Question: If someone ran an online game using JSR rules, would the two of you play?
Anne: I'd definitely give it a try, if it was in a timeslot I could make! Not that I don't have plenty of time playing Scion already, but somehow I usually want more.
John: Probably not? Maybe? Would it be awesome? When would it be? Don't toy with my emotions.
Anne: I mean, we both work a lot on employment and personal projects... but that's never stopped us before.
John: Are you planning to run a long-range game? Because if you only play a few sessions and then drop us I will hate you forever.
Anne: I feel like I should point out that we're high-maintenance players, though. I'll write backstories in the tens of thousands of words and construct entire plots without Storyteller input.
John: I am very suspicious of online games. Last time I was in one I had to leave because it turned out I hated everyone. Fair warning, I can be a horrible bitch to ST for. I try to be helpful, especially for new STs, but I have a low tolerance threshold.
Anne: And John won't write any backstory because he hates writing, but he will hijack your plot and sail it to Tortuga. Remember, his most-played character was Colin Margaritas and that fucker is crazy.
John: So the answer is yes, maybe, but at your own risk.
Anne: What he means is yes, if we have time, and we'd love you for offering even if it didn't work out.
John: Unless I hate you.
I love my friends.
ReplyDeleteThey are pretty great.
ReplyDeleteWhat would make you hate someone?
ReplyDeleteAnd what about all those rules you use that are not on the website?
We're trying very hard to make sure all the rules are on the website. Little by little, day by day, we get more of them on there and organized. I don't think there are many left that aren't either in power descriptions or on the house-rules page, but of course there are some. In those cases, John would probably explain them to the ST as they came up, and then abide by the ST's ruling on whether or not they made sense.
DeleteJohn's a curmudgeon. He might just hate you because it's Tuesday. Generally, though, he's pretty easy-going and fun in a game setting, and only gets his back up as a player when he thinks the Storyteller is either A) being lazy or B) being inaccurate.
John is not so bad to ST for.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether the idea of running a game featuring John and Anne would be incredibly awesome, or incredibly stressful.
ReplyDeleteA character like Colin Margaritas would make me want to die. Or at the very least throw a lightning bolt at. A character like Maximus Giovanni VII, however, is super awesome.
I think I'd rather stick with having John and Anne as distant advisors.
I think I would be happy to run a game for Anne, and I would be terrified to run a game for John.
ReplyDeleteFrom everything their players say, they are both very decent people in RL. However, I would be very afraid of getting something historically inaccurate, or getting a stern glance of disapproval because my modern interpretation violated his suspension of disbelief.
Man, I have that problem since Griff joined my game. Happily he's only brainy about central and south America.
DeleteI ran a one-shot, not an extended campaign, but here are my recollections from last fall's ST Appreciation Day. If that game was any judge...
ReplyDeleteBoth John and Anne will gravitate towards social roles, play on the strengths of their allies, and set themselves up at the center of their local webs. Both will make unexpected decisions that change the way you thought the game would unfold. Both will showcase other players.
John will make bold moves and seize momentum, right or wrong. Anne will make steady moves and outlast adversaries.
Anne will lead and coordinate her supporters wisely. John will berate his toadies for not being enforcers.
Anne will ride off to victory in a red convertible. John will exhaust all likely options, then exhaust all unlikely options, then destroy the building, then have a satisfyingly dramatic death scene.
...I think that's a pretty good summary!
I think it's the best summary.
DeleteAnne: I feel like I should point out that we're high-maintenance players, though. I'll write backstories in the tens of thousands of words and construct entire plots without Storyteller input.
ReplyDeleteTHIS - I love this - it is amazing.
I wish my players did this - after a year of playing one of my characters has nothing of a backstory beyond "he was raised by nuns"
for clarification characters = players
DeleteHeh, I'd be tempted as the Storyteller to make those some wicked unusual nuns. If he's not going to fill in details, you might as well fill them in for him.
DeleteIt's always kind of luck of the draw when it comes to what creative pursuits your players are moved to do for games - I like writing, so I do that, but everybody doesn't have the interest or the time. I'm very jealous of terriblyuncreative, who is an artist and can visually art up things that happen in his game, and of Baron Samedi from the WW forums, who has a graphic designer in his group who makes them super hella awesome graphics. If only we were all artistic savants!
It's borderline heretical an' shit, I know, but I'm inclined to say that isn't automatically a problem. How are you pushing and probing during play?
DeleteIt's like, I want people to put some thought into their characters, right? But I don't need for all that thought to be at the front end, at character creation. It can be spread out, you as the ST can ask questions on an ongoing basis, and probe players for info during the game. I'm getting to the point where I almost prefer that (no offence to you and your style, Anne), because whatever you're dealing with can be made relevant by tying it into that character's past at a moment's notice.
None taken - I know how much of a pain in the ass I can be, which is why I mentioned it as a warning. :)
DeleteYeah, not having a lot from the get-go doesn't necessarily mean that the character won't become awesome later. Goze's concept when he came into the game was "kind of like Indiana Jones", and Kettila's was "I killed a lot of Girl Scouts in a sacrifice and am on the run", but both of them blossomed into very concrete, very interesting personalities over the course of play. Some people do better with responding to things happening than with trying to come up with things on their own.
It's when you have a character that doesn't come in with anything and also never develops anything that you really have frustration, I think. And, as Brent notes, sometimes the ST has to kick that person in the ass to make them think about it.
Im generally in the middle. I dont need a full backstory. But I certainly need(prefer) a little more then "so im a dude that loves swords". Without at least a little character fleshing by the 2nd game or so. You're putting a lot more of the character creation job on the other players and the ST. And if you eventually grow into a character, possibly creating a strange dissonance with the actions you took originally that dont mesh with the character you ended up with. And not in a growth and change way, but in a nothing connects or makes sense kinda way. Its like....when you finally decided at game 5 some stuff about your character, nothing before then seemed connected.
DeleteI don't think I've ever had a character that, once I started playing for a while and got the feel of the character, was ever really "the same" as the person I had in mind during character creation.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that's to do with my personal style and all, but for me, no amount of pre-play prep seems to get rid of the whole "seemed like a different character for those first handful of sessions" issue, just because of the amount of time during play that I seem to need to settle on the right voice and personality.
Do they really seem like different characters? Or do their interactions with the super natural world and their band change who they are?
DeleteTheres a big difference between short term growth when encountering extreme stimuli, and the sort of character wandering I see a lot of when theres no basic plan for the character early on.
Hmm... I'm not sure I know how to confidently answer that question. I only feel comfortable speaking for myself, and my sample size is pretty low.
DeleteMy suspicion is that you thinking about this as a difference of type, and I'm thinking about this as a difference of degree. But who knows?
I used to write extensive backgrounds, but I no longer do so. My characters tend to take on a life of their own and find a unique voice during play. It is only once I have actually gotten beneath the skin of my characters do I begin to extrapolate what happened in their past that made them the way they are.
DeleteI do not think I have personally done a lot of character wandering because I tend to have my end goal in mind before the game even starts, though that is subject to change based upon the needs of the group.
In fact, most of the character wandering I encounter is my real life friends trying to figure out what to do with their lives. :D
I had a similar problem Brent. In all three of my games, my character started as something and changed completely. Though, the first game the gm was kinda an asshole and tried to change my character by making me jump through hoops, but thats besides the point.
DeleteI do not think they change cause of anything we as the player of said character did wrong, its the environment around him.
Take my newest character, Gavriel Caspet. Israeli Special Forces, Gallant, nice guy and tries to be helpful. By the first 3rd game session, the gm and the other players had forced me into a position of where he was now quiet, angry, wanting to kill the group and borderline saying 'F@*& it all, I am leaving.'
They changed him, cause they were stupid and careless in how they went and found him and how they treated him afterwards. I came in the game late, but I was awoken around the same time they awoken. So the GM explained that I was undercover in Saudi Arabia, in territory held by titanspawn, gathering research on them covertly. They came barging into the area, one in full Navy Whites, another in a bleach white Kimono(pure white in Japan... Not good.) and the women with faces shown, bringing a picture of me, asking with my REAL name(not my covert journalism name) and blowing my cover there and losing a safe house.
That was not the worse of it. Then they stole confidential documents from my character, that should of been impossible to do, but the gm allowed it cause he was trying to drive the party apart, not bring us together. Those two things almost made my character go over the deep end. Sigh, he changed a lot from when I first made him. Though, I like in the end how he became.
My second character had similar problems, but thats cause we had a new gm and two people that would come to game high to mess up the game. His name was Bradley Jolland, I miss playing my Irish Hacker. RIP man, I shall play you some other time.
I think part of what you're describing is that, just as storyteller plans dissolve once players come in contact with your game, characters change rapidly when confronted with the other players and the ST.
DeleteFor example, I pretty much just play a single character, Dr. Alan Lord, a Scion of Quetzalcoatl, who, Brent, you may remember debuting in your game. I've played him in most Scion games I play (Largely because those games have a tendency to dissolve... and this includes my one venture into STing), and he's been a different character in each game, because while he has the same background and personality, he tends to fill different roles depending on who his Bandmates are and which situations/Gods he interacts with most often.
Characters are dynamic, and it's impossible to transplant them from one game to another without changing them. And if you're so stubborn with a character that they can't change with their companions... well, either you or your fellow players/ST are doing it wrong (And if it's several games, it's probably you).
You can't explore if you don't know where you've come from. The reason it works in rel life is cause your friends have rich histories already. If they were cardboard. It outs their wandering wouldn't be funor interesting
ReplyDelete