One Track Mind
Roleplaying from a selfish perspective. A single-minded article by Mark Newbold
– AKA Jan Lomona…
It’s one thing
that I’m almost certain of…no, it’s one of thing I know that annoys
GM’s more than almost anything is when they have a team of players who just
WON’T DO AS THEY’RE TOLD! And I
admit, I have some sympathy with that. After
all, if I was the omnipotent power in the universe and my minions didn’t obey
me then I’d throw the rattle out of the pram as well…
In my very limited
experience (more about that later – or less as the case may be) most GM’s would
like an easy life. By that I mean they would
like all the countless hours, sitting on the loo with a notepad in one hand and whatever
in the other, to count for something more than just wasting time with their pants down. Characters, situations, locations, planets,
plotlines, anything relevant to a scenario, it’s usually pre-planned for the
player to stroll through and experience. Because
I think that most – say, seven out of ten – GM’s want you to have a Vinny
Jones-style emotional experience. Pleasure,
mixed with pain and a dose of irony, regret and forehead slapping thrown in for good
measure.
BUT…
There’s always one
player who won’t follow the plot. One
who has to make a stand and come out with annoying lines.
Spoil the perfectly crafted scenario with lines like: -
“Well my character’s a
smuggler. Why would he go on a salvage
mission?”
Or the equally
annoying: -
“I really don’t think my
character would do that.”
Or the soul crushing
final rebuke: -
“Sod it, I’m buying a new coat
and getting a hair cut.”
Even a player like me,
who’s rarely GM’d, knows that when that particular line is rolled out then the
game has hit a brick wall without a crash helmet. And
I’ve heard it more than once. (Ouch!) So,
what would a GM have to do to correct this?
Let’s get one
thing straight. I’m no expert on RPG. I’ve played Star Wars since
1988 with Jonathan Hicks, Paul Squire and some of the Lichfield
lads mentioned on the intro to the free Lazarus RPG game. I’ve done a bit of D&D,
some Shadowrun, some Prime Directive, Call of Cthulu and a few
games of Mech Warrior.
Not much really.
So for me to give my
views you have to understand that I speak from a forced and narrow perspective. RPG is Jonathan, Louis and
Paul’s area of expertise – my area of expertise is of no relevance to this site
whatsoever, but less about that.
I digress. To correct a session on a collision course with
mediocrity the GM might decide to run the game to the strengths of the players. Now, this brings about problems. I remember clearly in about 1991/92, when we were
running through the Setnin timeline for the second or third time we (myself,
Paul, Andrew Curtis, Darren Houghton and Jason Brown)
all decided that we would play our characters as close to their true selves as possible. Serious RPG – no slipping out of character,
giggling in games, going up the road for a bag of Jelly Babies. Roleplaying to the max. And this must have sounded like nirvana to our GM
Mister Hicks.
But it proved to be a
disaster.
Whenever Jon tried to
get us to do something we would question it. When
he wanted us to salvage a space station we said “Why would I do that? I’m a smuggler/mercenary/bounty hunter, not a
scrap metal merchant?” And whenever
he wanted us to stick together we would bring up all the old arguments that our characters
indulged in and refuse to play as a group.
To cut a long story
very short – it didn’t work.
I remember Jonathan
being perplexed. I mean it seemed like a
great idea. Play up to the characters instead
of having the characters react to the storyline. But
it didn’t work. Which proved one thing:
-
IT’S BLOODY HARD BEING A GM!
I have nothing but
respect for those of you who lead us simple-minded players through the traps and pitfalls
of the regular gaming session. Setting up the
stories and such. Throwing off-the-cuff
characters at us. Great stuff. But I can also give you another example of what
annoys GM’s: -
SINGLE PLAYER CHARACTERS
What do I mean by this? I’ll tell ya.
People like me, who only ever play one character.
My particular alias is Jan Lomona – he’s the A-desandian
smuggler who’s peppered throughout the Fiction section of this site. So in almost all of those years of roleplaying I
only played Jan Lomona.
Jan, Jan, Jan, Jan,
Jan.
Which must have
frazzled Jonathan’s brain.
It was cool initially. For Jon, Jan was a character that he knew very
well, from the audio stories we had done with NHP and the books we were
writing at the time. And for me it was a
great workout – iron out the kinks in the character, build up more of a background
for him. But as time went on it must have
become increasingly difficult for Jonathan, or whoever was GMing at the time, to come up
with new situations for him. Jan was and is a
fairly static character. He’s the same
as a twenty year old as he is as a fifty year old. Apart
from progressing through the ranks of Glann Cipple’s organisation and
finding out he has a daughter he never knew he had and governing the capital city of his
homeworld and…
Well, quite a lot
changed actually.
But the point is, much
of it came through the Roleplaying games. Which
was ace for me, but seeing the same stat sheet for ten years must have slayed the GM. But that’s not my problem, is it? Why should I care?
I was playing a character that I wanted to, in a game that I love. And it’s up to the GM to lead the game (from
a players point of view). So where could we
correct things?
I DON’T KNOW…
If I knew the answer to
what makes a perfect session then I’d publish it for free on the Internet.
…….?
No, actually, I’d
sell it through the Internet and make millions.
Which would sort of mess things up for every RPG publisher in the world.
And every GM.
Us players would have a
laugh though.