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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7000373" data-attributes="member: 4937">20 years ago or so, I naively had this idea that as a GM, not only should I not steer how a character plays their character, but I shouldn't steer what sort of character a player creates.  I still believe GMs shouldn't play a player's character, but I've learned the hard way that you can't have open ended character construction with no GM input.   Open ended character construction only works if you only have one player - which frankly has been true of most new wave RPGs since about the time Vampire: the Masquerade came along.  Most of them play as written only of there is a single PC protagonist.  If you have a group, you have to invent a new dynamic that isn't what is described by the text.  How VtM was actually played in practice had nothing to do with the game that was described - unless you only had one player.  When you only have one player, the game can be about whatever that player wants it to be about.  You can lavish spot light on the characters internal life, and all sorts of things.  But when you have a group, the game has to be about whatever the group is doing, and that means that every character in the group has to be fairly suitable to whatever the group is actually doing.This means that no matter how "good" or "creative" the player's conception is, as a GM you just can't approve it unless it works with the group.  I learned this trying to jump start a GURPS campaign where basically every player created a massively introverted character who had no reason to be a member of a group and every reason to just want to go their own way, and none of the players really had or was willing to create any motivation for changing that.  I learned that playing a Chill campaign where all of us were good players, and we each ended up creating really cool conceptual characters that could have worked as a team - but which... it dawned on the otherwise skillful GM almost as soon as the first session began, had no role whatsoever in the story he'd prepped.  (Ironically, this may have partly been my fault in trying as a player to help my GM, as he'd given me one hint about the larger campaign he planned ("South America"), and I had tried to 'plan ahead' by creating a character I thought would be very useful, only to find the kicking off point ("Small Town America") was totally different than my expectation and I was a complete fish out of water.)Nowadays, I think a lot about whether the player is going to be happy with the concept, whether the player has a plan for getting along with the rest of the party, and whether the character is going to be fun for everyone before I let anyone play anything.  Once I approve it, it's my fault if it doesn't work out, but nothing comes into the game unless I approve it.I agree that not being able to switch to plan B is a GM fault.  But it can also be something the GM should bring up to the group if he thinks character design is skewing the group toward a different sort of story than was pitched.  If I pitch and the party agrees to a 'heroic' campaign, and everyone shows up with a CN or N rogue, thinking they'll be the cool gray character in the cast, it suggests maybe we should play a game were everyone is a Pirate (or some such) instead.  And if no matter what you pitch, everyone wants to be the rebel with the edgy misfit character, it suggests there is some dysfunctionality going on where people are judging their character solely by how he messes with everyone else ("Loonie" motivation).</blockquote>

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