NOW GAMEMASTERING VI

I've written at least one essay here about why railroading is bad, and that's what happens when the storyteller (GM) tries to keep control of the story. The players are the heroes of it, so they should make the story, not have to follow it mindlessly. Then again, it is very hard to tell a story if the players do whatever they want to. Especially if they don't have any idea what to do.

The answer to this is often to make non-linear adventures: the players are given a clear goal, and a story unfolds as they follow it, but they have an impact on it. While this is a far better solution than railroading, it has still one major problem: it removes the focus from the characters to the story. In fact, a lot of these games give the impression that the players are involved in a story, but that it's the story, and not their character that is of biggest importance.

Take for example this bare bone idea for a run: The runners are hired to do some works, doing this puts them in a bad situation (ie. Corps screws them up) and they must solve the corporate conspiracy. Even though this isn't a bad story, it isn't as entertaining, in my humble opinion, as a story about the characters themselves and their actions.

To make this a little clearer (I'm sure you're all confused by now wondering what the heck I'm trying to say), I'll explain how I came to this conclusion. Last tuesday, I went to the library to pick up a copy of "Nine Princes in Amber" by Roger Zelazny (great book). Reading through it, I began thinking about why, whatever the character I made in rpgs, they were always less interesting than Corwin (the hero). Why did his story seem so much more interesting to be in than all rpg games I ever played, or gmed (and I played and gmed quite a few)?I thought about various factors. Maybe it's his detailed background? No way, he begins the novel without even knowing who he is. Maybe it's his personnality? It certainly plays a role, but even if I did a character with such a personnality it wouldn't be really much more fun than any other... Then it occured to me: it's because he's the center of the sotry. He makes things happen. He shapes what the story is like.

In the novel, Corwin goes out by himself to learn what happened to him, and when he does acts by his own will and try to become the king of Amber. He isn't caught up in some devious conspiracy, he makes the conspiracy, and he acts according to what he wants to do. He has goals throughout the story, and the novel (decalogy in fact) is about him trying to reach these goals.

What does this mean? It means that the best stories are about the characters in it, and not about the events surrounding the characters. This is especially true and important in interactive storytelling where focusing on the events is so much easier and convenient than focusing on the characters. It is important to remember that your players are playing your games to play a fun and entertaining adventure, not to be told a fun and entertaining adventure while they run around and ask some contacts to learn another part of the story. The characters are the heroes, don't forget this.

Now, the question you're all asking you is "Yeah, but how am I supposed to make the PCs the center of the sotry?". The answer to this is not simple. The best solution to this problem I see involves work from the GM and the players alike. Both must do their part of the job to end with a good game. Since the focus of the game changes from what the gm says to what the pcs do, The explanation for the later is a little longer. 

Essentially, the gm must allow the players to act of their own will and does not force a story down their throat. This a though job, and it involves quite a lot of improvisation and quite a lot of in-game notes. Strangely, this is harder to do in Shadowrun than in other rpgs since the "Johnson gives mission" setup is almost a basic of the game. As such, the gm might have to break out of this pattern, and allow the characters to act of their own will, while doing interesting things. Another job of the gm in such a situation is to give some things to do to the characters. Even though they are the focus of the story, there must still be something to make a story. Look at the players short and long term goals as well as their team goal (more on this later) and make sure there's something that can be done to get closer to all, or at least some, of them. Even though the characters make the story, they still need an interesting world to act in.

The player's part is manyfold. Since the gm is not responsible anymore to make sure there's an interesting story, they have more work. Lots of what I'm going to say I've already said in previous essays, this is because this text is essentially the sum of all my recent thought on rpgs.

First of all, the players must act, and not react. This is essential. Without action there is no story, and without story there is no game. The characters must do things to be interesting, and the world should be changed by the way they act. But for this to happen, they must not wait for somebody to tell them what to do, they must go out on their own and act according to their goals.

This bring me to the second point: the characters must have goals. More than one even. Basically, all characters should have at least one short term goal ("I want to get a Vindicator Minigun"), a long term goal ("I want to get revenge of the Halloweener's Gang") and the team (all players) must have a team goal ("We are together to start our own gang and make it the most powerful one of Seattle"). That last point is very important: even though in a novel it is very possible, and common, to have only one hero, in a rpg this is hardly the case. As such, all characters must have a reason, and a good one, to be together, else they'll end up going their on way to achieve their personnal goals. Since the game is one story about the whole group and not 4 stories about 4 characters (for example), these characters must stay together, must act together (most of the time at least) and do so in a believable way. To achieve this, all characters should have a goal which is common to all members of the group, a goal which is very long, or even impossible, to attain (else when the goal will be reached the characters will simply stop being together). Carefully choosing these goals is very important to make sure the characters act and do not react.

Yet another thing, characters must have interesting backgrounds and personnality. Both factors are very important, even a character with the "amnesia" flaw should have an interesting background, even though it is not the player who chooses it. The personnality of the character defines how he is expected to act. As such, since the players are expected to act and not react (how many times must I say this? ACT DON'T REACT!), their personnality is one of the most important factor, with the goals of the character, in determining what the story will actually be like. The background is equally important since it defines which NPCs are known by the character, and who knows him, why, and of course if they like him or not. "Nine Princes in Amber" would be far less interesting wouldn't it be of the other princes and their realtion with the hero, which are all part of the background of Corwin.

Finally, all characters should be done the other players. This is by far the less important factor. Actually it is mor technical than anything else, since some characters could be better done separately fromt the rest of the group in some special situations. The goal of this is to make sure all characters go along together at least remotely well (so characters don't kill each others at the first game session) and that there isn't any important gap in the set of skills and capacity of the group (how many times I've seen a shadowrunner's group where nobosy had the "negociation" skill...). Another important use of this is to make at least a part of the background of the characters together. After all, the characters must have been together for at least a little while to have common goals.

As far as I know, this is a new approach to roleplaying games. This approach could be very rewarding, even though it requires much more involvement from the players and the gm. Of course, if any of you as comments on this, I'm eager to receive them... Finally, thanks for reading to the end of this long-winded, high flying piece of playing advice. :)