Paper Men and Investment

Paper Men and Investment

Mailanka's post "On Paper Men and Disposable Characters" really made me think about my games, where they stand on the paperman-snowflake scale, and all other things regarding investment into the characters and game world. Since I'm not good at writing such posts, I will analyze some of my past games in a "stream of consciousness" way. I'm not going to describe all my game, but only those that I remember clearly at this moment.

Game #1

This was a soft sci-fi game with three players. All of the players made characters that are closer to the paper man. Their backstories could be summarized in a dozen of words or so, such as "mechanic on a remote colony world that is interested in clarketech" or "adventurous son of the owner of the main power plant on that colony". Still, the players were invested in their characters and the game world, including the meager number of NPCs. I remember that one of the session was devoted entirely to interviewing several candidates NPC hirelings. Everybody had fun, and when the eventual  TPK happened, nobody was salty. Good times. Despite the game world being not very detailed and the characters having very simple backstories, everybody was on the same page, and there was a lot of character-to-character and character-to-world interaction, if that makes any sense.

Game #2

This was an urban fantasy game about hidden magic in the modern world. The setting, again, was quite rudimentary. I've had five players, and all of them managed to make characters independently from each other but in such a way that it was easy for me to weave them into the story. This was also very experimental for me - usually I do not really have an overarching plot and do not GM modern-world games. Also, RPM was in use by me for the first time. The characters were very different, from a single sentence backstory ("Uh, so he's a fire mage that has an ice mage rival who's hunting for him after my character crashed a plane with no survivors.") to very intricate and detailed backstories that took couple of pages. I was very worried about this game, but... everything went pretty much perfect. The only thing that went wrong was that the character with an intricate and detailed backstory was being quite passive, and was neglected by me as well. But the player did not hold a grudge against me, as far as I know. Overall, I think I caught lightning in a bottle and was as close to a 10/10 game as I have ever been, and will never be able to replicate that. And I'm never using RPM again, but this game wasn't the reason for that.

Game #3

Oh, boy. My friend offered me to GM a Westmarches-style game set in my fantasy setting (that is currently being reworked). I've heard that many such games either do not even start or fall apart almost immediately, but I was still keen to try. We have advertised the game, found a lot of potential players, many of whom almost immediately left (sometimes due to bizarre reasons), but that was expected. Eventually, the game started. None of the characters had very detailed backstories, limiting them to short paragraphs. Some of them could be summed up with a single sentence, such as "Grippli blood mage that escaped his homeland and practices blood magic in secret" or "A runaway gnoll slave". I was very surprised, but the game laster for a very long time, I think almost a year. The players got very invested into the characters and the world as well. I was pleasantly surprised at how well players used all the information from the setting document, and how much high-quality roleplaying was done. Sure, there was lots of arguments too, but overall I consider the game a great success. Due to some scheduling conflicts, I was only the secondary GM, I probably hosted only 15% of the sessions, so I have mad respect towards our main GM - he did a great job. However, during the few sessions that I attended as a player, I found that the GM does not really like to challenge the players or put them into any threatening situations. I found that this greatly took away from my investment in my character and the story in general. I'm glad that we had a group that was not afraid to discuss problems, so everything was discussed in the open, so we all learned our preferences and gripes we've had with each other. We still all play together and remember this game fondly.

Game #4

This time I've decided to GM another game in the aforementioned setting. This was a play-by-post game due to scheduling difficulties. Again, the characters had short backstories, but over time the players got very invested in them. Not everything went smoothly - some characters were quite strong, maybe too strong, as they wiped whatever encounters I threw at them with ease. When I tried to ramp up the strength of the enemies to make things at least somewhat challenging, one of the players confronted me, saying that this is not what he's looking for - he's too invested in his character to lose him in non-dramatic circumstances, such as "coinflip combat" (either he parries a powerful attack and takes no damage or takes a major wound). That did not really gel well with me. When I play, I like my character to be challenged, and when there is no chance to lose or no stakes at all, unless it is a plot point, I just lose interest. Overall, the game went well, I think. What I took away from it is that you should tell your players up front about your GMing style and/or discuss your expectations with the players before the game.

Conclusion

Now that I reminisced of the days of old, I can say that I do not think that crafting an intricate character, writing a long backstory, and planning the character's advancement in advance is necessary to be invested in the character and the game world. In my opinion, if the player makes a "Bob" with a solid concept and just a little bit of personality (and that is very easy to do thanks to GURPS's disadvantages and quirks), he will become invested in the character during the actual game, as the character overcomes challenges, leaves impact on the world, etc. And even if death finds that character, it usually feels natural, and no hard feelings are held against the GM. So, I think I'm closer to paper man gaming than to snowflake gaming. If "paper man" is 0 on the scale and the "snowflake" is 10, I'm at 3 or 4.

While it probably is not related to the topic at hand, but it is also important to talk to your players, to discuss what you like and do not like, what you expect from the game, and so on. That should help make things less salty and, of course, improve for your next game!