Gaming Hut: Eliminating Mannerisms II
A while ago I talked about starting up a new series where I deliberately swear off many of my Gming mannerisms. ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
wordwill asked for a progress report and here it is.
No open-ended problems or extended continuity. All cases are discrete episodes unto themselves.
This has gone well so far. It’s helped greatly with our attendance situation. Due to the usual adult time commitments, we have a rotating cast of players. Being able to rotate characters in and out has been a great boon. The characters are professionals who clock in, clock out, and work cases. No need for fancy explanations when somebody doesn’t show. In the last continuity heavy series, a PC won a contest that made him a king. When his player had other commitments, a convoluted and not entirely satisfactory plot device was required to explain his frequent absences.
An unexpected consequence: interchangeable characters are expendable characters. In my default series style, I weave continuing plot lines around each character. I therefore contrive to keep the characters alive. Otherwise a raft of carefully developed story elements die with them. Here I can dish out the brutality without qualm; I pay no story tax if the die rolls happen to condemn a character to death. (Also I’m playing using somebody else’s established rules set, which also encourages me to let the gore spatter where it may. Why, it’s playtesting, I say!)
No ongoing villains.
The adventure source material from which roleplaying tropes evolve get great mileage out of recurring arch-villains. In an RPG series, though, players can feel a sense of frustration at never being able to definitively defeat the bad guys. Disposable (if sometimes nasty) villains seem to be working so far.
No statless or impossibly powerful antagonists. (Note that your superiors do not count as antagonists.)
One character, the boss, is necessary to the premise of the series. Everybody else can be killed. The group is facing a lethal (and careful) enemy now, but she has game stats and is eminently slayable — if and when they get their hands on her.
No ascensions into godhood or interactions with divine or semi-divine entities.
Haven’t been tempted by this one but it’s a perennial mannerism and I’ll have to keep an eye on it. Anyhow, I’m working out this obsession in a spec project…
I’m also considering a restriction on comic GMCs, but have declined to formally forswear them.
I didn’t swear off comic GMCs and am glad I didn’t. Comic relief provides contrast that sharpens the horror and nastiness. A funny character functions as shorthand, indicating that his role is minor and the information they can get out of him is limited.
In exchange for these restrictions, I’ve made a single demand of my players: You may not, jokingly or otherwise, refer to yourselves as incompetent, bunglers, unlucky, etc. You are playing competent professionals. Do not undermine this, even out of character.
I only have to step in and remind them not to go there about once per episode. My staunchest self-deprecator was delighted during the last session to find an instance where it seemed appropriate. (I’ve already forgotten the context; anyhow, I steered them away from the outbreak of deflating humor.)
