this too shall pass

[reverancepavane]

Change. Change is important in role-playing games. Both change in the characters and the universe. It's what drives a fulfilling story. And an important part of change, especially in RPGs, is the reversal of circumstance. For example, if a gamemaster introduces an escape-proof prison then they are almost guaranteeing that the players will be escaping from it or rescuing someone from it, negating the nature of the prison. Think of how unfulfilling the story would be if the prison really was escape-proof. "Nope. It's no use. Let's get a beer." But this technique also applies to characters as well. If a player has a powerful character then they are just asking to be humbled, to be brought down low, to be inconvenienced. That's where the good story is. [Of course, they can then get to change their status again, and regain their power. That too is change, and excellent storytelling.] It's when a player is unwilling to relinquish their power that they start to disengage with the game. The objective of the game changes from "continuing play" to "winning." And how exactly do you win a role-playing game?

Comments

[maelorin]

win?

i don't see them as a competition, or as having a win condition.

for me, it's about the roleplaying. the being someone/something else.

i like to take a character concept, flesh it out, and then try it out on a world concept. consensual, collaborative, and/or collective, storytelling ... live.

i abhor competitive games because they pull on the darker part of my nature - the impulse to crush, kill, and destroy obstacles - directing it towards fellow players and the dm/st ...

i prefer to build moderately powerful, rounded characters and see where they go. characters that can survive most scrapes and have enough tools and tricks to be able to be creative and get themselves into trouble ^_^

that said, a game can be a win. or full of winnitude. fun = win.

[enkorvaks.livejournal.com]

One "wins" a role-playing game by beating the other characters (preferably into unconsciousness).

You can "win" a tabletop by successfully getting to the end of the campaign, but that's about it. Of course, the players "win" by having fun. Unless the player trying to "win" is the sort of person that has the most fun messing it up for other people. In which case, resort to the first statement, but substitute "character" with "player".

[scurvy-platypus.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm not entirely sure I actually agree.

Part of the reason is because you're making some assumptions I think about _why_ people play rpgs. Change and character growth is an aspect of some kinds of games, but not all of them. For example, if you're going to be playing in a Stargate inspired game, change does happen but... it's more of an action series than a drama. Action gets enough just enough change in order to keep the action pieces interesting. A drama gets change because you're explicitly looking at characters and watching how they deal with and react to circumstances.

I think there's also an aspect of how adversarial the GM is with their players. For example, having a powerful character doesn't mean (to me) that the character needs to be humbled. It means that they need to face some sort of challenge that's appropriate to their ability. Neither the character nor the situation has to change (immediately) for the game to be satisfying. The satisfaction can come from the struggle to create (or prevent) some sort of change.

[scurvy-platypus.livejournal.com]

You slipped that "put at risk" bit in while I was typing my reply...

Again, I don't think that games implicitly or explicitly really went for targeting things like this as a matter of course. GMs often would, but that stems from the traditionally adversarial role that GMs have had.

GMs have been told "you have to give players stuff, so they can see their character improve and 'change'." and they have to balance this with "you must challenge a character."

In life, the acquisition of stuff often makes life easier. In rpgs, it's similar although it tends to be on a much more massive scale in the usual fantasy game.

Therefore, if you're going to want to challenge the character, you need to take away their stuff.

Also, taking away things, and people in a character's life count as "things" in this context, is an easy way to jump into yet another round of the "heroic journey", or at least what a lot of people think the heroic journey is.

Again, I think one of the key things to understanding people's approach to the "heroic journey" is to realize that for many people it's tied very strongly with zero-to-hero play. As a game progresses, there's a tendency to reset that "zero" level. So a fantasy game might go along and the original story arc or campaign finishes off at 7th level. Players are still digging things, so the GM starts a new arc. And right at this point, the reset happens. 7th is now the new zero and the characters are putzes once again.

Occasionally a GM will allow the characters to feel strong in comparison to the rest of the world, but it doesn't happen too often and it's usually of a pretty short duration. It's as if all that's happened before might as well not exist.

I always felt like Star Trek: The Next Generation had a lot of this going on. Stories were pretty self contained, and while changes might happen in the setting, they really only seemed to happen at that one point, and then it's as if it were always that way.

Like LaForge getting a promotion. One episode he gets the promotion, and then from that point on it's as if nothing's really changed and it's always been that way. He just gets a slightly different form of address.

Games like SotC and PDQ do reward players for having things happen to their characters. For incorporating some risk that things will go against the player's and/or character's goals. But they have a reward mechanism built into the game to reward players for doing this. The fact that they have to tie the reward mechanism to the risk, to me means that they recognize that as a whole, players are in fact not keen on having things at risk.

Older games like Gurps tried to do this, with giving you points for taking disadvantages.

The idea might have been for players to develop a more nuanced character, and to introduce an element of risk to some aspect of play, but the practical reality is that it just was a source of extra power for players to pump up their character. Playing of faults/disadvantages was something that a player often had to be reminded of, and most GMs knew that their players were going to pitch a fit if they tapped those disadvantages too often.

I think where games like PDQ, SotC, Hero Quest, and others of a similar nature really succeed, is because they force a player to invest in their character. They're explicitly pulling out what is interesting and valuable to their character to begin with.

This means that GMs don't have to scrabble around on the character sheet, looking for some way to challenge a character, or figure out some way to engage the player's interest. It's on the sheet, put their by the player. They're telling you what's important to the character, and what the player is looking to mess around with.

In _that_ context, yes you can seriously start pushing buttons and see what happens when change or the possibility of it is introduced.