Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
We don't actually know this. The responses to my asking for specifics here are cagey, to say the least. There seems to be no specifics on what the GM's role was as far as conversation goes and there's also a lot of switching between pre-0 and 0 as far as discussion on the issue goes, so I'm not at all certain that your postulation is correct. It would seem very odd to me that the GM would announce a character creation mini-game, ask that players not create characters prior to session 0, and then immediately engage in assisting character creation. The response so far is that the GM was present -- which is a very careful thing to say.If the DM was present, heard the entire conversation the players were having where they designed their characters, and disapproved of that action... why did he wait until the next session to raise objections?
Because it was pre-zero that this conversation happened. So, if he disapproved, this was within plenty of time to say so.
Was it? I missed the clarification. Are you certain this is correct (I looked back and didn't find it, but I'm not rereading the whole thread).Just to make sure we are clear, it was not only "it was habit for this player" it was additionally "habit for this group with this DM."
Roger that, and then what happens? Do you insist that the Pepsi now must be consumed and nothing else could be?Not sure if that changes your opinion, but if I'm the guy who brings pepsi to the game, and I always bring pepsi to the game. And the DM asks me to not bring Pepsi... It is fairly likely that if I bring it, it is because I'm in the habit of doing so, and forgot, rather than choosing to purposefully ignore him.
Your last is stretching too far. I'm not interested in leveraging the players' connections unless they put them in play themselves. Instead, if Character A has a strong bond to Character B, it improves play. If the relationship is a mercenary one, it really doesn't. Now, I'll grant that many players establish this weak bond and then do the "but we're PCs, so of course we help each other" thing, so sure. But, that's playing against or orthogonally to the establish relationships rather then with them.Wow, again, we seem to be shifting gears a lot here.
The DM wants a connection between the two characters.
Players: "I hired him to protect me"
You: "That is nothing, no connection, no loyalty. There is no way for me to leverage this against you."
I guess you like stories where the characters are just hired hands and don't really have any reason to care about each other, huh? See, hyperbole and strawmanning other's arguments doesn't really work very well. I prefer connections to be actual connections rather than mercenary transactions. There's zero reason for the illusionist character to care about his hired guard except that the hired guard guards them. This isn't a character connection, it's a hireling. It's only the "fellow PC" meta-connection that lets this kind of thing function.I mean... you didn't ask them to have a personal, loyal connection and deeply held feelings for each other. You just asked for a connection, and a contractual connection is an connection. If you want them to be secret lovers or something, you need to ask for more than "just have a connection"
Sorry, but did "town guard" come with anything related to the town you were the guard of? Or was it a label, and you didn't know your way around, or the major NPCs in town, or have any relationships to the town or duties or responsibilities to it? "Town Guard" is generic right up until you pick the town you're the guard of, and then it's specific. There's nothing in the presented backstory that makes it unique at all to Saltmarsh. Town guard at least has to pick a town and then gets tied into that -- it's not nearly as generic as you're trying to claim.And.... how is "it works in any town" a criticism? I made a character who was a town guard once. He could have been a town guard in any town. I could have made it work if the setting suddenly shifted, does that mean I'm not connected to the town I'm in? I mean, what if a player came with "I'm the former mayors son, and I grew up in this town helping the people through many difficult times?" That could be any town. Does that somehow make this less of an embedded story?
Yes. Motivations are what drives the character to action. If money is the motivation, then unless the reward is commensurate with the risk and better than what you can do elsewhere, then it's not a motivation to do anything. "Money" only works if you're engaging the meta-motivation of "playing the GM's adventure." You're essentially arguing for employment of meta-motivations instead of character motivations.And attacking that his motivation was money? Are we now demanding that the PCs have not only the proper proficiencies, and the proper connections, but also the proper motivations?
Absolutely, and I have hella fun games. Because it's not really demanding that much -- make a character that engages and is engaged by the themes of the game.You've moved into wanting such highly specific things, do you truly demand so much from your players?
Sorry, did you think I made that claim? I didn't. Each character in my game already had a backstory when they showed up. This wasn't an argument for not having any player backstory prior to the mini-game to tie players to the themes of the game, but instead suggesting that they not be fully locked in so they can adapt to what happens during the minigame. If the players wanted their backstories integrated into the mini-game, that was up to them in how they framed their scenes or in how they narrated the results. I couldn't care less. My point was that if you did show up with a fully formed character, then you were going to have issues because you couldn't fully control the outcomes of the minigame -- you would end up friendly with one faction and at odds with another and you couldn't predict that. Further, if you had a fully formed character, with the BIFTs all set up, then you'd be out of room to add Bob the Fighter as your best bud because of the cool thing you did with each other raiding a Dustman outpost for burial trinkets because you were hired by a mage to do it. The goal of the minigame wasn't to thwart character building, but to engage the characters deeply in the setting and each other from the start.I've read through your little mini-game three times. Do you know what I don't see?
Any reason at all that it can not work with characters that have partial backstories already created. I see no reason that what you describe could not have been done with characters that are more than 85% completed. In fact, having mostly finished characters would seem to make that game easier, since they have hooks and connection points in their stories already.