Ones and Zeros: I WISH I might... #5

I WISH I might... #5

July 28, 2002	WISH
This week's WISH asks about communication and miscommunication. I had a player in my Traveller campaign who didn't really know what he wanted. We discussed it and I let him run an amnesiac. This is the campaign I discussed in WISH #4, where I had very different assumptions amongst the players about the world and the threat levels and how I expected them to get along. So 'John Carter' is on the run from the cops in this little backwater planet and decides it's time to get off. He steals a letter that will allow him to pass himself as one of several heirs who have inherited a spaceship (that's the PCs and their hook...). I start asking the player questions about what he does, how he operates, etc. "What do you do with the guy from whom you're stealing this letter?" "I kill him, can't have him around as a messy loose end. He figures he's some kind of secret agent and he's in a lot of trouble." Fair enough, but it doesn't really fit either my expectation of the world or the background I wrote for the character. In my background, the character was a secret agent, but not of the James Bond/Jason Bourne type. He was a recruiter for a secret school of telepathic healers, outlawed by the Imperium but continuing in hiding. Another PC had latent talents that his school wanted so he'd been sent to bring her in. What happened next? Hadn't determined. So, I throught about it and I decided that we could tell a great story that was sort of a reverse "Bourne Identity" and when he realized all the bad things he'd done because he thought he was one kind of agent would be some great role-playing. What do you do when you find out that underneath your veneer of civilization, you're capable of being a casual killer? I was really sorry I didn't get to develop this plot. Sometimes player-GM communication doesn't work. I burned some long fuse between myself and a friend in a D&D game he was running. We, the good guys, had been ambushed trying to help 'little Timmy' rescue his family from the Brigands. Now, Timmy was described as '13'. I am playing a Monk from a different culture. After we escape, I go hunt down Timmy. To my mind, he's a young adult who needs a lesson in 'not tricking the large party of adventurers'. Now, I'm a good guy. I'm not going to kill him, I'm probably not going to draw blood. Timmy will learn his lesson and that'll be that. The GM can't deal with it. I'm planning to hunt down and beat a small child. Small child? I didn't get a single 'small child' signal before this. Medieval agrarian society age 13 read very differently to me. The GM insisted that I was out of line and that it should have been clear what he meant. I agree, it should have. He should have described 'Timmy' as a small child, not as 'thirteen'. I never really got back what enthusiasm I had for that campaign and left it within a few weeks. I did learn a lesson that I've tried to apply in my own games: make sure that if there is a misunderstanding, you talk it through with the player. It doesn't always work and it doesn't always solve the problem, but it never hurts.
.:Posted by Michael on July 28, 2002 12:31 PM:.