PC antagonism done right
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@Gilette Honestly? No. Unless it means whapping them across the face with them, old school duel-style.
That saying about how 'what you reward is what you encourage' applies here, too; coddling this behavior encourages it and makes it seem acceptable when it simply isn't so.
Provided there are options to negotiate, various opt-outs someone can take, limitations that can be agreed upon, etc., these folks are not in the position of 'innocent bystander with a gun suddenly at their head before the trigger is pulled, cope!'
The folks who can never lose, never look 'bad', never let someone else have the spotlight/etc. generally need a reminder that the game (in my case anyway, and in most others I have seen this is equally so) is intended for adults, and they'll be expected to behave like one even when things aren't going their favored way•. This is where things get into the territory others have mentioned re: 'won't accept anything bad happening to them ever/won't make sure they outshine everyone else in the scene at all costs' types, and they're typically pretty toxic to the game's ecosystem.
Being extra gentle with them really isn't the answer. Reminding them about the old playground rule about sharing all the toys is pretty essential, and this is more than most staff are ever willing to undertake. It's rare someone will speak up to say: "Hey, we've had repeated complaints about spotlight-hogging/unwillingness to take even a minor hit/etc." to this type, and generally ignore them in the vain hope that they'll shape up on their own.
There are fairly freeform, full-consent games where people can generally do this with impunity, and it's generally not a problem. Otherwise? Yeah, it's a problem, and it's not gonna fix itself. You can delicately mention it all you want, and generally it's not going to make an enormous difference if we're talking about one of the soap bubble ego types -- if they can't take a hit, they're generally going to be even less open to OOC criticism of any kind, no matter how constructive or kindly in its delivery.
• Most of what we need to know to play nice with others we really did learn as kids on the playground. (I have a whole theory about this just waiting to get flung at some poor, unsuspecting wiki somewhere, some day.) That said, as adults, maybe we've strayed too far from those days to remember those lessons, no matter how critical they tend to be to getting along in daily life. Share the toys. Toss the ball to other people, too! Don't throw a tantrum when the ball was thrown to somebody else; you'll get a turn, too! Share your snacks. Don't crack dirty jokes in front of the nuns. Staff needs nap time, too. If you get hurt, it's OK to cry and ask for help from the nurse, and it's not cool to laugh at somebody who's crying because they've been hurt. Don't break somebody else's toy just because you can when they've shared it with you.
The list goes on and on, but really, imagine how many problems would be averted if folks kept what we all learned as little kids in mind, you know?
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@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:
I have notes in policy re: 'consent options don't mean you always 'win' and can never be on the losing end of a particular conflict', but when it comes to this particular crowd, I feel like I'm going to end up writing a monster of a long-winded thing about 'how to play nice with others' as a general advice/resource file on this specific point. (This is stuff that isn't policy, but gives examples, some of the reasoning behind why things are set up how they are, general advice to help someone find play, style guides, and general resource whatnots; that glossary thing is an example of the kind of thing that lives in 'resources' vs. The Rules, which live in 'policy'.)
I don't think policies work. I don't mean here, I mean in general - policies don't work. Maybe a general statement to set the tone so folks are informed ("don't be a dick"), but anything else is just wasted effort; to reasonable players it will be just common sense stuff they'd be doing anyhow and to bad ones... well, they won't read it, or they won't think is about them.
Players who can't handle IC rivalries at all, who'll go to each other and bitch OOC over pages then metagame the hell out of their response don't think that's what they're doing. The kind of person who tries to win the game instead of play a character won't second-guess themselves, and that's why it falls to MU-runners to change the rules and redefine what winning the game looks like to such players. Sure, it's a trick, a sleight of hand ("here's some XP for playing nice") but if it works who really cares, right?
When it comes to it good players won't mind if their rival gets some rewards out of such things - I feel all this thread really is (or should be) about is ways to mitigate drama by compensating the conditions which prevent it.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Gilette said in PC antagonism done right:
Well, how else do you handle someone with a fragile ego? Kid gloves.
If I have to treat someone with kid gloves, it means that I don't consider them an adult.
If I don't consider someone an adult, I don't see why I should have them on a game where it is clearly stated that all players should be, and act as if they are, adults.
These players are unwittingly toxic, most of the time, but I do not see why staff and players continually hold the belief that toxic players need to be either taught or coddled.
That said, I'm working on a system that throttles this shit down.
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@Gilette said in PC antagonism done right:
Well, how else do you handle someone with a fragile ego? Kid gloves.
My personal option is, to use the English phrase, send them to Coventry. Basically, ignore them, avoid rping with them, if stuck in a scene don't acknowledge them etc, before long you become whom they choose to avoid.
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@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:
When it comes to it good players won't mind if their rival gets some rewards out of such things - I feel all this thread really is (or should be) about is ways to mitigate drama by compensating the conditions which prevent it.
Pretty much this.
It sounds like Arx is one of the relatively rare places where you could designate a group as game-wide antagonists (seek to end the world), but others, in a fairly reasonable representation of reality, aren't so cut and dried. It's a faction in opposition or competition with yours, and so on. (Everybody reading this thread needs to go watch Black Sails right now, seriously.)
@Arkandel said in What do you play most?:
Many games put their metaplot on a wiki and promptly forget it exists.
...
Good metaplot is a roleplay-generating engine. The vast majority of MU* don't have good metaplot, they have a wiki with someone's fanfic scribbled hastily in a couple of its pages.Honestly? IF ONLY. It's not even that good. If the actual information was on the wiki in full and available to players, they could arguably do something with it themselves -- but many games are so wedded to 'secrets' that the actual information players would need to do something with that 'here's our basic storyline' statement is not made available to them. So it's not just a case of 'here's the idea, now back to watching my movie... ', which is bad enough, but 'here's the idea, now back to my movie... HEY STOP THAT THAT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE SECRETS! THAT ISN'T ALLOWED!'
...so much hate for that.
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@GangOfDolls said in PC antagonism done right:
Antagonism is best when its motivations in the character are pure.
Using this as a jumping-off point for some thoughts...
When filming the pilot to Firefly, Adam Baldwin was having some problems getting into the Jayne character until Joss gave him the bit of advice: Jayne thinks he's the hero of the story.
While I don't think Jayne's motivations are pure, but he thinks he knows the world to work a certain way, and it comes to a head where he is threatened to be spaced. He wasn't actually spaced, just the threat of it was enough to pull him back from destructive.
Two things happen here that I don't see happen a lot on Mu*s:
- The antagonist backed down. Life may be cheap in the wild (space-)west, but your life is still yours. There's no god to complain to, no director to put you in a bigger limelight, you're either alive or dead, and you can't achieve your motivations when you're dead.
- The protagonist backed down. I don't know if this is something I don't see a lot because I play WoD games, but seeing someone who feels slighted or wronged not take the nuclear option isn't common. So many characters are tooled to "win" that not taking that road seems like a player deciding to cripple their character. In my Firefly example, Mal would lose an easily controllable bit of muscle, an asset, and probably lose a few of his other crewmates and that would kill him inside.
Most RPGs aren't set up for these scenarios. Maybe Promethean (WoD) and it's keystone system. Maybe Fate Core. Maybe one or two others, but these aren't the stories we think of when we think of playing a tabletop RPG, and that's mostly what dominates this hobby.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
What I suspect lately is that people create winners.
So take for example a special agent type; he's not created with the intention of being a combatant, he's made to be Batman, a wizard is intended to be Harry Dresden, a clever character to be Sherlock Holmes, an inventor to be Tony Stark... you get the idea. Those act as more than merely inspirations, it's what they are essentially created to be - legends, unstoppable juggernauts in their respective arenas, and they are characters who might even work on a table-top setting.
But they aren't played on a table-top setting, they're played on multiplayer games. I'm still surprised at times about how profoundly defensive people get about others who create anything close to their concept, and it might be because of this; it's not just that they don't want to lose, they don't even want to have competition, even though in the original material of the very archetypes they chose to create there is always antagonism from someone with comparable or even superior skills; Sherlock has Moriarty, Batman has Ra's (or the Joker, take your pick), etc.
Anyway, that's my take on it. Players write themselves into a corner because of the narrow-mindedness of these concepts they specifically set out to play - they roll to be unbeatable, and enter games where no one is supposed to be, and that it's the heart of the problem. I think the damage takes place as early in the conceptual stage of making a character and becomes baggage the player is burdened with for the remainder of that PC's life.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:
What I suspect lately is that people create winners.
Many do, perhaps. I actually try to pick loser concepts. Makes gaming more interesting.
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Right, totally. I don't think a pure motivation is equal to correct one.
Your post reminded me of that line from Into The Woods:
"Nice is not good."
So, purity for me is that the character's motivation is his own- no matter where the needle jumps on the morality scale- and isn't so much a projection of the player just trying to obstruct someone else's fun in the game. That's not a story, that's just being dick.
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Then I'd like to distill many of my thoughts down to one line:
PC Antagonism Done Right requires the player to accept that their character is not the hero of the story, while their character does.
I also think the game should have a system in place where death, pain, suffering, and loss are meaningful, but as I believe that a player's job is to buy in to the theme and setting of the game they play on, this can be easily mitigated by the bolded statement above.
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Double-post follow-up:
The newest version of Prime Time Adventures (the seminal story-telling game structure for structured telling of stories):
Just like on a TV series, the producer takes on the responsibility to keep everything running smoothly. That includes: • Making sure that the players, the people playing the game, are happy. Is everyone getting a chance to contribute? Does everyone like how it’s going? • Making sure that the characters in the game aren’t too happy. Is the story exciting? Is there conflict and adversity? Are the issues getting enough attention?Some of the most recent RPGs have amazing "how to run this game" rules and advice. They have come a far, far way from White Wolf's Rule Zero ("if the rules don't make the game fun, ignore them"). These are actual rules, and if the players and GM follow them, you should have a much better game.
Well on a Mu*, the player must also play this role. There was a time, not too long ago, when this was expected of every player. Something happened (I'm going to blame paranoid WoD staffers) where people had this beaten out of them. Now it's often easier to focus on your own character and not risk yourself to the ire and complaints of players and staff alike.
Cut that out. Players: Take more responsibility for the scene and respect for those in it. Staff: Support players who do this. Thenomain: Stop posting and get back to work.
Yes sir.
(Damn slave-drivers.)
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edit: I'm going to ignore that stupid Thenomain slave-driver.
From Apocalypse World:
To the players: your job is to play your characters as though they were real people, in whatever circumstances they and themselves—cool, competent, dangerous people, larger than life, but real. My job as MC is to treat your characters as though they were real people too, and to act as though Apocalypse World were real.This is my favorite advice. Really, anything that tells the players what their job is does by and far better than any generic "What Is an RPG?" advice.
Incidentally, if the players of Apocalypse World aren't each other's antagonists, you're not playing it right.
The GM (the "Master of Ceremonies", in this case) gets further instructions:
• Make Apocalypse World seem real. • Make the players’ characters’ lives not boring. • Play to find out what happens.There's that "not boring" again. And again, these aren't suggestions; the author is very clear that if you don't do these things then you're playing the game wrong.
It also has a bit of advice that I find cropping up in the RPGs I like more than others:
• Play to find out what happens.
That is: Embrace the consequences. (You thought I was rambling, didn't you?)
Apocalypse World is big on the consequence. Fate Core sugar-coats the pill of consequences so that people will grab for it like candy. Here's where the system tells you how to play, as opposed to relying on following the soft rules. Someone said "be more MUD-like" as a solution. This is where their model lives, and it's a good model. Good enough that more RPGs are going there.
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I think I'm done now.
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@Ganymede said in PC antagonism done right:
Many do, perhaps. I actually try to pick loser concepts. Makes gaming more interesting.
On Vampire games especially, I'm interested into the descent into darkness, rather than overcoming the darkness. One of the reasons that ghouls interest me more than the Vampires themselves.
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@Lisse24 My experience with Vampire is some players go into it to play exactly what White Wolf explicitly states it isn't; superheroes with fangs.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in PC antagonism done right:
@Lisse24 My experience with Vampire is some players go into it to play exactly what White Wolf explicitly states it isn't; superheroes with fangs.
That's pretty much all of the WoD game lines. People ignore what's there and do their own thing against the grain of everything else. If you try and discourage this, you become the bad guy. It's a never ending cycle.
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@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:
Antagonism makes for good stories, but in a MU* environment I think it's a lost cause. Mostly for the reasons you mentioned, but it's even more than that. Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend.
Man I could not disagree more. If I can find someone who is cool, who I know is OOCly not crazy, who will be wanting to play a rival, antagonist or enemy, I'd value that person 100x more as my antagonist then my friend.
Making friends is easy.
Having meaningful rivalry (where its entirely IC and doesn't bleed over into OOC powergaming) is the true gems and value of what makes quality.
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@ixokai said in PC antagonism done right:
@faraday said in PC antagonism done right:
Antagonism makes for good stories, but in a MU* environment I think it's a lost cause. Mostly for the reasons you mentioned, but it's even more than that. Let's pretend that there's a totally mature player who won't start OOC drama, needs no encouragement to play antagonism, and is an awesome RPer. I don't want that person playing my character's antagonist, I want them playing my friend.
Man I could not disagree more. If I can find someone who is cool, who I know is OOCly not crazy, who will be wanting to play a rival, antagonist or enemy, I'd value that person 100x more as my antagonist then my friend.
Making friends is easy.
Having meaningful rivalry (where its entirely IC and doesn't bleed over into OOC powergaming) is the true gems and value of what makes quality.
My ideal lands right between these two ends of the spectrum, but is somehow harder to find than either: my favorites are the "best of enemies" sorts. The long-standing rivalry with mutual respect for the other's talents, or the duo that utterly loathe each other to the core but have to team up from time to time against a common adversary.
This is one of the reasons I'm sorta against "designated antagonists", but strongly encourage games with factions in conflict, in competition with one another, or with rivalries or opposition to each others' end goals. Allegiances are more likely to shift in those cases depending on the circumstances, and the adversary of today becomes the uneasy ally tomorrow, and the double-crosser of the day after that, and so on. It strikes me as more dynamic, less black and white, and more flexible and versatile on the whole.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said in PC antagonism done right:
This is one of the reasons I'm sorta against "designated antagonists", but strongly encourage games with factions in conflict, in competition with one another, or with rivalries or opposition to each others' end goals.
I completely agree with this sentiment. I was fairly disappointed when a game I recently append into did the 'designated antagonist' thing, when I thought they wouldn't be. It was somewhat disheartening.
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So I tend to play on games with appable FCs where the hero/antagonist roles of some characters are highly defined because of the source material. In general there's no limit on apping a "bad guy" be they FC or OC, though some villain FCs are rendered inappable because of power/narrative weight (Thanos, etc)
I feel like I've played villainous/antagonistic characters more often than not at this point, and my read on the situation is this: The problem is not usually with antagonist players not wanting to accept negative consequences, but with certain protagonist players never wanting to let the antagonist achieve or succeed at anything (which would usually result in negative consequences for /them/).
In my circles we tend to call this "excessive whitehatting", where some protagonist players just kinda see villains as punching bags for them to knock over so they can feel cool then wash/rinse/repeat every Saturday night. It can be very hard to get them accept any kind of scenario where they might not win because it runs so counter to the Saturday morning theory of heroics I don't doubt a lot of the people I'm thinking of operate on. I see it make people either reluctant to either app antagonists in the first place or do anything /too/ villainous with them in the fear that they will be immediately dogpiled heroes looking to get their triumph fix.
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It seems there's been a bit of a MU* wide culture shift on the nature of villains like that. A few years ago, it felt far more common that a villain-player could get heroes who'd agree to a pretty standard arc of 'suffer setbacks, get defeated, eventually defeat the villain' and everyone could have some time to shine.
These days, though, it seems very common that hero players simply can't handle any plot where they might lose or suffer a minor inconvenience.
It was one of the many factors that put MCM in its current state which used to have a thriving antagonist culture about 2-3 years ago.
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I remember playing Black Adam on Universe Unlimited and I had a pretty basic rule, one available because the game was consent-based, that went something like: Black Adam lives in Khandaq. He has a whole storyline about re-taking and restructuring Khandaq. As a result, typically, Black Adam gets the "win" in Khandaq when the story calls for it (remember: consent based, so a lot of narrative stuff had more weight in the decision-making process since there were no dice). Now, when outside of Khandaq? Black Adam usually lost against heroes of the same power level.
I remember Amora the Enchantress hung out with Adam a lot (for a variety of reasons) and Thor liked to swing his hammer around and warn them to BE GOOD. And the times he did it outside of Khandaq, he got in some good licks and they retreated, were fought off, didn't achieve their desired goal, etc.
But one time he came to Khandaq and swung his hammer around and Adam punched him all the way out of the country.
In superhero games, that sort of narrative back and forth and the way power can swing from one end to the other is important, and probably why those games work best when they are consent-based, and not full of dice.
