More Love

Still thinking about Love in the Time of Seith.  First a bit of a digression though.

I read a comment recently saying that Shakespeare only gave each actor their own lines and cues, but no-one got to see the whole play.  According to the commenter, the idea was "[t]o keep his actors on their toes" because they didn't know the whole story until it unfolded.  It went on to say that later editors of Shakespeare's works not only collected all the parts together, but added the dramatis personea and in the process spoiled the drama.  According to the commenter, the short descriptive tags next to the character names ('exiled duke' or 'drunken butler', etc.) made "the play [..] pregnant with plot and the story ahead almost self-fulfilling."

While I think the actors did (and do) commonly just get their own lines and cues when learning a part, it is hard to imagine that after rehearsals they won't have picked up the whole plot.  So I don't buy the idea that the practice was something to keep the story fresh.  Other web pages suggest that in Shakespeare's time the practice might have helped ensure that no one actor could take the play to a rival company before it was performed.  Or maybe it is just a way to avoid distractions while learning a part.

What I really objected to was the idea that a list of characters with short descriptions was a bad thing or that it made the story a self-fulfilling prophecy and so boring.  The commedia dell'arte survived for hundreds of years (approx 1550 - 1800) using a list of stock characters is various situations and semi- or fully improvised interactions.  

Which gets us to role playing games.  As we start a role playing game -- whether it is a one-shot or the start of something longer -- we only know a quick description of each character.  To make it work, we have to go beyond those descriptions -- and the associated stereotypes, character tics, and assumptions -- to the actual characters at hand.  Even just expanding the tag just a bit helps.  A "hot shot pilot" might be anything:

• a farm boy who dreams of being a hero and meeting his father
• a smuggler with a heart of/for gold
• a good soldier who bends the rules because she knows she's safe
• a young guy desperate to live up to expectations, his reputation and his father
• an ordinary guy who would be happy in a boring job but loves his wife enough to follow her anywhere

The short tag at the start of the game gets expanded, maybe during character creation, maybe during play, probably during both.  The mixture of the expanded tag, the initial situation and the interactions between the characters gives us the story.  Not self-fulfilling at all. 

Which gets us back to "Love".  It uses generic descriptive names, "themes" for each character and some preset relationships.  Together they a list of characters:

• The aging King.   (Ancestors and Law) 
• The rebellious Princess. In love with the Knight.  (The Gift and Rebellion)
• The Seithkona.   Seductive witch, teaching the Princess magic.  (Sexuality and The Gods)
• The foreign Earl.  Prospective husband for the Princess (Treachery and The Eastern Kingdom)
• The Knight who is not as he seems.  Spy for the Earl and in love with the Witch  (Nature and Lycanthropy)

Ok.  Lots of stuff there, but also some threads that don't lead anywhere. (yet).  Certainly the story to come out of that group of characters is not pre-ordained.  The question is whether 5 players from more traditional (i.e D&D like) role playing games can sit down and build a story from those characters during play without having to have a DM guide them.

A problem with 'Evil' in scenario creation

Five years later and I'm back.   

For various reasons I wanted to get together a one-shot of "Love in the Time of Seith" (aka the crone game).  I was struggling a bit though because of the problem of evil.  Not the big theological problem of why evil exists, but the more practical problem of how to add adversity to a role playing scenario.

Of course, the traditional answer is that the DM's scenario provides the adversity.  There is some monster or evil villain who is the opponent.  The players are the good guys and they resist, explore,  investigate and defeat the enemy and his minions.  

Sometimes that's good enough.  The players buy into the scenario and everyone has a good time beating up on things. The scenario is something like "The mustachio-twirling evil necromancer with his zombie hoards must be stopped!"  Why is raising them from the dead and marching on our town? Maybe there is a McGuffin around that needs to be protected/destroyed or a prophecy that is being fulfilled. Who knows, who cares, grab your axe and have at them! 

Sometimes it feels rehashed and flat.  I don't want undead who hate all life because "undead" or an orc horde who murder, rape and pillage because the rules say they are "evil".   That's too easy.  It encourages the computer game solution of killing every character who is highlighted with the correct -- i.e. enemy -- color.  It is a cooperative game -- can the players use the rules to overcome some predefined obstacles -- but it doesn't give much of a story.  

Which leads back to Love in the Time of Seid (sorry, I'm not going to look up how to do the thorn character correctly).  There is no enemy.  No DM either, but mostly no explicit evil enemy to be killed.  The game is 5 characters with their relationships and is supposed to do from there like a Shakespearean tragedy (or comedy if you want, but the ending condition is two characters are out of play, so likely tragedy).  Unfortunately, one character is:

• a foreigner
• "middle-aged, fat and wily"
• a poisoner
• has Treachery as a main theme as is likely assumed to be treacherous
• controlling a spy in the King's court because he wants to take over
• the husband proposed for the Princess by the King, but whom she hates

Basically, the Earl is set up to be the bad guy.  Of course, all of that can be subverted, but if the other players focus on him as the villain there isn't much that can be done.  At least on the surface one of the players is being asked to play the equivalent of the mustachio-twirling necromancer invading the Kingdom.

Of course, the set-up  is more Shakespeare than CRPG so immediately grabbing a sword and attacking him doesn't seem fitting.  Besides, the resolution system doesn't make that a reliable option.  So that are more possibilities.  Still, I wonder if the player who ends up playing the Earl will feel limited.  (I played the Knight the one time I've played the game, so I don't know personally.)  Beyond that, I wonder if it would be possible to redesign that character so that he was less stereotyped "evil".