maddman75 said:
W3rd. I hate-hate-hate when people try to go to third person to avoid role-playing. "I tell him that I know where the Evil McGuffin is." No, don't tell me, tell him!
Conversely, I hate when
everything has to be done through in-character, first-person conversation. Anyone else ever play in a game where they ran into this?
PLAYER: I head down to the market and buy some rations for the trip.
GM: Okay, you walk up to a stall heaped high with food of all kinds, and the pudgy merchant behind the counter greets you with "Good day! How may I assist you?"
PLAYER: I tell him I need three weeks' worth of iron rations. Is it just going to be standard prices, or...?
GM: "I have fresh apples, from the orchards south of the river! And flour milled from the finest grains in the kingdom! Whatever foodstuffs you require! Ha ha!"
PLAYER: Does he have iron rations?
GM: Do you ASK him if he has iron rations?
PLAYER: Yeah, I guess. And if he does, I buy them.
GM: Well, ASK him, then!
PLAYER:
Generally, our group doesn't fuss over whether a conversation is described or done in-character, as long as it fits with what we're actually trying to do. If the discussion isn't that important to the plot or to the characters, narration generally wins...so if you just need to make sure that your employer is informed that you know where the evil McGuffin is, "I tell him we know where the evil McGuffin is" generally suffices. If you're telling your greatly-loved brother who is dying of a wasting disease (the cure for which you have been seeking throughout the game and can only be obtained through use of the evil McGuffin), you'll probably do it in-character instead.
Interesting, entertaining, and/or important stuff should get in-character attention. Long, routine and/or strictly expository dialogue should just be summed up so the game can keep moving.
And to follow up the recent tangent on this, I'm personally on the fence about letting "I use Diplomacy/Bluff" replace an in-character statement, mostly because the most recent iteration of our group has had a few people who aren't personally all that confident about making up a good lie or being really diplomatically adept, but have played characters who were. I think the middle-ground we reached was to have them make the roll, and then the GM asks a few questions (or makes a few suggestions based on the result of the roll) to get some specifics about the tactics being used. Followed by a mix of GM-narration, coaching, and a few key in-character moments to get the final outline of the conversation across.
It seems to work fairly well; at least, it isn't terribly awkward, it doesn't embarrass the non-diplomatic player whose character is very diplomatic, and it seems to tend towards giving the non-diplomatic players the kind of confidence and experience they need to really get comfortable doing more in-character smooth-talking. (And keeping the rolls in helps prevent diplomatic players with non-diplomatic characters from being able to steal the spotlight from 'em; the
player might be silver-tongued, but when the dice hit the table they don't get to play the master negotiator if the skill points aren't there to support it.)
maddman75 said:
I also get frustrated with inactive characters. I run a very open campaign, and if you wait to figure out what you're "supposed" to do, you'll end up not doing anything.
Yeah, that's always a bad scene, a bunch of characters who just sit there doing nothing. Most of the time when we see this pop up in our games, it's because the players don't really "get" the setting yet, or because they haven't gotten comfortable enough with their characters to be able to take the driver's seat like that. I think our best games were with GMs who noticed the blank, glassy-eyed stares in response to "So what are you doing?" and immediately filled the gap with something that the characters could react to, until the players hit their stride and started taking action on their own (sometimes as little as two sessions, sometimes as many as twenty).
The worst games were with GMs whose response to the deer-in-the-headlights "I don't know what to do" expression was just to give 'em the fish-eye right back (as if that EVER works). Followed closely by the GMs who stepped up to give the PCs something to react to, but then failed to step aside once the players were comfortable enough to take the initiative on their own.
It's a tricky business, apparently.
--
which makes us cling to the good gms all the more tightly
ryan
