placed them there, but because he's Indiana Jones, and he's got a thing about snakes....

Play revealing things about the characters in Fate is exactly what I was referring to when I mentioned the player having a choice to change the nature of their character, without any pressure from system or GM: at a milestone, a player can rename an Aspect, changing fundamentals of their character. But that's "can", not "must."

Umbran said:

The OP talks about play that leads to a change in the foundation of the character.

In common RPG parlance, risk is... a chance of harm. The GM creates challenges with risks in them - if you don't find ways to deal with the challenges, the consequences imposed by the GM are things the PCs don't like.

That's not the same thing as play that leads a player to realize that their character, as a result of things that they have experienced, will experience change. There is no "risk" if the choice to change or not is entirely in the hands of the player. "I watched my best friend die - I used to be a happy-go-lucky bard, but now... I am driven by vengeance!" is character driven play that has nothing to do with "risk".

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I agree with this.
Just to be clear I was not offering my in-game example as one of risk or things at stake.
I merely said my in-game example was one I believe reflected a dramatic character arc.

chaochou said:

The only way to talk about character-driven play is to seperate it clearly from GM-driven play, and that means highlighting where play is GM driven. The fact that a lot GM-driven play doesn't want to admit what it is, isn't my problem.

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See this where things got sticky.
You're equating character-driven play with dramatic character arc whereas I am not.
Are you now saying by your definition they are one and the same thing?

innerdude said:

I'm not advocating for GM force to change a character. Nor am I asking for "forced change" from the system, if the player doesn't want it.

But that's the key phrase---if the player doesn't want it.

I'm suggesting that I'd actually like to play a game with players who DO want it. I want them to readily accept and embrace that their characters are actually going to change in ways more meaningful than leveling up. And if by accepting that as a core premise, the players come to find that the system is testing and stretching their characters in ways they didn't expect, then that's precisely the point.

If the default point of view is, "My character should only ever change in ways that I, the player, choose to allow them to change or at most by adhering to stated character building rules," then we've started off on the completely wrong foot for "character-driven" play in the first place.

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Thanks for this clarification. I believe I can now see why you wanted perhaps the GM to be included within the example I provided.

pemerton said:

I would have hoped it was fairly clear that by "dramatic character arcs" I meant what the OP referred to, that is, emotionally-affecting changes in the charcter(s) that are produced via application of the mechanics in play.

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I'm happy if your intention in the use of dramatic character arcs in the excerpt of your post was in relation to application of the mechanics in play. It did not specifically state it so hence I took issue with the comment.

There can't be dramatic character arcs if "the story" is already written (by the GM or the module author or whomever) and the GM already knows what is to come.

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What about this -
Character discovers secret backstory by DM (I know) which could emotionally-affect a change in the character (in 5e one could pick up or lose a personality trait) via application of a mechanic (homebrewed or whatever, you could use the Sanity rules here for instance). This GM force (via Backstory) could be negated by the player via a character resource (resource could be an Inspiration point, or sacrificing it for a period of time).

Isn't that similar to your Prince Valiant RPG but in THIS instance there is a "story already written by the GM or module or whomever" and the GM knows how the adventure might unfold, but now there has been a dramatic character arc produced via application of the mechanics in play?