What do I get out of it?
[ roleplaying games ][ rpgs | thoughts ]
[ October 31st, 2009 ]
[ by: Alvan ]
With the sudden increase in RPGs that I actually play in (as opposed to run), and partly inspired by Navdi’s recent blog posts, I’ve started to wonder what on Earth do role-playing games offer me as a player. I know what I enjoy when I’m running a game, but what about playing? I’m not one of those people who really gets under his character’s skin – immersion might happen, but in a shallow capacity. I blame the endless years of GMing for this – I am constantly ready to hop out of my character’s shoes and into the shoes of another and willing to bend my character to suit the needs of the story. As a player, I don’t play games to solve mysteries and not really care about epic stories about the fates of the worlds because of the epic storyness of theirs. So, what do I like?
This applies to both being a GM and a player, but I love that social situation of gaming. Seeing friends, chatting with them, having fun. Gaming is pretty much the only opportunity I have to see some people these days (being over 30 is tough on schedules), so I cherish that. It’s not uncommon for a game session to start an hour or more later than originally planned because we’ve been trading rumors and just chit-chatting about our lives and the latest cat video on YouTube. The groups I’m a part of tend to have a very loose and casual atmosphere even after the gaming has begun- when something happens in the game that can be commented from the sidelines, it probably will be, either instantly or right after the scene has played out. No matter how serious the game gets, it’s not uncommon for people to step out of the situation, make a verbal footnote about what’s going on, and then return to whatever dreadful thing is happening. This might sound like we’re not taking the games seriously, but it maybe just the opposite – we’re paying attention to the details (and the intertextuality that’s common to our games – we do a lot of referencing) and being responsive on a different level. I can imagine it being highly disruptive to a person not used to the style, and feel a bit sorry towards those who have recently started playing in our regular group.
Sort of related to the previous point is the fact that I’m used to playing games. I’ve been running/playing RPGs two thirds of my life now. And I’m a creature of habit if nothing else. It’s something that we do, and have always been doing. And on some nights, that alone feels like a good enough reason to keep on doing it. Luckily, this is a feeling I get only quite rarely, but I admit, it’s still there.
When actually playing, I’ve noticed that I love three things – building my character’s story, playing (with) the system and observing others from the sidelines.
The first is probably the most important one. I might not immerse myself into my character, but he’s still the most important thing for me in the game. A good analogue might be likening it to the situation in a writer’s process where “the character starts to live a life of its own”, doing decisions that might surprise your own planning and the story starts to unfold on its own to directions you didn’t originally think of. To oversimplify – Inside the game world, I only care about what happens to my character and how his story plays out. I get a glitter of happiness in my eyes when my character faces situations where he has to make difficult choices, when he fails in things, when he is forced to come face to face with things that he has done. When he makes the wrong choices that I know as a player will come haunt him later on, when he is shown the error of his ways and given the opportunity to change. When he resists the temptations in front of him twice, only to succumb to them the third time, when the results might be the most catastrophic. These are things that allow me to build an interesting narrative about the character that can be told later.
Of course, when I said that only my character’s story matters in the game world, it doesn’t mean that I’m some sort of an island or a lone wolf – in games with groups of characters, the most important people in my character’s story are the other players’ characters. And enabling them to play out their stories helps me play out mine. Also if the game’s story is about epic heroes saving all of creation from the threats from beyond, then that is a part of the character’s story as well. But like I said from the start, the epic story itself isn’t something that I look for in games. Its the personal story of which the epic might be a part of. Same goes with solving mysteries of the universe – if the characters solve that mystery and my character learns something about himself while they do that, it’s great. Solving mysteries for mysteries’ sake isn’t really interesting.
One of the best old game sessions I remember playing was a Marvel Superheroes game where our characters were debating for most of the game session about what they were going to do next. My character was mostly just sitting in his chair, listening, through the long long discussion. And then at some point just flies away, not saying a word, not actually coming back to the game for a few game sessions. Might have looked like nothing much for the other players, but there was a lot going on – the character had just fought his father, defeating him. The rest of the group was discussing things that riffed with that part of his story quite awesomely. And the decision to get the hell away from them was very good step for the character’s development, and it was a very cool game session for me. Even if my character didn’t really get to “do anything”. It’s not far from immersion, but not the same thing.
The second thing I love in game situations comes from my engineering background I guess. I like mechanical aspects of the systems. I can play freeform and get a lot from it, but if someone gives me a 600 page rulebook, I’ll embrace that and become a rules lawyer if necessary. I know what you’re thinking – “God, he’s a munchkin…” but it’s not really that. If the game has set some rules about how things work, I like to use the system to build a character the way I want it to play out. If I want to play a character who is really scary, I use the system to make my character that. Or if I want to create a fighter who jumps around and does all sorts of Errol Flynn stuff, I’ll choose things from the mechanics that allow me to do that. And I when I say I can become a rules lawyer, it is usually to protect the vision I have of what the character can do.
A sad example of such a behavior on my part comes from our old d20 Future game, where I played a grizzled heavy weapons expert who was augmented with “cybernetic stuff” (that’s a technical term) and thus near impossible to bring down without actually killing him. Game mechanics-wise he had a lot of powers that allowed him to keep on going even when affected by various negative conditions (to keep him going), carry stuff (I had this vision of him carrying his wounded comrades from battle while the firefights was still going on), etc. And when the GM tried to keep the story flowing into the direction he wanted to while it conflicted what I wanted from the character, I could get pretty annoying to protect what my character was.
As the previous example shows, what I seem to be incredibly bad at, is communicating my intentions of what I want to do with my character to the GMs. I guess in part that is because I start to realize it myself only after playing a few games and getting to know the character myself. The character really builds only after he’s had to made some decisions and shown some personality, not immediately after I step in his shoes or create his statistics..
Also, worth mentioning is that sometimes the things that I emphasize in the system system side aren’t the things that I actually use in the game. I’m one of those strange people who get a kick out of playing the character who is the greatest swordsman of all times, but has sworn never to unsheathe his sword again. When you have to consider a decision to draw it or not just makes every armed conflict more interesting.
The third enjoyable in-game thing for me is that I like watching other people play. I’ve been running games for such a long time that it’s my second nature to lean back and look what the others are doing and how they’re having fun. Hard to really expand on this beyond just that basic idea. Looking at people playing is fun. I’ve been in games where my character has died halfway through the session so I haven’t had a chance to play for the rest. I’ve been to games where I haven’t had a character – I’ve just come in to sit and observe. Anything can be a spectator sport if you like it enough. Even RPGs.
So, that’s me and some thoughts what I’m getting out of gaming. I would like to ask you what do you get out of playing RPGs? Why do you do it? What’s cool about it? If you’re a player in one of my game groups, I’m especially interested.
October 31st, 2009 at 16:51
As a player in the Vuosisata -game you are running, I must say I really enjoy the laid back attitude of the group. I like it that the people let each other approach the game in their own way. They give you room to play the way that comes naturally to you. We are quite different as people and as players but I already feel close to them just because I enjoy playing with them so much. I don’t have to feel like someone is always second guessing me or making me feel stupid if my character does something stupid. Taking a step back and watching and listening, instead of trying to force the game and the other players to follow their own vision and agenda, is a very good way to play. I don’t like to feel like someone is always looking back at me and trying to drag me faster in their own narrow direction.
I am the type of a player who gets immersed very strongly. In larps it was pretty annoying sometimes, because if my character got angsty for some reason, I might just start weeping. Not the best thing to do among people who I never felt that close to in- or offgame.
).
In a tabletop game I get to live inside my head and listen to other people without having to worry about social patterns and feeling inadequate, like in larps (or some tabletop games that did not have a group that was such a good fit). I also need the right to step back and not be trapped in myself like in larps.. I felt like I had to be seen all the time, when I wanted just to observe. (Ok, anyone who saw me as the red alien in the Ed Woods larp would doubt this sentiment on my part
I feel that in tabletop games I get to be someone other than me more freely. When I had a character who was the leader of the pack, I felt like I had so much room to forget myself and experience someone else’s story. A good gm gives people the chance to let go of their social insecurities and stigmas and face challenges they never knew they could tackle. I do not want to play an omnipotent god or the coolest hero in town. I am more into “normal people” in their own world. But I want the experience of outdoing myself on a personal level.
My immersion starts from the first sentence concerning my character. The gm tells me: “your character should be someone who knows how to deal with intellectual dilemmas” -> I have someone in my head already, even if they end up becoming different from my original first glimpse of an idea.
Your description of the character coming to life on it’s own is very familiar to me. I often notice that my character is doing, feeling and thinking things that I would not have thought of, had I had to plan for them. It also helps me deal with events in the game that I was not prepared for or that somehow shook me. If my character has to do something that is out of my comfort zone, I get a bit more immersed and let her “run on her own” for a while.
In some ways I am a rather conservative and “innocent” person, so that helps especially in the more cynical and dark areas of the story. (Though it’s hard to pinpoint where that line is).
I am a character player through and through. I like to play out social situations and get to know the other characters as people, not just as “tools to get the job done”. If the story concentrates on epic scale mysteries and you have to save the world too fast to have any or enough room for character development, I get uncomfortable and soon after that: unhappy. I do like the mysteries and the search for the right thing to do to fix the world, but I need to have room to approach all that from the characters point of view.
I must say that I am pretty low-key when it comes to the story arch and what I want from it. I would be happy playing out some mundane every day life stories. If a game turned out to be about five people working at a shop at the local mall, I would not mind. (Though I do hate customer service jobs
). The big epic stories can be fun and I understand their importance in the gaming world. But do I prefer saving the universe over saving the neighbors poodle? No.
This said, I do think games are supposed to take you out of your comfort zone and challenge you to take a leap.
The rules are a necessary evil for me and I do not like to memorize rule book pages. I do want things to follow a logic and to have the security of knowing that if my character has a stat, I get to use it. But other than that, it’s all about the immersion for me. (I can be really annoying when it comes to rules, I often have to ask which dice to roll etc, one more reason to like Vuosisata
).
I think that it’s better to have the rule book authority centered around the game master. Players are pawns for good reason and should stay that way (when it comes to the rules, not in other areas of the experience). All hail the gm. It keeps the gaming experience more laid back if players know their place and do not try to run the thing. This said, I do want the players to have control over the things they have been promised rulewise. And when it comes to immersion and internalizing the story, I want to have room to think for myself.
But there’s an another side to the rule book controversy. It’s all about who we are. People are different and should be allowed the room to be themselves. It’s the forcing of others that bothers me, not the interest in the ways things work.
And the gm should not abuse his power. What has bothered me in the past about people, who as players take too much liberties in the interpretation of rules, is that they sometimes use rules as a shield. They want to control things and are unable to let go. They use rules to silence their doubts and insecurities in ways that end up suffocating other players, it ruins the fun. It’s all about the approach. Some people confront the gm about the events of the game. “That monster can not have just killed my pet, it’s unfair”. That’s just as annoying. Trying to run the game when you are supposed to enjoy and experience it, and let other people do so too, is the problem.
I would like to see experienced game masters as players. It would tell so much more about the person. The ability let go of the control must be something gm’s as players have always struggled with. It can be relaxing being the pawn, if you surrender to the idea. The way I see it, surrendering the control and stepping back to watch and listen, is a very important aspect of rpg’s. As long as you aren’t bullied towards it.
The gaming experience outside of the immersion is important to me too. I love seeing how other people play. It’s a very fascinating way to see the person from a different angle than normally. I am always interested to hear how other people think. I wish I could listen in on games. Even if I am talking a lot in character, I am always listening. And the way the gm runs the story is interesting on a more personal level, too. How a story unfolds when there are the players experiencing it and the gm running it, is just enthralling. It’s better than books and movies on so many levels. This from a book-addicted movie nut.
People surprise me in such positive ways. I try not to feel like I am ruining it if I speak out too much. Vive la différence.