Waaaay back in my introduction, I mentioned that I came to Roleplaying by way of Jeff Hannes’s Dramatic Roleplaying Tournament. Every year since then, I’ve gone to Jeff’s own little “JeffCon,” a weekend get-together with about 30 gamers which is completely dedicated to Free-Form Roleplaying.
After JeffCon this year, the big conversation was about roleplaying a character as it was written on the sheet, vs. making the game an enjoyable/interesting story. In a Free-Form module, the GM hands you a character sheet with your history, attitudes, goals, and relationships with the other PCs. If you don’t play to what is on your sheet, you will affect the flow of the game.
There’s a dark side to this, however. If you ONLY ever stick hard-line to what’s written on the sheet, you’re locking yourself out from opportunities to make the game more interesting for you and your fellow players.
And this is what the game starts to feel like. . . .
For example, in one of the games this year at JeffCon, one of the characters in charge of the group of PCs had a pretty simple goal: Sit and wait for the big boss (an NPC) to show up. The problem was the big boss wasn’t supposed to show up until the end of the module, and sitting around waiting makes for a boring-ass game.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t other things the character could have decided to show an interest in. There was all sorts of evidence pointing to some truly weird shit ala mixed-up realities going on. However, the player playing the leader stuck to the character as-written—trying to achieve his goal of waiting for his boss—so we all sat arguing for much of the module (except for the times where he told us to shut up) and nothing interesting happened.
I know how you feel, buddy.
There were other problems with the module setup. Only one character in each “reality” (there were three) had any interest in the reality mix-up–becasue it was worked into their background. The others didn’t care. Had ONE other character in each reality decided to try and fix the problems that were arising, the story would have been infinitely more interesting. Except, nobody did. None of the characters had it written on their sheets to be interested, and none of the other players decided that maybe their character’s priorities would shift in the face of such a bizarre turn of events.
Post module and JeffCon, everyone began discussing the failings of that particular game—and other times when people had felt they had less fun in modules because they felt their character’s background didn’t allow them to do anything other than stick with the program. Here are my thoughts on this:
The most interesting stories are about characters that evolve. If you go into a story with a character that has a very focused personality trait or goal, you might want to consider how those goals or traits might change in a charged situation—like the one you’re in during the course of the game.
Hopefully not THIS charged, but you never know.
This isn’t to say that you need to BREAK character to have fun. On the contrary, you should be expanding your character, making them more complex. I don’t think any GM on the planet would fault you for not playing a character exactly how they envisioned as the situation in-game evolves . . . provided you’re helping to make the story more interesting and fun. And if your GM does resent you for that—Wow, seriously? Ditch that guy/gal like an evil ring that needs to be dumped in a volcano.
I have a question for you: do you play these games to be bored, stressed, or otherwise unhappy? No? Then why would you restrict yourself to goals or character traits that cause you to be any of those things?
Have fun with your games, and your characters. Don’t sacrifice one for the other.
Thinking of this in terms of being a GM, for a tabletop game, I would probably try and come up with something to force the immovable player into action. It may not work depending on how stubborn the player is, but maybe it’ll provide a little action for the other players. Of course, LARPs and tabletop games are slightly different beasts, so I’m not sure how well that type of response could work in a more free-form, larger situation.
*winding rant, sequence initiated*
I don’t LARP, but I can see why sticking a bit closer the original concept could be more important in such large, organized events. Though, nothing should come at the cost of enjoyment.
As a GM, if I’m making pregens, I try to give a lot of wiggle room in the characters. Typically I’ll only just hint at personality and let the players make the PCs their own. Then I just roll with the punches.
As a player, I try to encourage fun and pacing whenever I can. Even if doing so skews the character as-written.
In theory I’d love to play a wolverine-style, quiet, doesn’t work well with others character. Even when I’ve rolled such peoples up, I always wind up working to keep the group together. The lone wolf character slowly morphs into a “I hate everyone, but these guys are ok I guess; I’ll take charge ’cause nobody else will” guy.
I try to prompt people to be interactive on either side of the screen. I love character immersion and character choice more than any other aspects of RPGs, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the other aspects completely. You’ve gotta work to balance everything so the game will be good, no matter what part you play.
*rant sequence completed*
This isn’t always limited to LARP, though. My usual go-to example for tabletop is The Lawful Good Paladin and The Chaotic Good Rogue. If either of them sticks hardcore to that description, it’s gonna make the game hell for the other–and possibly the other players as well.
I admire your stance on the Wolverine-style “I work alone” type. Because, honestly, I have played in tabletop games where we’ve had those types, they’ve never worked with the group (despite the group’s efforts to bring them in), and the GM has to take time out to go through what the loner is going, making the rest of the group have to sit around and twiddle their thumbs.
The DRT style modules are a little more particular–things can go awry if someone misreads a detail in their character sheet–but it’s become a trend that sometimes people are unhappy with sticking strictly to the character sheet because it’s boring, or an individual character makes the game hell/boring for the rest of us by sticking to closely to their sheet. There was a lot of discussion about it, and I think the group, as a whole, made goo progress.
Actually, a great book to read on this topic (which you can find online for free) is called PLAY UNSAFE. It’s not LARP-specific, and it can give everyone good insights into how to make their games more fun if they feel there’s stagnation.