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WISH 30: Is PBeM Roleplaying?

Are PBeM (Play-by-email) games actually roleplaying? Why or why not? How does PBeM differ from or approximate roleplaying face-to-face, or other activities that you feel it is similar to?

I'm going to say no, using criteria that some folks wouldn't or don't.

1. To me, a roleplaying event of any kind is characterized by a social gathering -- I'm not going to be entirely meat-exclusive and say that it requires everyone be in the same room, but it is a social situation for the players (anecdotes and laughter that have nothing to do with the game itself... that's my style of play I guess -- PBeM's aren't social for the players as a general rule -- they are for the characters, but not players.

2. A roleplaying event involves a level of immediacy -- in responses, in formulating reaction, et cetera. Talk to me about IRC, chat, or MU* environments meant to roleplay and I'm on board with the idea that you can have a roleplaying game going on in that environment, simply because of the immediacy of it... PBeMs are a kissing cousin to that; collaborative writing experiments.

Some folks might argue against that assertion (that PBeM is more of a collaborative story-writing exercise than roleplay), saying that writing is much more structured than PBeM, but for all that you might be firing emails off to people quickly, nothing in an PBeM compares to the instantaneous online interaction of a chat room or IRC or what-have-you, and forget about face-to-face -- regardless of the speed of emailed replies, actions is more considered, prepared, structured, and planned with PBeM... yes, to the point where, IMO, what you're doing is writing the story of what your character is doing in character than being in character.

Caveat That doesn't make it less of a good experience -- it just makes it different. (Not the kind of different I enjoy, but that's a whole 'nother thing.)

Posted by Doyce at 12:58 PM | Permalink

A Nobilis chancel-making tool.

Posted by Doyce at 4:28 PM | Permalink

The 20' By 20' Room

Roleplaying games are really interesting.
From that sentence, all else flows. Roleplaying games are interesting, and interesting things are worth talking about. One way to talk about things is via this probably over-hyped new technology known as the weblog.

Posted by Doyce at 2:34 PM | Permalink

Mike Sullivan: Magipunk, v 2.0 -- great stuff. Something that would be fun to play with/in.

Posted by Doyce at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Monday Mashup #17: Psycho

Hmm. I think I'd got with My Life with Master on this one, simply because I've been wanting to do something with it for awhile (although my current fave idea for MLWM is to run the classic I7 Ravenlof adventure as a MLWM scenario with the PCs as servants of Stradd, the traditional adventurers as the Others, etc.)

In this idea, the Master is the owner of a hotel, and the minions are hotel staff. We'd have to go a bit larger than the Bates, so lets mash in a good-sized old place like the Stanley Hotel (just to get a little bit of The Shining in there).

The twist here would be that Norman's not presented as the Master, but as one of the fellow minions, following the orders of his Mother (whom the character's never see) -- Norman would use all the rules in the book for NPC minions (only using Reason and Fear for rolls, etc.), essentially making him simply a foil for the PCs who eventually reveals himself as the Real Master.

Posted by Doyce at 7:31 AM | Permalink

I've got some catching up to do... Monday Mashup #13: Silence of the Lambs

I'm combining this with Nobilis.

Lecter is a captured excrucian, gone from cannibal to destroyer-of-bits-of-creation. Because he has been captured by the PC's and they have no proof that he's actually done any harm, they're stuck with either keeping him under lock and key or releasing him, and they aren't going to release him.

He therefore becomes a source of information -- insight into the other monsters out there in the world whose motivations are beyond the understanding of normal folks but which are completely understandable to him.

In the stories, Lecter's motivations were alienation and aesthetics; he only killed the most stupid, annoying, and distasteful. Playing around with this, you get a pretty archetypal Excrucian -- they are truly alien by nature (coming from beyond Creation), and aestetically motivated, as they try to 'collect' all the portions of creation within themselves... perhaps not strictly cannibalistic, but close enough. Our little captured excrucian never expects anyone to understand him... who in Creation could.

Until he begins to sense that he might have an ally (or at least willing dupe) in the form of one of the PCs: someone particularly bright, particularly ruthless, notably pragmatic...

Hmm. This is an idea I might have to use.

Posted by Doyce at 7:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

WISH 73: Player-Driven Shifts

What's the biggest PC-driven shift you've ever experienced in a campaign? If you were a player, what made you feel like you could successfully change the GM's world? If you were a GM, was this planned or something the PCs surprised you with?

I'd probably have to give the golden screw aware to Scott Herndon's affect on my TiHE campaign, in which he presented positive proof that the universe had 10 primary points of power within it, when I was firmly convinced that it was eight. His reasoning for this was so good that I actually went looking for the other two myself and, upon finding them, realized a great deal more about the story than I had previously.

Posted by Doyce at 7:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

WISH 71: Unwritten NPCs

For GMs : when you plan or play your NPCs, do you intentionally leave out some of the story for each? Do you hold something back and let the Players imagine the rest or do you present NPCs from the core of who they are?

What I generally try to do with NPCs is present them based off of a core idea of their character, with all the contradictions and oddities that that generally entrails, but at the same time I'm listening to what the players are doing with that character, how they read them, what they think is going on with them, and incorporate the best of those ideas as well.

This has worked particularly well lately within the Nobilis game, most notable where ***Dave has picked up on a tremendous amount of the hidden stuff within Haley, the Power of Imagination, and run with it. Good stuff.

For Players : Do you rely on the NPC as presented, or are you usually looking “between the lines” to figure the elements that are hold-backs?

I'm naturally inclined to be narcissistic in real life, so thinking about NPC motivations isn't my strongest suit. Since I write up stuff on my own, I tend to come up with involved reasons for NPC actions that, while amusing to the GM, are nowhere near the real deal.

Do you care that the NPCs might have as many conflicted qualities as the PCs?

Only if it's somehow relevant.

Should a game really revolve around the PCs in every respect, including a certain ‘artificial’ quality to the secondary cast? Or are you happier if the NPCs are ‘sticky’?

I prefer NPCs who seem to have lives going on beyond what's going on with my character -- that makes them more interesting tome and shakes me out of my natually PC-centric POV.

Posted by Doyce at 6:58 AM | Permalink

WISH 72: Character Interruptus

Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone?

Sara Parker, a.k.a. Bombshell, was a pretty cool Supers character. A leader who didn't want the job, a secret identity, a second-layer of secret identity, a dark secret, and more character hooks than you could shake a stick at.

Where might she have gone? Well, I think Dave would have been missing at least a few lovely opportunities if Sarah hadn't at the very least (1) been kicked out of the group as a spy, (2) been kicked out of the group (again) as a traitor, and (3) run into her 'dead' parents, apparently working for the bad guys.

Posted by Doyce at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Don't want to shell out for the Pyramid subscription so you can check out the latest acid trip from Ken Hite? Try David Atwell's Alternative and Future History.

Posted by Doyce at 11:04 PM | Permalink

The Fantastic in Art and Fiction

Posted by Doyce at 9:21 AM | Permalink

Entrances to Hell in the UK, updated fairly frequently, and complete with site history, maps, and photos.

Great stuff and a fun read, worthwhile at the least for Nobilis and Unknown Armies.

Posted by Doyce at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, we've had a few players cross-over from one Nobilis game group to the other now, and someone asked one of the 'crossers' which one of the groups stayed on track better.

His answer, to say the least, surprised me a bit, so I set about the Saturday session with the goal of getting the thing in focus a bit better. The result (as summarized elsewhere):

Nobilis seemed to be focused and on track and yet somehow ‘off’.

That's just how it seemed to me, at any rate. Wasn't really sure if anyone else saw it that way.

Dave chimed in:

Re Nobilis, I thought the session went well, too, but I agree that it was "off." May be because folks are scattered here and there, and not necessarily pulling toward a common goal. Or maybe not.

There's a magic formula there, somewhere, with the Nobilis stuff. People are all addressing the story but...

Hmm... I'm not feeling like everyone's gears are engaged? Everyone's addressing the problems at hand but not always involved at the same time.

Case in point: as much as I liked the scene with the Wyrd sisters from from last game, the scene where everything really felt 'right' was Sian visiting Meon.

Could this be because it was a personal project... er... rather, a personally-devised solution to a problem? I think maybe so -- it felt much more player-determined, which is a point at which a game like Nobilis or Amber really seems to start to hum, I think... when the players have their own projects to work on, or are coming up with their own solutions and actions.

The scenes that have, thus far, worked really well, since the split of the group into two (in no particular order):

- Lust and Crime disposing of the Excrucian weapons.
- Sian and Justice in general.
- Sian and Meon in general.
- Death traveling back in time (by Gating along the 'path' of his own lifeline) to collect his former 'tribe' as warriors.
- Donner and Cities making a private arrangement of mutual benefit.

Things that haven't really clicked:

- Most anything where someone said 'I need you to do this', especially when the 'how to do it' part is defined at all... giving them leeway to solve the problem in whatever way they feel like always seems to work better (though that still comes in second place to the scenes that are completely self-determined.

So I'm not sure that 'common goals' are really what's missing... just need to get to that point where everyone's engaged in their private idaho's, I guess. This isn't new ground or discovery for me (or anyone else reading this, I suspect) -- it's just something I need to remind myself of from time to time.

Posted by Doyce at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)