Roleplaying Ruminations...
A Roleplay Too Far?
I'm a good roleplayer. Actually I'm an excellent actor. Face it, with a lifetime's experience of either hiding what I was feeling, or projecting something I thought other people wanted to see, its not really shocking, I guess. I never really considered it as a profession, per se, due to the unemployment rate. But acting feeds directly into role playing. Role playing can be called "acting lite" at times.
I'm good if I'm in a scene and can concentrate on the scene. You know, the old, "What's my motivation?" question. If I'm not into the scene, well, I'm as crappy a roleplayer as most people.
That's one of the advantages to game mastering - you get to make up the scenes so you know you'll be good with them. The issue, though, is that because roleplaying is, at its heart, a group activity, you need to be able to interface with the group.
It's possible I may have failed in that last night.
Last night comprised a climatic scene in my Traveller 1165 campaign. The campaign is set 70 or so years after the fall of the Third Imperium. It's not a pretty environment. Think Star Wars meets Mad Max. The mission last night was to bring back, or take out, a trumped up Warlord. He'd been on the good guys team and had gone bad. Very bad. Using superior technology he'd taken over a large village and was using it for personal slave labor. The members of his good guy team who didn't escape the situation were brutally imprisoned, including one 11-year-old boy and his mother.
The heroes got into the compound and in their investigations found the mother. A bit later they found the kid, naked, strapped to a sawhorse, "bleeding from all the wrong holes." The Warlord entered with an armed entourage and the party, with a rocket launcher, brought the building down on him...and them.
The Warlord was dead. Oh, they made sure of that. Twice. But the cost was high to the heroes as well. They were badly injured, and one of them had died saving the kid from the falling ceiling. But the village was saved, and they left it back on the mend. The kid and his mother were going back to Khavuu - and what passed for civilization - with the party. We were done.
Or so they thought.
Two days out from Khavuu while the ship was in jumpspace the kid, Jimmy, came to Stuart's character, Gene, and said, "Can you come and see Mom? She won't wake up." Gene did. Julie, Jimmy's mom, was dead. Two days before that Gene had treated Julie for anemia, and a bit of depression, but beyond recovering from having a building fall on her, she seemed fine.
Gene - Stuart - now had to deal with a dead mother and her 11 year old boy right beside him asking, "Is Mom all right?" Stuart - not the character Gene - said, "I'm not sure what to do here."
Maybe that should have been my first warning sign. "Roleplay it!" I said. I mean, come on, this was the big scene, right? Stuart did, and he did it well. Stalling for time he told Jimmy to go get Capt. Gaarruff - Dave - which Jimmy did. They got back to the cabin together and Jimmy connected the dots. His Mom was dead.
Three years of severe abuse, imprisonment, having a building fall on him, and now having the only person he had in the Universe die, fell in on him and he lost it. "Why did she die?" Jimmy cried. "We made it. We got out. Why didn't she get out?" And remember, as far as I was concerned this was roleplaying. I didn't describe this, I acted this. Real crying. Real tears. Drawing on the relevant scenes of Ordinary People and Stand By Me I went for it in what was the best roleplaying I'd done since winning the Cyberpunk 2020 tournament in Rochester back in '94 when game designer Mike Pondsmith had referred.
And softly - almost too softly for me to hear - Gaarruff said, "This is a bit outside my comfort level." Did Gaarruff say that...or did Dave? At that precise moment, I honestly didn't know, because Dave is a pretty good roleplayer in his own right.
Had I gone too far? Had I taken it over some line I didn't know about? Maybe. I never would have thought that 30 years ago. Back then going too far was actually dressing up and going into steam tunnels and caves. Who would have thought that sitting around a table and essentially talking would go over the line? Maybe I should have.
We'll see what happens with future sessions I guess.
Always a learning process.
D&D: The Next (Ad Nauseum) Generation
In other news, we learned that WoTC will be releasing D&D V5 later this year.
Because V4 seemed like such a hit and obviously what the world needs right now is for us to buy yet another new, slightly (or sometimes not so slightly) changed copy of 100+ books. Yea, right. :-(
I'm a good roleplayer. Actually I'm an excellent actor. Face it, with a lifetime's experience of either hiding what I was feeling, or projecting something I thought other people wanted to see, its not really shocking, I guess. I never really considered it as a profession, per se, due to the unemployment rate. But acting feeds directly into role playing. Role playing can be called "acting lite" at times.
I'm good if I'm in a scene and can concentrate on the scene. You know, the old, "What's my motivation?" question. If I'm not into the scene, well, I'm as crappy a roleplayer as most people.
That's one of the advantages to game mastering - you get to make up the scenes so you know you'll be good with them. The issue, though, is that because roleplaying is, at its heart, a group activity, you need to be able to interface with the group.
It's possible I may have failed in that last night.
Last night comprised a climatic scene in my Traveller 1165 campaign. The campaign is set 70 or so years after the fall of the Third Imperium. It's not a pretty environment. Think Star Wars meets Mad Max. The mission last night was to bring back, or take out, a trumped up Warlord. He'd been on the good guys team and had gone bad. Very bad. Using superior technology he'd taken over a large village and was using it for personal slave labor. The members of his good guy team who didn't escape the situation were brutally imprisoned, including one 11-year-old boy and his mother.
The heroes got into the compound and in their investigations found the mother. A bit later they found the kid, naked, strapped to a sawhorse, "bleeding from all the wrong holes." The Warlord entered with an armed entourage and the party, with a rocket launcher, brought the building down on him...and them.
The Warlord was dead. Oh, they made sure of that. Twice. But the cost was high to the heroes as well. They were badly injured, and one of them had died saving the kid from the falling ceiling. But the village was saved, and they left it back on the mend. The kid and his mother were going back to Khavuu - and what passed for civilization - with the party. We were done.
Or so they thought.
Two days out from Khavuu while the ship was in jumpspace the kid, Jimmy, came to Stuart's character, Gene, and said, "Can you come and see Mom? She won't wake up." Gene did. Julie, Jimmy's mom, was dead. Two days before that Gene had treated Julie for anemia, and a bit of depression, but beyond recovering from having a building fall on her, she seemed fine.
Gene - Stuart - now had to deal with a dead mother and her 11 year old boy right beside him asking, "Is Mom all right?" Stuart - not the character Gene - said, "I'm not sure what to do here."
Maybe that should have been my first warning sign. "Roleplay it!" I said. I mean, come on, this was the big scene, right? Stuart did, and he did it well. Stalling for time he told Jimmy to go get Capt. Gaarruff - Dave - which Jimmy did. They got back to the cabin together and Jimmy connected the dots. His Mom was dead.
Three years of severe abuse, imprisonment, having a building fall on him, and now having the only person he had in the Universe die, fell in on him and he lost it. "Why did she die?" Jimmy cried. "We made it. We got out. Why didn't she get out?" And remember, as far as I was concerned this was roleplaying. I didn't describe this, I acted this. Real crying. Real tears. Drawing on the relevant scenes of Ordinary People and Stand By Me I went for it in what was the best roleplaying I'd done since winning the Cyberpunk 2020 tournament in Rochester back in '94 when game designer Mike Pondsmith had referred.
And softly - almost too softly for me to hear - Gaarruff said, "This is a bit outside my comfort level." Did Gaarruff say that...or did Dave? At that precise moment, I honestly didn't know, because Dave is a pretty good roleplayer in his own right.
Had I gone too far? Had I taken it over some line I didn't know about? Maybe. I never would have thought that 30 years ago. Back then going too far was actually dressing up and going into steam tunnels and caves. Who would have thought that sitting around a table and essentially talking would go over the line? Maybe I should have.
We'll see what happens with future sessions I guess.
Always a learning process.
D&D: The Next (Ad Nauseum) Generation
In other news, we learned that WoTC will be releasing D&D V5 later this year.
Because V4 seemed like such a hit and obviously what the world needs right now is for us to buy yet another new, slightly (or sometimes not so slightly) changed copy of 100+ books. Yea, right. :-(