Or possibly I’m just picky and weird about what consitutes “part of the concept”.

And I’m not against taking the blow; I just can’t handle a blow that can’t be bounced back from. Part of my problem with Buffy was that Buffy didn’t have long enough to get over the death of her mother: by the end of the series, she was still traumatized over it.

You can break a character concept by completely removing what makes the character interesting (premise), and you can expand a character concept by escalation and changing the circumstances.

Oh yeah, that’s all good. It’s just that I get odd about which bits of the concept are really not to be touched, and they’re not always the bits even I expect.

What comes to mind though, is that television shows and suchlike seem to frequently try and break their character or situation concepts, only to either suddenly decide “no” because the story is getting boring, or use it as escalation. Spiderman gives up being Spiderman: Mary-Jane gets kidnapped so he picks up the suit again: started getting boring. John Crighton finds his way home: turns out its aliens messing with his mind which leads to an epic chase across the universe: escalation. Buffy’s life gets normal: her mom dies so she starts slaying again: started getting boring. Lex Luther discovers Clark Kent’s connection to Superman: leads to more overt conflict between the two: escalation.

You can break a character concept by completely removing what makes the character interesting (premise), and you can expand a character concept by escalation and changing the circumstances.

Does that make sense?

Having never played in any game which does stakes-setting this way, I’m going to have to take your word for it. Fortunately I play with people who are quite good at doing this sort of thing without rules support.

Kirk says: I can be quite happy so long as people don’t hold back on doing damage to my characters, and the system supports me doing damage to them myself. But if I were playing with you, Carrie, and I tried to break your character then you would lose your investment in the game. Vice versa, if you refused to break my character then I would lose my investment as well.

I think I phrased myself badly, because this isn’t quite what I meant. I meant to set up a distinction between damaging a character and breaking a character’s concept.

I’m all on board with damaging my characters. I set them up for pain, often enough. But they have to be damaged within their own context. For example, I have a character running right now who is a queen in exile. This makes her unhappy; it damages her. But if the GM said at our next session that her title had been restored, that would break the character for me. This despite the fact that she herself would be very happy about it.

The definition problem happens because one way to break a character for me is to damage it in an irrecoverable way. Terminology sucks.

Anyway, there are some things that can be damaged without breaking the character. If Cordelia lost her ability to shapeshift, that wouldn’t break her for me despite it being significant damage.

Perhaps a dial system: each player sets how much pressure they want on their character. The higher the dial setting, the more pressure the system will put on the character, and the more encouragement (and perhaps incentive via a reward system) is given to the players to do damage to that character.

Again, not quite what I meant. I want pressure; I just want it to be pressure the character can sucessfully resist, or pressure that is directed against parts of the character that aren’t vital to the concept. But this is a fine idea anyway, because everyone has different ideas about how much they want their concept to be challenged. One guy may be playing a boyscout to show off his boyscoutness while another wants the boyscout to be continually faced with icky moral dilemmas…

But that also raises the question: what if my investment in the game is doing damage to OTHER characters? Then we have a problem with social contract. There is a possibility that I would be violating other players’ investments, and if I were to respect their dial setting then I would potentially be losing my own investment. As I see it, the only solution here is to find a group that suits your investment, same as a player with gamist or narrativist preferences playing with other gamist or narrativist players.

Indeed, though it’s often possible to let the damager hit the “non-vital” parts of the other PCs. But this kind of thing needs to be carefully worked out, IME.

Joshua mentions the TV-series Reset Button

I just realized that it sounds like I want my gaming to be like Classic Trek, where Kirk can fall in love with Edith Keeler and then never mention her again after “The City on the Edge of Forever” is over. Which is not the case, but I’m not certain I can articulate why…

Kirk — yeah, you might be unfulfilled by a structure that returned to equilibrium regularly. The easiest example of this I can think of is any serial television show that doesn’t follow the soap-opera model. So like, early episodes of Friends, or any episode of Cheers, or any police procedural. Now, while it can sound kind of candy-ass to wrap everything up each week/episode/session, it can lead to some high-powered, punchy stuff. Law&Order is good stuff, after all.

Ben — Buffy as a whole is only sort of a story — each episode, though, is a story in and of itself (with the occasional two-parter, of course). Now, given that The Body was necessitated by outside influence (ie, Kristine Sutherland says “I want out”), there’s a worthwhile story in that episode itself. The best argument I’ve heard against it is that it’s barely a Buffy episode — it doesn’t key into the Buffy franchise hardly at all, save for using the same characters. But I don’t see any argument for being able to see a sudden death of Mom coming, any more than I want to be able to see the next Monster of the Week coming. Teevee gets to introduce things each episode; some of them are significant, some aren’t.

I disagree with your opinion about story structure. If Buffy’s life finally becomes normal and then *poof* her mom dies for no good reason, that’s a bad story. (And, yes, I will argue that Buffy as a whole is a bad story.)

If her mom dies and we go “oh, man, clearly that had to happen because X and Y and Z but I totally didn’t see it coming,” then the story is structured well.

yrs–
–Ben

But can we mix views? I can be quite happy so long as people don’t hold back on doing damage to my characters, and the system supports me doing damage to them myself. But if I were playing with you, Carrie, and I tried to break your character then you would lose your investment in the game. Vice versa, if you refused to break my character then I would lose my investment as well. Perhaps a dial system: each player sets how much pressure they want on their character. The higher the dial setting, the more pressure the system will put on the character, and the more encouragement (and perhaps incentive via a reward system) is given to the players to do damage to that character.

But that also raises the question: what if my investment in the game is doing damage to OTHER characters? Then we have a problem with social contract. There is a possibility that I would be violating other players’ investments, and if I were to respect their dial setting then I would potentially be losing my own investment. As I see it, the only solution here is to find a group that suits your investment, same as a player with gamist or narrativist preferences playing with other gamist or narrativist players.

I am also wondering: what other ways and in what other areas can players invest in?

The next question is: how much of this has Ron thought of already?

Another option which I’ve considered exploring before, but hadn’t mentioned is a matter of scaling. It is possible to make one scale (in time or scope) match the roller coaster, and make a larger or smaller scale match the drop. For example, making the character’s decline inevitable, but giving the option of hope for the character’s loved ones or people. Alternatively, you could have a roller coaster cycle within a larger droping pattern. In each case, the idea is that the player can adjust their view to the scale where their desired patterns occur. The danger is that one scale is usually more prominent, and could become the focus of all of the views regardless of conscious intent.

In practice almost any combination of views can be nurtured, but in many cases doing so requires great care. Views must be fed regularly, and cannot be adjusted too quickly, or things will go wrong. In this case you end up with two kinds of food, both of which taste great to both views, but either will get sick by eating the food meant for the other. Mixing the food will make them less sick, but if you want to ensure each view only gets their own food, you need either a very careful system or a person willing to separate them out.

I think Claire’s got the really strong point — that personal preference is not so important as being able to express that preference and have that expression have an impact in the game. Implementing this sort of thing will (as Kirk points out) result in some very strong game experiences. I’m wondering if it would be possible to reconcile Mendel’s drop ride and roller coaster into the same game — the experience of one character does not need to be the experience of all characters, after all. Can one character nosedive into the Abyss while another character whirls around the edge of the whirlpool in such a way that both players get their challenge to the character, but neither character concept is broken?

Speaking of which, Carrie, I think a lot of the problem that you cite can be avoided with good stakes setting. Good rules of this stripe make you able to say no to any losing stake that would break your character concept and ensuring that your engagement and satisfaction were maintained.

(Also, Buffy entering adult life is my preferred Buffy, but I came to the party late and those are the seasons that I started with.)

I’m mostly an aquarium type of guy. However, heh, the three Ronny games I wrote don’t play that way at all. Funny.

Peace,

-Troy