Welcome back.

Last time I talked about GM generated conflict, but that's really only part of the picture. In a lot of games, it's the biggest part of the picture. In fact, it's kind of the default assumption in most games: the GM comes up with a plot, and the players interact with it.

But there are other options. In games like Amber or most social LARPs Player vs. Player conflict is assumed to play a big part. Even in more traditional games, PCs can have conflicting goals. Players can also initiate plots of their own. In fact, one of my favorite ways to GM is to give the players a setting and see what they find to do there, only stepping in with my own plot events when it seems like fun.

So let's talk about Player-generated conflict. In previous columns, I have talked about having goals for your character, and how they don't all need to be in harmony with the rest of the group. PC goals are the seeds of Player-generated conflict.

Well, they're the seeds of good Player-generated conflict. Real-life disagreements being dragged into the game in stupid, immature ways are the seeds of more than a few Player-generated conflicts.

But let's talk about the constructive ones, instead. As a Player, you have the potential to generate conflict whenever you have your character pursue his goals. That conflict can go in two basic directions. Player vs. GM, or Player vs. Player.

Player vs. GM

Player vs. GM conflict is fairly similar to the usual setup in gaming. In fact, it can be hard to tell who's generating the conflict sometimes. The PC tries to do something, and the GM puts obstacles in his way. The PC reacts, and the cycle repeats. The only real difference is in who started it, which can have one major consequence. If the Player does something the GM really didn't' expect, the GM has to improvise.

I probably don't need to mention that some GMs are better at improvising than others.

The Platonic Ideal GM would have considered every possibility and would already be prepared for that course of action. I am not, nor have I ever played with such a GM. Fortunately, there are ways to fake it.

A really good GM probably knows enough about his setting to figure out how to react on the fly. Since most of my games are only informally mapped out at best, I'm doing a lot of that anyway. I spend more time figuring out who the NPCs are and what they're likely to do than I do working out exact events, so my players can't do too much that's unexpected. I wasn't expecting anything anyway.

(They have really floored me more than once, though.)

A less flexible GM might stonewall the player temporarily, or, better yet ask the player, out of character, to hold off for a while, until he figures out what to do. I've had to do that a couple of times. I think the result was better than if I'd tried to work completely in the dark.

A really inflexible GM could just make the unexpected actions impossible or force them to end in automatic failure. This is commonly called "railroading" or "bad GMing." Bad GMs will even do it when the Players are following the "main" plot, but in an unexpected way.

As a Player, here's what you need to think about:

How open is the GM to Player-initiated plots?

I've run and played on both ends of the spectrum: games that pretty much ran on rails, and games that didn't run at all unless the players found something interesting to do. I'm happiest somewhere in between, with the GM presenting a compelling plot for the players to unravel, but with room for some pretty significant subplots that the players introduce.

In fact, I'm gearing up to play in a Witchcraft game (finally) in the next month or so, and I tacked about two pages of subplot ideas onto my character background. I told the GM what kind of things I'd like to see, and what I'd generally be doing if left to my own devices. He seemed to appreciate it. We'll have to see how it goes when the game starts (if we don't end up playing Champions instead, with a different GM)

This gets into some fundamental gaming issues. If you really, really want to be able to pursue your character's own agenda, and your GM really, really wants to run just his plot, then it might be that you should find a different game. More often, though, it's just a matter of striking a balance and smoothing out the difference between play styles. For instance, I personally love it when my players tell me what their character goals are so I can work opportunities to pursue those goals into my plans.

I guess that turns a Player-generated plot into a GM-generated one, but I'm not really sure.

How important are your character's personal goals?

Assuming the GM has a plot in mind, you might have to prioritize a little. To this day, I still don't understand what was going through the player of Jason's mind in my Now is the Winter Vampire chronicle. I'd pretty much established that one of two evil Malkavians was well on the way to completely shattering the Masquerade beyond all repair, and wanted to kill the PCs just out of spite (Jason in particular). Further, the Prince was the only guy around who could stand up to him one-on-one. Even further, Jason's own Sire wanted him to help the Prince.

But Jason thought now would be a good time to try to spark a minor Anarch revolt and seize power for Clan Brujah.

Well, in a way I guess I could see his point. Still, it was a pain to find ways to convince Jason to at least look in the direction of my plot from time to time, and he took up more of my time than was really fair to the other players.

My rule of thumb is "Saving the world" outranks "wining the heart of the fair damsel." If the GM has a strong plot, I'll usually try to follow it to as great an extent as is logical for my character, but try to get time for my personal goals whenever I can.

Back in my goal setting columns, I already discussed the idea that your character's personal goals have to be worked in as the GM has time for them. If you're one of five players, you can only really expect about a fifth of the GM's time.

Of course, if you can get several players involved, then jointly you get more time. Such was the case with a character in my Now is the Winter game by the name of Maximillian.

Max was a Setite envoy, recently come to Scarborough to see if maybe the Prince was in a forgiving mood. (See, he'd kind of kicked them out when he caught one selling heroin to a member of his Herd. And by "kicked out" I mean "staked, decapitated, or and burned to ashes.") Max was something of a ladies' man, and liked to flirt and show off his vampiric nature to those who knew the signs by giving roses to female vampires he met.

One of the male PCs came to instantly hate Max when Max gave his girlfriend, and later in the same night his new Childe, a rose. Pretty soon, he had the rest of the group convinced that Max was the living personification of evil.

So, in the interest of getting the PCs to do something, I wrote Max into the plot. It was actually really handy. I needed a way to mess with the Brujah, and having Max corrupt one of the Anarch leaders worked great.

None of that would have happened if the group had just ignored Max or casually beat him up like I thought they would.

The tricky thing about Player-generated conflict is that it's hard to know when, as a player, you're generating conflict, or when you're just rising to the GM's bait. If you declare your vendetta against the Dark Prince, is that player-generated conflict? Or did the GM just make the Dark Prince such a natural target that your vendetta was almost inevitable?

I don't know, and I don't think it matters a great deal. If the end result is fun, then the process by which you got there is probably not worth worrying about excessively. Probably, in the vast majority of games, the GM provides the seeds of most of the plot. In a smaller minority, the GM is more responsive to the Players. Some games lend themselves to this more than others. Amber leaps to mind, as does Nobilis. Games with less cosmic settings tend to be more GM controlled, but there's no reason it has to be that way, and I'm sure a lot of people play them with less GM control.

I write most of my columns under the assumption that the GM will be providing most of the direction for the game. That's the way it's been for most of the time I've been gaming, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

But, as I've said, that's not the only way to game. In a game where the GM is taking a more reactive role, PC goals and Player-generated plots become a lot more important because without them, all the PCs can do is sit around in the inn, waiting for the mysterious old man to show up.

In a game like that, you need to choose your goals carefully. Of course, there's not a lot of useful advice I can give you. The very nature of a game like that makes it hard to generalize. Almost everything I say in this column still applies, but in a slightly different way. Most of the stuff in the next session is particularly important, since a game where the players have so much freedom is likely to have more room for PCs to get in each other's ways.

Player vs. Player

Player vs. Player conflict is a lot easier to nail down. If PC #1 pulls out his sword and tries to run PC #2 through, then you've got very clear PVP conflict. Of course, not all PVP conflict is so direct, or so violent. A pacificist PC trying to convince a warlike companion to cut down on the slaughter is engaging in conflict. So is a stuffy Tremere trying to get a loopy Malkavian to SHUT UP during an audience with the Prince.

(Did you all know that "Shhh!" can be used as a Command with Dominate?)

Player vs. Player conflict can be awesome. Absolutely nothing is more personal than a fight with a friend or family member. The potential for drama is amazing.

Player vs. Player conflict can be terrible. Absolutely nothing is more personal than a fight with a friend or family member. The potential for trauma is amazing.

So, unless your ideal gaming experience is a lot different than mine, you'd rather have more of the former than the latter. The question is, how do you get it?

The answer, at least the only answer you're going to get in this column, is "I'm not sure." Player vs. Player conflict is tricky. I know that I have taken abuse from GM controlled NPCs that would have provoked a much different response if it had come from a PC. There's a strange sort of neutrality associated with the GM. Perhaps because he plays so many characters, players don't tend to associate him strongly with any one.

People have different tolerances. Someone might be fine with his PC getting into a fight with yours in one game, even if his character is seriously hurt or killed. In another game, with a different character, he might take a nearly identical situation really hard.

(Of course, if you killed his character twice in two different games, there might really be some issues you want to address)

These are the things I want to know about any conflict between PCs?

Why is this happening?

It should go without saying that PVP conflict should arise from totally In Character stimuli. A game involving five other people is not the appropriate venue for you to take out your aggressions on someone else. If you're mad at one person, deal with that one person. If you're mad at the whole group, then leave. Or suck it up and deal with your problems like an adult.

Ok, enough sermonizing for the moment.

Similarly, PVP conflicts should make sense within PC motives. In real life, and even in most fiction, most people won't pull guns and try to kill each other over trivial matters. They're more likely to argue, snub each other at parties, or insult each other a lot. When a serious mutual threat arises, all but the most casual of allies will temporarily put aside their differences.

The response should fit the circumstance. One of my little brother's friends had this habit of playing obnoxious characters who would try to attack other PCs if they offended him. He was always really surprised when the other party members killed the sociopath in their midst, and even more surprised when the GM backed them up on it.

But sometimes violence really is called for. Right now, in the IRC Buffy game I'm playing, there is a decent chance that Juri (my Slayer-in-training) will end up trying to kill Theo (a werebear - only now he seems to be a Wendigo). Theo has killed a human, and if Juri finds out about it, she will feel like it's her job to kill him, even though doing so might break her heart.

That could be way fun to play. Before it happens (if it happens at all), I'm going to have a long talk with the GM and Theo's player. As fun as the subplot could be, I don't want to screw up the whole game over it.

What will the results be?

You can never really know what the results will be, but you can make a good guess. If the conflict will make the game better, I go ahead full-steam. Back when I was LARPing, I actively sought out chances to screw with other PCs, because that's what made the game go 'round. The best one (stillborn because the game ended early) was my Tremere, Sir Cynan, playing out a long, slow con-job on the city's Giovanni that would have culminated in him convincing them to teach him Necromancy - at which point he would have killed them all because he didn't need them anymore. The mysterious Tremere/Giovanni alliance threw most of the group for a loop, and was loads of fun. After the game broke up, I told some of the Gio Players what I was up to, and they said they would have loved it - even if they died.

If it's something that I might enjoy, but that won't have a big effect on the game, I'll go ahead for as long as it's fun. For instance, in the aforementioned Buffy game, there's a love-triangle between Juri, Theo, and Travis (the token normal guy). It happened pretty much spontaneously, but it's loads of fun. The bickering between Theo and Travis is entertaining, and the whole mess produces a great group dynamic. Theo and Travis haven't tried to seriously hurt each other or anything, and whenever the Big Bad rears his ugly head, everybody focuses on the task at hand. For as long as it makes sense (not much longer, if Juri decides to kill Theo, obviously)

I want to keep that dynamic. I'm not going to force it, though.

If I can't see a way for this particular conflict to make the game better, then I have to ask myself what it's worth. I, personally, would rather metagame to avoid a conflict, rather than play my character "accurately" and spoil the game. If the conflict becomes so obvious that I have to resolve it in order to have fun, then I'll try to resolve it with as little disruption to the game as possible. The conflict between Juri and Theo might reach that level. (Since John reads my columns, you might find out, too)

"I was just playing in character" is not a defense that frees you from responsibility for your actions.

What do the other players think?

I've mentioned this already, but it bears repeating. You are not playing the game alone. Your decisions affect the other players. Play nice.

If your character is about to severely harm another PC, you should really talk to that player first. Killing another PC without any warning is particularly vile. Even if you have a really good reason, you should probably discuss it with the other player first. Sure, you know that because of your obscure Code of Honor, you're honor bound to kill him, but does he know that? If he did, he might not have done whatever he did to offend you.

Consent is kind of implied in a game like Amber, or in most LARPs that I've seen, but even in those situations it's a good idea to at least try to discuss what's going on out of character. That can get pretty hard, though. Not all players are of the same caliber. Some people have trouble keeping IC and OOC knowledge separate.

In a case like that, you have to make a judgment call. With some people, I wouldn't hesitate to discuss my secret evil plans. With others, I wouldn't reveal what I had in mind unless I absolutely had to. I'd still be trying to feel the situation out, though. My goal in most RPGs is to have fun, and to make sure the rest of the group is having fun. Winning good, but only if it's fun.

The VLARP I just used as an example ended when a bunch of new people joined the game and threw their combined weight around to wipe out the Giovanni utterly without warning (and with a healthy disregard for a few inconvenient rules). They managed to sow enough hard feelings that about half the players quit, and the ones of us who were left had to start a new campaign because they'd damaged the old one beyond repair.

Sure, they "won" but what good did it do them?

(And of course, if they'd waited one more session to do it, I would have been ready to help them, but I'm not bitter.)

Now that we've figured out when and why to have PVP conflict, the question is, what do you do with it?

I don't really have any answers to that, either. Every case will be different. The primary goal is to make the game more fun. There can be lots of secondary goals. Most often, I find myself in a PVP conflict for roleplaying reasons, rather than because I have a personal goal. For instance, Juri's potential conflict with Theo arises from the fact that she's a monster-hunter, and he might be a monster. "To see if Juri could beat up Theo" isn't really my goal.

(Besides, I know she'd toast him.)

(I'm kidding, John)

Summing Up

This is the part where I condense everything I just said into a couple of pithy paragraphs and provide some incredible insight that will forever alter your gaming experience.

Unfortunately, I (a) don't feel like trying to boil the article down to two paragraphs, because if I could have done that, I would have only written two paragraphs, and (b) I don't really have any profound insights to offer.

But let's see what I can come up with:

Player-generated conflict is the most dynamic way to blur the line between Player and GM. If you really embrace it, it will change the way your games play out. The GM's job will be different. Rather than just throwing events at you, he'll have to be able to react to events you throw at him.

Taking the reins that way gives you, the Player, more responsibility than you would otherwise have. You have to balance what you want with what's good for the rest of the group.

Your ability to deal with that responsibility will, in large part, determine how entertaining the conflicts you generate are.

Which is kind of the point, isn't it?

That's all I've got for now. See you next time.

Welcome back. I decided this month to do a column I've been thinking about for a while: "When GM's Attack -or- Why Bad Things Happen to Good Characters."

I'll begin with a story. After I left my much-beloved Shadow Run game, a new player started - the GM's girlfriend. She was playing an Elven Street Shaman with Snake as her totem, which nicely filled the dual voids of Healer and Hot Elf Chick that the loss of my two characters had caused.

However, because she'd come into the game very late, hardly any of the plot threads directly related to her. She told the GM she felt like she was always on the sidelines and didn't really matter to the game.

So, the GM looked over her background and came up with a plot line that was hers and hers alone. She got center stage and her own personal spotlight.

She hated it. She said the GM was being mean to her character.

He responded with a line that I have taken to my heart: "The characters in the spotlight... they don't want to be there. They'd much rather be on the sidelines where it's safe."

(Hope I quoted you correctly, Dave. It's been a while.)

That's the great conundrum of Player Characters. Most PCs want to avoid the spotlight, while most Players want to be in it. That's also the topic of this column, or at least part of it. I want to discuss the reasons GMs are mean to poor, helpless Player Characters.

Another brief story: When I still lived with my parents, I used to enlist my mom as a reader for my fiction (at least some of it). She's not really the ideal audience for horror/fantasy action adventure stories, but I had a dearth of choices. One complaint she always had was that I was too mean to my characters. Bad things always happened to them.

I used to answer that if nothing bad happened, there was no story.

Unless it's very unusual, that's probably true of your game, too. (And if your game really does run with no conflict, I'd be curious to hear how that works)

There are several reasons for conflicts, setbacks, and general bad days:

Reason 1: It's Just the Plot

The dungeon full of Orks, the Empire of Darkness that's crushing the PCs home town, the elder god beneath the sea: usually these will cause the PCs some problems. It's nothing personal. The PCs are just in the way. (Well, actually, the Orks are in the PCs' way from a certain point of view - but for now we'll assume they're evil, nasty Orks who were just hanging out in the dungeon until they figured out how to get the dragon out of the 10' halls. THEN they'd be trouble)

The faceless, impersonal hordes of evil are a staple of gaming. They're easy to manage, and the reaction to them is fairly obvious. You kill them, run from them, or banish them as appropriate, and pursue your other goals along the way if you have any.

Usually, the main plot affects all the PCs more or less equally. Individual events may hit one PC harder than the others, but over all everybody's in the same boat.

Dealing with this sort of conflict is often what a game is about. If you're playing Star Wars, you're probably trying to defeat the evil Empire (or protect the failing Old Republic these days. You kids and your prequels. In my day we had to walk ten miles to Mos Eisley through a sandstorm, and there was hardly anyone there, and we liked it.)

It is to be hoped that the big conflict figures into your character's personal goals in some way, but this could be tangential. Look at the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings. None of the four really got up one morning and said "let's go destroy the One Ring to prevent the rise of Sauron." Frodo wanted to keep the Shire safe, and his friends wanted to keep him safe. That the safety of the Shire was dependant upon the destruction of the One Ring was kind of a bonus.

In earlier columns, I've already suggested that you should choose goals for your character that will then to lend themselves to the GM's plot. You should also pursue your goals in a way that doesn't directly conflict with it.

Frodo could have decided to throw the Ring down a well. The series would have been much shorter, or at the least would have gotten off to a much different start.

The central conflict of the game is a great way to define your character. How does he feel about it? What does he do about it? Why?

Since I just introduced her to you all, I'll use Juri as an example. The big conflict in our Buffy game is the continuing battle between the champions of humanity and the forces of darkness. Juri has been raised to believe it's her job to protect people from the forces of evil. Further, after a little reading on Shinto religion, I decided she's something of a supernatural racist. Humans are descended from the Kami (the gods and spirits of Shinto religion). Demons and vampires aren't. Therefore, it's always the right thing to do to kill a monster - though it might be occasionally advisable to wait and kill one later if it has something you want.

In practice, she's always eager to fight, because it's what she was raised to do, and the only time she feels like she's fulfilling her purpose. On the other hand, she's very concerned with the safety of the rest of the team. If a team mate is in trouble, Juri will probably drop whatever she's doing to help them - which isn't always the best decision. Her "kill them all" attitude is rapidly eroding, not out of compassion for the monsters, but because she's been in several situations already where letting one live for a few minutes would have vastly simplified her life.

Other members of the group have different outlooks, which lead to some interesting situations. The most fun is watching Travis and Theo (who hate each other) both try to protect Juri while she's trying to protect both of them.

Reason 2: You Asked for It

This is my favorite. One of my gaming ephinies was the realization that if I was running Champions I didn't actually need to plan adventures. All I had to do was roll everybody's Hunteds and DNPCs and figure out how the latter got in trouble with the former.

In almost any game with an Advantage/Disadvantage system players have the option of creating ties between their characters and certain NPCs. This is a practice I strongly encourage, even in systems that don't allow it formally.

Since I'm tired of using Star wars as an example, let's look at another cinematic classic: Die Hard. John McClane, trapped in an office building with a bunch of terrorists, and without his shoes. What does he do? He saves everybody. Why? He's a hero, and the movie would be really short if he did the smart thing and snuck out - but also because his wife was one of the hostages. Later on in Die Hard With a Vengeance, the brother of the terrorist he beat the first time comes after him for revenge.

It's all personal, and therefore more gripping than it might otherwise be.

When your character's personal ghosts come back to haunt him, there are essentially two forms the interference can take. Either it will be part of the main plot, or it will be a distraction from it. Either is fun.

In my Now is the Winter game, Dr. Zhou (the Tremere) had a Dependent: his mortal family. In the second adventure, Dr. Killian (the Malkavian bad guy) kidnapped his granddaughter as a reprisal for Dr. Zhou breaking someone out of Killian's asylum. While under the good doctor's care, the poor kid was subjected to lots of nasty mind control powers that warped her mind for the rest of the game. In session 2, rescuing the girl was the main point of the session. For the rest of the game, trying to unravel what Killian had done to her mind distracted Dr. Zhou and almost induced him to sell out the rest of the group once.

NPC ties aren't the only thing the GM will exploit. If your character has a fear of spiders, then expect at least once that he'll drop something he really, really needs into a hole full of daddy longlegs.

Rather than looking on this as persecution from the GM, I look on it as a way to make sure my character will always be involved in the story. When your enemy shows up, it's your chance to shine. When your loved-ones' lives are on the line, failure is not an option. Cool stuff.

Careful choice of disadvantages has allowed me to steal the spotlight (well, just borrow it for a while) of several games.

Reason 3: Just One of Those Things

Even if your character doesn't' have Enemies (for which he got, or paid in 7th Sea, points) he has enemies. He's probably a gun-toting maniac. Of course he has enemies. If he left them all dead, then their kids, girlfriends, and bill collectors are his enemies. If, somehow, he doesn't have enemies at all, he still has some ties to the game world.

Eventually, those are going to cause him problems.

(If your character doesn't have any ties to the game world, go back and read all my earlier columns and re-make him. The game is really a lot more fun if you have some vested interest in the outcome. Honest)

These can be some of the most annoying misfortunes ever to strike a character. The come out of nowhere, more or less, and can utterly screw up your plans. Sometimes they serve the greater plot, but sometimes they only seem to serve the GM's sadistic urges.

As a GM, I've hit more than one PC with a complication just because it seemed like it would be fun. I'm more than sure that some of my favorite GMs have done the same thing to me.

Sometimes it's realism. If your character wanders into the area the GM has decided is the lair to a big monster, he's probably going to end up mauled by said big monster. If he was there for a totally different reason, there's going to be irony dripping along with the blood.

Sometimes it's an attempt to steer the characters (affectionately called "railroading" in many cases). If all the avenues open to you but one are guarded by ravenous wolves, guess which one the GM thinks you should take. This is really annoying when it's blatant, less so when the GM is subtle about it. If he's really good, you'll never notice.

Sometimes it really is just one of those things. For instance, I tend to run about half my games off the cuff. I have a general plan, but at least of half of what goes on in a session is pure improvisation. If my PCs do something I totally didn't expect, I have to come up with something fast, and I'll try to make it interesting. "Interesting" in gaming parlance tends to follow the conventions of the old Chinese saying...

These random conflicts can be annoying, but they can also be a lot of fun. The potential for them is one of the things that makes gaming a lot different than fiction. In a story or a movie, everything that happens is part of the plot. In a game, there's potential for lots of plots all at once.

Assuming your character survives his unfortunate encounter with the beast from my earlier example, maybe now he thinks it would make a nifty jacket and pair of boots. There could be some fun later down the line when he goes back with the right equipment this time.

Reason 4: The GM is a Jerk

This is the one I don't like. There are times when a GM is just out to get one player, or to kill them all. Those are two different situations, so I'll take them one at a time.

First, the Party Killer. This GM wants to run his game (at best) like a chess match where he throws all his resources at the party and the players do their best to beat him, and (at worst) like an endless deathtrap where the party will fight wave after wave of threats until they're overwhelmed.

The first case is fine, if that's what everyone wants to do. It's more like a strategy game than a story game, but that's what it's meant to be. As long as everyone's on the same page and everyone's having fun, they should keep doing it.

The second case is the kind of game I'd walk out on. The realization that broke me out of my munchkin phase in High School was that the GM always had more hit points than I did. He always had more experience. There were always more monsters. There was absolutely no way my character would ever be more powerful than the GM could threaten.

Once you realize that, there's not a lot of point in collecting power anymore unless you have something you want to do with it.

The flip-side of that realization was that as GM I could always, always kill the entire party whenever I wanted to. There was no ability a PC could possess that I couldn't defeat, remove, or circumvent.

Once I saw that, I couldn't see much point in wiping out groups of stalwart adventurers any more, either. The Tarsque and the Death Star were comforting security blankets that I had largely outgrown.

So now for the hard part, the vindictive GM. There are levels of vindictiveness. Sometimes the fault lies with the player, and the GM is just trying to rein him in, or the player is just trying to push his character in a way the game is not designed to go.

In my Now is the Winter game, Jason the Brujah seemed determined to ignore the fact that the city was about to be sucked into hell as he pursued his political agenda. Eventually, I decided to smack him by having the Prince offer him an Office, then use the Dominate power of Fealty (which makes an oath literally binding) to force him to toe the line. I'm not sure that was the right decision, but it was enormously satisfying - particularly when Prince Marcel rolled so well that I had to extrapolate more slots on the effects chart to see how long the Oath would bind Jason.

But sometimes the GM just has an axe to grind. I really don't know what to do about that. GM favoritism is just about always bad. If the GM and the player can't settle their differences amicably, then maybe the player should leave the game. Some people just shouldn't game together, even if they get along in other ways.

If the game isn't fun, you definitely shouldn't play. If it's the only game in town, then you'll have to decide if which is less fun: a game where the GM is out to get you, or no game at all.

Since everyone reading this article is presumably equipped with an internet connection, I'd recommend looking into PBEM, PBP, and IRC games.

Parting Words

This is usually the point where I tie everything together into a nice neat bundle, but I don't really have one this time. The big point is "The GM is probably not picking on you." The lesson, to the extent that there is one, is that setbacks and conflicts are what make your character. How he reacts to them is what defines him.

Welcome back. This time out, things will be a little different than usual. I recently had a really interesting experience, and I thought I'd share. There's not really any advice per se, but maybe you'll enjoy it anyway. We're returning, briefly, to the exciting world of character creation, or more accurately, character development.

If you've been reading so far, you've probably reached the conclusion that I think characters are important. You'd be right. For my style of gaming, well-realized, detailed, plot-hook laden PCs are as important as a compelling setting and interesting, vibrant NPCs. All of which is more important than a really original, amazing plot.

Unfortunately, it tends to take me 2-3 sessions to get into character. The rest of the time, I have a bunch of ideas that don't really hang together. I have to muddle through for a few sessions before my character "comes to life" and sometimes the result is a lot different than what I started with. Like my guilt-ridden, honor-bound Pendragon knight who started play as an affable bastard, for instance.

This is a flaw I've been trying to overcome. I've done it by writing long character backgrounds (which tended to be fairly lifeless, and to nail down details I'd rather leave vague) and by writing fiction (which is a lot of work to do well, and not worth doing poorly). This time out, I decided to try something new.

I just started a Buffy game. My character is Tomika Juri, a Potential Slayer from Japan. I started with a basic idea for a very serious, studious girl who had already dedicated her entire life to being the Slayer, and would realize fairly early in the game that she'd missed out on some good stuff to do so. If you're a fan of the show, you might be reminded of Kendra, who was a major inspiration. I also wanted a slightly different take on the idea of the Slayer, which is why I chose a Japanese Potential. Juri sees the Slayer as something like a Samurai, and that colors the way she does her job. For example, in our first run, the group was patrolling, and ran into a small pack of vampires. One of them got knocked down, and before Juri killed him, she let him get up and compose himself. (The barbaric bloodsucker ran instead of facing honorable combat)

I really didn't have a lot else to go on. So, after the first session, I decided to try something new. I conducted an interview with my new character. It was kind of an exercise in role-playing, and kind of a story. When I started, I didn't really know where I was going with it. I stopped when I got to six pages. I'm thinking about doing some more later.

The text of the interview follows. The interview is completely out of game continuity, and doesn't even stick to a single moment in time, since I put in some questions that Juri wouldn't know the answers for yet. I initially thought about doing a completely In Character interview, either by a fictional student reporter for the school paper, or a member of the Watchers' Council checking up on her, but I decided fairly early on that either of those options would be limiting. The Watcher wouldn't ask all the right questions, and the student wouldn't know some of the ones he needed to ask.

I also want it noted that I know about as much about Japan as a slightly more than casual Anime fan. Any inaccuracies are the result of ignorance, rather than malice or design. I hit close enough that I don't think I'm wrecking other players' SOD, though.

I've appended the interview with comments in italics to clear some things up, and to expand on a few others.

Interview with Tomika Juri

First, let's set the scene: a coffee shop in downtown Littleton, Co, on a cold, February morning. Music by someone who thinks the Celts were nicer, cooler, and above all cleaner than they really were is playing from speakers in the ceiling. The place was decorated with eclectic furnishings, mismatched chairs and tables, and some overstuffed leather sofas. There was a pool table over on one side, and a big TV on the other. Most of the clientele on this blustery Saturday were high school and college students.  (This paragraph was done when I still thought about doing the interview IC. I like it, so it's staying)

Tomika Juri was already waiting for me, sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of her. She was wearing a white blouse, a long, gray skirt, and a blue wool blazer. Even on Saturday, she looked like she was on her way to school.

Since I'm told we might not get an accompanying photo (more's the pity), I'll provide a brief description. I might have anyway, because Miss Tomika is a pleasure to describe. Her hair is as black as India ink, very silky, and today parted to one side and held in place with a heart-shaped hair clip. Her eyes are blue, the color of sapphires in bright light, almond-shaped, and very expressive. She has an elfin face with a cute little upturned nose, and a figure to match. If I didn't know better, I would have found it hard to credit that she could take a vampire in hand-to-hand combat. (I'm told that she killed two, and finished off a third, mostly single-handedly in a recent hunt. Impressive.) Of course, the blazer hides her musculature. All you see is the adorable face and the fact she's not much more than five feet tall.  (Speaking of the accompanying photo, anybody got any suggestions for a young, teenage Japanese girl, preferably with blue eyes - but I know some people with Photoshop skills, and for that matter, I can easily change that detail.)

She was watching the door, and I saw her size me up. It took only a moment for her to figure out who I was, at which point she smiled bright enough to melt butter and stood up.

I ambled over. We made our introductions. Tomika's accent is a strange, but very appealing mixture of proper British and Japanese. A waitress stopped and took my order. I pulled out my recorder, and we began:

RDG: Thank you for agreeing to this interview.

TJ: I'm glad to do it. What would you like to know?

(Direct, isn't she?)

RDG: Well, everything. Let's start with where you were born.

TJ: Hiroshima.

RDG: What was it like?

TJ: It was very nice there, but I only lived there for a few years. My father had an apartment over his store. He sold groceries to the people in our neighborhood.

RDG: What about your mother?

TJ: (pauses) She died when I was born. My grandmother helped take care of me. So did my aunt, Aoi.

RDG: I'm sorry.

TJ: It is all right. I never knew her. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a mother, but I don't really miss her. Papa did, though. He was always very sad.

RDG: So, did you have a lot of friends? What did you do for fun?

TJ: There were some other kids in the neighborhood, and Aunt Aoi had two sons. They were stupid-heads, though. We did normal stuff, I guess. Played in the park, flew kites, went swimming in the summer, played video games and watched TV. Uncle Genjo worked in an electronics store, so they had a big TV and lots of games. Even if their kids were stupid-heads.  (The cousins kind of came out of nowhere. So did the step-siblings who show up in a little while. That was kind of neat)

RDG: But you left later, right?

TJ: I was seven. Some men visited Papa. Later, they talked to me. They said it was my destiny to be trained as a warrior, to protect people from creatures of the night.

RDG: And you believed them?

TJ: Why wouldn't I? They were adults, in suits. One of them was a monk. They wouldn't lie. Besides, I was a little kid. I still believed in faeries, and that a monster lived in my closet, but he could only come out at night if the door was open and the nightlight was off.

Anyway, they were right. There are creatures of the night, and people need to be ready to kill them.

I don't know what they said to Papa. Maybe the same thing they told me, I guess. I didn't really understand it at the time, but he was seeing a new woman, and I think he thought it would be easier if he didn't have a little girl underfoot. Later on, he married her, and they had two kids.  (In my original background write-up, all I knew was that Juri's father had given her up to the Watchers. A new wife was a good reason he might do so)

RDG: Have you ever met them?

TJ: Once, when they were little. My stepmother is kind of uncomfortable around me, and besides, I was usually too busy with training.

RDG: So you went to...?

TJ: The temple. I don't think I'm supposed to say where it is. They may have moved everyone anyway. It wouldn't be hard to find, though. It's kind of out in the boondocks. I thought it was really isolated until I got to America and saw how spread out everything is here.

The temple was a monastery, very old. The plumbing was always dodgy, and there was no TV. Most of the people there were men. There was one girl, a lot older than I was. She left after a while. I kind of wonder where she went.

RDG: So what did you do there?

TJ: I learned to be the Slayer, if I am the one Chosen when the current Slayer falls. At first, I was too little to spar. I learned normal school things, and how to speak English and old Latin. I practiced Tai Chi and Aikido. When I got older, I started learning more martial arts. Kenjitsu was my favorite, and Kyudo. Being a Slayer is like being a Samurai. You have to give your life to a greater cause. I studied art: calligraphy and flower arranging, and tea ceremony. And I learned about the occult, of course. Lots of old, musty books that had pages so fragile you had to use tweezers.

RDG: What did you do for fun?

TJ: Sparring was my favorite. Training exercises, like Capture the Flag. For my thirteenth birthday, the monks gave me a special party. I got my own swords, and they brought in a vampire for me to kill.

He was faster than I thought he'd be. He broke a couple of ribs, and the monks had to hit him with a tranquilizer before I could cut off his head. It was very embarrassing, but they said I did a good job.  (The whole "vampire birthday party" thing came out of nowhere. I was completely surprised that the idea was lurking in my subconscious, but it was really so perfectly logical. That bit was one of my two favorite in the entire interview)

Oh, and Sensei Brody bought me a Hello Kitty Fairy doll.

RDG:...

TJ: What?

RDG: Just processing. You killed a vampire when you were thirteen?

TJ: Yes, with my new katana. And some help from my teachers.

RDG: And that's what you think is fun?

TJ: Well, I also like reading manga, and since I moved to America I watch TV and play video games again. There's three different DDR machines at the arcade. That's fun.  (This bit is not strictly in synch with the rest, having theoretically only been in town for a couple of days, Juri probably hasn't been to the video arcade yet, but she will be eventually)

RDG: About that, why did you leave Japan?

TJ: My teachers didn't say, exactly. The location of the monastery, or the fact that a Slayer might be there, must have leaked out. They said it wasn't safe for me to stay at the monastery anymore. They needed to get me out of Japan, and Lane-Sensei said I could stay with her in Littleton. I had my visa and school records and things in just a few days, and I was on a plane the next day.

I thought it would be a big plane, but it was just a little one, a Lear Jet. We stopped in California for one day, but I was too sleepy to really enjoy it. Hayden-Sensei bought me a Hello Kitty address book from a shop near our hotel. The next day we landed at a little airstrip, and Lane-Sensei met me and took me to her house.   (Just as a point of interest, the GM gave me a Drama Point when I had Juri pull out her Hello Kitty address book to call her Watcher.)

RDG: So, how are you liking America?

TJ: It's very different from home. I've only been here a couple of days now. I'm not really used to such a big school. I had private tutors from the time I was seven. Trying to remember where to go and when is difficult.

I love Lane-Sensei's house. The Watchers sent over some of the things from my old room. I'm still getting used to sleeping on such a big bed, and having so much space. The dojo isn't as big, and there's no firing range. I hope there's Archery at the high school so I can keep in practice.

Lane-Sensei cooks huge meals. I like American food, especially fried chicken.

The town is much bigger than I'm used to, and there's an even larger city not far away. It looks like a nice place.

RDG: Any friends yet?

TJ: Lane-Sensei is very nice. She lets us patrol, with weapons. So is Marian, even though she forgot to drive me home from school. She has her own car. That's so cool. Theodore is very brave, but he breaks lots of rules, and he always seems so angry. Simon is nice. I met a cute boy named Travis Evans at school. He said he'd drive me home from now on. (Giggles) I was surprised to find out he knew what vampires were. The Watchers said mostly people don't know, that they don't want to know.  (These are other characters in the game. Nailing down Juri's reactions to them was one of the things I intended to do from the start. It's also one of the things I want to expand on, maybe through a diary or something)

RDG: Let's talk about your work. Do you think you'll be Chosen?

TJ: I don't know. I hope so. Whether I am or not, it doesn't change what I have to do. Good people have a responsibility to fight evil. I don't have the strength to fight a demon on even ground, but I have the teaching to find its weaknesses, the knowledge to exploit them, and the skill to take its advantages and make them mine.

I would never go against my teachers, but sometimes I think the Watchers are too concerned with watching when they should use their power to do something instead. I will hunt the monsters for as long as I can.

If another is Chosen instead of me, I might seek out another source of power. Most of them are dangerous, too dangerous, but there has to be a way. I read about Gwendolyn Post and what she did. She was a bad person, but I do not completely disagree with her.  (Most of this is stuff I knew when I made up the character. It helped me to find Juri's voice to have her state it, though)

RDG: So for now you patrol? What do you like about it? What do you dislike?

TJ: It's fun. I know that's a scary thing to say. You don't have to look at me like that. In sparring, you have to exercise control so you don't hurt anyone. And in the back of your mind, you know it's not real no matter how well you pretend. When you're really fighting, it's real.

I understand that it's dangerous. The first vampire I fought could have killed me. Even with the monks watching, he might have got lucky. The one last night cut me, and it still hurts. He would have killed me, or one of his friends would have. I know the danger, and I don't want to die, but...

... When you're on the edge of death, you're alive like you can't be any other time. Everything is clear, simple. All day everything is hard. It's hard to remember where to go and what to do, what language to speak in, who knows what, who likes you, who doesn't. When you're fighting, there's only you and them, and all that matters is your strength and skill.

And you're helping people. Last night, we saved a woman's life. Who knows how many others after that? Those vampires would not have stopped killing until someone made them stop, and we did it. I did it.  (First fight, about 1/4 of Juri's life points on a good hit. Fortunately, I had an extra Drama Point.)

Besides that, I've been training to do this since I was a little girl. I lost my father. He barely knows me now. He used to send me a birthday card. I don't know if he will now, since the Watchers moved me. It's what I do. Why teach me to do it, if they weren't going to let me do it?

RDG: Do you ever wish you had something else? That your life had been different?

TJ: No. Yes. Maybe. I don't know. 

That's a hard question. I like being who I am, but I wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mother, and with a father who wasn't so distant. I miss Japan. I miss the temple and the village, and I miss Hiroshima, even though I don't remember it very well.

There are things in life that I've had to give up, and sometimes I wish I had them, but that's selfish. Some people have to make sacrifices so that other people can be free and happy, like soldiers and policemen. 

I got other things in return. Knowing what I know, I would rather be the one keeping secrets instead of the one living in a world made of them. Most people go through their lives being afraid. They ignore the truth because otherwise they couldn't live with it. I don't have to do that. I know there aren't very many people who could beat me in an even fight. I know how to even the odds, or tip them in my favor. I don't have to be afraid.

That doesn't mean I can be stupid, though. An old vampire, or just a man with a gun, could kill me easily if I'm not careful, or maybe even if I am. But at least I know who I am and what I can do.

For that, I guess it's worth not having a mother.  (This is my favorite piece. I realized just after I wrote it that [a] it's exactly what Juri would say in character, and [b] it's a lie. She doesn't completely realize it, but she really craves a "real" family. She's going to try to build one as the game goes on, and the way she feels about different characters will really influence her actions. For someone she sees as "family" she'd probably throw away everything else she cares about, and would definitely throw away her life...)

RDG: (sniff) Sorry, something in my eye. Let's talk about the future. What do you want to happen next?  (...Which struck me as being both sad and sweet)

TJ: Well, I want to be the Slayer. (Grins) If not me, it would be neat if it were Marian. I want to patrol more. I want to get used to high school. I'm thinking about joining the Kick boxing team. Wrestling might be interesting, but I've seen it and I find Aikido generally superior for practical applications. I hope there's archery. I want to try miniature golf. We passed a place on the way into town, and that looked like fun. Go-karts, too.

My future is at once nebulous and very clear. The Watchers Council will take care of me. If I am not Chosen, I will find some other role with them. I would like to finish high school, either here or back home. I do not know about college. If the Watchers can fund my activities as a hunter, that might be time better spent elsewhere. Something inside me wants to go, though. I would like to study art, perhaps.

RDG: Do you have any goals that aren't practical?

TJ: Doesn't miniature golf count?

RDG: You've got me there.

TJ: I... I think I would like to go on a date with Travis. He's very handsome. Maybe we could play miniature golf. (Grin)

I want to learn to drive. Everyone drives here. That might count as practical, since it would make patrolling easier. I think I need to buy some new clothes, too. People dress a lot differently here. I need more pants than the ones I patrol in, especially blue jeans.

Do you have any other questions?

RDG: Not right now. Thank you, Tomika. It was a pleasure speaking with you.  (The last part revealed a little bit of her sense of humor, which is very subtle. Juri is a lot more likely to feed straight lines than crack jokes.)

So anyway, that's it for this month. Not much in the way of advice, but I hope you enjoyed it. If there's anything you'd like to see in future columns, please let me know. I'm thinking about following up character goals with character advancement, a column or two on the subject of experience and Experience and what to do with either.

See ya' next time.

Hi everybody. Welcome back. We're still discussing character goals. We've already talked about what they are, why you should have them, and what they should be, but all that still leaves a question.
When do you pursue them?

In a MET style LARP, it's pretty easy. Almost all your goals tend to be personal, and you pursue them whenever you get the chance. In a PBP or PBeM, there may be more direction, but it's still not hard to go off by yourself and do whatever you want as long as the GM has time to deal with you. Splitting the party may not be advisable, but it's not a serious logistical problem like it might be in a tabletop game.

But my column is primarily aimed at tabletop gaming, and at the tabletop (or sprawled around the living room, in my games) having one or more characters wander off by themselves can cause some problems. Some day, if you ask nicely, I'll tell the story of the Shadow Run session that ended up having three groups and two GMs... The basic problem is that there is only one GM, who plays all the NPCs and describes the entire environment. While the PCs are all in one place, this isn't much of a problem. If the party splits up, the GM's attention is split, too. Sometimes that's unavoidable. Sometimes the GM arranges it on purpose. But other times, it can be a real pain - particularly if it's just one PC who is trying to use some downtime in the main plot to go pursue one of his sub-plots. That leaves the other characters to either just sit, or to go find things of their own to do.

Thus, either several people are bored, or the GM suddenly has multiple games to run.

So what can you do about it?

Here are several strategies that I have employed. All of them require the GM's cooperation, and that's an important issue. Everything I'm going to suggest creates some degree of extra work for the GM. As a player, you need to decide how much your character's goals are worth to you and to the rest of the group. If you start disrupting the game or burning out the GM, then it doesn't really matter if your character won the hand of the Princess, defeated the Dark Overlord, and recovered the McGuffin of Ultimate Power. You are failing.

Yes, I said you are failing. If you wreck the game, then you lose everything. I once nearly wrecked a game by focusing too much on just what I wanted. It's an easy trap to fall into - at least for a spotlight hog like me. Now you've been warned.

Ok, now that that bit of unpleasantness is out of the way, let's move on. There are several ways to carve out time for your character's goals.

In Game, With the Party

Unless your GM blows chunks, there will be situations in the main plot that relate to your character's goals from time to time. Keep an eye out for them. When you find yourself in one, play in character. Don't make the decision you think is "best." Make the decision that your character really would if he was in that situation. If you're playing Inigo Montoya, and you spot the Six-Fingered man, you're not likely to consider the fact that you're carrying an urgent message that absolutely, positively has to get there overnight. There's the guy who slaughtered your father over a sword. Go kill him. Now. And that group of twenty guards he's got with him.

Well, actually, Inigo might be smarter than that, but he'd at least consider it.

In Game, Alone

Sometimes, the group splits up. I've run sessions that never had more than two PCs in the same place at the same time. I've played in them, too. If everybody's OK with it, that's fine.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Be considerate: Well duh. If your character goes off by himself, the GM "owes" you as much time as he's spending with any one other player. In a group of six players, that's 1/6th of the GM's time. The group gets an hour, you get ten minutes. More is nice, but all you really "deserve" is 1/6th.
• Keep track of your POV: Don't react to OOC information in your IC dealings. If the group gets in trouble because you wandered off on your own, then the survivors will be really angry with you when you get back. If you get in trouble when you wander off on your own, don't expect them to come save you if you can't call them.
• While you're out anyway...: While you run off to visit your old, ailing aunt, maybe you could also check in with one of your contacts who might have some useful information for the group. Huh?
• Be considerate: I know I already said "be considerate," but it bears repeating. Keep this behavior in check. If you only go off on you own every once in a while, it's no problem. If you're doing it for a long time, frequently, you should probably look into one of the other methods I'll discuss in a minute.

Journals and Bluebooks

"Bluebooking" emerged some time in the 90s. I'm not exactly sure where. Mentions of it cropped up in some of my game books about that time. If anybody who knows more cares to post comments, I'd love to read them. I've never Bluebooked formally, but I think I've more or less adopted the "guts" of the practice. The basic idea is that you keep a binder or something in which you write character actions. The GM reads what you wrote and writes in responses. You can presumably also do this with other PCs, too. It's a pretty good way to handle "sideline" events, though I think it would work best between sessions, since the GM probably can't stop and read your latest entry and write another one while he's doing anything else.

A somewhat related method could be carried out in a character journal. I am a huge fan of character journals (and I really, really need to update the one in my D&D game). Mostly, journals just record actions that have already happened, but in my Now is the Winter game one player particularly used his to flesh out relationships and add a lot of content to the game that I never put there.

To be honest, I was a little shocked at first. I read one of his journal entries, which had a long conversation between him and an NPC - only that conversation had never occurred in game.

Once I figured out what he was doing, though, I was all for it. In fact, I do it a little myself.

Here's what he'd do:

• In Game, he'd tell me he wanted to go to such-and-such a place to talk to some NPC contact.
• I'd say "fine. You go there. What do you want to know?"
• He'd tell me.
• I'd make up an answer. For instance, if he was looking for where to find a Brujah safe house, I might say one of his Anarch contacts gave him an address warfside.
• In his journal, there would be a lengthy description of his trip to the Anarch's hangout, and a detailed conversation that covered other topics as well. For example, if the PC was shaking down an Anarch, he might mention some (made up on the spot) dirt he had on said Anarch.
• Rarely, he'd write something that, while he was unaware of it, was "wrong" for some reason, and I'd tell him what he needed to change.

None of the player's new details involved OOC information unless he'd also gained that information IC later in the game. None of the details he added were consequential to the plot. But they turned a 30 second exchange between him and me into a real, fleshed out scene.

There are some things to keep in mind with this. Obviously, you're still asking the GM for more of his time. You're also asking him to hand over the reigns of the game, at least a little bit. I like it. Some GMs won't. You pretty much have to respect your GM's wishes. You should also be sure your performance In Game is as good as your performance in your journals, or at least as good as it can be. The other players deserve to be wowed by your awesome character portrayal. The group's goals probably deserve as much attention as your private ones.

E-Mail, Chat, and IM

A step up from physical journals, which have to be passed around, is electronic messaging. To be truthful, the journal in the example above was a Word file we passed back and forth as an e-mail attachment. I don't usually keep hand-written journals. Typing is so much faster, and I'm part of the Sesame Street generation, with the attendant low attention span and desire for instant gratification.

In my last handful of games, quite a bit was done as e-mails between the players and the GM or each other. This works very similarly to journals and bluebooks, but there's some difference. Scenes are "real-time." In other words, it's less likely that a scene you do through Instant Messaging with the GM will be edited after the fact. You will also be generating new material, instead of just fleshing out old stuff. Since the GM is involved, you can cover new ground.

There are also some new things to worry about.

• Be considerate: Yeah, you knew I was going to say that. Even more than with journals, you're taking the GM's time up, because if you're using IM or chat, you're taking up specific blocks of time.
• Keep track of continuity: Scenes played this way will occasionally be set between scenes that already happened In Game. If your character didn't know the location of the McGuffin of Power during the game, he has to wait until after the game time that the last session covered before he can find out. If he only spent an hour by himself, he probably doesn't have time to drive all over town and talk to half a dozen different NPCs.
• Don't get too far ahead: If you're doing things between sessions, keep in mind that the rest of the group isn't going to want to skip two days of game time because you ran off to Reno with your mistress - even if you came back with an important clue. If you don't want to spend two days of game time playing PS2 and reading comic books, then you'd better not spend them IM-ing the GM. In a similar vein, if one player does this kind of thing, all the players should have equal opportunity. This is particularly true if two PCs have conflicting goals. That brings us back to the GM Attention ratio I mentioned earlier. If the GM has to shuffle e-mails and Instant Messages from six players, you only get 1/6th of the total volume.

As always, the key thing to keep in mind is that you're trying to make the game better. I started with a discussion of all the competing goals, and that's where I'm going to end. I've provided tools to help you pursue your character's goals, and presumably your goals. You should do that with an eye toward the goals of the rest of the group.

So that's about it. I think I'm through with goals for now. In fact, I'm not sure what next month's column will hold. I'm up for suggestions.

Till then, good gaming.

Welcome back. In this season of giving, I can think of no better topic than "getting stuff." So that's our topic for this month's column. Last time we talked about all the interconnected goals that make up a roleplaying game. This month, we'll focus on the ones that really matter: Character Goals.

Goal Setting for Fun and Profit

Let's get started with the premise that people have goals. PCs are people, ergo they have goals. First, a group of PCs usually has a goal. In a really simple game, it's probably "finish the dungeon," or something similarly short-term and liner. If that's the way you play, you probably don't need to set a whole lot of goals for your character. The rewards of the game are immediate (treasure), or intrinsic to the character (levels).

In a more complex game, it could be both more complicated, and longer-term. For instance, in a very strange futuristic occult game I played, our group goal was "defend our clan from another clan." We had lots of short-term goals like "repel the invasion," "figure out where the ninjas hid the bomb before they blow up our house," and "blow up the other guy's house." All of those fed into the larger goal in one way or another. A few others didn't, early on.

Within the group, individuals have goals. One PC in the aforementioned game was a kind of adopted member of the clan who wanted full membership status. Another one wasn't really family at all, and only hung out with us because our enemy was his enemy. My character, just to contemplate matters, was in love with a member of the enemy clan.

A single individual can also have contradictory goals. Megan, my character in that game, wanted to find her missing brother - the only member of her original family left alive. When it turned out that he'd been involved in killing all the others and had been working for the main bad guy all along, there was a bit of conflict there. Megan could never bring herself to kill him. Eventually he killed himself to spare her the choice (or else there was just some kind of kill spell on him. I was never completely clear on what happened). Love makes people do strange things.

Choose Your Battles

The trick with setting goals is to set goals you will actually be able to pursue during the game. I'll stick with Megan as an example, so first I'll have to give you some quick background. Megan was a member of a race of dragon shapeshifters. Before the game began, her family was killed. She was the only survivor besides her brother, Michael, who had run away from home years before. She lived with her aunt and her aunt's new family (also dragon-people). Megan was a little weird because she'd learned to take her dragon shape about five years early. In her culture, that made her a full adult even though she was only a sophomore in high school (home-schooled once the faculty found out she could turn into a 10' long, fire-breathing lizard). She was also a magical prodigy, with a mastery of spells that would usually take decades.

She lived in a sort of over-the top, anime cyberpunk world. Take Shadowrun and make it weirder, and you're most of the way there.

I could have set a lot of goals for Megan. In fact, I did, and discarded several as the game shaped up. The ones I considered were:

• "Find out who killed my family"
• "Become a master of the mystic arts"
• "Lead as normal a life as possible"
• "Rebuild my father's mercenary unit"

Of those four, the first was the only one that was really practical. The person who killed Megan's family turned out to be the main bad guy, acting through Michael. Out of character, I pretty much knew that going in. If you hand a GM a plot hook that big, of course he's going to use it. In character, Megan figured it out fairly quickly, which made her even more determined to beat the bad guy. She promised him she'd eat his heart while he was still alive - and at the end of the game she did.

Mastering the arts of magic was going to take longer, even for Megan, than the game was going to run. Besides, she was usually to busy running for her life to study much. She regretted it, but had to mostly put aside gaining much more magical proficency.

Similarly, there was not much chance of her leading a normal life. She tried whenever she got the chance, though. She had a boyfriend (who happened to be the son of a major enemy), went shopping, and liked motorcycles.

She never got the chance to rebuild her father's merc unit. I eventually discarded that goal because it wasn't adding anything to the game. That came down to the fact that the GM didn't think our group really needed a merc unit mucking up his Romeo & Juliet style feud story. I decided, on reflection, that it wouldn't have really been in character for Megan anyway. Leading a merc unit wasn't what she wanted to do. She might have tried, but wouldn't have stuck with it for long - which is pretty much what happened in the game anyway.

The lesson in all this is that you need to pick goals that are within the scope of the GM's game, or at least not too far out of it. The GM should, of course, also be ready to work with you, but you need to keep in mind that he has other characters to consider. He has less room for compromise than you do because there are more demands on his attention. If the GM wants to run a modern crime game where you take down a ring of Triad heroin dealers, then your FBI guy should probably not decide he wants Fox Mulder's job. At the least, he could keep his UFO hunting a little in the background.

Don't Bite Off More than You can Chew

A big, overarching goal like "become Emperor" might not be a great choice for some games. If the game has nothing to do with being Emperor, and your character is never going to so much as go to the Imperial Palace, it's going to be good more for flavor than actual play.

One of Megan's goals, becoming a major sorceress, was just going to take too long. The fact she wanted to do it meant I spent every experience point I could spare on magical stuff, and by the end of the game she was pretty good, but she still had a long way to go. Fortunately, it wasn't a huge goal for me (the player).

Goals you can achieve are fun. In one of the first Pendragon games I played, my character, the not terribly creatively named Sir Daffyd, wanted to win enough land for his huge family. That was, I thought, going to be pretty tough. In fact, since the GM ran the invasion of Rome, he ended up with more than enough land, but most of his male relatives died off in the fighting. The irony just added to the savor.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

This one is the bane of players everywhere, and I feel like a GM shill for bringing it up. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to choose goals that fit within the GM's plot. The GM has a lot to do. He has (if he's good) invested a lot of time in the game, and made a lot of plans for where it's going and what's going to happen. He's made up locations, events and NPCs with whom your character will interact.

Unless you decide to have your character go in the opposite direction at every opportunity. I used to play with a guy who did that, and the one time I GMed for him, it drove me nuts. (kind of sad, really) However, if you pick a course of action that at least makes you hang out in the general neighborhood the GM picked out, the game will run much better for everyone.

If you find that your goal isn't practical, maybe your character will change his priorities. Finding the Seven Cities of Gold is all well and good, but if you just got information that evil Templar agents are going to summon an elder-god in London, maybe now's not the best time to leave for the New World. (Later, after the hellfire, damnation, and waking nightmare begins... that would be a good time to leave.)

A classic example comes from my accursed Fantasy campaign. I call it accursed because every time I try to run it, something bad happens. Neverhtheless, I really like the world, so I keep trying. In this particular attempt, which was cut short by two players having to quit partway in, I had one player who was playing an exiled nobleman. His family had lost a civil war a few years back and fled to the campaign city. His big goal was to go back home and retake his lands. That was actually cool, but unfortunately the player didn't seem to care about anything else. I dropped plot hooks all over the place, but if they didn't involve an invasion of this other country, he didn't care.

Of course, the game got cut short after only a few sessions. Maybe he would have perked up after a while. If so, that would have been fine. I really had plans for his big goal, just not right at the beginning of the game.

Keep Your Friends Close...

Unless you're in a fairly unusual situation, there are some other players. If they've been reading this article, they might have some goals, too. (If not, feel free to show it to them) The game will be better if you decide how your character reacts to those goals. Helping is good, but sometimes so is hindering. Think about what another PC's goal means to your PC. A noble, honest Paladin might not want his Wizard friend to obtain the Staff of Bones if his religious training tells him that the Staff is evil and anyone who wields it is invariably corrupted. That could lead to some interesting intra-party conflict. As long as everyone is mature about it, that's really fun.

The other PCs can also help you with your goals, or might want to get in your way. Look for opportunities to involve other PCs in your plots. Presumably, the group hangs out together. They should take some interest in each other's lives.

In my Now is the Winter game (which I'm sure you're bored of hearing about now), Catlin the Ravanos stripper had a blood disease that she wanted cured so she could feed freely. Dr. Zhou the Tremere offered to help her. While he was doing it, he conned her out of a couple of traits of her blood more than what he needed for his research. He almost used that blood when the bad guys offered him something he really wanted in return for it. If he hadn't bothered to help Catlin, that subplot could never have happened.

In Conclusion

I don't really have a lot of concluding thoughts for this one. Setting and pursuing goals for your character is a great way, possibly the best way, to flesh him out and make him more than the sum of his stats and equipment. On the other hand, it's also a good way to disrupt the game, so you should keep a handle on it.

So, that's it for this month. Next time, we'll talk about how to pursue these lofty goals of yours.

See you then.

Hello again. We've spent a long time talking about all the work you do leading up to a group, so now I figured it was about time to start talking about some playing. Let's talk about goals. Put simply, we've talked about who you are. Now what do you want? (oohhh. B5 Reference. I'm a geek)

What are the goals of an RPG?

The over-simple answer is "To have fun." Everybody leads off with that one. I don't really know why, but who am I to defy tradition. Actually, it's kind of good to mention it. I've played in games that weren't fun. A sort of social inertia builds up, an unpleasant cycle that's not easy to break out of. Discussing the goals further down the pyramid is a good way to make sure that the big goal at the top is met.

So what are the other goals? Basically, I see three.

• The GM's Goals
• The Players' Goals
• The Characters' Goals

The GM's Goals

The GM bought the book. He makes up the campaign. He probably has to clean up his living room (or needs to) so everyone will have a place to sit. Obviously, he has something invested in the game. The GM could have lots of goals, like "kill all the PCs" or "get laid by the cute gamer chick." For our purposes, I'm going to ignore most of those and state the GM's basic goal as "guide the PCs through the story." Even that isn't perfect, but it's a lot more elegant than the three paragraphs it would take me to cover all the nit-picky variables.

The GM has a story to tell. If he's a good GM it's either very flexible or so compelling and well constructed that it never occurs to the players to deviate from it. Still, there are characters the GM wants to use, events he wants to unfold, and possibly themes he wants to explore. For example, in my Now is the Winter Chronicle, I had a bunch of NPCs, primarily the St. Croix family, the brood of Dr. Killian, and some Faeries who were playing out their own conflict. I knew that what would happen eventually was that someone would open a Fairy Mound on the edge of the city and unleash the old god who was bound up there, along with the dark entities who had been trapped with him.

The GM's goals are the most pervasive in the game, since he does more work than anyone else to shape the world. (Though that's not always true. There are some modern games that spread the GM's role out to other players, and even in "old school" games there are variations.)

The Players' Goals

The Players are the prime movers in the game. If the GM doesn't have players, then his story is not going to happen. In my opinion, if any game was produced as a TV series, the PCs should be the people in the opening credits sequence. If someone else would be in the opening credits, then those characters should be the PCs.

The Players' basic goal could be fairly well stated as "to use their characters to overcome obstacles and defeat adversaries." Once again, you could argue the details, but that's the basic. Players may have individual goals for their characters, like "to get to 20th level," or "to become Primogen of Clan Brujah." Those goals may or may not be what the Characters want for themselves.

The Characters' Goals

There are, of course, two broad sets of characters. There are PCs and NPCs. Many and complex are the possible relationships between them. The characters have goals. The "Bad Guys" probably want to destroy the world or do something similarly antisocial. The "Good Guys" probably want to stop them. ("That's where I keep all my stuff!") Further, there are individual goals: rivalries, aspirations, romances.

Baring some fairly deep bits of psychology, the Characters don't really have any goals that the various players don't give them, but in a way they can. Good roleplayers will often realize that the "right" thing for a character to do isn't necessaraly the smartest thing. In fact, a well-fleshed out character can be downright stubborn.

But what does it all mean?

So, we have three, or two and a half, perhaps, sets of goals. Fortunately, they're not mutually exclusive. They do take some care, though. The GM has the largest responsibility. He's likely to do the most work, and what he does has more potential than just about anybody to make the game fail. The GM should really try to make sure the story he wants to tell is one the Players want to participate in. He needs to tailor it to the characters they want to play (though there's quite a bit of give-and-take in that).

The Players also have some responsibilities. I've already talked about picking characters who will fit into the group and into the story. My Now is the Winter game was a mix of political maneuverings and supernatural action. No matter how interesting he was, a character who was only interested questing for Golconda and avoiding political entanglements would have been hard to work with. However, it could have worked if the Player wanted his misbegotten vampire to be continually frustrated in his goals and drawn into Vampire politics and violence.

Beyond just fitting in, it's good if the Players will pursue goals that advance the game. In an old-school D&D dungeon crawl, the PCs don't really need any goals beyond "kill monsters and take their stuff." "Save innocent peasants from evil humanoids" is a nice addition, but not strictly necessary. In more character-driven games, it's nice if the characters have some goals of their own, though. For example (since I love these), let's look at Now is the Winter again.

• O'Neil wanted to serve the Prince. He believed that Prince Marcel held his un-life in his hands, and he'd do just about anything the big guy said. This made him really easy to manage from my perspective. In fact, I occasionally felt like I was railroading his Player. He also had some secondary goals, though, and we got a lot of drama out of the way those goals conflicted with his loyalty.
• Zhou wanted to increase his own power. He was on the way to developing his own Path of Thumaturgy. This was a goal that was much interrupted, but fortunately it wasn't a major goal of the Player.
• Catlin wanted to be safe. She was always trying to find someone to protect her. Unfortunately, "Player Character" is rarely a safe occupation. Catlin's player told me she enjoyed the game, so I suppose she didn't mind.
• Jason wanted to be more powerful. I gotta say that his goal was incredibly disruptive to the rest of the game. His Player didn't really seem to care about my plot or about intraparty relations at all. Everybody was at his throat after a while. Eventually, I found a way to
• Miles wanted to win the love of Moira Pendragon, the Tremere Regent. I was kind of disappointed with Miles' romantic subplots. I tried hard to paint Moira as not being worthy of Miles, but his Player never got the picture. Not even when I threw in a cute Toreador chick to woo him. Still, it was fun. Miles kept involving himself with the Tremere even though he tended to get in trouble for it.

From the above example, you can kind of see where GM, Player, and Character goals overlap and conflict. Jason's Player was so focused on his goals that he drove me nuts sometimes. I finally managed to work his pursuit of political power into my apocalyptic plot, but it took some work. Then the guy had to move to San Antonio for a new job. I hate it when Real Life gets in the way of my gaming. By playing Sire Miles' infatuation for Moira, Cathy ran some pretty heavy risks. Just about everybody at one time or another did something that annoyed the other Players. They were a really dysfunctional little group.

So, what does it all mean?

It means that a good game is going to involve some compromises. Unless he's incredibly talented, the GM is not going to get to tell exactly the story he envisioned when he was planning the game. Important NPCs will get killed before they get around to delivering key clues. PCs will become obsessed with "vital clues" that the GM only threw in to add a little flavor. Players will have their own preferences, which the GM needs to take into account.

The Players also need to be ready to compromise, both with the GM and with each other. While the PCs may all hate each other, the real people involved need to be cooperating on the shared goal of "having fun."

It's easy to forget that the other people in the game aren't there for your entertainment. You should be trying to have fun, but when your fun stomps on someone else's, you should consider pulling back. If you really want to do a lot of investigation and interaction, and the rest of the group just wants to kill monsters, maybe you can work on a timeshare system. Maybe you can PBeM with the GM between sessions where your character goes off and investigates things, then comes back and tells the group where the monsters they want to kill are hiding. After a while, the other Players might get interested in what you're doing.

If all you care about is fighting and the rest of the group wants to play a soap opera, then you should probably just take the Narcolepsy disadvantage and play Diablo between combats. Your utter lack of knowledge of what happened while your character was unconscious will seem like good roleplaying.

(More seriously, there are limits to how far compromise will go. Some people shouldn't play with some other people. That's just life.)

So, I've talked about what Players should do a little bit. The GM is beyond the scope of this column. I haven't really hit on the Characters too much. The complex relationship between Character and Player deserves its own column, which, not coincidentally, is what we're going to discuss next.

Till then, have fun.

Welcome back. Thanks for stopping by. Last time we discussed how your group got together. This time we'll discuss who should be in the group. A group of PCs is generally a task force of some kind. They're adventurers who will be presented with a variety of challenges and obstacles. They need skills relevant to the tasks at hand, and some means of coordinating their actions.

I've had to revise my thoughts on this topic quite a bit since I realized that not everybody has me or one of my friends as a GM. The optimum spread of character abilities that work in my games may not be very useful for yours.

So lets start with the basics.

Play Style:

The type of game you're playing will heavily influence the makeup of your group. If you're playing in a good, old fashioned dungeon crawl then you can focus on combat abilities, worrying only a little about non-combat skills. If you're more interested in playing average people in extraordinary circumstances, your characters will have a wide range of skills, many of which won't be particularly relevant to the tasks at hand. If you're playing a "Feeble Mortals Against the Mighty Old Ones" game like Call of Cthulhu then you'll need a range of social and investigative skills. Combat prowess will be of limited use.

Personal preference is important, too. The group I'm in now likes tight, well-rendered stories -- similar to what you might see in an hour-long TV drama. There are subplots and side trips, but mostly everything relates to the main plot. That may change as the game grows, of course. I've played in a couple of groups where we spent as much time on the characters' personal lives as we did pursuing "adventure goals." I've also seen groups where combat is the main focus. Social interaction was limited, and frequently abbreviated so we could get on to the next fight scene. In a game like that, a bookish, social character is probably not going to have much to do.

Most of my experience has been in games with a mix of challenges where a wide range of skills was required. Even if combat was the primary focus, other activities took up a good share of time, and characters that were only useful in combat could sometimes be left out. Since I only have my experience to draw upon, and since I figure that kind of group is the best example for the purposes of this article, I'm going to talk about building groups with a range of skills, rather than just fighters or just occult dabbling antiques dealers. This is probably the most common situation, and it's easy to adapt to styles of play with different expectations.

So, let's move on.

Group Construction:

I have never encountered a group of players who sat down with the GM, having no personal expectations, and asked, "So, what kind of game is it?" then negotiated with each other to make sure they had all the needed roles filled. I'd like to try it some time, but I doubt I ever will. When a potential GM pitches a game for me, the first thing that usually pops into my head is a character concept.

Most group construction takes place after some or all of the players have chosen concepts. Usually the more flexible players, or the ones who just showed up late, modify their concepts to fill needed roles. That generally works out just fine, since there really aren't that many roles to fill. Unless your GM is just an obstructionist, he's probably not going to make your ex-Marine, former cop, school Librarian, and town dog catcher go on a geological survey mission to Madagascar. (Well, he might, but he's probably going to take into account the fact that none of the characters know anything about geology -- work with me here.)

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd ed. divided up the roles very neatly: Warrior, Rogue, Magic User, and Cleric. Warriors were primarily combatants. Rogues primarily snuck around. Magic Users primarily threw spells. Clerics also primarily threw spells, but they were different spells. Honest.

Seriously, that wasn't a bad spread. Warriors were useful for defeating adversaries. Rouges were able to circumvent physical barriers. Magic Users wielded a lot of different abilities, potentially able to substitute for just about any other party member. Clerics were good for support roles, mostly healing injured companions. Some of the secondary classes provided redundancy, which I'll talk about presently.

You don't have to have a class system to have specialists. Most game systems reward specialization to one degree or another, since a character who's specialized in one area has better skills than one who spreads his points evenly. Even games where all the characters are similar, for instance Ars Magica, Amber, or just about any superhero game offer opportunities for specialization.

So, why bother to specialize? Some games make you specialize (Dungeons and Dragons, Cyberpunk 2020). Some games just reward specialization (in Fading Suns a starting character can pretty much be good at one thing). Other games leave the field open, but it's a good idea to specialize anyway. A group of specialists is more capable than a group of generalists at a similar level of experience. Look at The Princess Bride. Wesley is superhuman. If he was a PC, then his player was probably the GM's Significant Other or drug supplier. The other main characters, though, were not unusual in and of themselves. Visini was small and stunted, so he developed his intellect. Fezik was incredibly strong, but not really smart enough to manage on his own. Inigo was totally dedicated to swordplay, and pretty helpless in any other arena. If he'd been a better investigator, he might have found Count Rougan. All three of them together are roughly as "powerful" as Wesley, who would have had a vastly higher experience level or character point total.

Group Composition:

So we've established that specialists are useful. Now, what kind of specialists do we need? Ultimately, that depends on your game. CoC Investigators need significantly different abilities than D&D treasure hunters. These are some general roles, along with some explanation of what each role is good for.

Warriors: Role-playing games are mostly about combat. Even games where combat isn't the focus frequently include episodes of violence. Warriors are focused on various means of harming others. For my purposes, a swordsman, a Shao Lin monk, and a pyrokenetic teenager are all Warriors. The Warrior's job is to eliminate threats and protect his companions. In a combat heavy game, you probably want most of your characters to be primarily Warriors, but several might have secondary specialties. In a game focusing on social interaction or investigation, you might turn it around so that most of your characters have other primary specialties, but some or all also have some skills in combat.

Scouts: Scouts are adept at moving around without attracting notice. Where the Warriors blow thorough obstacles, the Scouts generally work around them. Used carefully, a Scout is more effective than a Warrior in some situations. Stealth and guile can get you past difficulties that brute force can't defeat. Scouts almost always have a secondary specialty, since it doesn't do much good to get past all the obstacles if you can't do anything useful when you get there. A Scout who is also a Warrior can be particularly nasty. Most people call them Ninjas...

Investigator: Knowing where to go is as important as being able to get there, and knowing who to hit is sometimes more important than knowing how to hit them. Investigators can be magicians with scrying spells, astrally projecting psychics, or good old-fashioned gumshoes. Investigators almost always have secondary specialties, frequently social skills. Lots of gamers overlook the value of investigation. Careful gathering of information can help you avoid a lot of trouble later on, though.

Talkers: I couldn't really think of a better name for Talkers. The AD&D Bard is the classic Talker. A Cyberpunk Fixer is a good example, too. Talkers are good at dealing with people. Their role overlaps with the role of Investigator quiet a bit since one of the most common uses for their skills is to convince people to tell them things. Talkers usually split their skills between social and investigative skills since they overlap so much to begin with. Talkers who are better at giving orders are frequently also Warriors. The ones who specialize in convincing people of things that might not strictly be true find the skills of a Scout to be handy for those times that they can't fool all the people.

Healer: Healers are adept at patching up their comrades, most often the Warriors. In games with Healing Magic, Healing is likely to be a primary specialty. Let's face it; the Fighters could really kill all the zombies. They keep the Clerics around for "Cure Light Wounds." In other games, Healing is more likely to be a backup specialty.

Expert: This is kind of a catchall category. An Expert has a particular skill that's useful in the right circumstances. A Healer is a certain type of expert. Others are Pilots, Weaponsmiths, and Scientists. Esoteric Experts are probably the most dispensable specialty most of the time, but when you need one you really, really need one. In my games, Expert tends to be a backup specialty, or something NPCs do. Ghost (way back from the Character Creation examples) was a Warrior first, and a Weaponsmith a very distant second. Curiously, the way the game turned out his skills in the smithy turned out to be more crucial to the overall plot.

Jack-of-All-Trades: After all this talk about specialists, I'm going to extol the virtues of a generalist. If you have the room in your group to work one in, a Jack-of-All-Trades can really come in handy. He won't be as effective at anything as his companions, but he'll be useful just about everywhere. Since most characters can't be in two places at once, it can be really useful to have two people with similar skills. That said, it's probably best if a Jack of All Trades is at least a little better than average at one. A Warrior with a wide range of low-level skills is a good choice. In a D&D game, the Magic User is sort of a Jack-of-All-Trades. The right choice of spells can do just about anything any other character can do. If you're coming up on a big fight, load up on Fireballs. If you're trying to sneak across the country, Invisibility and some illusions will come in handy. If you need to make some friends, Charm Person is a good choice.

Redundancy:

The above descriptions hinted at this. You want to be sure your party isn't over-specialized. If you only have one Scout, you'll blunder into a lot of trouble he gets taken out. If you only have one Medic, everybody had better be very, very careful if anything happens to him. Besides, an over-specialized character is likely to be boring to play whenever the game doesn't revolve around his specialty.

Ideally, every character in your group can pitch in to help with one other character's job, and be at least a little competent at a third. Perhaps sadly, one of those three jobs should probably be Warrior. I've played characters that were totally helpless in combat. It can be fun once in a while, but it's not tactically the best choice. It can also irritate the GM, since he'll probably have to modify scenarios somewhat to take care of you. If you're going to play a character that can't fight at all, you should take care to make sure he's pretty good at something else.

Your exact choice of specialties will be dependant on the type of game you're playing, and the backgrounds of the characters. Here's the spread on my current Shadowrun game. I'm running Shadowrun to fill in for a while. Our Tribe 8 GM had to quit, and the next GM is too busy to start his game, so I decided to run a somewhat episodic game with a few subplots to keep things connected. I'm a big fan of Cowboy Bebop (an Anime about interstellar bounty hunters, for those who might not know) so I decided to capture a little of that flavor in my game. The Runners aren't bounty hunters, but they're more or less "good guys" operating on the edges of the underworld. Everybody's got at least a little combat skill, since I don't consider an episode complete without a massive fight that lowers property values in a six-block radius. (Well, maybe not every episode...)

The players didn't set out to coordinate their characters, but they checked in with each other to make sure they had the major bases covered. Here's what they came up with:

• Alex Black (Bodyguard): Alex has enough cyberware that he's as tough as a Troll. He's also a crack shot with a pistol. His primary specialty is Warrior. He can also handle the role of a Talker in the right situations. He's charismatic and good looking, and used to work amongst the rich and famous.
• Father Angus (Bull Shaman): Father Angus is moderately better at Conjuring than Sorcery, and has ready access to Spirits. In my terms he's an Expert in magic and kind of a Jack-of-All-Trades. He's most useful as a Healer, and pretty handy as support in a lot of applications. He's not a great Scout on his own, but his spirits can help the group's other Scout. He's OK in a fight, but mostly good at summoning a spirit to harass the enemy so his friends have an advantage, etc...
• Cammy (Con Artist/Burglar): Chameleon, Cammy for short, is adept at stealth, breaking and entering, and confidence games. She's a good Scout, and a decent Investigator or Talker when the situation calls for it.
• Ena (Elf Mage): Ena is the group's other Magical Expert. Like Angus, she's kind of a Jack-of-All-Trades. She's most useful as a Scout, with Clairvoyance and a Mask spell to let her see things the group's enemies don't really intend. She's got a pretty good Power Bolt for when things get hairy. She's not as adept a Conjurer as Angus is, and Elementals aren't as readily available, but they're more useful when she summons one.
• Ziff (Ork Combat Decker): Ziff is big and strong, with some cyberware to help him survive a fight. He's also a pretty good computer hacker. I'm going to tag him as an Expert in running the Matrix. Within the Matrix, he's mostly useful as an Investigator. He's also not a bad Warrior.

This group is a nice spread. I don't think they would have done a lot better if they'd tried to coordinate from the beginning. So far, the only real weakness they have is a lack of Investigative talent, which they don't need a lot of. Most of their runs don't require more than basic fact-finding. If the game runs long enough for much development, they'll probably decide they need some more investigative skills in the meat world. Ziff will probably decide to leave his Combat abilities alone and get more adept at Matrix running. Another solution is for every character to develop a wider range of contacts the group can tap for information.

And that's about it for this time. Next up: Combat Roles. See you then.

Welcome back. Thanks for stopping by. This marks the beginning of my second year of columns. The fact that you're still here either means I'm not as bad at this as I think, or you're all literary masochists.

Last year we talked about character creation. Of course, there's more to a game than a single character. Besides all those guys the GM plays, you probably have to deal with two or more other players and their characters. I touched on this way back in the first column, and for the next few columns I'm going to expand on that idea.

All the Player Characters will form some kind of group. Whether it's an effective group or not depends on how the characters interact. A good group needs a range of skills and abilities appropriate to the group's goals. For instance, a team made up of a portrait artist, a street mime, and a hurdy-gurdy man with a monkey would probably not make the most effective hostile insertion team. On the other hand a ninja, a navy SEAL, and a MI6 agent might not do all that well collecting change on the boardwalk, at least not without bloodshed.

A team also needs some measure of cohesion. They need to have some means of making group decisions, either through a command structure or some type of democracy. If they can't act in concert they're not really a team, just some people (probably highly armed) hanging out in the same place.

The players as a group need to build characters who will fit into a team (Unless they're playing a highly competitive game like Amber, perhaps). The beginning of team building is figuring out what the team does and how it formed. The GM may have something to say about this. He might tell you "You will be a team of Rebel Agents with the mission of delivering the Death Star plans to Princess Leia." That's pretty specific, while still allowing for a range of character types. The GM's concept could be even more restrictive, like "You're the only surviving members of a Ninja clan that was just wiped out by the evil Shogun." Often, though the GM just tells you to make up whatever characters you want. That has been my general experience, both as a player and as a GM.

The "open call" sort of games, if done well, provide the players with the most freedom and produce some of the most fun groups. If done poorly, however, they lead to the variations of the old cliche of "you're all at the tavern when an old wizard comes in and says he's looking for adventurers..." With a little more thought, you can do a lot better. Just because the GM didn't say your characters had to start the game already knowing each other is no reason why they shouldn't.

So then, who are your characters and how do they know each other?

Let's start at the beginning. Usually the GM will have some concept of a game. It's a good idea to find out as much as possible about what's going on before you make up characters. Find out if there's anything the GM really likes or hates. It's a good idea to avoid things you know the GM's not going to like. Find out where the story will begin. With that as your starting point, figure out who you want to play and how they got there. Start with generalities and hammer out the specifics later.

Once everybody has a character and a general idea of how that character wound up at the game's starting locale, you can start looking for connections. Every character does not need to know every other character, and nobody necessarily has to be best friends. What you want, if you can get it, is a lose web. Character A knows B and C; C knows D, and D knows E (who is secretly A's half-brother). When the game starts off, those characters would tend to gravitate toward one-another just because everybody else is a totally unknown variable. You can start building a real team as you go along.

Example:

I never tried to build a really cohesive group until my Vampire Chronicle titled "Now is the Winter." I gave the players some direction by giving them several concepts from which to choose. The one they liked best was "Servants of the Prince," but nobody wanted to be an actual "servant of the Prince."

I love being the GM.

So anyway, what I finally wound up with was:

Bradley O'Neil - Losombra Antitribu and former Arcanum member. Bradley was pretty easy. When the player initially gave me the concept I told him the only way such a poor fool would have survived was with the protection of the Prince.

He was an occultist embraced by a Sabbat Losombra. She was so cruel that he eventually attacked her and, by a stroke of luck, managed to diablorize her. Having been a member of the Arcanum, he knew enough about vampire politics to know that was bad. He fled to the one city where he knew any other vampires, and begged for the protection of the Prince (who kind of owed him a favor).

Jason Sinclair - Brujah political manipulator. Jason was the Childe of the Brujah Primogen. The Primogen was fairly weak owing to the fact that the Prince recently killed half his clan in a fit of anger.

Jason didn't present too much of a problem, either. He Bradely O'Neil was one of the Prince's flunkies, so they would have run into each other from time to time.

Dr. Zhou - Tremere Feng Shui expert. An old, Chinese doctor embraced by the Tremere for his occult knowledge.

Once again, it was no great stretch to say he would have known Bradley. The players even went above and beyond the call of duty and made up some personal connections. The Tremere Chantry was in the local university, and Bradley taught a night class. Better yet, my city's Chinatown was within Brujah controlled territory, so Dr. Zhou and Jason had crossed paths on ocassion.

Catlin (who's last name I can't remember) - Ravanos Stripper. (Why Amanda wanted to play a Ravanos Stripper I truly don't know). She was a former blood doll/prostitute. The Ravanos who eventually Sired her used to rent her out to other vampires as food. One of her customers was careless and gave her AIDS. Rather than see her die, her Sire embraced her. Later he regretted wasting perfectly good favors on a "chew toy" and abandoned her.

Catlin's story gave her some great hooks which I'll get into a little later. In the short run, we just needed a reason she'd hang out with all these other vampires. Since Bradley was an agent of the Prince, the players involved decided he got the job of teaching her the ropes after her Sire kicked her out. That put her next to one of my two prime movers, which was good enough for me.

Sir Miles - Gargoyle.

Sir Miles' player wanted him to be an ancient warrior who had been serving the Tremere for centuries. Since I didn't want a 1000 year old warrior of death in my game, I insisted that a huge portion of that time be spent in Torpor. Since I already had a Tremere, a Gargoyle was easy enough to fit in. If nobody had been playing a Tremere, I would have insisted that Miles' player come up with a connection to somebody else.

All in all, they were pretty cohesive, even though there was still a lot of room for conflict. In fact, it wasn't long before a couple of them were plotting to kill each other, but that's a story for another day.

Once you have a loose structure, it's time to start putting the pieces together. If the GM has guidelines follow them. For instance, in the Dungeons and Dragons game I'm playing now, the DM wanted to throw us together in the first adventure. Our pre-game planning was limited to figuring out how we might interact once we actually met. Since one PC was a Northman (and really big and strong) it wouldn't have been a good idea to have another PC who hated the Northmen with unquenchable passion. An initial prejudice would have been fine. In fact, we got a little bit of that kind of thing. But, the players needed to know what to expect going in to avoid hard feelings and player to player misunderstandings.

If the GM doesn't have any preferences, then you can do whatever you want. Try to figure out what's logical based on everybody's characters. In games like Pendragon, your characters might have well all grown up together. It's a good idea to work out these social dynamics early on. I've come up with really cool ideas for my character after hearing another PC introduce an element from his. I personally like to create the closest relationships possible (within reason), but some people like to start off as relative strangers.

Whatever you do, however you do it, you'll eventually end up with a bunch of characters who you know will soon be thrown together. Your next step is to figure out, at least in general, how they're going to interact. This is when you start really comparing histories and doing a bit of character editing.

Example:

Going back to the PCs in Now is the Winter, we had five vaguely connected characters. As the PCs played around with their backgrounds, some interesting hooks emerged.

Jason wanted the Brujah to run the city. It had been held by the Ventrue since it was more than a crossroads with two buildings, but everybody needs a dream. In the short term, he just wanted the Brujah to be less weak than they were. Still, his political ambitions were quickly going to bring him into conflict with two other PCs. Anything he did to or around the Prince was going to involve Bradley, since the Prince used Bradley as an agent in any matter he didn't want to risk one of his own clan over. Also, since Chinatown was in the middle of Brujah territory, Jason and Zhou were eventually going to be fighting over a piece of territory.

Dr. Zhou didn't intentionally cross any of the PCs, but the easiest way to work Miles into the rest of the group was to have the Regent put Miles under Dr. Zhou's direction. Zhou was also the Regent's Childe, so she tended to send him on her errands, particularly since she didn't like her Second. That made it easy to tie Zhou to the Prince.

Miles didn't have too many connections. His only real link was to Dr. Zhou. That was OK, since as GM I was able to quickly insert some others. I made sure Miles owed Jason a small Presitation debt in the first session.

Catlin was already connected to Bradely. She looked at him kind of like her Sire early on, and later fell in love with him (more or less, these are vampires we're talking about). She also came up with another cool connection due to one of her Flaws. Catlin was a Plague Carrier. Since she's had AIDS when she was Embraced, there was no easy way to get rid of it, but the Tremere with their blood magic, might know a way. If any Tremere would know, it would be a freaky blood alchemist with all kinds of esoteric medical knowledge. Luckily enough, there was one of those in the city, Dr. Zhou.

Bradely didn't really need any more connections. Almost every PC had some link to him already.

These hooks didn't turn them into a perfect team by any means, but they did establish some initial relationships. Bradely was the natural leader, with Jason always trying to wrest control away from him. Zhou could be counted on to be loyal, but only for as long as the Regent wanted him to. Right there I had a cool dynamic with all three subtly playing against each other. Miles wasn't interested in being in charge, but his ties to Zhou and Jason, along with his natural tendency to want to follow someone, put him in an interesting position during all the power struggles.

And there you have it. A group built this way has some possibilities that a group just thrown together at random doesn't really have. Before I started doing things like this, most of my PCs would interact with NPCs but had relatively little to do with each other. There weren't many in-character conversations between players, particularly in the early stages of the game. That left a lot of burden on the GM if players wanted to play through anything beyond the basics of the "adventure."

In Now is the Winter my players spent almost as much time interacting with each other (arguing, back-stabbing, sharing blood...) as they did talking to NPCs. That turned out to be a good thing, since it gave me time to figure out what was supposed to happen next while they were arguing about it.

The next column in this series will cover roles within the group. It doesn't matter how well integrated your characters are. If they don't have the skills they need to get the job done, they're going to be in trouble. So be sure to tune in for The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker.

See ya' then.