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View Full Version : Roleplaying Is challenging the Character, not the Player, possible?



Amphetryon
2015-09-07, 08:13 AM
It is oft-repeated wisdom around these parts that GMs should do their utmost to challenge the capabilities of the Characters in the game, rather than the capabilities of the Players sitting around playing the game; I, myself, often give advice along these lines. We refer to decisions made based on the knowledge that we're playing a game as 'metagame' rationalizations, with varying degrees of sarcasm and derision. But, as I think about it, I wonder, is it really possible? Can we, as Players, or GMs, so thoroughly divorce Player knowledge from Character knowledge as to make in-game decisions that are driven by the Character, not the Player? Can we present an obstacle the Character, rather than the Player, is tasked to solve?

goto124
2015-09-07, 09:08 AM
I think, it usually involves changing from "tell me exactly what you searched, anything you didn't search, you don't get" to "Roll for Search".

However, the second approach is potentially unfulfilling. Looking for hidden objects, disabling traps, etc becomes 'roll this'. And what of Diplomancy and Bluff? "I Diplomance the king into believing that he should not attack the nation". Leaving it

Admittingly, this is a DnD approach. I would like to hear how other system handle it.

Point is, there has to be some form of challenge for the players. Otherwise it's just plain boring.

Let's use combat as an analogy. You have the stats, weapons, skills, etc. You don't actually have to swing a sword IRL and try to hit the GM on the head. But you do have to decide if your character is going for a normal attack, or a Bull Rush, or to trip the opponent, etc. You can't say "I roll Intelligence, since my character should know what to do!"

Okay... to be honest, I'm now not sure what you're trying to get at, especially with no examples to imagine what sort of situation you're imagining. Since you mentioned 'divorce player knowledge from in-character knowledge', I'll go with saying: I believe the best way to handle the issues* arising from players having more information than their characters, is for the GM to twist the world such that the info isn't relevant anymore. Another possibility: structure the world so that having information isn't detrimental to the playing of the game. You know that trolls are weak to fire? Cool! You still have to take it down though.

* What issues arise from using metagame information, exactly? Apparently, many players think metagaming is inherently wrong. As with a lot of things, it's how you use it.

hymer
2015-09-07, 09:10 AM
It is oft-repeated wisdom around these parts that GMs should do their utmost to challenge the capabilities of the Characters in the game, rather than the capabilities of the Players sitting around playing the game; I, myself, often give advice along these lines.

You really ought to challenge both.


Can we, as Players, or GMs, so thoroughly divorce Player knowledge from Character knowledge as to make in-game decisions that are driven by the Character, not the Player?

Is this the question I should really be answering?


Can we present an obstacle the Character, rather than the Player, is tasked to solve?

Sounds easy enough. Say, a trapped door that can be opened in a number of ways that may or may not use up some of the character's resources. It's no challenge to the player, who's done this (or seen it) plenty of times before; just a matter of going through the motions. But each character will find themselves able to deal with that door in their own ways, according to their abilities.

Amphetryon
2015-09-07, 09:30 AM
Sounds easy enough. Say, a trapped door that can be opened in a number of ways that may or may not use up some of the character's resources. It's no challenge to the player, who's done this (or seen it) plenty of times before; just a matter of going through the motions. But each character will find themselves able to deal with that door in their own ways, according to their abilities.
How is the Character - and not the Player - arriving at a given solution to a trapped door?

hymer
2015-09-07, 09:55 AM
How is the Character - and not the Player - arriving at a given solution to a trapped door?

So it isn't the 'challenge' you're interested in, but the knowledge?

The Grue
2015-09-07, 10:17 AM
How is the Character - and not the Player - arriving at a given solution to a trapped door?

Because the character, like the character's limited per-use resources, is a conceptual construct that exists in order for the game to function.

The character doesn't actually exist in the same sense that the player does; the character is not a person, the character has no agency or ability to respond to its environment. The player has all of these things, which they project onto the character.

The character is a puppet the player slips onto their metaphorical hand. The puppet moves only because the player moves.

Comet
2015-09-07, 10:24 AM
The players handle everything that is not handled by the mechanics. Choosing what the mechanics handle is choosing what the characters do on their own. Pendragon assigns numbers for when your knight gets angry or sad or boastful, so that aspect of them is partially out of the player's control, for example.

Beyond that, it's a matter of a more general "your character wouldn't know that", which is either handled by the fiction in an obvious way or is so specific to a single situation that it becomes nearly impossible to discuss.

Darth Ultron
2015-09-07, 10:53 AM
You can't really challenge the character, the character is not real. You can only challenge the player. You can dance all around with the words if you wish, but at the end of it all, you can only challenge the player.

The two can't really be separated.

Amphetryon
2015-09-07, 11:51 AM
So it isn't the 'challenge' you're interested in, but the knowledge?

Again, how is the challenge one that is overcome by the Character, and not the Player seated at the game table? If the advice "challenge the Character, not the Player" has merit and is a viable strategy, how does one achieve this goal? If challenging the Player, rather than the Character, is 'metagaming' or breaks immersion or is otherwise some version of BadWrongFun (and much advice around these parts is some variation on that theme), then how does one avoid it, either from the Player's perspective or from the GM's?

hymer
2015-09-07, 11:55 AM
Again, how is the challenge one that is overcome by the Character, and not the Player seated at the game table? If the advice "challenge the Character, not the Player" has merit and is a viable strategy, how does one achieve this goal? If challenging the Player, rather than the Character, is 'metagaming' or breaks immersion or is otherwise some version of BadWrongFun (and much advice around these parts is some variation on that theme), then how does one avoid it, either from the Player's perspective or from the GM's?

Are we going round in circles? :smallwink: I'll leave your thread alone, I'm afraid I have no idea what's going on here.

Jay R
2015-09-07, 12:09 PM
To entirely challenge the characters, and not the players at all? No, not 100%.

Hypothetical game: Each player is a programmer, who has programmed a character's reactions, planning, and fighting skills. Rather than choosing the character's build, the programmer programs in all possible elements, and designs an algorithm. to create a build. Then these programmed characters run through the dungeon, while the player/programmers go outside and play football.

The players are still the ones being challenged - in this case, their programming skills and optimizing algorithms.

Players design character builds, decide what equipment to buy, decide whether to pick the lock or bribe the guard, decide which rooms to search and when to check for traps, and in combat, decide whether to full attack or move and attack, which feat to use, and how many points of Power Attack to use, which spells to cast, and when to drink potions.

The character is a player-built tool which limits and focuses which player decisions are available, but the player not only makes the moment-by-moment decisions in the game, but also made the decisions which determine what options that character has to choose from.

Amphetryon
2015-09-07, 12:14 PM
To entirely challenge the characters, and not the players at all? No, not 100%.

Hypothetical game: Each player is a programmer, who has programmed a character's reactions, planning, and fighting skills. Rather than choosing the character's build, the programmer programs in all possible elements, and designs an algorithm. to create a build. Then these programmed characters run through the dungeon, while the player/programmers go outside and play football.

The players are still the ones being challenged - in this case, their programming skills and optimizing algorithms.

Players design character builds, decide what equipment to buy, decide whether to pick the lock or bribe the guard, decide which rooms to search and when to check for traps, and in combat, decide whether to full attack or move and attack, which feat to use, and how many points of Power Attack to use, which spells to cast, and when to drink potions.

The character is a player-built tool which limits and focuses which player decisions are available, but the player not only makes the moment-by-moment decisions in the game, but also made the decisions which determine what options that character has to choose from.

How can one make decisions in the game that are not 'metagaming,' then? Even if a Player willfully ignores information she might have on the basis of 'my Character wouldn't know that,' the Player is still consciously making a choice based on the knowledge that she's playing a game.

Jay R
2015-09-07, 02:14 PM
How can one make decisions in the game that are not 'metagaming,' then? Even if a Player willfully ignores information she might have on the basis of 'my Character wouldn't know that,' the Player is still consciously making a choice based on the knowledge that she's playing a game.

That's correct, but over-simplified.There is no broad wall between everything that is 100% meta-gaming and everything that is 0% metagaming. There is a long continuum of how much the decision is unrealistically meta.

If a character who has never left his home village before buys a spare silver dagger, then it's meta-gaming to some extent, since we haven't played out the character learning about lycanthropes. Two days ago, when a beholder appeared, I asked the DM, "Does Gustav know enough about Beholders to know that all attacks are ray-based?"

This is a series of delicate, complex judgment calls, not a simple yes/no decision.

But if a different player would do something else with your character, or would even have built a different character, then to some extent, every challenge is challenging the player, using the character as a tool to do it.

Is the monster being threatened by the Fighter's greatsword, or by the fighter, or by the player? As soon as you realize that the player decided to have the Fighter attack with the greatsword, the three possibilities are revealed to all be the same.

TheThan
2015-09-07, 02:24 PM
In my mind challenging characters comes down to Roleplaying. Challenging a character’s moral or ethical beliefs or bringing challenges that force them to make tough role-playing decisions is the way to go. As soon as you insert mechanics into the situation, then the players can easily divorce themselves from their characters.

The classic prisoner dilemma is one, how does your character handle an enemy that has surrendered? Do they run the risk of getting back stabbed by taking him prisoner? Or do they simply kill him and be done with it. This should (but doesn’t always) amount to the players making decisions based on their characters’ personalities and the specific situation. What do they do with the nursery of orc babies they found in the orc encampment they just finished fighting through. What do they do when the princess doesn’t want to be rescued by the knight in shining armor? Bring these sorts of questions up and allow your characters to play it out.

I would also like to say never tell players “Your character would never do that!” to a player; that starts arguments (which usually begins with “Yes my character totally would do that!”). Instead ask them, “are you sure you want to do that? It seems a bit out of character”, or “are you sure about doing that? that clearly goes against your alignment”. That gets players to think about what their character would do, as opposed to telling them “No, you can’t do that!”, which people tend to take a disliking to.

goto124
2015-09-08, 12:37 AM
And sometimes, with situations like those, you have to metagame just to know what is the 'right' decision, or at least the decision that doesn't bring the game to a screeching halt.

Which can be justified in-universe. Your barbarian doesn't kill the orc babies because his friends told him not to. Other reasons could be 'people will get furious at us' and 'let's try not to do morally grey stuff until we've at least attempted the alternatives'.

I sitll don't tell other players their characters are "out of character”, or “clearly goes against your alignment". Because the players know their characters best, and no one else dictates their characters! (And what's with the whole alignment thing anyway?) It's just a rephrasing of 'your character don't do that', and not much better if it's any better at all.

A better alternative would be 'what do you expect to happen?' It gets them to think of the consequences. Can they bear it? Can the other party members bear it?

Thrawn4
2015-09-08, 04:32 AM
In my opinion it would be a bad idea to challenge only the characters and not the players. The game is supposed to entertain the players, and watching some autonomous mechanics that determine the outcome (like a roll for combat tactics that allows the character to make the optimal move) is boring as it takes away the players' agenda and the basic premise of roleplaying.
And yes, my approach involves some kind of metagaming. We had this thread once about handicapped players in an average group where it was said that handicapped players are at a disadvantage because a socially awkward player has some trouble playing a persuasive character and so on, but this hasn't been an issue in my groups. And I think every DM can reduce the amount of metagaming to acceptable degrees. But again, I think metagaming is a necesssary aspect if you want people to play their characters.

goto124
2015-09-08, 07:14 AM
watching some autonomous mechanics that determine the outcome (like a roll for combat tactics that allows the character to make the optimal move) is boring as it takes away the players' agenda and the basic premise of roleplaying.

To emphasize your point, I'll add: Why not just read a book, or watch a television show?

Jay R
2015-09-08, 02:37 PM
You can't challenge the character and not the player as long as the player has to make the choice of what to do.

Thrudd
2015-09-08, 05:58 PM
Yeah, the two really can't and shouldn't be separated. Isn't the whole point of playing the game to challenge the players? The characters are just their proxies in the game world.

Slipperychicken
2015-09-08, 06:12 PM
Sure. Just get the character to do anything that needs a roll instead of a player decision.

And you can divorce player and character knowledge. That is what knowledge and lore skills do. For example: My character knows all about firearms and their inner workings, but I do not. He has also studied art history and architecture, which are both skills that I lack in real life.

Amphetryon
2015-09-08, 07:27 PM
Sure. Just get the character to do anything that needs a roll instead of a player decision.

And you can divorce player and character knowledge. That is what knowledge and lore skills do. For example: My character knows all about firearms and their inner workings, but I do not. He has also studied art history and architecture, which are both skills that I lack in real life.

What is the Character rolling? How were the Character's skills in the rolled action determined?

Jay R
2015-09-08, 09:12 PM
Sure. Just get the character to do anything that needs a roll instead of a player decision.

... and that didn't need a decision whether to do or not. If the player decides to have the character pick a lock, or search a room, or attack with his sword, or buy two swords instead of one greatsword, or to cast a specific spell, then the player is involved in the challenge, or decide what spell to cast.


And you can divorce player and character knowledge. That is what knowledge and lore skills do. For example: My character knows all about firearms and their inner workings, but I do not. He has also studied art history and architecture, which are both skills that I lack in real life.

But if you decide when to roll a Knowledge (art history) roll, then you made that decision.

Frozen_Feet
2015-09-09, 03:08 AM
Any mechanic which engages only the character and not the player already creates all problems with metagaming you might want to avoid, as it by nature breaks immersion by reminding the player is not their character.

Slipperychicken
2015-09-09, 03:33 AM
... and that didn't need a decision whether to do or not. If the player decides to have the character pick a lock, or search a room, or attack with his sword, or buy two swords instead of one greatsword, or to cast a specific spell, then the player is involved in the challenge, or decide what spell to cast.


A decision to attempt something is not necessarily the same as a challenge. It takes no effort or skill to decide to try climbing Mount Everest, or to try shooting a fly off a cow's nose from 100 yards, or to try arm-wrestling the world's strongest man. The challenge comes in succeeding at a task (or goal, or whatever), not simply deciding to attempt it.

ArcanaFire
2015-09-09, 04:14 AM
Can we present an obstacle the Character, rather than the Player, is tasked to solve?

Yes. You task them with personal dilemmas. You take things the character is already established as caring about and craft the situation around those things. The player has established that the character doesn't like deep bodies of water, then give him a situation in which he has to swim to save someone or something he cares about.

At that point it's not about the swim check, it's about having the courage to step off dry land and grow as a person.

Say she's racist against orcs. Make the only person who can give her the key she needs to that chest be an orc and watch her struggle with talking to him politely in public over shooting him in the face with her bow.

These are things that would be totally easy for the player to do, but because their characters are already established as having difficulty with it, it becomes a more entertaining chunk of the game to play for it.

The mechanical challenges are going to boil down to numbers, but the challenges your party will remember will be the ones that took their character out of their comfort zone.

...you know, as long as you don't do it every single session because then they'll see what's up and be like "bro, what are you doing?"

Seto
2015-09-09, 04:27 AM
I'm afraid you're overthinking this, Amph. "Challenge the character, not the player", in most cases when it is given as sound advice, means something as basic as "don't forget to take into account who the character is, and make the player remember it". IMO, when the character gets into a swordfight, you're already challenging them, because you make the player rely on the capabilities of their character. As a counterexample, a purely logical puzzle in a dungeon can be solved using only the player's own capabilities, be their character a genius or a fighter who dumped INT.

You're interpreting it as "Challenge the character and don't challenge the player", which requires divorcing the character from the player. (In that case, grounding dilemmas in the character's personality as suggested above by ArcanaFire could work). It's probably both easier and more reasonable to interpret it as "challenge primarily the character, not only the player", which requires not divorcing them most of the time.

Jay R
2015-09-09, 08:56 AM
A decision to attempt something is not necessarily the same as a challenge. It takes no effort or skill to decide to try climbing Mount Everest, or to try shooting a fly off a cow's nose from 100 yards, or to try arm-wrestling the world's strongest man. The challenge comes in succeeding at a task (or goal, or whatever), not simply deciding to attempt it.

I suspect that you missed my point, and that we are using the word "challenge" in different senses..

The actual challenge in the game is deciding what to do - determining when to bribe a guard, when to bluff him, and when to attack. The player has to meet that challenge.

Rolling random dice and counting down hit points isn't a challenge; it's how we decide the results of the challenging decision of whether to fight or run.

NichG
2015-09-09, 08:57 PM
I'd say it can be done, but that doesn't mean it should be done.

A completely railroaded game where every die roll is explicitly written into the script and there are no branch points gets pretty close to this. There is still the issue of 'challenging the players' character-building abilities', but you can push that even further by providing a number of pregens equal to the number of players. In which case, what you're left with is a sort of stochastic movie where the players just get to choose which camera they want to look through, but no player can make any decision that could change the overall outcome.

Should you do that? Probably not. At the end of the day, metagaming is a fairly minor aspect of the overall play experience, and it isn't worth sacrificing all that much from other areas of the game to control it. It can even be a positive influence on the group dynamic in cases.

What it comes down to is that oft-repeated wisdom is often a matter of taste and balance, not rules and ideals. People read about a game that feels off to them, and then say 'for me, I'd want the game to be a bit more in this direction compared to what you described'. If they were happy with what they read, they don't give this particular advice, or they might even advise on some other aspect instead. If you try to push it to a formal limit, you overshoot the sweet spot, even for the person who was giving that advice in the first place.