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Wag
 
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Sikorski (4/15/2008)
You don't want that to happen too much or you just get an homogenized blob of people with no distinct flavours or values, like that mucky grey colour when you mix all your paints up.
I think there's a general agreement that this needs to avoided in any game that can't rely on regular PvM to keep it entertaining - the question is whether your game is going to stir the mass from outside with some flavour of NPC or whether you try to persuade the protean mass to rise up on it's own pseudopoda by providing nutrients and signficant payoffs for cells which devour other cells.
Sikorski (4/15/2008)
NPC's DPC's can remind people of their group/culture/race/religion's etc, core principles and characteristics
That is rather the ultimate 'signpost' NPC - they aren't telling you how where the ogre is that you must fight, but rather how you ought to be roleplaying/what your culture is. I wouldn't be too surprised if this didn't go down very well!
One thing I've noticed is that the two strategies really don't mix that well. If players feel like they are being pushed by NPCs they seem to either sit back and enjoy the ride or fight and oppose the NPCs and everything they stand for. In that sense, if you're trying to encourage player lead activity, sending in 'cultural exemplar' NPCs can end up backfiring as the apathetic end up letting the NPCs front the action, which is then opposed by the more active players.
If you want to encourage player lead action but logistics don't allow the ditching of all NPCs, then splitting NPCs into two groups - "Local plebs" and "Distant patrons" - seems to work best. Local plebs are more or less passive, can be pushed about by anyone, but are much easier to push/wield in cause's that align with their culture. Distant patrons are theoretically powerful and active, have IC agendas in line with the background, but are totally offscene other than their ability to send envoys, offers and occasional supporting resources.
Players are totally free to adopt whatever ideology they want, but if they can speak the same 'language' as local/external NPC groups, it's a lot easier to get their support.
Marios
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Nath (4/14/2008)
That said, I also believe in 'letting the dice fall where they may' as KODT put it. An example of this was the pilot (a permanent major character) being killed by a piece of shapnel during a rough landing in the Serenity film. It wasn't 'the end of his story arc,' it didn't achieve anything in a wider sense, it just happened, which made it far more powerful and plausible. Simulation is a frame to support immersion. Point of accuracy on this... if you watch the film carefully (and I admit it is difficult to spot unless you are paying attention at the time) you will find that he is not killed randomly by shrapnel but is in fact killed by a Reaver harpoon thing (there is a brief shot of this in the next scene but it is a blink and you'd miss it thing). So not quite as random as you say but the point still stands - the suddeness and shock of this event is poignant to say the least.... and it is certainly not a 'heroic last stand' death which the other characters almost get.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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Wag
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Marios (4/14/2008)
That's not what I meant by IC/OOC goals aligning! If your IC goal is to seek solitude appropriate to a hermit, but your OOC goal is to interact with lots of other players, that's what I would call misalignment. Equally, if your IC goal is to defeat your enemies but your OOC goal is to be defeated by your enemies (because, say, you really don't like having to kill another PC) then I think that might constitute a systematically difficult misalignment (rather than simply a failure of planning).
What if your OOC goal was 'to tell a good story' which is generally mine in most LRP... in that case, whatever happens will achieve your 'win condition' so long as it is entertaining. You really cannot apply such concepts as 'win' or 'lose' to LRP, especially not in an ongoing campaign. Just as in real life, things cycle round thorugh life, death and rebirth (as a new character) but the story remains...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Whispering God is your friend... trust the Whispering God... Ruins of Empire 1st - 3rd Feb, 2008, Gladstone scout centre, Chester
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balor (4/16/2008)
What if your OOC goal was 'to tell a good story' which is generally mine in most LRP... in that case, whatever happens will achieve your 'win condition' so long as it is entertaining.
In which case, it's not actually a "win" condition at all. A win condition is I think, by definition, something which is contingent on something external to you. I think it can be taken for granted that most people want to "have a good time" - the question is whether you want to do it by engaging in contested IC goals (PvP). If you do, then it's as meaningful to talk about succeeding/failing in those contested goals. If you don't, it isn't.
Following Matt P, I'm definitely _not_ trying to say that all games _ought_ to be PvP games/all roleplay should be judged or redefined in those terms (and by that measure, terms that don't apply to _all_ roleplay aren't invalid) - but if you _are_ running a PvP game where the plan is for the action to driven by players engaging in contested IC goals then it seems facetious to refuse to decribe battles as ending in "defeat" or "victory". I think people can generally grasp that being defeated in some instance doesn't mean that you haven't thoroughly enjoyed yourself/that you're swollen with resentment - I don't think it's necessary or desirable to assert that defeat is superior to victory or that both are equally irrelevant.
balor (4/16/2008)
You really cannot apply such concepts as 'win' or 'lose' to LRP, especially not in an ongoing campaign. Just as in real life, things cycle round thorugh life, death and rebirth (as a new character) but the story remains...
If that were true then those concepts wouldn't exist and no one would know what they meant. In real life, we're perfectly happy to talk about winning and losing - all you need to do is specify a situation where people have conflicting goals. I think you're jumping from "I have lost this battle" "I have lost this struggle for succession" - which I think are meaningful if you ever engage in an IC struggle - to "I have lost the game" "I have lost at life" - which I don't think are meaningful (unless you literally only have one IC goal and it's a one shot thing - which doesn't seem terribly likely, unless you specifically designed that to be the case).
Marios
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Imagine you're playing a character who is a very serious chess player - one of his main IC goals is to engage and win uptime games of chess. I can't see what motive you'd have _not_ to describe the resolution of IC chess games in terms of winning/losing/stalemate.
You could argue that OOC you don't have any sympathy with your character's IC goals - in your game neither you nor the other player actually keeps track of the game, you agree between you at the beginning what kind of resolution and in what manner would make the best story, then you act it out. I wouldn't find that sort of game attractive, but I agree that there's no point talking about IC conflicts that don't actually exist.
You could argue that you play _as if_ whether you won or lost mattered to you, but actually OOC you have no preference whatsoever - but that seems like a fairly extreme rejection of any degree of immersion/sympathy with a character.
You could argue that your character desperately wants to win the game, but you prefer to lose OOC - this strikes me as such a misalignment of goals that you'll end up having to pick one over the other - either (i) you decide that it's not appropriate to play the character as anything other than sincerely desiring what they want, but then find yourself not enjoying the character/the game as much as if you'd designed a character whose IC motivations aligned more closely with what you wanted OOC or (ii) you'll decide that it's reasonable to redesign the character in line with what you most enjoy roleplaying (i.e. consciously or otherwise, they'll thwart themselves and actually seek out a distinct IC goal more in line with what you want OOC).
If that's the case, then I don't see why you wouldn't design your character like that from the start. If you know you want to play someone who starts games of chess but inevitably throws them, why not create a character who is motivated to do just that - either because they like seeing other people win IC or because they like taking pieces and watching the other player panic, but find strategy boring.
Unless you pass an OOC rule stating that all uptime games of chess will stalemate, it's inevitable that some people will lose. The question is whether being able to participate in open-ended games of chess is worth the wrangles over the rules of chess and the fact that some players dislike losing _more_ than they like being able to play (which can be problematic if chess games are, in effect, challenges that you can only reject by accepting a loss).
I don't think it's a question that can be usefully answered by pretending that, in a way, no one _really_ loses or wins at the Great Game of Chess - viewing the bigger picture, aren't we all just "Having Fun"? Events don't have to include chess games, but insofar as they _do_, then people are winning/losing/stalemating - I don't think that in any way implies that they aren't _also_ "Having Fun", but I don't think that's immediately relevant.
It _is_ worth pointing out that there are people who would much, much prefer to lose at chess than not to be able to play at all - I just don't think it makes any sense to overemphasise it by saying that, actually, there are people who prefer to _lose_ at chess rather than win. If that really is the case then, by definition, they aren't playing chess - they are playing antichess - and it's worth considering whether that violates in some degree the implied social contract.
I think the relevant questions will always boil down to (i) Do I want to run a game where people can, among other things, play chess? (ii) How much is that going to conflict with the other things I want to occur in my game?
Marios
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Prodigal
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You could argue that your character desperately wants to win the game, but you prefer to lose OOC You could decide to play a bad chess player, even through you are a good chess player, and therefore deliberately OC underplay your ability. I suspect this isn't quite the point you are making. This is starting to look at the simulationist-immersionist / narrativist divide. Some people think you should twist things (such as your character's actions, or how well they perform them) to make the setting conform to some sense of narrativist logic ('I'm playing the evil imperial, so clearly I need to capture the rebels at some point, and lose at the end'). Some think you should try to stay solidly immersed in the mindset of the character. ('I'm playing an imperial officier, so I need to capture the rebels for interrogation in order to look good/not get force-strangled when Lord Vader turns up')
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Nath (4/16/2008)
You could decide to play a bad chess player, even through you are a good chess player, and therefore deliberately OC underplay your ability. I suspect this isn't quite the point you are making.
You could consciously underplay while still actively trying to win (although that does seem unlikely). More realistically, any handicap you can make unconscious (if you want to play a character who can't run, remembering not to run all the time makes it very hard to immerse yourself fully in things like running away - but if you just wear trousers which make it impossible to run at your normal speed - or condition yourself into some very specific leg problems that you don't need to think about consciously - then it's a lot more practical).
Nath (4/16/2008)
This is starting to look at the simulationist-immersionist / narrativist divide.
I didn't think it needed mentioning - if you're talking about PvP then I took that as meaning that we weren't talking about narrativist games (where it's explicitly player-with-player-creating-story rather than player-versus-player (maybe incidentally creating a story depending how you define story)) - probably I should have been clearer (but every extra caveat is another line of type!).
Marios
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Prodigal
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remembering not to run all the time makes it very hard to immerse yourself Marios, you are increasingly sounding like a Turkuist. (I don't mean that in a negative way) I agree with much of Turku myself, but I do recognise there are larp styles that don't hold immersion in a role as the goal. I enjoyed playing the Jeepform (an extreme narrativist & freeform style / thinktank) larp I played in and would like to try some of the others they have produced. Under Jeepform, a character would only die if it was felt appropiate to the story. A far less extreme application of narrativism I have heard players say OC at one small UK larp was 'if you are going to kill another PC, try to arrange things to do it near the end of the event, if possible.' (so they don't miss the event, and just make a new character for the next one)
------ <insert really amusing sig here>
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