THE EIGHT TRACK MIND #15
Virgil Greene adrift off the islands of the Net....
September, 1995
The Special Short Issue!
Many moons ago one could buy a pack of chewing gum with five sticks for a nickle. Then the nice folk at Wrigley in their infinite wisdom came up with "The Handy Dime Pack" that had seven sticks for a dime; they advertised it as a wonderful and convenient packaging idea rather than a price increase. Well, this edition of the "Eight Track Mind" is the handy shorter version dealing only with the Official Topic, Comments on IR #14, and a few short bits perhaps. I've recently had the joy of moving within my building and in the process succeeded in hurting myself a bit and wasting lots of time that could have been used more productively. I'm temporarily phoneless and without Internet access; reduced to a semi-barbaric state.:) Next issue will likely be the Hideously Bloated Jumbo Issue as other goodies that I'd like to have put in this issue get shoved into it.
About a year from now those of us residing in the United States will be facing a presidential election. The campaigns for the GOP nomination are already under way and there's talk of disaffection with the two major parties leading to major independent candidacies. Well, I'm here to tell you who will win the election. Really.
The winner will be William Jefferson Clinton, the present President, if he is the nominee of the Democratic party. (sudden gasps of shock, horror, and hysterical laughter) No, really! Here's why.
Look at the GOP candidates. There's Senator Dole, more or less a moderate Republican but pandering heavily to the GOP right wing of late. He's also over seventy years old; healthy, but it his age will still count against him.
Governor Wilson and particularly Senator Specter are pro-choice and thus way too moderate for the current GOP. Wilson is also going to be hurt by the fact that while he's pointing out his California balanced budgets, those budgets were balanced by a massive tax increase and a lot of cuts. Specter is also calling attention to his moderate record on the assumption that most Republicans aren't as conservative as the other candidates; I think he's wrong. Also, unfortunately, I rather suspect that a significant number of GOP voters will reject Specter for no other reason than that he's Jewish.
Senator Gramm is (in my opinion) too conservative and perhaps more importantly too unappealing to win in the general election. As for the others...well, we're talking Loony Toons here and th-th-th-that's all folks!:)
It could be that a third party run by Jesse Jackson or Ross Perot would confuse things. A Colin Powell candidacy would be really interesting, particularly with his talk of the "sensible center"; I think a lot of folk would place themselves there. It's also possible that something will happen that will make Clinton decide not to run again. But consider that we are in a time of economic growth, low interest rates, not terribly high unemployment, and the lowest deficits (as a percentage of GNP) since 1979. If Clinton was a Republican the GOP would be trumpeting this from the rooftops. I really think that any GOP candidate will destroy himself by pandering to the Religious Right, the NRA, the Tobacco Lobby, and other groups that do not reflect the real interests of the general voting public. Remember, you heard it here first!
[And of course Clinton won, we're still in a time of economic growth, low interest rates, not terribly high unemployment, and now a (supposedly) balanced budget. I stand by my comments about "if Clinton were a Republican"; heck, they'd be measuring him for an addition for Mount Rushmore.:)]
Now what did all that have to do with gaming? Not a lot, admittedly.:) Hmm, but here's a weird campaign notion....the merry band of player characters working to elect someone! I suspect that in most game worlds political succession is by inheritance or pure power plays as opposed to democratic elections, but why shouldn't there be republics in fantasy settings? A group of adventurers from such a land would likely be viewed with suspicion in the surrounding kingdoms and empires and oligarchies; they'd be spreading "dangerous ideas". A thought, actually. I think if I were to run a RuneQuest Glorantha campaign I'd probably add a republic established by a radical monotheistic sect that decided to reject monarchs and lords in favor of elected leaders...one wonders what Greg Stafford would think of such an abomination. :)
[My inspiration for that was certain German Anabaptists who ran some towns for a time during the Reformation. It turns out that there is a republic of some Malkionis (monotheist) in the West of Glorantha.]
The Official Topic....
HORROR STORIES
I don't really have anything I'd describe as a true gaming "horror story"; I've not had any GMs who acted with real malice towards the players. Instead, I'd like to talk about a campaign idea that I've experienced twice that I call "Bait and Switch".
Bait and Switch. Generally this refers to a sort of false advertising where a business will advertise a great special offer for a wonderful product that they do not in fact have in stock; the business gets you in the store with the offer and then their sales people try to persuade you to buy this other product that isn't quite as good and/or isn't as cheap as the advertised product. In gaming a bait and switch is when the GM gives the impression that the campaign is going to follow one pattern, encourages the players to create the characters with that pattern in mind, and then almost immediately puts the characters in a setting totally different from that which they expected, cutting them off from almost every bit of background and connections that the players worked so hard in establishing.
Case one. Many years ago, in a Traveller campaign I'd created a Noble character who'd been lucky enough to gain a yacht in creation. I spent quite a lot of time outfitting the yacht, getting passengers for our first trip, getting extra crew members, and so on. But what happened during our first actual game session? We all were transported to another dimension when we sat on our beds and had nothing but what we had with us at that time. Strangely, we all seemed to go to bed with all our weaponry.:) We were in a place where we had to pay for our lodgings and were forced to hire out on jobs; the only one we went on was actually a module from the Star Trek RPG. We ended up getting a bunch of phasers which are way overpowering in the Traveller universe and that pretty much killed the campaign.
Case two. I'd spent quite a bit of time designing a character for an RQ Glorantha game. He was a tavern owner in Pavis who'd once aspired to be a Lankhor Mhy (knowledge god) priest. He'd given up that dream after his wife who'd been one of the rare adventuring Sages was killed by some trolls in the Big Rubble. I'd designed the tavern, and even established some details of his current love life which isn't something I usually do in a game. But what happened during our first actual gaming session? I ended up chained to a canyon wall, wearing a slave collar (prevents the use of magic points to cast spells or seek divine intervention), and in someone else's body! I was with a bunch of total strangers (other than a drunken newtling) who'd also ended in bodies other than their own. Almost every bit of character design was irrelevant to the situation we were in. My skill at martial arts proved valuable after we escaped, but it was intended as something he learned to help in keeping order in his tavern. I and my companions found out that we were in the bodies of some leaders of the Praxian nomads who were plotting an attack on Pavis, but we never learned much more than that or even if we were in the mundane world or on some sort of strange hero quest. We never learned who had switched our bodies and bound us in that canyon. The campaign sort of ended with no resolution.
What was wrong with these two campaigns?
First off, our work on character design and equipping was pretty much wasted. We were placed in situations away from our associates, our homes, and our connections. All we had left were our character attitudes and skills. Perhaps it could be argued that this reduces the game down to true and pure role-playing, but I would note that no one exists in a void. We all exist in a world filled with influences and experiences and encounters and so do our player characters. When a character is almost immediately ripped from the world the player expected the PC to function in and placed in a vastly different situation the player is going to end up with a different character than the one they'd created. They should have just started out in that world in the first place.
Secondly, ripping the characters away from their world takes away the players' freedom of action. Oh, I suppose you could argue that they can still do as they please, but if you really believe that let me blindfold you and take you on a plane to some distant city and leave you there with no money, ATM cards, credit cards, or identification.:) You'd find out that your options are limited. In these two cases we had no realistic choices; the campaigns were essentially linear. Again, if we are going to be in such a situation let's go into the campaign knowing this instead of having it sprung as a surprise.
Thirdly, it's essentially a gimmick. I honestly do not think that one session's worth of "surprise" (I expected the switch in the second game) adds enough to the total campaign to make this a better option than having the players know the situation ahead of time or having the switch occur later in the game after a significant amount of game play and background development beforehand. I should note that I'm not all that fond of surprises. In the above campaigns, my observation was that the players really didn't like the switch and were frustrated, but the GMs thought it was a neat trick. Hopefully, any GMs out there will read this and recognise that it isn't a new trick or one that players will enjoy. However, it may be possible to place PCs in a radically different setting or situation shortly after the beginning of a campaign without the drawbacks I've noted. In Pyramid #13 there's an article by Steffen O'Sullivan and Ann Dupuis titled "Yrth 1100" about setting a campaign right around the time of the "Banestorm"; the event that brought humans and others to the world of Yrth in the GURPS Fantasy setting. Mr O'Sullivan notes that in his campaign he told the players that the campaign would be set in Medieval England at the time of the First Crusade, that there was magic and fantastic creatures, and that it would be possible to have Magical Aptitude but no initial spells. The village the player characters were in was moved by the Banestorm to Yrth pretty early in the campaign, but they were able to make characters that could function on Yrth and they weren't totally cut off from all they knew or their resources and connections. The article has suggestions on using such a shift in campaigns in other ways.
The difference between what O'Sullivan did and what was done in the two campaigns I participated in is that his campaign allowed for PC free will. In the Traveller campaign we had no choice but to be mercenaries. In the RuneQuest campaign we could not return to our lost lives and we could not simply play along with the nomads who were going to sack Pavis, our home. Both campaigns were really GM driven; we had little in the way of realistic (key word) options. But in the GURPS campaign the PCs were able to do what they had expected to do in the first place; run their village, although they had more real authority. They were doing what they had designed their characters to do.
I guess that's the big thing right there. If players are designing characters for one sort of campaign and immediately find that the campaign is totally different from what they were prepared for they will be frustrated and resentful. But if they find themselves in a situation that they are prepared for even if it is not quite what they expected they might be intrigued and interested.
One point I should make. It would certainly be practical to have players design characters for one sort of game, have the world seem to be what they expected, but then allow them to learn that it really isn't what they expected. The fantasy world is actually an insane asylum and the characters are delusional. The "high tech" that the PCs use is really magic (or vice versa). The whole game universe is a game in a high-tech future . The key is that the PCs should learn this over time, and the PCs should be functional in the world that they start out thinking to be real. The problem with Bait and Switch isn't that the players don't know everything about the world, it's that the players are essentially forced to play different characters than the ones they designed.