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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Lanefan]

You seem to be missing the point. I am not asking how one would introduce risk in this context. I am challenging the idea that risk is necessary at all.

...

This rather hinges on a point - "play" is not limited to "interaction with the rule set".

It's a very long time since I agreed with @Umbran on much but what's said here is bang on.

Playing through a character's arc - which may or may not involve significant changes to said character - might rarely if ever involve 'risk' and might never need to touch the game rules.

And to follow on: correct me if I'm misinterpreting, but it seems 'risk' in this context is being used as shorthand for 'potential for forced changes to a character's feelings or emotions that its player doesn't necessarily want'; which means I'm in effect risking my agency over my character.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for a second suggesting my character's arc should always go smoothly and have everything neatly fall into place. There'll be failures along the way, possibly up to and including complete failure to reach or even get close to whatever end goal I've set, and that's just part of the game.

What I'm advocating for is the right to retain control over my character even in a failure situation - let me as its player determine how it reacts in-character to said failure, and-or determine what it does next, rather than having my reaction forced on me by the game system (or worse, the GM).

The same applies if I am the GM: what my NPCs do-say-think should as far as possible* not be system-forced but should come instead from what that character is and how it perecives the situation.

* - I throw this qualifier in to acknowledge that not every NPC the party meets is going to have a fully fleshed out characterization or personality. Those that do, however, should be able to ignore the forced-resolution mechanics just like a PC can.

 

[Umbran]

I would say that risk is only a necessary component for the game to be "substantively character-driven."

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.

 

[Umbran]

Player agency is a valued currency - one playstyle features it and another doesn't but lies about it.

Mod Note:

You probably want to be very careful about characterizing things as "lies". You should also probably take care in the challenging attitude. This is supposed to be a friendly discussion. If you become antagonistic and demanding, there's a problem.

 

[billd91]

I would say that risk is only a necessary component for the game to be "substantively character-driven."

Sure, you can play your character as having changed due to in-fiction events in any role-playing game, but for character change to be the point of the game (which is how I read the phrase, "substantively character-driven," used in the thread's title), the game itself must be able to drive character change.

"the game itself must be able to drive"...Drive as in force? Or drive as in elicit?

 

[prabe]

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

I suppose it's possible to have what happens in play alter the nature of a character, and then further events be determined by the character's nature. Seems a little like what has been said elsewhere in the thread about this not being a pure (clean? simple?) dichotomy. Doesn't make the definition wrong, just pointing out that the boundaries are porous and indistinct.

 

[innerdude]

....correct me if I'm misinterpreting, but it seems 'risk' in this context is being used as shorthand for 'potential for forced changes to a character's feelings or emotions that its player doesn't necessarily want'; which means I'm in effect risking my agency over my character.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for a second suggesting my character's arc should always go smoothly and have everything neatly fall into place. There'll be failures along the way, possibly up to and including complete failure to reach or even get close to whatever end goal I've set, and that's just part of the game.

What I'm advocating for is the right to retain control over my character even in a failure situation - let me as its player determine how it reacts in-character to said failure, and-or determine what it does next, rather than having my reaction forced on me by the game system (or worse, the GM).

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.

From what I know of your background (long, long loooooooong time AD&D 1e player who expects to play a single campaign anywhere from 5-7 years), your perspective makes perfect sense.

And while it's a valid perspective for a certain style of play, it's not a style I'm particularly interested in.

 

[pemerton]

I once again provide the quote to which I objected (refer below). I never once mentioned that characters were being changed as a result of play. That is all you.

The quote you're objecting to is from me:

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.

Doubly so if the GM has already decided what that story will be independently of the development by the players of their characters.

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.

Here is your account of the events in your game:

Just this weekend I witnessed this - an incredible piece of invested roleplaying between two sibling PCs. This had all been pre-thought out by the players that at some point they would have an epic argument about their relationship and their "shared" beliefs that would effectively forever change them and their relationship.

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, just an intense honest conversation that flowed naturally between two characters.

<snip>

I'm amazed how some players are able to weave invested storylines through the main arc.

this fallout was already pre-planned by the players upon character generation and although they had laid the bread crumbs for this story arc along the way (now evident), both myself and the other players had missed them. We had noticed the peculiarities but had not picked up that this was going to explode.

<snip>

All this played out through unscripted dialogue.

Needless to say, the player of the paladin is retiring her character (for now) - while the warlock now free from the burden of the lie, looked to continue on a different path (new class).

<snip>

Might we revisit these characters down the line, realistically yes since they play an integral roll - but that will require some discussion with the players about their characters, so that we may find an agreeable way to re-introduce them to each other and the story.

As I understand this, there occurred - parallel to the GM's "main story" - a distinct story that was collaboratively authored by two players which most of the rest of the group didn't really feel the force of until those two players, by agreement, brought it to a head. The result is that, at least for the moment, one of the PCs is being retired from play.

I don't see how that shows what I said to be wrong, because it's not an example of what the OP is talking about. The players don't seem to have put their characters at risk. There characters don't appear to either have driven, or to have been changed by, the actual play of the game as that unfolds via action declarations and their resolution. As you present it, it just looks like collaborative authorship of a subplot alongside what I take to be (given you presented it as contradicting my claim) your own GM-authored main plot.

 

[pemerton]

For this type of character driven play to function, the players need to choose (some number of) beliefs for their characters, which can be placed into conflict during play. This is (more or less) what beliefs in Burning Wheel are for, they are cues from the player about what sort of things the game master should challenge the character with.

I think that it can be done also if the beliefs (or similar) are presented implicitly rather than expressly on the sheet. For instance, they might be implied by a class or playbook selection. Or be manifested through the play of the character.

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.

Sure, you can play your character as having changed due to in-fiction events in any role-playing game, but for character change to be the point of the game (which is how I read the phrase, "substantively character-driven," used in the thread's title), the game itself must be able to drive character change.

I agree, but for the reasons I've just given I don't think this has to be via direct mechanical operation upon mechanical elements like Beliefs.

Another example - better than my toy one - is the Apocalypse World actual play sketch that @Neonchameleon posted somewhere upthread. The key there was that the MC established situations and narrated consequences ("made moves" in AW parlance) that put the PCs' commitments under pressure, and then doubled down on initial outcomes to keep that pressure up and see what happened.

(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.)

 

[Lanefan]

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.

I wonder if our definitions of "character-driven play" are the least bit aligned.

I see "character-driven play" as meaning, at its root, play where the characters (or more precisely the players in character) rather than the GM set the context and tone and sequence of play, and thus to a large or complete extent drive whatever storyline the game generates along with much of the day-to-day play that gets it there. The GM is still responsible for the setting, and for enforcement of the system rules when-where appropriate, but the characters drive the game both in the short and long term.

They can and often will (but don't have to) still change in ways far more meaningful than simply levelling up or as reflected by any other number, but those changes and any results thereof or reactions thereto remain under the player's control. And yes, a character might find itself in a situation where it's being tested or stretched in ways unexpected.

Reading what you say here, it almost seems like you're looking for the game to in some ways drive the characters via more of a mandated* or expected set-up of emotional tests and trials, which seems a counterintuitive way to use the term 'character-driven play': the characters really aren't driving. Couple that with emotion-binding resolution mechanics that mean to some extent the players can't always drive either, and what have you got? It's character-focussed, absolutely, but doesn't seem very character-driven.

* - not exactly the term I want to use but I can't think of a better one right now...I don't want to say 'system-forced' or 'system-demanded'.

From what I know of your background (long, long loooooooong time AD&D 1e player who expects to play a single campaign anywhere from 5-7 years), your perspective makes perfect sense.

This does raise a few yet-unanswered questions:

What real-world time frame are you looking at for a campaign or story arc to unfold?
Are you intending a situation where it's the same characters all the way through?

I ask because both of these can and do make a huge difference to how play unfolds, regardless of anything else.