NPCs are just Tools

NPCs are just tools. They're not there to steal the limelight, they're not there to give some amazing monologues. NPCs are just tools for the GM to use, to nudge the game a little bit to one direction or the other, to help make an enjoyable evening or something along those lines. As such is the case NPCs don't need complex personalities but a way to affect the PCs and through them to affect the players. When they've filled their roles, they're not needed anymore, they can be discarded, or move to the reserve pile for later scenes and/or sessions.

Drosselmeyer, in Princess Tutu understood this well. When talking to Edel in episode 12 of the first season, he says to her: "Your role is to add glow to the story in my place". Unlike the players, the GM doesn't have an avatar in the game. All the GM has is everything that is not controlled by the players. But, as we know, those things are there to serve the PCs and/or the players. The Gm should forget herself, of course, but for now please stay with me.

 Most problems of using NPCs come from not acknowledging this simple idea. If the NPCs are just tools used by the GM to serve the game and players, then one wouldn’t give them amazing and way too long monologues.  One wouldn't let them steal the limelight either.

But it grows deeper than that, unsurprisingly. It means that trying to give them life and complex personality is a futile intention. A gm should think in terms of how the NPC affects the PCs and through them affect the players. This calls for a simple motive, for example, so it will be easy to grasp. It also calls for something that will challenge the players' perceptions, like am NPC that divides the players and the characters to a few sides.

It also means that one shouldn't get to attached to the NPCs. Once they fulfill their role, they should finish they're part in the game. If the players don't connect to them, they should be left out. And if the players like them enough, make their part greater, make them more colorful.

So how one should use this kind of tool? There's no one true way, of course, but for me it always was about giving the illusion that they're far more complex and alive than they truly are. They should sometimes be busy, or they'll use some fancy words to describe some simple ideals. They will be distinctive, different from one another. And most importantly, they should be made such that I will always be able to bring them to the present scene, if I'll ever need them. Usually, this combination does the trick for me.

What do you think? Feel free to write in the comments.

We all have a role to fill

Last time I've covered a Princess Tutu episode, it was a really early one. Since then, I began to question my remark that this series is a great GMing guide, but the ending of season one showed me otherwise. In episode 11, which I'll cover today, we are presented near the end with a remarkable scene. The annoying Drosselmeyer shows us that he does understand stories, when he reminds each character of his or her role in the unveiling one.

Now, this is an interesting case, because each character in the series plays a role in the story. To a certain respect, it is just like an RPG: each player is assigned a role to fill in the story that is being created (this is, again, a topic for another post). Our 4 main characters are our players, and Drosselmeyer is our GM.

This scene asks about roles. What roles does each side fill in the game? What is the players' role? What is their GM's role? To a certain respect, after almost 11 episodes, we are presented with the Social Contract of the "game". Each player got a role to fill, assigned to him or her by the GM, and this is their job. As long as they fill it, though, Drosselmeyer doesn't intervene. But when they do leave the role behind, Drosselmeyer reminds them and guides them back to their role.

This is one type of a Social Contract that can be made. We can also "sign" a contract that gives the GM an even greater role in the shaping of the game, a kind of game in which the players are only there for the ride. Or we can go the other route, to a game without a real GM, a game in which the players guide the game themselves. It can also, unsurprisingly, be somewhere in the middle.

But the Social Contract is only a part of a greater contract, the one called the Group Contract, which also covers such things as rule-systems and the like. It answers questions such as "how do we choose a rule-system?" "How closely do we follow the rules presented in the rules-system?" and so on.

Both of these concepts are there to help us play better games. They do it by giving us the tools to describe in detail the roles, expectations and responsibilities of each participating party. 

There's No One True Way

And we're back to what will hopefully be my normal schedule. I've started to watch an anime called Princess Tutu. I'm yet to say what it is about, as I'm only 2 episodes in it, as of the moment of writing these lines. What struck me so clear while watching its second episode was how good it is as a GMing guide.

In the second episode, we have a rivalry between Anteaternia and Rue-Chan (yeah, I know that Chan is not part of the name but it's easier for me). Anteaternia asked Rue-Chan how she learned to dance so wonderfully, for which she answered with practice. Then Anteaternia said that she'll practice as hard as she can so she'll does as wonderful as Rue-Chan. Rue said that it is not possible.

And that's and amazing thing, because as we watch the episode we learn that Rue-Chan didn't say that from the point of contempt. Anteaternia will never be able to dance as well as she can, because Andteaternia will have to develop her own style.

And that's true for our GMing. There's no right or wrong, there's no true and false. There's no better and worse. Each of us GMs has different strengths and weaknesses, goals and needs. And each group has a different mixture of players with different expectations, needs, goals and abilities. Because of that, this combination, there's no ultimate style of GMing. There's no better way to GM.

There are only two rules for GMing that are right all the time- "don't be a dick", and "know thy players". All the rest is just style. So don't try to copy another GM's style. Instead, try to develop your own. Try to find your inner truth about GMing and go with it, play to it, GM according to it.

Society- Please don't Break the Contract between us

There are two types of bad movies- those that are bad from the beginning, and thus you can laugh at them, and those that start good and then turn really crappy. This movie belongs to the second, much disappointing group.

In short, this is the story of a young man who thinks that he doesn't belong to his family. Slowly but surely he starts to find the truth, while it seems that the whole world is against him. At the end, when the truth is finally revealed, Yuzna tries to pass some social commentary. While the message gets to us, the execution is a bit… way too much over-the-top, and that's without mentioning the "fart-jokes" of the end. Too bad, it opened way too good to be campy, it is just a disappointment.

But, like always, there's something to learn from this movie. There's something that the movie does right, or otherwise I wouldn't have been this disappointed. And what the movie did right was to question my understanding of the situation- am I really seeing that something isn't right, or is it just the protagonist's imagination.

Throughout most of the film, Billy visits a psychiatrist. This gives us the possibility to ask ourselves: who really is the madman in this movie? Is Billy the madman, or is he the only sane person in the world. He himself questions what he sees, and time after time Yuzna disputes his protagonist's theories.

And it is so powerful. Because not only are we afraid for Billy, who might be sane and thus in real danger, we also fear that he really is mad and thus he might hurt all the other people in his disturbed world, people who only tried to help him. What Yuzna does at the end, though, is to throw all of these possibilities and fears out of the window, picking a lazy (even though much more social-stingy) solution. For an example made right, I'll have to point you to the great Buffy episode Normal Again (season 6 episode 17). But yeah, Society…

What can we learn from this failure? First of all, that sometimes we can't give both social commentary and a satisfying ending. And as we first of all game and only later try to say something, the game is more important (unless stated so from the beginning).

Bu secondly and far more importantly, if we have built something good, please don't let it fall. Because disappointment is a breaching of the contract between us people, players and GM(s). And this contract is far more important than shoving a message into our ears and brains.

With that out of the way, I wanna hear you. What have you thought about this movie? And what have you learned from it?

Martin- When One Shouldn't Invent the Wheel

I owe you an apology, dear readers. I was to the IICON convention, the Israeli convention for geek culture, kinda like the Israeli Comicon. Unsurprisingly, it took me some days to recuperate, to return to normal. Truth is, I was quite sure that you won't even feel it, having prepared posts for the first two convention days, but personal matters made me unable to cover the following days (the last day of the convention and those days for breath-catching). So I'm in a bit of a delay. For that, I apologize. I do hope that the posts from now on will justify the wait.

And without much farther ado, let's move to the 14^th movie in the project, to the movie Martin.  Martin is an interesting case. It is not a bad movie per se, and even Romero called it "my favorite movie", but for me, it just didn't work.

It is a movie about a person who is sure that he's a vampire, and who challenges through his twisted take on vampirism the myth of the vampire. Parts of these he does through the phone, talking with a radio DJ who understands what great hit he has in his hands.

The movie is very art-housey in its feel, and that's where the problems start to arise. You see, George Romero is a very talented director, and one feels it, and he knows what he's doing. But it just doesn't work. I didn't feel a thing for the character of Martin. I knew that I should have, but I just couldn't. The movie is so filled with art-house tricks that it just loses something in its way to glory.

Romero, and it might be strange to say, is just not Ingmar Bergman or Pedro Almodovar who can make a very art-housey movie and it will still be communicative enough for us to feel something for the characters, for the story. Romero isn't talented enough for the task, although he sometimes can come close to that.

And most of us are Romero-level GMs and not Almodovar- or Bergman-level GMs. It is not bad to be Romeros, but it does mean that we should know our places. We don't have to try and challenge the usual narrative or the basic and universal roles and tropes that make our RPGs. We don't have to conjure a meeting between the PCs and the players every other game, or to go to the meta-level game every time that we can. Truth is, most GMs can make wonders of just the usual party going to the usual dungeon to kill the usual dragon. Hell, I who finished a campaign with a meeting between PCs and players don't consider myself able to conjure a meeting like that again. Sometimes, or maybe even all the times, we just have to know our places, to know what we can achieve and what we can't, what we can challenge and what we shouldn't.

We don't have to invent the wheel from scratch every time, or even every other or third time. Usually, striving for a great experience, for a nice evening of dragon-slaying, sometimes it is just enough.

Conflict Is Not Mandatory

You don't need conflicts. You read that correctly, I really did say that you don't need conflicts. Conflicts are not mandatory, are not a must-have ingredient for a successful game or even for a successful story. Conflict is a nice and a very useful tool in order to create enjoyment, interest and to be one with the character, but it is not the only one, or the most important one, or a success guarantee.

Think for example about a nice in-character conversation between a PC and an NPC. Does it have to hold a conflict in order to be interesting? No, I'm serious, does it? I don't think so. I once GMed a game in which for three hours the characters were just gossiping about people not present. No conflict was there, just a conversation about what did this person and what did that one. When I wrote this game for my friends, I thought to myself: "If we have to have conflicts in order to create interest, why do our conversations seem so enjoyable, so interesting, so "worth-our-time?" It went a blast. I was asked to GM this game again.

But this is an extreme kind of game, not much similar, or even close, to what we refer to when we normally talk about RPGs. Things like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire, PTA. But then I started to read the GENder theory, which is kinda interesting yet kinda flawed. Anyway, the E stands for exploration. It means that one plays in order to explore, in order to be, someone else. And that got me thinking: "In order to feel like [insert a name here], do I need to be in a conflict?" I don't think so, otherwise I wouldn't enjoy play SIMS.

And it all circulates back to what I've said in the beginning: Conflict is not mandatory. It is useful, but not mandatory.

Opinions?

The Players just roll the Dice…

One of the most common problems that I've seen in games is a lack of understanding about the distinction between what the players do and what their characters do. Let's explain this strange sentence with an example:

It is a D&D session, and a fight erupts. Fighter raises his axe and attacks Orc Number 1, while Wizard shoots Orc Number 2 with a magic missile.

Now, let's analyze this scene. What do the characters do? Wizard casts a spell, Fighter attacks with his spell. What do the players do? They roll the dice, and… that's about it. And that is the problem that I mentioned in the first sentence of this post. The fact that the characters are fighting, and have a certain chance to die, isn't relevant that much, because at the end all they do is to roll some dice.

Actually, if you look at it this way, looking for clues in Call of Cthulhu is not that much different: You enter a room, and you try to notice things. The character does that, I mean. You just roll the dice. Or in other words, if we want to differentiate between types of scenes, we should think in terms of what the players do and not in terms of what the characters do. Because if in both cases we just roll the dice, there is no difference. Or at the very least, not a real difference between the scenes.

And that's a distinction that I think one really has to make and hold to her heart. When one writes an adventure, or improvises one, you should always try to think in terms of what the players will do. Will the players just roll some dice? If so, maybe I should find another thing that they'll be able to do, like inventing the adversaries, or giving them as much roleplaying scenes as possible?

After all, we sit with the players, in the real world, and not with the characters in an imaginary one…

Whose Game Is It?

I think that it was just yesterday when I wrote about my MLP campaign. When the session ended, one of the players sent us a drawing of the characters. Apart from the cool factor and the feeling of epicness for such an instant, what struck me more was the conversation that ensued.

Player 1: You should post it on Facebook.

Player 2 (the artist): What should I write?

Player 1: Tag all of us-

Player 3 (interrupting): And write that it's Yosi's campaign.

I immediately said that this campaign is owned by all of us, it is our campaign, and that they created the story as much as I did. A quick conversation ensued, and it got published as "our campaign (but mostly Yosi's)".

I have 4 players in this group. Each one with different amounts of experience with RPGs, with only one of them (quite ironically, player 3) having prior experience in one of my games. The fact that he's a regular player in my groups for about 2 years now is only this more ironic.

The consensus was clear- this is my campaign far more than it is their campaign. And I find it quite interesting. You see, I always use "my campaign/game" in my writing, because I took part in it, making it mine. It is my campaign not because I'm the GM, but because I help to drive it toward a certain dramatic beat. I don't mean here railroading, because I don't railroad (and my players can attest for that), but rather I mean here creating as much drama as I can, while ensuring that as much of the story and drama is created by them and/or for their playing instruments (the PCs) and them.

My players also play this way, and have almost as much control about the plot, setting and the like individually as I do. They create parts of the setting, their findings, they even invented the plot, creating and fleshing it between the sessions to our own amazement. Yet they all agreed that it was my campaign and not theirs.

And I'm confused. If it weren't for them, it would remain just a concept, an idea about a MLP game in which the players play Blank Flanks looking for their Cutie Marks. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have a prophecy, or Sherlock Hooves, or Zombie-like ponies. If it weren't for them, the books wouldn't do anything more than fly and laugh till the end of days. If it weren't for them, the narrative wouldn't move from Canterlot to the Crystal Empire. If it weren't for them, they wouldn't meet Cheese Sandwich. Yet it is my campaign, according to their words.

Looking in forums, theory articles, RPG.SE and other places that I regularly visit, it seemed almost too prevalent, too widespread. I found only a handful of players who didn't gave the credit for the campaign's success, or the credit for ownership, to their GM. And it didn't matter if the game involved a pre-written narrative, a sandbox or a completely improvised game. It didn't matter if the players were active, passive, inventive or questioning for permission before each step on their way towards the end.

And I find it confusing and problematic. We always say that RPG is a type of shared experience. We always say that we create everything together. We always say that the story moved one way or the other because we, each and every one of us, chose so. So why do we still give the keys of ownership to the GM?

I don't have an answer. I have some theories, but not even a single one of them is fleshed out, not to mention able to stand a test or scrutiny. But I know that I don't like this mindset. Am I alone?