thread: 2006-05-25 : System and character sole-ownership
On 2006-05-26, Joel P. Shempert wrote:
My gut says yes on this one. . .and of course, historically this seems to be the prevailing attitude in roleplaying. Sure, there's a lot of defensive "my guy"-ism in that, but I'd say there's also a legitimate claim, that if you get a say in what happens to a character, you're going to care more about what happens. This can be the character that you "own," e.g. the Player-PC relationship, or a character that you don't, e.g. the stinkin' cool NPC villain that you're just dying to see get what's comeing to him. in either case we want to have a say in what happens; in a trad RPG setup we have at least marginal say with the PC, his own feelings and actions anyway, so we expend a lot of energy trying to exert our "say" on the NPCs. And if the situation is nice and dynamic and functionally collaborative, then it pays off. If it's a dysfunctional railroady/illusionist situation, it doesn't. (And of course in suc a situation our "say" is often undercut wrt the PC as well.) And that's precisely where we check out. "OK, guys the wicked cool master villain sneers and postures and gloats and pushes a button and BLOWS UP THE WORLD! Cool, huh!" Players: "eeeeh." Put "say" back in the equation ("He's reaching for the World Destroyer Button, whaddya do?"), and suddenly it's GAME ON.
This isn't about just characters, either (and it seems to me, Vincent, that this is just what you're getting at): it applies to all elements of RPGs. This is about treating characters (and their ownership) exactly as we treat other elements and THEIR ownership. So we already talk about how players will be more engaged when they have a real and palpable say over plot, premise, setting, etc. . .so of course characters too. Right?
A counterpoint that occurs to me is that we DO get engaged in non-RPG stories where we don't have a say—books, movies, etc—but I don't know if that even has relevance to discussion of RPGs, or if Roleplaying being that thing that Roleplaying is and books aren't, negates the point.
Peace,
Joel
This makes JS go "Oops, didn't notice the marginalia"
