[Agemegos]

This is a barrow that I have been pushing for twenty-seven years—I first discussed it in an article titled "That's Entertainment", in one of the early issues of ASGARD Bulletin.

My first piece of advice is "be aware what sort of RPG you are in". Just as there are the several different sorts of gamers of whose needs a GM must be conscious, there are several different sorts of games — or rather several orthogonal tendencies within a multidimensional spectrum of games — of the needs of which all players ought to be conscious. There are games that tend towards being expanded skirmish wargames, in which the enjoyment derives from making best tactical use of resources, including second-guessing, out-witting, and defeating other players. There are games in which the enjoyment derives from acting out character tropes. There are ones in which the enjoyment derives from appreciating ones characters motivations, situation, and emotions and the acting appropriately to them. There are games in which the enjoyment derives from collaborating with others to extemporise a compelling story. Most games are in one or more overlaps; nevertheless it remains the case that in a game that heavily emphasises genuine striving against real opposition you will annoy others and undermine yourself if you make a deliberate mistake "because that's what my character would do" or "because the hero always lives the ingenue unprotected and goes to investigate the sound of breaking glass in the first quarter of a story like this".

Similarly, in a game that heavily emphasises characters responding to incident consistently with their motives or building tension steadily to a climax, setting an ambush for the rancher's hands and blowing them out of the saddle because you can tell OOC that the GM means him as a villain will irritate the other players and frustrate their enjoyment of the game. It doesn't matter whether you win the argument afterwards about what is good roleplaying: if the GM and other players end up frustrated and upset it doesn't matter whether it was "good roleplaying" or "good gameplay" in some purist sense.

So: find out as early as possible what the GM and other players are trying to get out of the game, and make choices as early as possible (ideally, before starting character generation) that will support you in entertaining them by facilitating the game they want and not frustrating it. Don't deliver a group of gamists up to the TPK by playing in character or playing to tropes or playing for the first-act defeat; rather play up to their agendas by setting up devastating moves for their characters. Don't drive a group of narrativists into an anticlimax by decisively jumping the level of conflict and anticipating the plot development to the crisis; instead, have your character respond appropriately to incidents as they occur and the current level of conflict.

If you find out that the advice above would require you to play in a way that you don't enjoy, that is outside your range as a roleplayer, then don't play in it. Find another group, or wait for another game, but take a rain check on the game offered or resign if it has already started, and never force the game you want to play onto people who have signed up for something else.

My second piece of advice is to design a character that is going to be suitable for the game you are going to play. Because if you generate a character that is not appropriate to the game in prospect you will later be forced into the choice of either playing the character badly or of spoiling the game. It is a longstanding bugbear of mine that players insist on generating characters that lack heroic motivations to go on adventures and then blame the GM for not providing them with adequate reasons to stick with the party and go on the adventures.

Help. Make it work. Start by generating a character that is suitable for the campaign you are about to play and not the character that you wish someone would run a campaign for.

If the GM issues a specification for the sorts of characters he or she wants in the campaign, aim for the middle. Constrained-optimisation problems in games have inculcated into most of us a reflex to generate characters right on the envelope of the specification, tricksily sneaking in something that is as far beyond the GM's intention as is compatible with the letter of what he or she specified. This is usually a mistake, except in RPGs that are basically re-skinned Star Fleet Battles tournaments (the extreme gamist ones). If the GM announces a campaign for adventurous professors at weird old Walpurgis U., generate a damned professor, not a bootlegging janitor or a cigarette-smoking man-in-black who hangs out at the Faculty Club to keep an eye on the research. Sure, you want to make a creative contribution; do so by coming up with a really entertaining professor, not by admitting that you are too uncreative to make a professor fun.

Start collaborating with the other players before you boot your chargen app. Knowing what the other players want to get out of the game, set them up to get it right from the beginning of character generation. If it's a hexgrid-intensive game and the other players want to pull of tactical coups, collaborate with them to set up devastating tactical combos. For instance, if one other player wants to play hard-hitting artillery, generate a meat shield to keep rude strangers off him and force his enemy into the open. If another player wants to play a martial artist, generate a mentalist or energy-projector to cover his back. Get some Hawkeye-and-Chingach**** action going! If another character wants to play a dashing and impetuous swashbuckler, generate his cunning and methodical partner. The characters will act as mutual foils, each providing a contrasting background for the other so that they defining qualities will stand out clearly without grotesque exaggeration. The other player will be more free to act impetuous for having someone watch his or her back; you will get to look cool by saving his reckless bacon with a well-prepared contingency plan.

Prepare your character to be drawn into adventures by the GM's scenario hooks. That means providing him or her with a small but diverse selection of sturdy, reusable grommets: features that are suitable for being engaged by scenario hooks and used to draw the character in various directions and the GM may require.

Fasten your character securely to the party, with links either to two other characters or to the Big Iron Ring of the team's occupation or duty. When the party is drawn into an adventure by the GM scenario-hooking somebody else, your character ought to be drawn along too — without the GM having to fiddle about at the beginning of each adventure separately motivating several sub-parties and individual characters. It is part of your job as a player to generate a character who will go on adventures with the party. It is not your job to make the GM work for it.