Hiding versus Seeking

29 May

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Although there are many roles in a role playing game, else they’d just be … arson and looting games, there appear to be two problematic opposing styles of playing: glory charger and the hiding tactician.

The former faces all problems with the “I’m an invincible protagonist star of this story; prepare to die!” attitude - not realizing they could die and getting annoyed when they do or take penalties like it’s discouraging bravery. Many new players do this - balls out fun is what they signed on for - and are brutally brought down by the GM, over and over and over again, until they develope MGRMS (My GM Raped Me Syndrome). In response, they become obsessively planning cowards who rarely take any chances. Though this would fit a lazy GM, since their story pacing slows and they can steal player plans to inspire plot, it can be frustrating to many.

Your Dominus, Master Game Master that he is, grants you solutions.

The problem of big balls
New players arent the only ones that fall into the glory charger style. Often times GMs simply dont feel its right to kill player characters (PGMs: Pussy Game Masters) and foster joke games of raw wish fulfillment, enter the anime bar maids with low Wisdom scores and high skirts. If that’s what you’re going for, great; but if you want drama this will kill it. The obvious solution though, destroying the character embarrasingly, is contrived and often overdone.

Better to begin with easy encounters, that allow the character to feel powerful, and raise the difficulty until they must take a break to ponder how to approach things. This whole style is likely a desire to vent a bit, and that can be important to the hobby’s enjoyment. They are portraying the stars of action films in many games - badasses. Let them feel like heroes early on but show that they arent all powerful. I’ve often written a plot point to be overcome without a scripted solution, letting the players create a novel approach. With creative players you may just decide the random option will work. Roll a 1d6, get a 3, the third plan will work. Then the GM is challenged as a storyteller to make it work. “OK. So the sheep are shaved and the naked halfling is hiding amongst them crawling to the guard post.” Whether you do these exact tactics or not, the players learn to think outside the box or to not hack first.

Decowardizing the obsessive planner, who maybe stalling until a braver character gets fed up and rushes in, is a bit harder. Game systems may encourage detailed planning in certain character roles, but spending hours of fun time preparing for every possible scenario that can happen in game can piss you off when you’ve got great story ideas that arent gonna see screen time. Ironically, the ambush encounter that would force on the fly thinking would only reinforce their fears. “Death could be lurking around every corner. SEE!!!”

Best option is to quicken the pacing of the plot. There isnt any time to sketch out the perfect plan. Every minute of planning in game can translate to an hour in the plot. The princess is being sacrificed to the dragon in the morning, giving them 12 minutes to plan in real time at the table. In combat, give them all the detail they can perceive (is it a female dragon? make a touch atttack on the cloaca) but they’ve got 10 seconds to declare an action. Effectively you cant decowardize a player, but you can inable their stalling. Rare gamers will complain that the game is too fast paced and exciting.

If they do, someone just volunteered to be the wuss of the group. It’s a fun character aspect to use for comic relief - go with it. “There’s a mummy behind you! No, wait, it’s just an old begger humming to entertain you.”

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Everything, with these Tags: Character, Gaming . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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