The "good story/good game" fallacy

[Teflon Billy]

...I will admit freely that part of me feels like a martyr but I also hope that it will mkae things better in the long run.

Yeah, I was just ribbing you

I, as a DM, often fall into a similar trap. When certain PC's give me something to work with, they tend to get more of my attention (which gives them more to work with) and so on and so on and so on...

But, seriosuly, what other way is there to go?

I have players--good players (Show up on time, have their own dice, clean up on their way out)--who, when asked to give me a background for their character show up with "Just a Normal Fighter" or "A wizard who wants more power" or some such crap.

In a case like that, the guy who shows up with something as simple as "Comes from a disgraced noble family" or "Hates the thieves guild becasue they killed his little brother" tends to get most of my attention.

What are you supposed to do with a player who shows up with a background of "Just, you know, a regular guy", they can be great in play (solving problems, tactically fighting etc) but as far as having the setting work with them, they are just null-quantitites.

 

[Berandor]

So in the "forced to make good pcs" thread, I ran across a somewhat common idea that always makes me tear my hair out, and I though I'd finally rant about it.

I get where you're coming from. I've got a few of these rants saved up myself...

The unbalanced party. Sure there's lots of good stories about groups at different power levels. So what? Those stories are often really only about one or two members of those groups, and there is a lot of character delevopment given to the lower powered members which can't be emulated in an RPG. Often the highest level characters are not point of veiw - their powers are more of a plot device.

O.K., I agree with you here in terms of D&D, but not in general terms of an RPG.
Really, the Buffy RPG - for example - is especially meant for players of different power levels to work together, and it works quite well, I've been told.

The moral evolution. Stories about a rat bastard who slowly becomes a better person are, well about that rat bastard. The other characters are there to act in specific ways that effect his moral development. An RPG is a team event, and expecting everyone else to play support characters for your emotional vingette is bad behavior. Likewise, deciding as the DM that you are going to force a change in a PC like those you like in your favorite books is equally bad. And deciding the PCs are all going to be the support characters for your npc's emotional journey? oh dear. This counts for almost all special destinies or journeys of discovery which you allow to effect the main course of the plot instead of being played out in the background.

Again, I have to disagree. I have played these Rat Bastards myself more than once. All you have to do is keep yourself open for possible hooks to your salvation, or to have you slip even deeper into darkness. You must not depend on certain actions and situations to evolve your character.
You can bring great inter-player role-playing into the group with such a character, and they are memorable - even without making everything about your character or hogging the spotlight.
I've done it more than once, and I've seen it done more than once.

Rough and gritty/high body count. Yeah, great stories have been written where death comes early and often even for main characters. Guess what, all of the characters belong to the same "player". The death, pain, loss, torture, rape, insanity, etc are all the idea and execution of the owner of the character they happen to. Though readers may get more or less attached to a character and thus more or less effected by such events, none of them invented the damn character nor have they been quietly working on their own inner story which just got ed over by your "good storytelling".

However, just because the player got attached to the character and/or is working on their own inner story does not mean you must protect the character at all costs, because that also does not make for very good role-playing imo.
I personally feel my character is more ed over by storytelling when he gets protected and secure no matter what he does, or would be in character for him. If I steer a character into a situation where I fully expect him to die, and I know the character knows he'll die, having him survive because the DM doesn't want to be "rough and gritty", he'll (the character, not the DM) be destroyed for me. Honestly, I've retired characters who suffered that fate, or voluntairly forewent resurrection.

There are other examples of good stories that most rpgers already realize won't make a good game. Anything involving keeping something about the main character from the readers and slowly letting them understand what the story is really about won't work where the "readers" and characters are the same.

I have had a player who had part of a great demon in him get to know this exactly how you describe is not possible, and I think it made for a great story. Proof of this is that I already have another player wanting me to keep secrets from his character in my upcoming campaign.

Mysteries can be used, but aren't going to work the same way as they do in the stories. Any of the great paranormal stories where character abilities are unpredictable and able to be 'pushed' in times of great need are mechanically akward. etc.

Yeah, well, that's a very specific complaint with regards to special abilities in relation to D&D rules. Still, even here I want to point out the various systems for Hero Points, Karma, etc. that allow exactly the kind of ability focus you deem "awkward".

Honestly, I think the problems with these kinds of stories are more a question of how they are converted to RPGs and not of their general convertability. A very importnat thing defusing a lot of tension is "not to favor a character over others", and really, that's the best criticism of well-known stories being translated into an RPG. It has nothing to do, though, with body count, power levels or rat bastardry.
It's just that most novels or movies do not include a cast of equally important characters, but feature a single main protagonist or two. Even those with more than one or two main characters often have these characters be seperated, so they don't steal each other's scenes.
And really, that's the biggest challenge for having a good RPG story: How to integrate all players into it, and not just one? How to keep a story consistent with the constant threat of the main character dying?

The problem with stories like "Matrix" is not that Neo is more powerful than Morpheus, Trinity and, say, Niobe, but what happens if Neo dies, can he die before the end of the campaign, what happens if Neo's player leaves the group, and how do you keep things interesting for the others when only one of them is "The One (vol. 6.0)"?

Also, just to have mentioned it: Many stories do not lend themselves well to interactivity, and interactivity is another key feature of good role-playing. (So that makes: 1. consistency in the face of change, 2. integration of all players, 3. interactivity for this post alone )

In a way, you can't lay out too much of the story beforehand, in order to not press your players into a character template and require them to act a certain way. Go with the flow and form the story out of their actions. I know this paragraph is way off-topic for this thread, but it leads to a concise statement that I desperately need to conclude with:

Most RPG campaigns don't start as good stories, but end as one.

Berandor
on a rant of his own

ETA: What is that, Teflon Billy? Six Posts? Wow. I think you're my new hero

 

[RavenSinger]

Amen Brother

I think that was very well put, Berandor. I especially appreciate your comments on the key being maintaining equality amongst the PC's in having importance in the plot. This is something I struggle with in every session with my players, mainly because they are all good and engaging. They all come up with good stuff I want to explore with them, but there are only so many hours in a session.

In a way, you can't lay out too much of the story beforehand, in order to not press your players into a character template and require them to act a certain way. Go with the flow and form the story out of their actions. I know this paragraph is way off-topic for this thread, but it leads to a concise statement that I desperately need to conclude with:

Most RPG campaigns don't start as good stories, but end as one.

Could not have even thought it better myself (much less said it).

--RavenSinger

 

[d4]

some other things that don't seem to translate well into RPGs:

the heroes being OK with the villain escaping...

and more importantly, the heroes getting captured by the bad guys. i've never seen a PC (myself included) take that very well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I very much agree.

The above is very good general advice. One CAN play in games like this contentedly, but it's an exceptional situation.

Good fantasy novels do NOT make good fantasy role-playing, nessecarily.

Another trope that doesn't work well: the badass with a tragic past. This combines the 'rat bastard character redemption' with the unbalanced party, leading to one twinked out Dex monkey who broods over being cast out of his drow society as a rebel and....A*hem....

Which brings up another that doesn't work that well: the badass artifact story. Anything with an ancestral blade of ultimate destruction or a moongem of celestial boom, or whatever.........no workie well.

 

[Mercule]

The unbalanced party.

I have actually seen this work, once or twice. It really only works when the more potent character(s) are willing to act as advisors or mentors to the rest.

The focus has to be securely on the less potent characters, though. In the situations where I have seen it work, it was usually a couple of very experienced people, only one of which could act as GM, teaching others how to play. The experienced players got their kicks from 1) helping out newbies and 2) copping a little 'tude, but without overshadowing the newbies. Short run set-up, though. The "established" characters didn't hang around for more than a few sessions.

The moral evolution.

Not as the focus of a campaign. All characters should "evolve" over their life of play. To focus on it, though, really does suck. I guess my thought on this is that it shouldn't be forced upon the group and the character shouldn't overshadow the others. Also, the group shoudl be just peachy with the character both in the form in which he starts play and the form he ends play. Of course, if you can keep the same association before and after, you probably haven't changed that much.

Rough and gritty/high body count.

This is the only one with which I really disagree. I do have to modifiy the statement to pick a bone, though. Rough and gritty/potentially high body count.

I, as a player, actually really enjoy games in which the PCs really have to scramble and think to survive. I like the "in the cross-hairs" feeling. This is still a matter of degrees, though. If it starts to feel like the outcome is a certainty, then we have a problem.

Also, my understanding of the Call of Cthulhu game is that insanity (effectively death, in terms of play) is an inevitability. It's not "if", it's "when". I would expect that the continued viability of CoC as a product speak a bit on this style of play, too.

I guess, I agree with the first two points about 95%. They can work, but it's hard and not long-term viable.

 

[Mercule]

The above is very good general advice. One CAN play in games like this contentedly, but it's an exceptional situation.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

some other things that don't seem to translate well into RPGs:

the heroes being OK with the villain escaping...

and more importantly, the heroes getting captured by the bad guys. i've never seen a PC (myself included) take that very well.

Major exception: 7th Sea. An actual quote from a game as the villain falls from the top of a mast into the water, turning it into a dive as he falls: 'Cool! More plot for later!' But then again 7th Sea rewards the players for being cinematic, one of them went so far as to buy the hated enemy background for the escaping villain.

As for the getting captured, only once have I seen a player be okay with that, again in 7th Sea, where a Knight of the Rose and Cross was captured - the player took over the character's tyro (basically a knight in training) to take part in the rescue. It also served as the tyro's 'graduation test'. But I also cleared it with the player first, he had been playing the tyro on occassion anyway.

It helps that it is very hard to get killed in 7th Sea...

The Auld Grump

 

[Steverooo]

Yeah, well when the DM tells you he is getting grief from some of the players who feel as if they are nothing more than my character's chumps it is time to do something. The problem is I tend to give the DM a lot of material to work with I interact with NPCs I try and convince the party what quest to go on. And the DM tends to make the story about my character because I am giving him so much and am so involved.

I gaurantee you, it won't help.

I have seen this exact same affect at work in three games, in the last few years... In two of the cases, I was the "headless chicken" player, running around trying to get things done. In another case, MD was, in a game I ran...

In all three cases, the "do-littles" get irritated with the HC ("headless chicken"), who will usually, eventually, leave the game. At that point, the game will begin slowly grinding to a halt.

In the last game I was in, we had a run-in with some Halfling Ninjettes, which prompted us to leave town. One of the party wanted to "hurry up and get to the good stuff" (apparently combat), and E-mailed a couple of us who were interacting with the Judge NPC who was getting us out of town, asking something like "aren't you guys overdoing the roleplaying?". Having come from a "bad game" where we had much the same problems (and people started dropping as soon as we hit combat), I knew there was no resolving this conflict, so I left the game. That one still continues. The previous one ran down from eight to four players, before finally drizzling to a halt.

I posted a question to this General board, some time back, about HC players, and how to deal with them. I really got no useful answers. I guess all you can do is try to get players who are all equally willing to get involved.

 

[Psion]

I have long been an advocate of the notion "what's good for a novel isn't necessarily good for a game." I think after playing many years, that would be obvious to most veteran players, but it doesn't seem to be. I still constantly see complaints to the tune of "my book does this, the game can't, therefore the game is bad."

It is my view that while games are certainly influenced and inspired by F/SF (and other) literature and action movies, it should be considered a separate but parallel medium. Certainly we can draw ideas from other mediums, but if we import something from another medium without considering if it really would game well, we do so at our peril.