@ganymede said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
Anyhow, I see your point, but I disagree with it. Two intelligent people can see the same set of facts and come up with different opnions.
Sorry, it wasn't actually for you, per se, but to explain for the audience's sake. <.< >.> I know you get it. We've had reasonable discussions about it before. Hell, half the time I agree with you and split the baby anyway.
@ganymede said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
To Derp's point, I resigned my PC when Echoes' vampire staff decided to not allow PCs as top-tier leadership in their respective covenants. I disagreed with the decision strongly, but I understand the bases for it. In my opinion, if you do not provide opportunities for leadership you are not going to draw in leaders. And I think you want leaders on games, especially World of Darkness games.
That was a contested decision. On Echoes, you pretty much had each little sphere as its own kingdom. I had Mage (Harvester) with some assistance in Werewolf, which was mostly Ecliptic. And then Moonshrimp had Vampire.
We did not always agree on what the best course for the game would be, but there were certain points where we pretty much just took a vote 2-1. Ruling out PC leadership was part of that.
Ultimately, it comes down to levels of control. Mage and Werewolf had some external control in that the Elders and Council, etc., were controlled by NPCs. We could help direct the boots on the ground experience from there. Vampire had no such thing going for it, and we were frequently confronted with the 'well it is PC-controlled so go talk to them' excuse. So we decided to remove that as an excuse.
When you let PCs run the show, you, as staff, lose that ability, for the most part. You have to rely on the PCs themselves to do that. To dish out consequences and steer the flavor of interactions. And if they idle, you have to give them a reasonable chance to get back to it. If they disagree with you, then you either have to push them forcibly back along the path you want to see on the game or find some kind of IC external force to do it.
Ultimately, it's almost always a mess, and creates more headaches than it's worth. Players can be leaders in the sphere without being at the top of the food chain. That is not a necessity for pretty much any game. You can have some pretty devoted shepherds who have no title or official authority whatsoever.
But those titles and official authority positions can bring your game to a grinding halt in a hurry in the WoD. In many ways, PC leaders are even more problematic than overt PC antagonists because they often do end up working in direct opposition to other players, or at best being so negligent that it has much the same effect.
People keep telling me that this is somehow a necessary thing, for PCs to be able to have something to strive for. But never, ever (1) on one of my games, will the Throne be something within their grasp. I am not relinquishing that level of control over my game world to people that I don't trust to actually act on it in a way that betters the game. YMMV.
(1) I can think of a rare handful of exceptions to this, but honestly I doubt the circumstances would ever arise to get there, so effectively never.
@arkandel said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
My anecdotal example in this regard was from years ago when someone rolled a new chef into a sphere and the existing chef complained OOC about it. There can only be one!
I remember this happening at least twice, actually.
@ganymede said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
And yet I can count the number of times I have seen players with the crown fulfill the responsibilities that come with it on my fingers.
Pretty much. It's why I don't allow PC leadership, and why people whine at me so much. They promise promise promise they will do it better than the other guys. (Spoiler: They don't.) So now all top-tier leadership is NPC, and I let PCs have middle management.
@wizz said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
It's fun to play a villain, but if you're not ultimately there to serve the story in the long run and give the "good guys" the big win in the end, things tend to go pretty sour pretty quickly.
Why do the "good guys" have to win? Plenty of pretty remarkable stories end with the good guys losing. There is nothing in the rules that says that good has to triumph over evil. Hell, if anything, evil is really the more likely to triumph anyway, because they aren't bound by any kind of limitation on their actions other than what they set for themselves.
Going into it with 'well the good guys are clearly going to win, duh' as the starting point is more the problem here, I think.
@ganymede said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
One may argue that it isn't quite as diametrically-opposed as Camarilla-Sabbat relations, but I disagree.
Not only would I disagree, I'd say that the Invictus-Carthian and Dragon-Crone-Sanctified conflict is actually a bit more diametrically opposed than Camarilla-Sabbat, and less predictable since allegiances can shift without having to uproot your entire social circle.
Right, but almost more importantly you need to make sure that you have actual White Hats and not just Redcaps-in-waiting.
@carma said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
The only thing I didn't do was start singing like a Disney villain.
@devrex said in Antagonistic PCs - how to handle them:
I've played 'em, but I sat long and hard and thought about everything else a villain could do besides kill an opponent, stay mostly in those areas, and really just try to make my mindset that when I make a villain it's just like STing: the character is there for the enjoyment of others.
It's never the villains that you have to worry about.
It's usually the heroes coming in and getting a whiff of anything opposed to their thing with an antagonist tag and swooping in like some kind of demented paladin determined to crush it into a fine red paste.
The villains usually play a longer game. The protagonist factions give no fucks. They just go in and decimate and then pat themselves on the back for staying the 'good guys' after their inevitable baseless murders.
I've always wanted antagonist PCs on games I staff for. Have advocated for it even.
The problem comes in that you have to be almost tyrannical with the PCs in question. Remind them that violence between antagonist factions is actually the exception to the rule.
Otherwise it quickly escalates to Did you bite your thumb at me sir WELL PREPARE TO DIE MOTHERFU**ER! Because obviously that's the way that all adults handle conflict.
It gets even more trivial if you include magic or any kind of superpowers.
So you have to make sure to put a firm boot on that shit or you end up with snipers in towers pretending they can pick off anyone they want with impunity because magic bullets you see?
I am clearly missing context on this.
Why does the cat have so many arms?
What is even happening?
@ganymede said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
@pyrephox said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
And yet, now both The Network and HorrorMU* 2.0 are doing pretty well with exactly that format, with a few revisions.
I honestly loved the idea. I think it is from my time on stage.
It's nice to claim ownership of a character, but I'm happy owning a portrayal of the same.
I think an important distinction needs to be made about The Network, though:
There is character continuity there, in that the actor-Character is continuous and exists between-and-even-during seasons. They don't just disappear when the season is up, and up until recently, you could even revisit old seasons and parts in the Rerun Room.
You just occasionally get to put them in the shoes of a little side-bit for a season under a different theme, but using mostly their same stats and such.
Came home.
SWAT is at the neighbor's house.
Been sitting waiting to get to my house, which is completely blocked off, for three hours.
And counting.
Cops in front of me.
Cops behind me.
Can't get out.
I am hungry.
And thirsty.
And tired.
And I have to pee.
FMFLRN.
@pyrephox said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
the biggest thing I could see needing some very firm rules is how to resolve conflicts of depiction when no party wants to give way.
I don't even think this would be the first big fire that you'd have to put out. The first big fire that you'd have to put out is figuring out how every single job that a player puts in is going to be resolved before that player logs out.
And who gets control over the xp pools that come with that character if you have to give them up every day.
And...
@mietze said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
I think we need to get away from the idea that a game in a beloved genre must cater to all people, past and present.
Literally nobody said this though.
What we've said is 'it did not work in the past and comes with an attendant host of problems that create issues for the players involved, so it is likely not worth the headache'.
This has absolutely nothing to do with who a game caters to, and everything to do with a generalized logistical issue that has absolutely nothing to do with taste.
For the most part, though, I agree with the statement. Not every game can, or should, try to cater to all people. But there is a certain core of gamerunning logistics that are going to be fairly universal for whatever genre you want to play in, and there's no escaping that.
@faraday said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
@tinuviel I mean, roster games have been around since the early 2000's, so I'm not sure what is new and different? Have they never been tried on WoD before?
Haunted Memories had some. They were quickly abandoned for a host of reasons.
@pyrephox said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
Although I most like the suggestion made earlier in the thread of, essentially, a 'partial roster': a character which inhabits X particular space, and must have skills/abilities A, B, and C, but is otherwise customizable.
I'm still not clear on how this is different from like a 'wanted concepts' posting somewhere. In this one, you'd still have to create the actual character and do the chargen work, which is what rosters are supposed to be alleviating.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, at all. I like having direction on what's wanted and where. But it doesn't address the core of the issue which is 'I feel intimidated by chargen'.
To me, this kind of thing is desirable but isn't what people are talking about when they talk about a roster. They want fully formed characters they can take off a rack and slip on like a prom dress.
Just to be clear here:
I am not saying that rosters are wrong. I'm saying that they are problematic, both for the players picking up the rostered characters and for everyone else who's had to interact with those rosters. It's not just in WoD, it's in every system, but WoD rosters are especially problematic this way just because of the gritty nature of the games themselves and the baggage that comes along with them.
So while, no, I don't have anything against adding new games using different philosophies, I'd warn against this particular one. There is a difference between 'not for me based on preference' and 'problematic for other players', and I think rosters fall into the latter more often than not.
@jennkryst said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
I would do quasi-rosters on WoD. Which is 'here are a bunch of pre-baked character hooks. You need X, Y, and Z minimums to reflect these things here, but aside form that, go nuts!' to save on 'I am new and know nobody in town' issues. I have no time for writing your personality, and once you grab that roster person with those hooks, THAT CHARACTER IS YOURS. And we write a new person to go on the roster next.
Or something like that. Kinda. Maybe.
Alright. So then what happens when someone picks up that roster with those, presumably, unique hooks and whatnot and then just doesn't play them?
Do you write another carbon copy of that character?
what happens if the first one comes back?
And how does that work better than just a 'Wanted Concepts' post somewhere public?
Serious questions, btw. I'm interested in why people think that this would be a better way.
@ganymede said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
It's funny to me because this does not seem to be a huge issue on large games with a roster like, oh, Arx. I mean, sure, it has a host of attendant problems, but this really isn't one of them. And frankly, I think what you said before says more about World of Darkness players than about rosters.
If this forum is to be believed, then it's a problem on Arx too, lol. I seem to remember various iterations of -- who was it. Cullen? Being mentioned as problematic all around.
And I mean, yeah, it might not be rosters in general, and could be WoD players. Buuuuut this is a thread about Rosters in the World of Darkness, so I feel like my comments are still valid. 
@solstice said in Roster Characters & WoD?:
Your character is yours. If you leave, that character goes away. If any one character is important enough to grind the entire game to a standstill if they left or vanished, you've found your actual problem.
Just tacking this onto here since I completely up and forgot my other side of this --
I want you to make your character because I want you to show me that you have a working knowledge of the rules.
I get it, the books are big. I'm struggling through the 700 pages of the behemoth that is M20 myself, and have a few books on top of that.
The number of times I've felt myself having sympathy for the people who go "I don't have tiiiiime to read the giant book, I just wanna plaaaaaaay" is exactly equal to the number of times someone has made a giant fucking mess in a sphere because they didn't have the first clue what they were doing.
Rosters make it too easy for people who have no idea what they're doing to come in and make a huge mess of things, on so many levels. It just doesn't work. It's not like FS3 where you can pick up the system in 15 minutes and be good to go. There's a level of effort that has to go into it. It's just the nature of the game.
