[UA] Players screwed over

[James O'Rance]

Chad Underkoffler <chadu at yahoo.com> said:

 >>>I'm all in favor of using a metagame perspective like "the world works 
like a movie (cars explode when they crash, the villain will tell you his 
dastardly plan, etc.),"<<<

These are genre conventions that you can use in the games you play. There 
are usually some conventions that are assumed in a particular rpg; if they 
turn out to be false (eg, the GM rules that superheroes *do* cause innocent 
deaths from collateral damage) it can be a bit of a shock.

That's why some groups discuss what genre conventions they want to use 
before beginning a campaign. It's not really a metagaming issue, any more 
than Dragons Have Treasure is a metagame issue. It's just an assumption.

 >>>What I was saying above is that I've experienced two main modes
of gaming:

1. Immersion, where you try to fit yourself into the head of
your character and react as he would react, and

2. Token, where the character is just an playing piece/extention
of the player into the game world.<<<

I've seen four main modes, actually. Rather than prattle on for pages, I'll 
quote a post to rec.games.frp.advocacy on the topic:

 >>>
Token play, in which the character is simply a bundle of game resources for 
the player to manipulate.

Type play, in which the character provides a "shell" of abilities and roles, 
and the personality is essentially provided by the player.  (This is not 
necessarily "playing yourself" because the abilities and role may 
distinguish the PC clearly from the player, but the PC personality is a 
reflection of the player personality.)

Character play, in which the character's personality is distinct from the 
player's and the player attempts to figure out what the character would do.  
This is what most recent published rules advocate.

Mask play, in which the player imaginatively "becomes" the character and 
knows intuitively what the character would do.  This is usually referred to 
as "immersion" on RGFA; an older name was "deep IC" (where IC stands for "in 
character.")
<<<

These are not the terms that I typically use, but I'll refer to them here 
for clarity.

I agree that token play is pretty basic stuff, and would bore the hell out 
of me. I see a mix of type play and character play in my roleplaying circle; 
it seems to be a matter or preference, although some people complain that 
the "type players" always seem to play the same character (including other 
type players!).

Mask play I don't see often, although I have gone there in freeforms and 
occasionally in table-top games; it might be a bit intense for some people, 
and perhaps too elusive to recognise.

 >>>UA might suffer (at least as per my group) in that an immersive
style is necessary for UA games to have real impact, however,
the incidence of failure makes immersive playing depressing.<<<

I don't see much point in playing UA in a token-play mode; if you want to 
kick back and indulge in some power fantasies (nothing wrong with that) then 
a game system designed to get inside your character's head doesn't seem like 
the best choice. You'd be better off playing Feng Shui.

On the other hand, one of the most horrible games that I ever played was 
Kult; I had begun to immerse in the character when horrible things decided 
to occur. Unknown Armies doesn't *need* to have horrible things happen to 
your characters, but it's certainly possible.

I know a fellow who had to stop playing a character that he'd lovingly 
detailed; maybe he was too deeply immersed and it was getting emotionally 
involving in an uncomfortable way. Doug Stalker knows the details of this, 
so maybe he can provide a clearer example.

 >>>UA seems to require a mode of play that stops just short of full
immersion with strong token aspects of "this is how my token
will react to having his arm ripped off."<<<

I'm guessing that you're talking about character play when you say 
immersion; I can hardly imagine a whole group of people in "mask play" all 
of the time.
Perhaps you'd be a little more comfortable with a mixture of character and 
type play in one game?

Personal experience again: When I'm playing Cthulhu, I'm usually character 
playing, with a slight tendency to deep immersion (unfortunately the 
campaign has suffered from mood-breaking players, so this is not fully 
realised). However, this Saturday when I realised that Yog Sothoth had 
indeed been summoned and that Victor/Victoria was about to die, I slipped 
into type play for the last few moments of her life. Despite the months and 
months that I had played that character, it helped me to deal with her 
inevitable demise.

I don't know if any of this is much help to you, but thanks for the topic - 
it's an aspect of running UA that I hadn't considered.


Cheers,

James O’Rance
“Divine being creates petting zoo. It gets out of hand.”
- The Bible (summarised by John W. Mangrum)

http://www.geocities.com/dragon-dreamer/



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