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

[Ovinomancer]

I explained my position. It's not this.






It's not a dismissal. It's that he couldn't care enough to disagree with the post.

You can take @Manbearcat's elucidation and other poster's views and either synthesize them or ignore them and insist on being offended. The former may advance discussion. The latter is just trying to shut it down. If you can't engage, then disengage. Insisting you're right to be offended is just noise.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[hawkeyefan]

I explained my position. It's not this.

It's not a dismissal. It's that he couldn't care enough to disagree with the post.

He made a multi-point post in response to yours. If you really think that he didn’t care, then okay....but I think it’s clear that he did.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Manbearcat]

I'm going to chime in on this. The negative aspects of "cheating" are not so much connotation as denotation. The dishonesty and breaking of trust is baked into common use. If you don't intend them, don't use that word.

And if you do intend them, you better be ready to be called out for insulting someone.

Yeah. A bit lazy and short-on-time while trying to get a quick thought up via my phone as I was leaving.

I obviously knew that was a potential hazard as I tried to pre-emptively disarm it. The Astros things popped in my head and I thought it was topical and relevant (because it integrates both the procedural problems and the way it makes us feel; which were both in play in the present conversation), so I figured associating it with the dynamic of TABLE STATE 3 that I was envisioning (where Force isn't welcome) would be illuminating.

I'll get a post up tonight on the binary vs continuum topic.

 

[pemerton]

The OP wanted to talk about the possibility of a particular sort of RPG play, in which the mechanical processes of play produce character-driven, emotion-evoking dramatic arcs.

Some people have replied with examples of such systems, episodes of play that demonstrated what was asked for, analysis of the relevant techniques. Part of that is inevitably addressing how to avoid "Railroad GM-ing" (to use the OP's phrase) - because this is part of showing why the OP's doubts are unwarranted.

Every post in this thread that tells the OP that he can get what he wants through the "Railroad GM-ing" that (per the OP) he finds highly distasteful and generally anathema is off-topic and an attempt at hectoring in respect of RPGing preferences.

 

[Sadras]

Whether or not the RPG version of this counted as character-driven would turn on how all that unfolding stuff was actually done. If the GM just narrates it all through to the moment of revelation than it is certainly not what the OP is talking about, because the mechanical process of play hasn't had any hand in it.

But suppose the backstory is gradually set-up as some sort of interplay between player and GM in the course of play (eg Luke's player fails a check, and the GM reveals an unwelcome truth via narration from the NPC Obi-Wan - My former star pupil killed your father - sorry about that!). And suppose further that the final revelation is the ultimate unwelcome truth narrated in response to some failed check by Luke during the confrontation with Vader. That looks like it could be an instance of what @innerdude was referring to.

I find this incredibly difficult to imagine play out simply on mechanics only because I'd say the GM would have likely already decided or at the very least thought of this before play and could use mechanics, whether successes or failures, to push play towards the desired reveal.

So how do mechanics in this instance help or change whether it was mechanics that revealed it or the DM via the fiction. To me it looks like mechanics are but an illusion of a prethought out idea. What am I missing?

 

[Numidius]

I'm sooo late to the party!

 

[Numidius]

I find this incredibly difficult to imagine play out simply on mechanics only because I'd say the GM would have likely already decided or at the very least thought of this before play and could use mechanics, whether successes or failures, to push play towards the desired reveal.

So how do mechanics in this instance help or change whether it was mechanics that revealed it or the DM via the fiction. To me it looks like mechanics are but an illusion of a prethought out idea. What am I missing?

I don't see a problem either way. Gm or players must refrain from thinking, elaborating, in their own heads?

The point is a roll was botched. Before that a partial success Introduced the argument.
AW has Gm rules for that, also a Gm must prepare Fronts in andvance, to be deployed in game against the Players, or into the setting anyway. These fronts can be actual armies, or just anything fluffy else.

 

[Numidius]

"These" games acknoweldge that Gm Force is a thing, and can be a decisive factor in a well run campaign, and provide rules for this.
The Gm may be adversarial in a "good" way, by the rules, without using Illusionism to calibrate encounters.

The Doom pool in Marvel Heroic.
Soft & Hard Moves in AW. Etc.

In "traditional" games and from a Player perspective: compare Classes in D&D and Careers in WFRP.
In both games You can play a pre-planned campaign where everyone at the table agrees to follow it to the very conclusion, but how does your character development is dealt with?
In D&D basically, whatever happens, you're going to be stuck in your class, maybe multiclassing, but in the end always a fighting machine.
In WFRP you can be an armored knight that suddenly decides having "Enough!" and become a pacifist Agitator, an Initiate of a Cult, and never unsheathe the sword again, and still continue to play meaningfully in the campaign.

In a recent WFRP campaign, on hiatus now, my PC was a young former Cadet, then Captain of a town watch in Marienburg, with a peculiar background that the Gm never cared/had time to use in play.
Long story short, we ended up fighting undead dark elves in a decades long forgotten and unseen Black Ark stuck somewhere on the bretonnian coast.
I failed and botched rolls after rolls, eventually acting under terror and switching-on the magical engines of the Ark in order to flee from a hoarde of undead former slaves of the dark elves.
We, the party, made it to escape, but the Ark is now sent offshore and we know it is heading towards Marienburg (think Amsterdam/Venice mash up), because reasons.

My PC, horrified and remorseful, indulged in drugs, some mud 'shrooms from a previous adventure, and failed (again) the resistance roll...
I started considering out loud the religious implications setting wise, from the POV of my Pc: Khaine is the god of dark elves continent, worshipped by humans assassins and the like in the Old World. Morr is the humanity god of death and proper funeral rites, and happens to be the brother of Khaine.

The next session my PC headed towards the coastal and only town around (from where we arrived after a ship travel), went straight to the cemetery, asked for the priest in charge, and with all his looming, shocked, appearance showed the priest two dark elvish blades from the Ark as proof and demanded being formally initiated to the cult of Morr to recover the will to get back on the Ark and try to stop its journey.

The Gm had no idea of my plan, but quickly asked for an Intimidation roll on my part. This time was a success. I spent some xp and entered the Initiate of Morr Career.
Gm: "Now everything changes for your PC"
Me: "The PC knows he's probably going to die trying to stop the Ark, anyway. But now he has overcome his terror of undeath magic."

We hired two small vessels with crews and are now in deep sea water...