Exchange of Realities

A lot of people find different categories to divide players into. This is one of them, this another, this a third. But there are a few specific player-types that don’t fit into any of these categories, and the Current is perhaps one of the most dangerous.

Under the first category above, she’d be halfway between a Creative and a Scientist—she’s there for the story, and she likes poking things and seeing how they respond. She’d give the second system and the third logic errors. She has the improvisational skills of MacGyver, a good enough idea how people work to survive in a conversation, just enough tactical skill to make fights difficult, and a strong sense of drama. Most importantly, she’s both a treat to run for and a hazard to the efficacy of her GM.

The advantage to dealing with her is that she enjoys the story; she’s immersed in it, and she tends to take the plot and run with it when it would otherwise slow down, to search out the more subtle clues, and to create situations that emphasize the nifty-angle of the story. When you put up a nearly impossible situation, she’s usually the first person to try something. And the second. And the third.

There are two major dangers she poses to the game. One is her modus operandi, and its effect on the plot. She’s a Scientist, but she’s not a rules lawyer; instead, she’s a cause and effect lawyer who likes seeing how the system interacts with the laws of physics. This makes her dangerous in firmly written systems (“Okay, so if I blast back everything in this radius a certain distance by doing this, what happens when the effect hits the sail of a ship?”) and absolutely devastating in experimental or freeform games, where there aren’t codified effects. The worst part is, it sounds downright reasonable, simply following logic from A to B to C, and she tries to stay within the Laws of Drama, so it generally in some way aids the story.

For instance (this is a real-world example, or at least as real-world as this blog gets), you give her a spell for eavesdropping, in which she opens a pinhole-sized pocketspace portal between Point A and Point B, so as to be able to listen closely at Point A to the conversation at Point B. Well and good, right? Except then most of the group goes into a place they shouldn’t be able to go, and can’t get back out. That’s when she asks the innocent question: “All right, the spell opens a little hole there and there, right? Now, I’d like to try something; stop me if it gets too broken. I’m going to estimate their location by how the sound is bouncing back…. and then I’m going to open a pinhole next to them…. still with me? All right. Here’s the kicker: would it be possible to extend the size of this thing to large enough for them to step through?” Her logic’s sound, and the usefulness of this particular stunt is undeniable: getting the group out of there would otherwise require a bit of a plothole, and having her provide a wormhole instead lets you keep internal consistency.

Not so bad, right?

Except then she keeps using it. By the time she’s halfway through the game, she’s used that little portal-spell to disable enemy archers (was that your bowstring?), store valuable supplies, capture a fleeing messenger (runner, meet wall), bypass locked doors, steal small trinkets, and save the life of an NPC with a crushed windpipe. Even the spell backfiring on her when she tried to repeat the capture application didn’t stop her (though it did result in her character actually calculating out his start-points and exit-points to avoid a repeat of the same problem), and now she’s trying to defeat a group of people she probably shouldn’t be able to take on alone by attempting to replicate the backfire.

Meanwhile, there’s the rest of the plot. She’s driving it as best she can (often asking what she can do to make your job easier), coming up with new solutions to old problems—she might even be better suited to your kind of plot than the rest of the group. This is one sweet main character inspiration—the problem, of course, being that a tabletop RPG should not have a main character.

This is why I call this kind of player the Current. She seems harmless, but it’s far too easy to get caught up in what she does. As one of my friends put it, “It is in the nature of a certain type of player to manipluate the GM without, usually, meaning to. You see, some people are very invested in their games, they really care about the result, and occasionally that type of person will also have very good ideas about the direction they want the game to go in. A lot of GMs like having this type of player; making them happy and making the game good are usually the same thing. Which means they often take over the game, usually without meaning to, because they GM inherently wants to give them what they want.” While working with your Current is making a good story, the side effect (whether she’s trying to or not) is often to sideline the other players.

Dealing with people like this can be difficult. They’re forces of nature in their own right, and you often find yourself listening well to them because their concern isn’t just for their own actions, but for the story as well. If their playstyle matches more closely with yours, it’s even easier not to realize that you’re siding with them over the other players, creating further gaps within the group.

Dealing with a Current requires several skills. The most important of these, of course, is knowing how to say “No.” That’s right, “No.” The word on its own should work decently well. For the more adept, coming up with internally consistent reasons why the current plan shouldn’t work (“You don’t have the energy for too many spells of that size in a row”, for instance) is a good way to deal with her—though be careful, since she’ll probably start looking for ways around it, and while it may be a good way to add a plot hook, it doesn’t help with the fact that that’s still leaving the rest of the group in her shadow. To deal with that part, start actively targeting plots to them—and, again, don’t be afraid to tell her that it’s a problem. If the other players are having difficulty keeping up with her, you might even want to suggest that they start coordinating with her; while it still gives her a mildly overblown importance out of character, it does mean that a larger portion of the group is putting these sorts of plans into action.

Then you need to look at yourself. This is the hardest part: neither you nor the Current is likely to realize her full effect on you and your decision-making process. But look back at the decisions you’ve made. Do you tend to agree with her more than with the other players? How often does she win disputes regarding the system and the world? Be honest with yourself—ask the other players if you have to. Then start taking it into account. When she makes an argument, step back and make sure that you’re addressing everyone’s concerns evenly; even make an effort to be biased against her if you have to. Remember that this is everyone’s game, and plan accordingly.