Tales from the Rocket House

Reading various blog posts about old-school gaming has me thinking in reverse, so to speak. I'm thinking back to some of my earlier gaming experiences, and seeing that, even though my current group is much better at characterization, storytelling, etc., I really miss the old days.

One of the things I miss most was that, however oversimplified the setting's views of good and evil were, we were the good guys. We held the walls against orc sieges. We raided the labyrinth to slay the dragon. We rescued the princess, the hostages, or whatever. Jumping from pseudo-medieval fantasy to Rifts, we met Coalition raiding parties at the border, and shut them down before they could get to the towns and villages. In modern games, we fought the evil ninja clan/legion of supervillains/vampire cult.

Call it power gaming if you like, but whatever scale the PC's operated at, they were powerful enough to be effective. Whether they were low-end militia, harrying the evil empire's troops or supers on the scale of the Avengers or X-Men, they could step up and get things done.

Truthfully, the depth of characterization was shallow, ranging from Clark Kent to Wolverine to Han Solo – the squeaky clean good guy, the edgy/violent good guy, and the roguishly charming good guy. And way too much of the game was devoted to combat, to the point that the rest of the game almost fell into being “interregnum,” or the time between battles.

To some degree, it was a more innocent time in gaming, or at least in our gaming. While the oft-leveled charge of unexamined, jingoistic morality surely holds some validity – the bad guys were bad because the game book said they were “evil,” and we fought them because were were the good guys, there was something incredibly refreshing about playing without even the shadow of nihilistic relativism.

Too often now I see that depth of characterization just runs to cynicism. If the PCs want to change the world for the better, they'll have to scheme, plot, poison, lie, and assassinate to do it. I don't know if this is actually any more “realistic,” or whether it's just amoral. Can you really change the world for the better by acting like the same monsters you're trying to fight against? There's a Nietzsche quote in there somewhere...

Why does the “real roleplayer's” refinement of the game so often boil down to moving from “I want to do the heroic, mythical things I can't do in real life” to “I want to do all the stuff I can't get away with in real life,” or “I want to explore the moral degeneration of my character?” Certainly, it's easier to play a sociopath, or at least a cynical rogue (and do the things you can't get away with in the real world). It sounds cooler and more “Indie” to play a deeply damaged character (Oscar material, for sure). But it can be done, and I think it's rewarding to play someone who actually aspires to be better than I am, not just meaner and crazier.

I think that, if the players want it, and are willing to work for it, that a game can have both a significant depth of characterization and a strong sense of heroism. And after ranting for almost six hundred words, I'll share my practical thoughts as to how to do it.

How

First, you have to have players who want a heroic game, with nobody who's outright opposed to the self-restrictions of not just doing whatever semi-psychotic action comes to mind, or you'll end up playing The Justice League with The Joker as a member, and that's not gonna work so well. Killing Jokes aside, player buy-in is paramount. This won't work without it.

Then, you need to have character buy-in. The PCs must be created as heroes, with moral codes of the sort that would push them to make the hard decisions and take the high road, even when the low road might be more effective (or at least easier). The PCs also need to be somewhat more powerful as compared to their average opposition that otherwise. Why? They don't have the same dirty tricks that standard characters have, and they need to be able to perform heroics in order to look heroic. The exact amounts will vary with the game you're playing, but in my Tarafore system, I'd make sure they had the basic combat skills of the setting at Good (13), and their personal specialties at Very Good (16), if not higher.

You also need GM buy-in. This is vitally important, because the GM controls the entire tone of the game. If the GM isn't “in” on the process, the characters won't feel heroic, just crapped on.

Imagine, for a moment, a group of Arthur's knights (or Jedi Knights, or even a superhero team) who serve to protect the people of the kingdom, and do battle against invaders and brigands. They have codes of honor they live by, and while they may be ready to fight, they're quick to show mercy to a defeated opponent. This heroic and chivalric baseline could inform the entire tone of the game, and the players should have opportunities to make their characters come off as heroes.

However, even heroes have hard times. An addiction to pain medicine following a severe injury, or an ill-advised love (or worse, a false lover who infiltrates the group), or moral dilemmas that make them choose between equal goods or equal wrongs, can all bring elements of depth . . . but they can't be piled on for every character, all the time, so the players spend their entire game being emo and being manipulated (and kicked around) by the GM. Part of playing a hero is actually getting to feel heroic.

In most games I've been in lately, the above is the perfect setup to have them all realize that everything they've been fighting for is a lie, to have them spiral off into various self-destructions, or have all those they love killed, twisted, turned against them, and taken away. (Maybe the decline in “good” characters has similar roots to the desire to play an orphan. Some GMs take the player detailing her character's family and friends as nothing more than an opportunity to torture, endanger, twist, and turn those family members against the character. In other words, the player's work of creating a character's social circle is used to punish her, either as a lazy way for the GM to hook the player into the game, or just because “The GM Is a Bastard, and that is a good thing.”)

What the GM Needs to Do

I'll keep this short and direct:

The GM needs to make sure the PCs have opportunities to come off looking like heroes – to do heroic things and not have them twisted.

For example, in one Lovecraft-based game (I knew better than to play in anything Lovecraftian, but I did it anyway, so this one's largely my fault), my PC organized a major effort to rid the city of “Legion” (a GM-created entity – the game wasn't 100% based on Lovecraft's writing), something every “advice giving” NPC I talked to, including Randolf Carter, said was a needed action. The result of my big effort? The Messenger stole the Necronomicon. This is standard operating procedure in a Cthulhu game, in which the PC's can really just save everybody some time by committing suicide in the first session, but it is a sterling example of what NOT to do if you want any sense of heroism. Another example of what not to do is the excellent 2004 PS2 game The Bard's Tale. While it's funny, and the plot suits the game's roguish antihero perfectly, it would be a very dirty and disenfranchising trick to play on a character who's trying to be heroic.

Examples of what to do include: defeating bandit gangs, rescuing kidnap victims, defeating invading armies (depending on the scale), stopping a madman from poisoning the water supply, and so on – all of the basics we've seen a thousand times in comics, books, and movies.

Another key thing to keep in mind is this: the PC's need to look tough, so give them weak opposition to fight sometimes. They don't always need to be just barely, desperately winning. A lot of the time, they need to dominate the villains. You can use description, cooperative action, or stunts to make the fights interesting or memorable. If you want to keep the difficulty high, try large numbers of significantly weaker opponents.

Finally, a “don't.” When you're bringing in personal issues that will add depth of characterization to the game, don't pour them all on at once. Let one, maybe two player characters suffer at a time, so that the rest can help them through it, and the tone of the game doesn't turn depressing or “Emo.”

Good luck, and to all a Good Knight!