Starting at the Begining
I've signed up to play in Ivan's Elizabethan SF game. The pitch:The plan is for an Elizabethan-era science fiction game based around the comet of 1572. To quote Benjamin Woolley's biography of John Dee, "[The appearance of a new star] went to the heart of the cosmological, and ... by implication political and theological, order, and did so at a time when, across Europe, that order was facing innumerable other destabilising challenges. If this was a new star, it meant that the great outer orb of the Universe, unchanged since the moment of creation, which in its very pattern ordained the arrangement of earthly powers, had somehow altered." Of course, if the new star were actually the spaceship of technologically advanced star-faring aliens, well, that would kind of upset the arrangement of earthly powers too.
The game would probably run about 8-10 sessions. It will be relatively low-action (it’s not going to be a bug hunt with longbows), more about the interaction between the humans with their various agendas and relationships (personal, political, military, philosophical, theological, ecclesiastical, etc.) and the aliens with theirs (friendly, hostile, neutral, incomprehensible?). My idea is for the PCs to be based around of the court of Elizabeth, but the exact structure is up for grabs e.g. they could be a cross-functional (ahem) team of the brightest and the best, or they could be the court astrologer or spymaster plus retinue, or whatever. There is the possibility to accommodate people who can only make it irregularly.
The player-group is four-strong, none of whom I've campaigned with before, two of whom are basically unknown to me. Ivan, of course, I know as well as anyone does.
It's been a long time since I found myself at the start of a campaign as a player. The last game was WFRP, which was made easy and fun by the WFRP random character generation, and which was so far inside all our comfort zones that stress was pretty easily avoided at the start of the campaign.
The second most recent game has been Jarrat's LARP Mage Chronicle: the Invisible College. Which appears to be on hiatus at present. I had no real ideas for the character I was to play. I came to the game with little inspiration, and that's unfortunately continued. I just don't know how to drive the character into interesting situations, or what he wants in the short term. It's been a very good game, showing me just how much juice you can get out of nMage if you try; but as a player I've been perpetually disappointed with my own level of story potential.
The game before that was Lace and Steel, also under Ivan's care. Character generation was done individually with each player, and as a consequence it took a long time for the character interactions to settle down. I went into that game with a pretty strong character, who eventually evolved to be something almost diametrically opposite from what I had thought at the beginning. But my feeling at the end of the game was that I'd missed the right pitch for character ambition; the game ended up being a lot less action-adventure than I'd thought. It wasn't exactly realistic, but it became clear that the objectives I'd set up for my character were un-attainable in the game paradigm.
As a GM, I've had a few more recent experiences. The approach I took for Gaslight and Acid Nights was to have a meeting very early on; often people were still bouncing ideas at that stage. The intent was to ensure that the characters were all compatible both in story-style and in personality, so that the game would not be riven by intra-party conflict other than what was dramatic and of importance to the characters.
It's a difficult distinction: you want characters that will interact, which means agreeing and disagreeing, and forming plans, and doing their own thing in slight conflict with the others. But you want this all to be interesting rather than aggravating. It needs to be fun. And on balance, it's more fun if characters blandly stick together than if they have really serious problems with each other.
Gaslight worked better than I could have dreamed. Aside from the love triangle, which was neglected by the players involved, all the character relationships sparkled. There was some or other minor point of disagreement between each pair, but also a much more compelling reason to stick it out. What's more, all of the connections felt pretty natural: they were integral to the characters' identities.
Acid Nights in contrast, was a disaster. People more or less independently arrived at the characters they wanted to play, without thought to the group; then tried to tack on relationships. Most of these were not clearly understood by both sides, and quite a few were almost instantly forgotten. Too few strong and natural connections existed to bind the group together from the outset.
Space Western II moved back to an individual-oriented character generation. The game has been plagued with cancellations and glacial plot movement, so I'm not too sure how it's working out from the POV of character stability.
Obviously, my thoughts now are about how I can use what I learned about my previous games to ensure that I create a character that's fun for the other players and me.
My first objective has therefore been to find out what the other players think. What kinds of characters they want, and what kind of game. This is always going to be somewhat approximate, as people will really only know their character's personality after a few sessions, and once they are exposed to the true game environment.
My second objective is to setup a character that's wide-ranging enough that I can engage with the plot and game paradigm whatever it end up being. It's got to be able to go down several different routes without radical change. Esmeralda in L&S, and Dauphin in Invisible College, have both really struggled with this. They're too narrowly focused on one kind of game, which have both turned out to be not a fantastic match with the game. Conversely, Johann, who evolved purely by happenstance, fit the WFRP game as it really was perfectly. He was able to slowly divert towards the needs of the game as it changed over time. He was a very successful character.
My third objective is really almost parallel to the second, and it's to find connections with the other characters. Strong connections which will drive both story and character motivation. The earlier these can be established, the better.
And the fourth objective is to find stories for the character. I've seen so many great character concepts fall flat because once the game actually starts, the player has no idea what to do with it. Sad to say, I think this is the problem with my Space Western to an extent: as a group we are really struggling to access the enormous potential of the characters, all of whom are very cool.
Have I missed anything crucial?
Stage I has begun, with e-mails bouncing around, finding out what we think about the game and the characters. The conversation is a bit at a pause right now, but I'm certain it will pick up again. But even if it doesn't, I think I've got enough of an idea to start pitching things reasonably well at the character generation session Saturday-week.
Stage II is still troubling me. I intend to be not-too-specific until it becomes relevant; leaving myself some flexibility to cope with identifying the paradigm and still having a functional character.
Stage III depends a lot on knowing more about the other characters; so that too is on pause.
Stage IV... can't really be done until the game starts. And obviously, as well as being a continuation of the character generation process, it is a pretty vital first step in my program of being a good player.
The game would probably run about 8-10 sessions. It will be relatively low-action (it’s not going to be a bug hunt with longbows), more about the interaction between the humans with their various agendas and relationships (personal, political, military, philosophical, theological, ecclesiastical, etc.) and the aliens with theirs (friendly, hostile, neutral, incomprehensible?). My idea is for the PCs to be based around of the court of Elizabeth, but the exact structure is up for grabs e.g. they could be a cross-functional (ahem) team of the brightest and the best, or they could be the court astrologer or spymaster plus retinue, or whatever. There is the possibility to accommodate people who can only make it irregularly.
The player-group is four-strong, none of whom I've campaigned with before, two of whom are basically unknown to me. Ivan, of course, I know as well as anyone does.
It's been a long time since I found myself at the start of a campaign as a player. The last game was WFRP, which was made easy and fun by the WFRP random character generation, and which was so far inside all our comfort zones that stress was pretty easily avoided at the start of the campaign.
The second most recent game has been Jarrat's LARP Mage Chronicle: the Invisible College. Which appears to be on hiatus at present. I had no real ideas for the character I was to play. I came to the game with little inspiration, and that's unfortunately continued. I just don't know how to drive the character into interesting situations, or what he wants in the short term. It's been a very good game, showing me just how much juice you can get out of nMage if you try; but as a player I've been perpetually disappointed with my own level of story potential.
The game before that was Lace and Steel, also under Ivan's care. Character generation was done individually with each player, and as a consequence it took a long time for the character interactions to settle down. I went into that game with a pretty strong character, who eventually evolved to be something almost diametrically opposite from what I had thought at the beginning. But my feeling at the end of the game was that I'd missed the right pitch for character ambition; the game ended up being a lot less action-adventure than I'd thought. It wasn't exactly realistic, but it became clear that the objectives I'd set up for my character were un-attainable in the game paradigm.
As a GM, I've had a few more recent experiences. The approach I took for Gaslight and Acid Nights was to have a meeting very early on; often people were still bouncing ideas at that stage. The intent was to ensure that the characters were all compatible both in story-style and in personality, so that the game would not be riven by intra-party conflict other than what was dramatic and of importance to the characters.
It's a difficult distinction: you want characters that will interact, which means agreeing and disagreeing, and forming plans, and doing their own thing in slight conflict with the others. But you want this all to be interesting rather than aggravating. It needs to be fun. And on balance, it's more fun if characters blandly stick together than if they have really serious problems with each other.
Gaslight worked better than I could have dreamed. Aside from the love triangle, which was neglected by the players involved, all the character relationships sparkled. There was some or other minor point of disagreement between each pair, but also a much more compelling reason to stick it out. What's more, all of the connections felt pretty natural: they were integral to the characters' identities.
Acid Nights in contrast, was a disaster. People more or less independently arrived at the characters they wanted to play, without thought to the group; then tried to tack on relationships. Most of these were not clearly understood by both sides, and quite a few were almost instantly forgotten. Too few strong and natural connections existed to bind the group together from the outset.
Space Western II moved back to an individual-oriented character generation. The game has been plagued with cancellations and glacial plot movement, so I'm not too sure how it's working out from the POV of character stability.
Obviously, my thoughts now are about how I can use what I learned about my previous games to ensure that I create a character that's fun for the other players and me.
My first objective has therefore been to find out what the other players think. What kinds of characters they want, and what kind of game. This is always going to be somewhat approximate, as people will really only know their character's personality after a few sessions, and once they are exposed to the true game environment.
My second objective is to setup a character that's wide-ranging enough that I can engage with the plot and game paradigm whatever it end up being. It's got to be able to go down several different routes without radical change. Esmeralda in L&S, and Dauphin in Invisible College, have both really struggled with this. They're too narrowly focused on one kind of game, which have both turned out to be not a fantastic match with the game. Conversely, Johann, who evolved purely by happenstance, fit the WFRP game as it really was perfectly. He was able to slowly divert towards the needs of the game as it changed over time. He was a very successful character.
My third objective is really almost parallel to the second, and it's to find connections with the other characters. Strong connections which will drive both story and character motivation. The earlier these can be established, the better.
And the fourth objective is to find stories for the character. I've seen so many great character concepts fall flat because once the game actually starts, the player has no idea what to do with it. Sad to say, I think this is the problem with my Space Western to an extent: as a group we are really struggling to access the enormous potential of the characters, all of whom are very cool.
Have I missed anything crucial?
Stage I has begun, with e-mails bouncing around, finding out what we think about the game and the characters. The conversation is a bit at a pause right now, but I'm certain it will pick up again. But even if it doesn't, I think I've got enough of an idea to start pitching things reasonably well at the character generation session Saturday-week.
Stage II is still troubling me. I intend to be not-too-specific until it becomes relevant; leaving myself some flexibility to cope with identifying the paradigm and still having a functional character.
Stage III depends a lot on knowing more about the other characters; so that too is on pause.
Stage IV... can't really be done until the game starts. And obviously, as well as being a continuation of the character generation process, it is a pretty vital first step in my program of being a good player.