I don’t know if it’s necessarily immersionists only- I think a lot of folks like to have a level of context to build characters with. I mean, a character is likely something you’re going to be using for at least a few sessions, if not a long time, so you tend to invest heavily in it.

That being the case, as Vincent says, “Fit Character” also entails getting some context about how your character does fit with the rest of the world.

I’ve noticed that you can give someone GURPS and they’ll be at a loss for what to do, while Tunnels & Trolls only gives 3 choices and people have no problem. I like to liken it to a restaurant- a menu with too many choices (or, worse yet, “We’ll cook anything you want, as long as you can name the ingredients”) can be overwhelming.

A set group of choices also helps you “aim” the character from chargen for play. In D&D, all the characters are rated in HOW they go about affecting combat, so you need never worry about picking something completely irrelevant to play.

Truth and Justice. A nifty rules-light semi Sim superhero RPG by the mighty Chad Underkoffler.

It was the game I turned to when I decided I wanted Sim supers once again, without the pain of most trad systems. It’s worked out well for that.

I don’t know if it’s necessarily immersionists only

Yeah, I think that’s where I was leaning too. I’m not convinced that there isn’t a link there at all, but I think I’m coming around to this:

Most people need to be positioned at a contextualized point to comfortably begin a game. Some folks, particularly those who use “setting” or “character” as their primary socket of emotional/intellectual engagement in the game require a certain amount of contextualization in the world in order (either by set-up exposition or cliche adoption) to plug in in a satisfying way. Others, particularly those who use “system” or “choice” as their socket require contextualization only so far as it assures them that lack of the details of the world will not hamper the process of getting to the choice or the game.

“only so far as it assures them that lack of the details of the world will not hamper the process of getting to the choice or the game…”

or, natch, that they have been given/created whatever context is necessary to get to the choice or the game.

Your D&D example is a good way of illustrating the system socket person. “I know I’m going to be effective in any class” is an assurance that says “I don’t need to worry about the details of the world” and facilitates me getting to the game.

On a different note, Victor’s game Shades sounds like it is contextually ideal for play by person who’s socket is choice based. Any time he talks about the game, he elucidates first that there is nothing before play - no world, no setting, no character. The first choice is made out of context with the first words you throw in the ring, and every bit of the world, the setting, the character is based the choices made in vocalizing and in reaction to the statements of the other players at the table.

In this way Shades appeals to me as an theory idea but not as a potential player. Because I plug in via character, and no character exists at the onset, I think the game would teach me to approach the game via non emotional engagement, which would lead me to treat my character like a pawn, and make me feel like I were playing a board game. This could well be fun, but would not satisfy the reason I’ve sought out an RPG specifically in the first place.

Ah, but it’s also a setting bit too! The choices say, “These types of characters are the movers & shakers of the setting”, “Clerics mean gods give direct magical power into the world”, etc.

Luke Crane likes to say that system is setting- and when you constrain choices and give people structure through it- that’s exactly what it does. Consider the previous versions of D&D that never provided a full setting- yet people still came up with D&D mythology behind it- “Well, obviously Beholders exist in this world, since they’re in the book.”

I believe the key is in giving folks enough context according to their tastes for them to run with.

That works well enough for “D&D genre D&D” — but hits gaps when you get into specific settings. (And does weird stuff when you put other settings into D&D rules.) It also gaps when you get the common D&D as sim problems. When D&D is used as D&D it works very well. When it is used for other things it does not.

(I’d even go so far as to argue that most published D&D settings are not very good as D&D settings. Look at some of the things Monte Cook talked about with his work and using the logic of the system to build the world, and the ways in which it is very different than most published D&D settings — which are based on sim assumptions and not the game system.)

OTOH, Burning Wheel has a very good blend of system and setting — if you’re the kind of person that is comfortable taking that kind of context into account. The thing that it adds, I think, is that it also helps people with a character socket plug in. You get your lifepaths which give you all your backstory as well as all your stats, and the two build together very well.

Thus people with a more character based focus will still be happy with Burning Wheel, while they may not get it out of D&D.

System, we all know, can be setting. Or it can lead to setting. Or it can have nothing at all to do with setting — which we also know very well from the mass of Trady RPGs that have setting and system which have nothing to do with each other.

The problem is that Arete and Hubris and the choice are such low-context system bits that they do not inherently build setting so much as they imply it.

Make a Burning Wheel character and you end up with a guy born a peasent in a village who was conscripted into an army but deserted in his first battle and then became a freebooter mercenary. This gives you lots of context.

Make a Nine Worlds character and you get a guy who normally defies the Gods, but sometimes doesn’t, and who likes to destroy things, and then you hit muses and either 1) just assume that humans are the same wherever you go and make muses that are all about generic human concerns or 2) have to actually sit down and read the setting/kibitz the setting out in detail in order to be able to finish chargen.

Nine Worlds does a really good job of supporting the setting with its system, but it does not have a system that generates setting (at least not in character generation).

There’s a reason why contextualization is an interaction in my model, and pretty much does exactly what you’re talking about — uses elements of the Fiction to give meaning to player Goals through supporting and qualifying details. I wonder if there are two flavors, during chargen and after resolution, or if they’re pretty much the same, continual process.

Mo, have you played anything like Universalis or Primetime Adventures, where there is literally nothing except system determined before play begins, and setting and characters are both created by the playgroup in a relative vacuum? How do those games play for you?

In a purely selfish bent, have you got to look at FLFS yet? I’d be curious to hear if you found it to give enough adequate context. It’s built off cliches, yeah, but they’re not exactly common cliches.

Though the character as pawn on a board metaphor is not a very apt one to describe Shades (board games always give the player a limited nomber of clearly defined possible moves, whereas Shades does nothing of the kind), I do think that you probably won’t like it for approximately the reason you give: it is quite non-immersive.

Though it’s non-immersive in an entirely different way than Universalis, say, or Polaris - I have to ponder how I can express the difference.

It has something to do with the fact that in those two games you explicitly act as a narrator, someone who looks down upon the characters from a great distance, whereas in Shades most of the narration is first person.

Perhaps - perhaps it is something like this (using sloppy but hopefully evocative terminology). In immersive play, you make choices as the character and experience the world through the character. In Universalis and Polaris, both choices and experience are severed from the character. In Shades, the choices are severed from the character, but you still experience the world through his or her eyes and ears (and memories).

(Anything that falls into the fourth category implied by those three? Where you make choices as the character, but experience the world from outside and at a distance?)

Greetings,
Victor

I wonder if there are two flavours, during chargen and after resolution, or if they’re pretty much the same, continual process.

My sense is that they are related, but separate. The first builds a safe-passage bridge from the player’s individual imaginative space to the SIS, the second fosters active participation in the SIS by acknowledging the player’s contribution to it. The first is a collaborative negotiation, the second a process of feedback that is intrinsic to western communication process. It’s a “Roger Wilco” that assures the listener that they have been heard, that they have had an effect, and that transitions them from one place to another.

No, I’ve not tried either Universalis or PTA yet (though Brand’s trying to get me to read the former and there may be plans in the works for the latter) but I’ve tried both Breaking the Ice and My Life with Master, They were both fun, but both were one shots and both had that board game appeal (non-immersive character pawning).

I think that had more to do with the fact that they were one shots, some system bits, their relative newness to me and in particular, the group I played MLWM with than to problems with contextualization; There were cliches aplenty (romantic comedy and gothic horror) available for both games that made for good, quick contextualized worlds.

From what I understand, BtI and MLWM are similar to PTA but not Universalis, which sounds more to me like Shades which I was talking about above. I think in the end, I’d probably do better creating a contextualized character if there was no setting at all than creating a character in a setting that wasn’t contextualized to me (because it would release me from feeling like I needed to find the right place, and push me to proceed with creating my own space) BUT that the character MUST be contextualized for me BEFORE beginning play.

So I think I might be OK with PTA, but Universalis or Shades could cause me some serious difficulty.

And no, I haven’t had a chance to look at FLFS yet… and to be honest, you probably don’t want me to, until we’re playing with it. If you introduce process to me cold then my business analyst brain will tear it up, and deconstruct it coldly, while if you give it to me warm, I can study it’s interaction and provide better grounded more constructive feedback…. Go fig, there’s that contextualization thing again. My MBTI “NT” needs several data points to contrast and compare, or else my analysis becomes destructive. Ask Brand about my introduction to Trollbabe sometime.