It Builds Character

I am reaching an age, perhaps an epoch, when everyone around me expresses concerns about decidedly adult matters, most of which involve either rings of power, which bond one human to another, and/or the spawning practices of modern hominids. The latter subject has been especially prevalent in recent conversations, as my sister is decidedly infested with baby. Not to worry, her condition is scheduled to culminate this very day in a beautiful yet grotesque ritual, which will bestow several new titles on various members of my family -mother, grandparents, uncle.

My impending promotion to the status of "weird uncle Sporkchop" has naturally wormed its way in to my thoughts on gaming, specifically the notion of creating a character. The ideas of fatherhood and rpg character generation hold a bizarrely similar appeal in my mind. I see both as a way to craft another sentient being, to project some aspect of my own personality and style onto the world and to take pride in their mighty deeds. When creating an rpg character, the world and person are fictional and the imprinting is done with pencil and paper. When forming a babby, the person is obviously very real and the character building is done through years of nurturing and acting all role-model-y.

Of course, there is also a great deal of chance involved with raising a child. They could have serious health problems, or do poorly in school, or develop tastes and opinions entirely opposite to yours. They might even grow up to be *gasp* a douchebag... or get eaten by orcs. These are all concerns that no doubt weigh upon the mind of every parent, keeping them up in the wee hours of the night. I suppose all you can do is hope that your care and example will guide your child in the right direction.

The girlfriend and I have had numerous conversations about real-world character generation and seem to be on the same page. We both want to have at least one kid, and want to do so in the not-to-distant future. The urge to procreate is weighing more heavily on the GF, whose ovaries have lately been holding her mind in thrall like some sort of fallopian illithid.

Side note: for those not familiar to the D&D beastiary, illithids are the game's shoutout to Lovecraftian octopoids that wreak havoc on the minds and sanity of those who behold them. To those not familiar with Lovecraft, picture this guy, but evil, and more psychic. 

Fortunately, my maleness has spared me from a similar level of emotional anxiety, though I do occasionally pause and think, I'm not getting any younger! Best get into the game!

Y is for "Yes And"

One of the fundamental rules of improvisational theater (one of my other hobbies) is often referred to as the "yes and" rule. If you are performing in improv comedy, or any other form of unscripted theater and one of your fellow actors gets a scene rolling, or adds to a scene in progress, it is important to run with what they have set up. In improv terms, adding something to a scene is called an offer and it is important to accept that offer. If you don't accept it, the scene may immediately break and/or descend into something completely unintelligible to the audience... a terrible place to be for any actor.

Learning to accept and run with others' offers can be tough. Sometimes you enter a scene thinking, "I'm gonna come in and be the hyperactive little kid" Then just as your stepping on stage, your fellow actor says, "Ah, Old Man Withers! there you are, I was hoping you might help me with some car trouble." Well, you can either shift immediately to Old Man Withers mode which will further the storyline that was just established, or continue to play your original idea and play as the little kid. The latter could very likely cause a break in the audience's suspension of disbelief because they're thinking, "Wait, I thought that was Old Man Withers?"

There is an improv exercise that distills the idea of "yes and" down to its root, in which each of the participants begins every statement with the words yes and.

1: "Hey grandpa, I can't wait to get to the carnival"
2: "Yes, and we're going to stay there all day, Billy"
1: "Yes, and I want to eat tons of cotton candy!"

and so on...

I bring this up because running a tabletop RPG is very similar to performing in improv theater. A GM plays every character not played by one of the players and also orchestrates all of the interaction with the surrounding environment. During a game session, the GM typically has an idea about where he/she wants the session to go. However, this idea is not always apparent to the players, and they may read the clues the GM drops in an entirely different way and attempt to take the game in an entirely different direction. The question is, as the GM, do you accept the players' offer and go in their direction or do you try to convince them to go with your plan as intended? The former can be challenging because it can put the GM into a spot for which he/she is unprepared, can potentially derail the course of the adventure and/or even bypass some of the hours of work the GM put into planning the session. The latter can be challenging because the players can start to feel railroaded (like their choices don't matter) and potentially breaking the fun of the session, and if it happens too much, dissolving the group.

There are a couple tricks a GM can use to say "yes and" to the player's decisions -to help guide the adventure without denying the players their active roles in the way it plays out.