The Campaign Builder's Guild

So, I've been on a Robin Laws kick lately. There's a lot of things I could babble on about after having gorged myself on books and blog posts, but this is a simple thing that shouldn't be overlooked the way it has been by gamers in general.

Robin Laws has done a pretty fantastic job dissecting film with an eye towards how makes films work, and how games can draw upon the same types of elements. Specifically, a lot of good work on rarely-discussed topics in games: dramatic goals, what makes a protagonist, what keeps the audience interested in characters.

Anyway, I commend to you this blog post:

QuoteI've talked before about the iconic characters and how they are driven by an ethos. By recapitulating it, they triumph over external obstacles, affirm their selfhood, and restore order.

But what drives dramatic characters?

When we care about a fictional character, we hope for X and fear for Y. X is the positive condition; Y is its opposite. In a procedural, we hope the character will succeed in reaching his procedural goals and fear that he will fail. In a drama, we perceive a positive and a negative potential. We want the character to reach the former and avoid the latter.

Compelling ongoing dramatic characters possess dual natures, or internal oppositions. We want them to overcome one of these and realize the other. Another way to express this is to say that the characters are torn between two internal forces or impulses. These are the poles of a dramatically active character.

- Rick Blaine (Casablanca) selfishness or altruism?
- Shelley Levene (Glengarry Glen Ross) winner or loser?
- Nora (A Doll's House) subservience or selfhood?
- Tony Soprano: family man or Family man?
- Nate Fisher: (Six Feet Under) freedom or responsibility?
- Frank Gallagher: (Shameless US) dissolution or dignity?
- Walter White (Breaking Bad) virtuous weakness or anti-social power?

Our feelings toward the two poles may be clear-cut, or divided. Dramatic characterization deepens, and our reactions to it become more complex, when our reaction to the dual nature becomes ambiguous. Part of us wants Tony to be the good family man, but part of us takes dark vicarious pleasure in his sociopathic side.

Laws has turned this idea of dramatic poles directly into a game mechanic. (This system is DramaSystem, which he is building. The game is DS's flagship game Hillfolk, about Iron Age tribes.) Here is a post which describes some Hillfolk characters in terms of their dramatic poles-- which simultaneously serve as a way to frame characters in terms of their dramatic conflicts, and as a central game mechanic.

I think it's usually the case in gaming that these dramatic ideas are introduced as minor embellishments, when they're handled at all. Most games concern themselves exclusively or near-exclusively with struggles against external conflicts, not internal conflicts. Furthermore, I think that framing dramatic characters as being caught between conflicting poles is a pretty simple thing to do, with a potentially huge amount of benefit, even if you're only using it as a way of brainstorming which kinds of roleplaying choices you want a character to be confronted with.

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I wholeheartedly agree with you on the idea that framing characters between these poles could be hugely beneficial. I just might have to look into incorporating such a thing in games I play in the future...

I am curious to expand on this idea and look more into the characteristics at either side of the poles - I can think of times when I've been reading or watching something and saw a character caught between these poles, but one of the characteristics or personalities they were torn between was actually disliked and/or hated. I wonder if more complex villains fit into this category, and whether this could actually be a separate group from the guys who have a side we like and a side we "fear"?

Quote from: Luminous Crayonrarely-discussed topics in games: dramatic goals, what makes a protagonist, what keeps the audience interested in characters.

I think these topics are rarely discussed in games because they're not really nearly as relevant for gaming.

Having dramatic goals can be good, but if the GM is too firm on those dramatic goals, the game turns into a railroad. A game is a much more flexible medium than a film, and, while certain narrative devices can certainly benefit the flow of a game, other factors can also figure in that would not have any place in film. A game can take much more of an immersive "see what happens" approach-- of course, the players and/or the GM should provide some sort of plot hooks so the characters aren't just wandering around aimlessly, but it may not have the same "dramatic goals" as a film. Part of the difference in a game is, of course, because the players are doing and not just watching. A complex, tactically involved battle that would be incredibly boring to watch on film can be exciting in a game because you're the one actually making the decisions and leading the charge.

What makes a protagonist can also be tricky. In a movie, there are heroes, sidekicks, supporting characters, and such. There can be those roles in a game, too, but very often there are more players who want to be the hero than would be traditional in a movie. You'd have to think more in terms of an ensemble cast.

And finally, of course, the "audience" that you have to keep interested is just the people who are there. As long as they're having a good time, it doesn't matter-- while some of what they do may make a good and interesting story later on, a lot of what they do won't. How many of us have had our eyes glaze over while someone recounts the details of an RPG session that most assuredly was very fun at the time, but, in the retelling, is completely dull?

Quote from: The HorseI am curious to expand on this idea and look more into the characteristics at either side of the poles - I can think of times when I've been reading or watching something and saw a character caught between these poles, but one of the characteristics or personalities they were torn between was actually disliked and/or hated. I wonder if more complex villains fit into this category, and whether this could actually be a separate group from the guys who have a side we like and a side we "fear"?

It's true, and this ambiguity is the reason dramatic conflicts in fiction are often more complex than procedural ones. In general, I think it is much easier for dramatic outcomes to be ambiguous, and to provoke a mixed reaction from audiences.

Quote from: sparkletwist

Quote from: Luminous Crayonrarely-discussed topics in games: dramatic goals, what makes a protagonist, what keeps the audience interested in characters.

I think these topics are rarely discussed in games because they're not really nearly as relevant for gaming.

That's true by convention, but not by necessity.

Traditionally, gaming tends to have plenty of ways to address procedural (external/practical) conflicts, but largely ignores dramatic (internal/emotional) conflicts. There's really no reason (besides inertia) that this has to be the case, and this narrow focus makes a lot of types of conflicts difficult or impossible to meaningfully address in games, and frankly makes a lot of dramatic characterization fall flat because there's nothing but player decision backing it up, and those decisions are seldom tested. (If procedural conflicts were handled the way most games handle dramatic ones, and you wanted to run a game where the conflict was a fight against a demon, players would simply decide whether or not they had defeated the demon, and whether or not the demon had affected them in turn. Because there's never any real doubt as to the outcome, it's difficult to create suspense.)

I didn't want to digress too much about protagonists and audiences because I thought it might be outside the scope of this thread, but if you'd like to discuss those concepts, it might work better for both of us if you'd give me the chance to state some specific working definitions within this particular context before you go about arguing against things that no one here has said.

World of Darkness utilizes morals, with characters choosing a Virtue and a Vice that represent their characters. In play, you are rewarded for taking a risk in pursuit of your Virtue or Vice, recovering all of your "go juice" once per story for taking a risk for your Virtue, or recovering one point per scene for taking a risk for your Vice. Combined with that system's Morality stat, which "punishes" evil behavior, you get a system which encourages good behavior while tempting evil behavior.

I'd love to see DS mechanic when that is all done. These sort of things could be imported into d20 to round out characters more and mechanically encourage roleplaying.

I was arguing against the idea of trying to apply too many film conventions to gaming, because I think it's of dubious use. In forming that argument, I used the definitions of the terms as I understand them. If you feel my definitions are in error, feel free to state your own opinions on the matter.

:yumm:

I want to read up on how to apply the conventions of action scene pacing, not fight scene, to adventuring/exploration scenes currently handled by D&D4 with skill challenges.

I mean, I feel like you ignored the entire content of my initial post to nitpick at one half of one sentence that only exists to give some background of the dude whose blog I'm quoting.

Ok, I understand. Perhaps my response was a bit stream-of-consciousness, and latching onto the wrong things-- but the one half of one sentence was just quote economizing. My point of contention is with the entire concept of trying to take too much from films and apply it to gaming. I don't really see too much value in doing that, because I feel the stories it creates are ultimately not that suited to gaming.

Basically, to me, it's as though the introductory paragraphs were saying "Dinosaurs are mammals!" and then the longer part of the post was talking some specific thing that is possible because dinosaurs are mammals. That's all well and good... but if you take issue with the core premise, it's hard to say much about the specifics. I am not terribly wild about the idea of dramatic poles, because I don't think it particularly adds anything to the game experience. If it adds a new way of thinking about a character, fine, but the last paragraph of your initial post (see, I didn't ignore it!) says that you want to try to take it beyond that-- and I don't think roleplaying games really offer the right venue for getting deep into internal conflicts, for the reasons I cited before. It's good drama, but players don't really like being told how to play their characters, so trying to enforce too much structure or mechanics on the conflicts can feel like a railroad. Getting too deep into the internal conflicts of one character is also probably going to lead to other players getting bored, unless those other players get involved-- and then it's not so internal anymore.

I'm sorry if you feel that my post was nearly devoid of useful content. Hopefully this explanation remedies that situation, though. I certainly never meant to be the person that comes out of the woodwork and craps on a discusson with nitpicking.

My experience with a lot of these experimental mechanics has been they often sound better on paper than they played with my group. They often proved disruptive to the type of game we wanted to play. I tried several times to introduce rules for social combat, for example, borrowed in some cases from ideas here on this board. In the end, we all decided it impeded the roleplaying and created an unwanted shift in mood. It transformed organic scenes into gamey ones, and in doing so diminished the story.

Which is not to say that experimental mechanics never hit pay dirt, or that they won't work for any group.