Friday, March 4, 2005

"...but I was only playing my character!"

The last week has been interesting. Saturday, we started playing the Light Bringer's Quest, which is (a) very long - I expect we'll finish around May - and (b) surprisingly deadly. I mean, I knew it was dangerous, but I wasn't expecting to nearly kill the Orlanth character twice before the second station had been reached. Tuesday, one of my players (encouraged by two others) managed to disturb me somewhat - at least enough that I'm going to find it difficult to sleep in the same house as him. And Thursday's game failed to happen, due to player illness.

We've also been having a little debate on the wattgamers-chat list. Its now evolved into "What makes a good GM?" but the original (and to me more interesting) topic was "What is the essential difference between a GM and a player?" To me this is more intriguing, as it leads to the possibility of role-playing differently - could a game work with every player also doing part of the GM's job? Or a game without a recognisible GM at all? So far we've got (to my mind) the following :

1. The GM is the final arbiter of disputes.
2. The GM is responsible for a consistent framework within which the characters interact. (Including rules calls, playing minor characters, providing info on how things look and sound and smell, etc.)

Anything else you can add would be interesting. I'm also starting to see ways in which even these could be dropped, or passed on to the players.

I haven't yet had enough responses to the recent survey to reach any conclusions. (Anyone who hasn't taken part yet, see http://grahamrobinson.com/survey.html for details.) However, I have been very surprised at how highly most people are placing "Playing your character" as a sign of good role-playing. While I'm not going to claim that playing your character is completely unimportant, it seems to me to be a fairly low priority. Take the following example choices :

1. A new player bellies up to the table. You have the choice of :
(a) doing something to ease the player into the game, or
(b) doing something that makes it difficult for the player to join the game.

2. In a given situation, you have the choice of :
(a) doing something fun, interesting, or entertaining.
(b) doing something dull.

Both of these should be no-brainers. Anyone answering (b) to either question in pretty much any circumstance has probably got the wrong hobby. For another example, look at Babylon 5 :

3. Londo asks G'kar to join him for a drink. Does G'kar :
(a) Make an insulting remark and leave?
(b) Enthusiastically get drunk with his old friend?
(c) Try to murder his old enemy?

Depending on the episode, you can justify any of these. G'kar's character is interesting precisely because what is "in character" for him changes so drastically. (For yet another example, see Garibaldi, whose "out of character" behaviour signals one of the better plot lines from year four.)

Now I'm not arguing that "playing in character" is entirely irrelevant - some consistency is needed for meaningful interactions. What I'm saying is that (a) for a good role-player acting in character is normally a minor consideration, well below being entertaining, ensuring enjoyment for others, and encouraging interesting stories in the priority stakes; and (b) what constitutes "in character" is so complex, that very little behaviour of a well-rounded character can't be justified if the player has some motive to do so.

Otherwise we might as well go back to those early D&D campaigns, and loudly proclaim "What part of 'I'm Chaotic Evil' don't you understand?"

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