Welcome back. Today's foray into the secret arts of roleplaying concerns evil. While it's not my thing, some people really enjoy playing evil characters. I'm going to explore the topic a little to try to nail down how I think about it. I'll try to cover the various ways players can portray evil characters and offer some advice here and there.

So, without further ado, let's get to it.

Original Sin

When the first protogamers, arising from the primordial ooze with their copies of Dungeons & Dragons, decided that Jack Chick didn't have enough to rant about already, they chose to play evil characters. The heirs to their tradition are still doing so today, in a manner largely unchanged from those ancient beginnings. (And, as an aside, I find it vaguely disturbing to refer to things that happened when I was about ten years old as "ancient.")

I suspect that the vast majority of gamers who want to play evil characters fall into this model. I would be really surprised if many of them read my column, so I feel free to be just a touch judgmental. The stereotypical Evil group is made up of a bunch of Chaotic Evil D&D characters or Diabolical Rifts characters who run around the countryside killing, maiming, stealing, and robbing tombs. Really, there's not a lot of difference between what they do and what nominally Good groups do except that the good guys probably tone down the rapine and don't kill uppity NPCs out of hand.

This is essentially juvenile wish fulfillment. It's irresponsible, selfish, and antisocial. And I would rather have people work it out of their systems with dice and miniatures than in real life. I personally don't find it very appealing, but I can see why some people would. It's hack & slash gaming turned up to 11. Take what you want by main force and destroy all who oppose you.

In my limited experience, the gamers who like to play this way don't really dwell on the psychology, or even morality, of evil. They take the "EVIL" label as a way to just do whatever they want specifically without having to think about it. "Why did you kill the guard?" "I'm Chaotic Evil." "Why did you steal your buddy's magic sword and sell it to buy booze?" "I'm Chaotic Evil."

See, it's easy.

So, since they don't really need my advice and probably aren't reading my column anyway, let's leave those guys alone and move on to the next set. Just to save myself a little grief, though, let me be clear: I don't believe that everyone who plays evil characters in D&D or Rifts does so just so they can be irresponsible. I personally know people who play interesting, well-rendered evil D&D characters. I could probably find people who play the snootiest games in existence in exactly the way I just described, too. D&D and Rifts just happen to be easy examples.

I Am Become Death

Vampire: the Masquerade opened up entire new vistas in the realm of evil roleplaying. It was right there on the faux marble back cover, "A beast I am, lest a beast I become." People had played monsters before, but Vampire made it mainstream. Right there on your character sheet was an ablative chart of your morality. That nasty Blood Pool meter was going to make you do stuff that violated that all-to-fragile Humanity scale, and no matter how hard you tried to avoid it, your character was going to end up as a hideous monster some day. Even before that, he had to do things almost nightly that most humans would consider evil.

Of course, some people didn't try at all, and essentially played Vampire the way they had been playing D&D. Kill the Ventrue, take his treasure. Works for me.

Besides his internal Beast, a Vampire also had to live in a society that would make A Borgia nervous. There was this entire secret society waging a very subtle war. The stakes were life and death. Just to survive, you were probably going to have to do things you didn't want to do.

That's some evil I can sink my teeth into (no pun intended). Vampire ushered in a bunch of other games with similar themes, and some expansions for existing games. Of course, there had been some before. The first edition of Cyberpunk predates Vampire, unless I'm mistaken, and edgerunners could be pretty evil people.

Playing an "evil" character in the Vampire style is an exploration of morality. Is it possible to be a vampire and not be evil? How far will you go to protect your immortal existence? Can anything you do be good when it's done by someone who is a multi-murderer? Does human morality even still apply to you?

How it plays out is up to you. In a lot of ways, your character will act like any other. Presumably something more is going on in the game than your character sitting and brooding about his lot in life and drinking blood. What changes is the focus. All your character's immediate goals play off of his inner struggle. A rival gang is trespassing on his territory. What does he do? Fighting them means giving in to his rage. Bargaining with them means reaching an accord with evil. Blackmailing them means committing treachery? And he can't even really fall back on the justification that he's the good guy here, can he? That would be hypocrisy.

Vampire was the first game I encountered that was really set up to deal with these sorts of questions. Other games were certainly capable of it, though. Somewhere in the middle of my really long Shadow Run game, I started thinking about just how violent Shadowrunners were, and how it was a little odd for someone who thought of himself as a "hero of the people" to casually blow away security guards while he was breaking into someone's office.

Which is a nice segue for my next point...

Whatever You Have to Do

Taking a step back, it's likely that the vast majority of player characters are relatively cutthroat mercenaries. Their alignment boxes might be filled out "Lawful Good," but they probably seldom scruple to cut down hordes of orks or rob tombs. Most gamers don't really care. A lot of the ones who do start playing their characters differently. But there's some potential for good roleplaying in these amoral characters.

I've already mentioned Cyberpunk and Shadow Run, which are both games where the average character is an outlaw with, at best, a morally dubious occupation. It's not a big stretch to say these characters are evil. In fact, the average person living in the worlds they inhabit probably thinks they are. -- Runners are criminals who kill, cheat, and steal. They live beyond the carefully regulated, safe, arms of the corporations and sow anarchy and terror wherever they go.

So why do they do it? Almost every Runner ever would be better off in a safe, corporate job. Why risk your life night after night? Why be a criminal? There are lots of answers, and they all lead in interesting directions.

Here's a few of mine over the years:

• Johnny Amadeus ran the shadows after he got involved in the underworld while looking for the man who killed his brother, who was a shadowrunner. He started with a strong distrust of authority, and added a dose of respect for some of the people he met. He wanted to fight corruption, and thought he could do it better from the shadows. He was also nursing a death wish, and the constant danger fed into that.
• Belladonna ran the shadows because she was physically incapable of leading a normal life. Someone had turned her into a killing machine. When she ran away from her master, the shadows were the only place to hide.
• Eric Zane was a runner because he was an immoral bastard who would do anything for money. I didn't really like him very much, so I quit playing him after a while.
• Pookha (a new character in a Shadowrun game I just started) runs the shadows because he has no SIN, and needs money to pay for a friend's constant medical care. He's a former ganger who would probably end up doing some jail time if he tried to come out of the shadows, and he can't afford that.

My Runner types tend to be fairly good folks, other than all the breaking and entering and shooting people. In fact, most of them have thought of themselves as "the good guys" to one degree or another. Characters I've played with have been a lot different. There are some really cool outlooks, and it's neat to see how they interact. In Johnny's group, there were a couple of runners who were just totally amoral. They didn't think about right and wrong at all, just about strong and weak, smart and stupid. Johnny's tendency to want to leave guards alive when possible bugged them to no end. There was one guy who pretty much believed he was a total bastard, but kept it in check by following a strict code of honor.

The gritty mercenary style of gaming isn't outright evil, necessarily. Just like good ole' hack & slash, it can ignore the issue completely. Or the moral issues can be played up. In a dystopian cyberpunk future, it can be hard to find anything that's definitively good, and there are a lot of evils with no clear source.

Staring into the Abyss

The next style I'm going to touch on bears a superficial resemblance to the first. It is possible to play deep, well rendered characters who are utterly morally despicable. It's a style of play that has no real appeal for me. I play pretty immersively, and depravity isn't something I really want to immerse myself in.

Sabbat packs in Vampire: The Masquerade are the most obvious example that leaps to my mind. I believe Werewolf also had a sourcebook that made provisions for playing Formori, who tend to be pretty evil since they've been dipped in a seething pit of corruption and then flash fried.

The only time I really get into playing utterly evil characters is when I'm the GM. I find it to be one of my major challenges, so it's one I've given a little thought to. Really evil people have a world view that's radically skewed from "normal." There's something that funnels all their actions in a harmful direction. The classic sociopath has no compassion, which allows him to commit atrocities in the pursuit of his desires because he never feels any guilt. The fanatic is so dedicated to a goal that the goal distorts his perceptions of the world. The psychopath, due to mental illness, really can't perceive the world correctly.

Interestingly, none of these characters would call themselves "evil." The sociopath would laugh at the concept. The fanatic might think you were evil for asking. Of course, some fanatics aren't evil. A fanatic pacifist probably isn't going to hurt anybody. The psychopath might consult with the voices in his head or something. Pretty much by nature, "Evil" is a label that has to be applied from outside, and in some cases each side of a conflict is applying it to the other.

So that leaves you, the player, to see what it looks like from the inside. What is it about your character that makes him think it's acceptable, or even desirable, to hurt or kill people in pursuit of his goals? Or to lie, cheat, and steal, which can be plenty harmful by itself.

In a melodramatic game, or a highly symbolic one, the answers can be pretty easy. In Middle Earth, Orcs are evil because they were made to be so by Sauron. In Star Wars, nobody really worries too much about why the Stormtroopers shot up a whole crawler full of Jawas. (They were receiving stolen Imperial military secrets. It was treason. Honest.)

In a more realistic game, the question gets a lot more fuzzy. Some people would argue that there is no "evil" in the real world. That's a debate I have no intention of starting right now. While there may be no true Good and Evil in the real world, there are accepted standards and social mores. Most people follow them, and react badly to people who don't. If you're playing a character who rejects all that, there should be a reason. That reason might make for some interesting roleplaying choices.

A character could be very noble and honorable, and also believe that serfs belong to their lord, and whatever he wants to do to them is fine. He could be empathic and charismatic, and also an anarchist who doesn't bat an eye at a mailbox bomb because he thinks it's the only way to fight an oppressive government. He could be a veteran soldier or inner city policeman who's just so desensitized to violence that he doesn't realize how much of a monster he'd seem like to a normal person.

Playing really socially maladjusted characters isn't something I really recommend as a standard practice, but there are some cool ways to do it. I'd love to play the veteran who's trying to put his past behind him, or the arrogant nobleman who's starting to learn about the inherent worth of humanity.

And, as always, if you really want to play irredeemably evil characters and revel in their cruelty and depravity, fine. I'll make no effort whatsoever to stop you. Please don't LARP, though. The LARPers don't really need your help. Also, I don't particularly want to game with you. That's fine. I have a group I'm very happy with now, even though my Buffy game is on Hiatus because the GM thinks it's more important to find a house for his family than to run my game.

Evil Shall Always Triumph For Good Is Dumb

The last way I can really think of to run evil characters is for laughs. I haven't played many humorous games, so I don't have a lot of advice here.

Playing evil as funny often involves turning genre conventions on their heads. I've heard of games with teams of incompetent supervillians who end up doing more good than harm, or dungeon monsters negotiating labor contracts and scheduling so someone will be ready to meet the next party of adventurers.

In a humorous game, you're probably not going to be exploring the depths of the human psyche. "Evil" is just another humorous shtick. In a sadly defunct game I used to play with some RPG.net regulars, my character was Fiona Gentry. She was a half-faerie, and her father was an Unseelie Lord. Children inherit all kinds of traits from their parents, like eye color, shape of the nose, a tendency toward being overweight... Fiona inherited her father's evil. She was actually a pretty nice person, under all the typical teenage defensiveness, but she was evil. Palpably, tangibly evil. She had to wear Goth style clothes. If she bought un-gothy clothes, they'd turn gothy in her closet while she wasn't looking. She had a scary voice that, if the game was a comic book, would have been written in gothic script with white letters on a black background. When she was angry or distracted, she had a habit of accidentally cursing people to the depths of the abyss.

But at least she had nice hair and a flawless complexion. Congenital evil AND zits would be just too much to bear.

So, that's about enough for this installment. I might decide (particularly if there's any demand for it) to extend my ramblings to cover how to play an evil character amongst other PCs. (Hint: If you're a thief out in the wilderness with three other people, one of whom can cast spells, and the other two of whom get better combat rolls and more hit points than you DON'T STEAL FROM THEM! It's better to wait until you get to town and there are more suspects.)

Bye till then.

Almost every game on the market has some kind of advancement mechanic. In Dungeons & Dragons, it's pretty simple. Going on adventures is rewarded by Experience Points (hereafter referred to as XP no matter what any given game system might call them). XP stack up to buy levels. Levels let you get new Feats, more Skill points, and access to Keweler Ninja Powers (sometimes referred to as Class Abilities and Spells). In Pendragon, it's a little fuzzier. Characters collect Skill Checks, then, at the end of the year, test the Checked Skills to see if they improve. They also get Advancements to represent whatever they might have been studying in their spare time. Marvel Superheroes (as far as I know) started a really brutal trend wherein your Karma (XP) was useful for day-to-day bonuses to rolls, and also for character advancement. Shadow Run did the same thing, as did Deadlands. Castle Falkenstein has no XP system, instead using GM fiat. I'd kind of like to play Castle Falkenstein long enough to know how well that works out.

Most advancement systems do pretty much the same thing, allow a character to gradually become more capable, or capable of new things. Which brings us to the topic of this installment: "How should I spend my XP?"

I can't recall ever being in a situation where I couldn't think of something to buy with my shiny new XPs, but lots of times I've run into not having enough to buy everything I want (which is pretty much everything). I'm guessing here that most of my readership has had similar experiences. So, what follows is mostly some thoughts on how to pare down the shopping list to manageable levels.

Before we Begin

Most XP systems aren't terribly realistic, with "realistic" being defined as "producing results similar to the way people in the real world learn and improve. Most XP systems aren't terribly genre emulative, either. In a lot of the fiction that inspires our hobby, people don't change much at all, or change radically in a very short time.

I don't particularly care. I like going up in levels. (Well, really, I prefer gradually spending XP wherever I want, but you get the idea.)

So, now that we've got that out of our systems, let's move on.

What Have You Been Doing?

This is the most realistic guideline for XP expenditure. If your character has been getting in a lot of fights and living through them, his combat-related abilities are probably increasing. If he's been spending all his time on research and investigation, those skills are probably getting better. Sure, he may really want to become a ninja master, but if he's not spending any time studying martial arts and mystical handsigns, then he's just not going to get there.

If realism is at all your aim, this is the way you should spend most of your XP. It may mean you can't always develop your character the way you'd like, though. That's just life, as they say. If your character doesn't have the chance to learn something, then it starts to hurt the shared illusion of the game if he suddenly knows it anyway. Some genres are more tolerant of this than others, mind you. Rather than feeling totally constrained, think of it as a challenge. A warrior who wants to be the world's best swordsman will have to make a lot of sacrifices to do so. Those sacrifices are roleplaying opportunities. I ran into this a lot with Sir Magnus, my favorite Pendragon character. He was the second-best at just about everything because he never focused on anything. Except Intrigue. Magnus rocked at Intrigue. He knew everything that happened wherever he was. It was those charming Roman manners.

Even so, it was really frustrating to me that I couldn't get his Sword skill quite as high as the guy who spent all his time dueling. Doubly so because I was so close. But in the stillness of my soul, I knew that's the way it should have been.

Most GMs will have no problem what-so-ever with you spending your XP in this way. If they do, it generally comes at the upper levels of skill, where, logically, you might really not be able to improve any more because you haven't reached a situation that challenges your abilities. In those cases, you can either argue with your GM, or pick something related to improve. For example, Ghost (my Tribe 8 character) had a 4 Melee skill for the longest time. The Weaver was really reluctant to let me buy one more point. Eventually I decided it wasn't worth arguing (since she might stop baking fresh cookies for the game session if I made her mad) and that maybe Ghost could use a higher Dodge skill instead. Or hey, maybe some more Weapon-smithing since that was theoretically the way he earned his living. I still held out my dream, though, that in a far future, the legendary God of Death of some distant tribe would look like Ghost holding his funky magic sword.

So, there's realism for you. But sometimes realism isn't your goal. For those times, there are several more philosophies to choose from.

What Do You Wish You'd Been Doing?

Here's the second way, and maybe the most common. Essentially, you just spend your XP however you want and back-justify it by saying that's what your character has been doing in his off-time. This pre-supposes your character has off-time. I've had games where a day where no one was trying to kill my character were rare events to be cherished and held in loving memory for all time. Fortunately, most of those characters really wanted the higher combat skills anyway...

I still try to maintain a little bit of narrative justification, even when game events don't completely back me up. As much as I might want her to, and despite the fact that the rules technically allow it, I would never have bought Sorcery for Juri (my Potential Slayer in a Buffy game). It completely didn't fit the character, and she had never shown the slightest inclination toward magic. I wouldn't have bought Gun Fu (generic Firearms skill, for the Buffy-impaired) either. Juri doesn't like guns, and would have been very unlikely to spend any time training with them.

On the other hand, I'd have no problem buying up Knowledge, Computers, Science, or Sports even though I haven't made any issue of those skills. They're all things she could logically have picked up here and there even though it didn't come up in the game. Juri's a high school student. Presumably, they still teach things in school. That's plenty of justification for a point or two. (But I'll probably buy more Kung Fu and Get Medieval instead...)

Oh, I Always Knew That

Here, we're stretching a little bit. Sometimes, that's OK, though. The rationalization here is that you're buying up an ability retroactively. Your character always spoke French, or knew how to disarm a bomb, or whatever. It just never came up before. Feng Shui (another game I'd like to get to play some day) actively encourages this. Other games tolerate it fairly well. It's not something you want to necessarily make a habit of, though. Sooner or later, you'll hit a continuity error.

GM approval is a much bigger deal here. There's a temptation to ret-con abilities that would come in really handy now, but that you really don't have any justification for. Some GMs like their continuity to be more sacrosanct than others, too.

I most often find myself buying retroactive abilities when the starting characters aren't quite as tough or skilled as I'd like them to be. If I'm playing an esoteric character (which is frequently) I might have to fudge some abilities. In those cases, I talk to the GM first to make my case. Then I buy up the abilities that will really matter first to the appropriate levels, and buy at least a little of whatever strange thing I want to work on later. This only stretches so far, and doesn't work for everything. Before the Revised Edition, if I wanted to play someone who spoke five or six languages in Vampire, that was going to be a big chunk of my starting points. If I was making up a Linguist, I'd probably have bought a good level in the Linguistics ability and one or two languages, then donated a large chunk of my XP to buying the other ones I wanted as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, a starting character might be severely crippled in other areas that didn't make s ense. On the other hand, if I wanted to play a fighter-type, but never picked up Melee, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for me to dump a lot of points into it later on and say he'd just never bothered to pick up a sword before now.

That, by the way, is the guiding rule. In all but the loosest of realities (Toon, Feng Shui, Amber...) this is only a good philosophy as long as it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, you've moved into the next philosophy...

Because I Really Want To

Sometimes there's no justification for what you want to do. This can really be the case with any games with supernatural powers. How do you practice flying? (Throw yourself at the ground until you miss) Sometimes it doesn't really matter much. If you're playing a hack & slash D&D game with minimal roleplaying and no particular overarching plot, you can probably take whatever new abilities you want and no one will bat an eye. Of course, you are probably not a big fan of my column, either, so the rest of this section is aimed at other people.

Generally, I try to advance my characters logically, with minimal back-justification. Sometimes, though, I want something totally new, usually because I came to regret decisions I made when I made the character in the first place. For example, Ghost started the game with no Synthesis abilities (magic, basically). I did that intentionally since I originally wanted Ghost to be the "big, dumb fighter," but as the game progressed I realized that without Synthesis, he'd never be as effective as a character who had Synthesis, even if that character had lower skills and stats. So eventually I saved up some points and bought some Synthesis. The Weaver worked an opportunity for him to learn into the story, and we went on from there. It actually took quite a while, because part of Ghost's personality was his rejection of the Fatimas, who were the source of Synthesis.

If you can't justify something in the backstory, you should try to justify it in the future, and work with the GM to make it happen. I'm in the process of this right now with Juri, though I'm on the fence about whether or not to go through with it. This is a pretty good example, and it's fresh on my mind, so let's take a look.

Juri began as a Slayer in Training. For about the past ten years of her life, she'd been raised by the Watchers' Council, studying and training so that if she were called as the next Slayer, she'd be ready. At the end of our first Season, she was Chosen, just in time to beat up our Big Bad for the season and survive the beating she got in return. (Handy, that. It's almost like the GM planned it that way...)

Which brings us to the present. Implicit, instinctive trust in the Watchers is a huge part of Juri's character. She sees them as her parents since they pretty much raised her. She sees herself as a Vassal of the Council since she was brought up in the Samurai tradition. But, the Watchers don't really have her best interests at heart, and aren't necessarily worthy of her respect. They've already misled her and betrayed her friends a couple of times, and are likely to do so again.

Originally, I thought I'd follow the path laid out by the Buffy TV show, wherein the Slayer gradually becomes disillusioned with the Watchers and rejects them. That would be really easy to do. In Buffy, it only costs as many XP to buy off a Drawback as you originally paid in Character Points. I could buy off Juri's Obligation: Watcher's Council, and be done with it. There would be a somewhat more substantial effect on the game, though. Juri is a foreign national living in America. If she ticks off the Watchers, they could easily get her visa revoked. She also has no particular job skills or means of income. She's completely reliant on the Council. If she told them to kiss off, she'd have to find another way to get by, and would shake up the lives of some of the other characters.

All that would be fun to play, and still may be the route I take, but I recently thought of another one. The Watchers have always tried to control the Slayer even as they say they're trying to assist her. What if a Slayer found some way to turn the tables, to gain a significant amount of control over the Council? In mechanical terms, that would be buying a 5 point Contact: Watcher's Council, and maybe a few points of Resources (3 at the absolute most, probably only 1, if that).

In game terms, it's a major shift, even bigger than abandonment of the Council. It's also not something I can do on my own. For this to work at all, I have to have the GM behind me. (I love you, Stone).

It would have to start with Juri getting the chance to get influence with some members of the Council, at which point I might buy Contacts: Watchers (1). Then time would pass, and Juri would have to get more involved in Council politics somehow. This would probably culminate in a major story-arc in which she either made it to the top, or lost everything.

At that point, I'd either spend whatever XP I needed to spend to buy the Watchers Contact up to 5 points, or I might lose the points I'd already spent up to this point and have to buy off the Obligation. (Actually, the whole Obligation thing is a little hazy due to a fuzzy spot in the rules)

Now, this example would have a pretty significant effect on the game's tone. If the GM doesn't want the Watchers to be a big part of the story, he's probably not going to let me turn them into one of Juri's most significant advantages. (Did I mention that I love you, Stone?)

A better example from Buffy is the Werewolf Quality. Oz picked up the Drawback version, and eventually kind of maybe the Quality version later on. Being a Werewolf is cool. You get to be strong and fast and tough, and have claws. Claws are very useful. Just ask Juri, who has 4 points of natural armor against blunt damage, which never seems to matter since everyone who tries to kill her has claws. (But I love you anyway, Stone)

There's not really any way to foreshadow your character becoming a Werewolf. He gets bit, then about a month later, things get a little hairy. If you wanted to do it, you'd need to have the GM on your side. In fact, you'd better be prepared to suffer for it for a while. If it came up in my game, you'd start off with the Drawback version and have to go through at least one story where your character got loose accidentally and might have killed someone. I'd also try to sneak in someone you bit, but who survived without you knowing about it, so I could smite you with a nemesis later. Then, after a while, you'd get to buy off the Drawback and buy the Quality, but only after something had happened in the game to explain your control over your condition.

The key to "Because I really want to" is thinking ahead. In its way, it's no different than improving the abilities you're using in game. You're just actively trying to improve the ones you want, and going a bit beyond that by asking the GM to help you engineer situations that produce the results you want.

Closing Thoughts

Is it that time already? I suppose so.

Like just about everything in gaming, spending XP is part of the story, and it's one of the parts where the players have a lot of power. (Please don't make me go all GNS here. By "story" I just mean "the collective narrative of the game's events, from inception to end.")

The GM can keep your character from being able to talk to the people he wants to find, and he can make sure his big uber-pet-NPC nemesis guy who's really his old PC from a D&D game he played back in high school never sticks around long enough for you to stick your magic sword through his spleen. Heck, he can keep you from getting a magic sword in the first place in most games. But in general, he can't keep your character from studying swordplay, or trying to make new contacts.

While your deciding where to spend your XP, you should think about how your decisions will develop the story. The decisions you make will say a lot about your character's personality. Does he say he's a pacifist, but you keep buying more Melee? Why? There could be a really neat reason. Once he's the best swordsman in the city, what's going to happen? The other Best Swordsman in the City may have something to say about it. And all those Second Best Swordsmen who want to be the new Best Swordsman will probably also take an interest.

Then there's the GM. He almost certainly has something up his sleeve. If the group is headed off to investigate the ancient ruins over the next hill, being the best swordsman in the city may not be quite as useful as being the guy who knows how to light a torch from flint and steel in the dark, or the guy who knows how to bind someone's wounds when the cleric is unconscious. It helps everyone if you develop your character along lines that don't diverge too far from the overall plot of the game. If you want to play the world's greatest detective, you're going to be pretty bored unless the GM has some mysteries in mind. Of course, if one of my players wanted to play the world's greatest detective, I'd try to come up with some mysteries for him to solve. It's a give and take thing.

Like just about all of my columns, the final advice comes down to "play nice." It's easy to get caught up in what you want (like my weeks-long attempt to talk my T8 GM into letting me have a 5 Melee score) but in the end it's almost always better to compromise if you hit serious resistance. Playing selfishly or irresponsibly makes the entire game worse, and if the game becomes not fun, what good is whatever shiny toy you got out of it?

Compromise works both ways, though. If the game is not fun because you're never allowed to have any shiny toys, then something needs to change. I've been in a couple of games where the GM and the players had radically different views of how powerful the characters should be, or of where the game should go. Sometimes it's best just to cut your losses and move on to something you'll enjoy.

I guess that's enough blathering for this time.

Next up: a complete surprise (since I haven't decided yet)

See you then.

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.